Does Romans 9:5 call Jesus God?

Fitzmyer (The Anchor Bible) points out 4 main positions about the meaning of the verse:

1. The Messiah is God; Jesus is divine. This reading was preferred by the vast majority of interpreters in the first 8 centuries AD.

2. The Messiah naturally descended from Israel, and God is to be praised for that. Christ (the Messiah) is thus the climax of the prerogatives of the Israelites. 1 Cor. 15.27-28.

3. The Messiah is over all, and God is to be praised for that. The Messiah naturally descended from Israel and is preeminent among Israel’s prerogatives, and God is to be praised for that. This interpretation has little to commend it.

4. Christ is by natural descent a prerogative of Israel, but God is the one who is preeminent and blest forever, which would be Israel’s 9th prerogative. This interpretation has little to commend it.

Paula Fredriksen in “Paul the Pagans” Apostle” (2017), discusses this, curiously, only in the notes.

N.13, p.237: “Rom.9:5, likewise, can be read (I think, implausibly) as correlating ‘Christos’ (v.9a) with ‘ho theos’ (v.9b). I understand these these two clauses as two sentences, with the break between ‘sarka’ and ‘ho’ marking the end of Paul’s characterization of the messiah as ‘of the Israelite genos,’ and the concluding sentence as a doxology praising the biblical high god (cf. Rom. 11:36, 16:27: God is distinguished from, and in 16:27 and superior to, Christ). Further, on Christ in this Philippians passage as ‘being in the form of a god,’ Camille Focant, ‘La portee de la formula “to einai isa theo” en Ph. 2:6,’ New Testament Studies 62 (2016): 278-288, esp. at 285.”

N.28, p.241: “Dunn, ‘Theology of Paul,’ 242-60, segueing to Rom. 9:5 and whether or to what degree Paul considers Jesus to be or identifies him as ‘God.’ Hurtado too is ‘binatarian,’ but he argues from the perspective of devotional practices, not hermeneutics as such. N.T. Wright, cheerfully Nicene, states simply that Paul considers Jesus ‘God,’ e.g., ‘Paul and the Faithfulness of God,’ 2:707, and frequently elsewhere.”
Whether Rom. 9:5 calls Jesus “God” or not has been disputed since Erasmus. In his Commentary on Romans (1980), Ernst Käsemann writes:
It can hardly be the last member in the chain, as the conjecture of a relative link ὁ ὢν seeks to assert (according to BAGD, 357a dating from the Socinian J. Schlichting; Barth; Lorrimer, “Romans IX, 3-5”; Bartsch, “Rom. 9, 5,” 406ff.; cf. the discussion in Sanday and Headlam; Murray, 245ff.; Michel). We thus have the alternative debated from the days of Arianism (cf. Schelkle, Paulus, 331ff.; Lyonnet, Quaestiones, II, 2lff.): christological apposition to v. 5a or praise of God in an independent clause looking back to vv. 4-5a. The problem cannot be solved dogmatically, although this has constantly been attempted. The apostle never directly calls Christ God, let alone the emphatic ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς, which would be hard to imagine in view of the subordinationism in 1 Cor 15:27f. It can hardly be accepted, then, that in an extreme paradox anticipating the later doctrine of the two natures, he is according this title to the earthly Messiah of Israel. On the other hand, like Hellenistic Christianity in general, he obviously sees in Christ the pre-existent heavenly being to whom the ἴσα θεῷ of Phil 2:6 applies. Theologically interpretation will always build on either the one aspect or the other according to one’s total understanding of christology, and arguments to the contrary will be rejected. Today, however, it is only along the lines of stylistic criticism that the debate can be conducted.
One must admit that the form of the doxology is unusual, for elsewhere the predicate comes first, closely related to what precedes (Zahn; Kiihl; Lagrange; Prat, Theology, II, 126f.; Cullmann, Christology, 312f.; Ridderbos). Even more unusual, however, would be a Christ doxology, for which the acclamations of the Kyrios in I Cor 8:6; 12:3; Phil 2: II in Paul, and the δόξα acclamations in Rev 1:6; 2 Pet 3:18, only prepare the way, no such doxology being actually found in the NT. In keeping with this is the fact that predicating Christ directly as God is also singular and that it would obscure the emphasis of the context. The main point here is that of Israel’s blessings. A doxology is appropriate, since God has given the blessings and in so doing, as in blessings granted to the Christian community (Eph 4:6), he has shown himself to be ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς, namely, the one who directs history (Luz, Geschichtsverstandnis, 27; Berger, “Abraham,” 79; Cerfaux, Christ, 517ff.; Taylor; Jiilicher; Lietzmann; Dodd; Kuss, “Rolle,” 129). There is a parallel in the doxology in 11 :33-36, and such a doxology impressively manifests the solidarity of the apostle to the Gentiles with his people. Insertions between the article and θεὸς are to be found elsewhere (Champion, “Benedictions,” 124f.). The dominant christological interpretation should be rejected.

Unlikely:

• This is, evidently, Paul’s first real attempt to communicate with the church in Rome. He has never visited them before, and the letters intends to prepare them for his arrival by assuring them they share the same understanding of the gospel (cf. 1.10, 13-15). I think it would be very odd to maintain a distinction between ‘Jesus’ and ‘God’ throughout Rom 1-8, suddenly call Jesus ‘God’ in 9.5, then never mention it again in 9-16.
• Taking that further: Paul never calls Jesus ‘God’ in any other letter. This makes Rom 9.5 anomalous, which should at least make us cautious in the ‘Messiah=God’ interpretation.
• Rom 9-11 is the concluding argument (who of Jews and gentiles will be saved) to the thesis Paul has built across Rom 1-8 (the problem of sin affects both Jews and gentiles). Rom 9-11 begins and ends with a doxology to God using ‘all’ as a catchword (9.5 and 11.32-36). In the latter, the praise is abrupt, punctuating his concluding argument that eschatological salvation will result in ‘all Israel’ and ‘the full number of the gentiles’ being saved together. I think this makes a good thematic mirror to the opener to his concluding argument: he lists out the key points of God’s eschatological plan, the last of which is the Messiah (9.4-5a), followed by abrupt praise for God providing that plan (9.5b). In Paul’s other letters, Jesus is consistently subordinate to God. In fact, Paul believed Jesus would ultimately give up his authority ‘so that God may be all in all’ (1 Cor 15.25-28). For Paul, God will rule ‘above all’ eternally, but Jesus explicitly will not because he steps down from his authority once The End arrives. (Which is comparable to contemporary messianic expectations.) I think this is hard to square away with the view that Paul believed Jesus is ‘God who is above all’ based solely on an ambiguous Rom 9.5.