Abstract
Nearly a half-century ago, Günther Bornkamm published his now well-known essay, “The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament.”1 In response to the increasing tendency to steer interpretation of Romans away from the longstanding estimation of it as a “summary of the Christian religion,” as Martin Luther’s friend Philipp Melanchthon described it, in favor of reading Romans within a more narrowly defined historical context, Bornkamm warned against carrying historical zeal too far. He reminded readers just how difficult it is to reconstruct the circumstances of the earliest churches in Rome—their origin, issues, and demography—as well as Paul’s relationship to them, insisting that we remain largely “in the dark” on these matters and that Paul’s letter to the Romans does little to illuminate us.2 Paul may disclose the putative reason for sending the letter when he solicits Roman prayers for the successful delivery of the collection he is bringing to Jerusalem, and no doubt he also hopes to ingratiate himself to the Roman churches in order to secure a warm welcome on his impending visit, which in turn will allow him to make Rome the staging area for his pending missions into Spain.3 Yet Paul gives little indication that he knows anything in particular about the circumstances facing the churches in Rome. As Bornkamm puts it, “Paul never mentions a thing about any sort of information which he has received from Rome, and nowhere does he name any informants, as is the case in other letters.”4
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Notes
Günther Bornkamm, “The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament,” Australian Biblical Review 11 (1963): 2–14, reprinted under the same title in
Karl P. Donfried, ed., The Romans Debate, 2nd ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 16–28.
The importance of the journey to Spain in compelling Paul to write to the Romans has been advocated most notably by Dieter Zeller, Juden und Heiden in der Mission des Paulus: Studien zum Römerbrief (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1973), 70–72.
This reconstruction is most closely associated with Wolfgang Wiefel, “Die jüdische Gemeinschaft im antiken Rom und die Anfänge des römischen Christentums. Bemerkungen zu Anlass und Zweck des Römerbriefs,” Judaica 26 (1970): 65–88, reprinted as “The Jewish Community in Ancient Rome and the Origins of Roman Christianity,” in Donfried, Romans Debate, 85–101.
This view of the purpose and occasion of Romans is identified most notably by Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary, trans. Scott J. Hafemann (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), especially 5–6. See also
Stuhlmacher, “Der Abfassungszweck des Römerbriefes,” ZNW 77 (1986): 180–93, reprinted as “The Purpose of Romans,” trans. Reginald and Ilse Fuller, in Donfried, Romans Debate, 231–44. According to Stuhlmacher, by introducing his gospel in Romans 1:16 with the declaration that he is not ashamed of it, Paul “is signaling to friend and foe alike among his recipients that he intends to stick to his embattled cause in Rome as elsewhere.” This view follows the suggestion of
Walter Schmithals, Der Römerbrief als historisches Problem, Studien zum Neuen Testament 9 (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1975), 91–93. See also Stuhlmacher, “Theme of Romans,” in Donfried, Romans Debate, 336. For related views,
see Kenneth Grayston, “‘I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel.’ Romans 1,16a and the Structure of the Epistle,” Studia Evangelica 2 (1964): 569–73;
Gerhart Herold, Zorn und Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus. Eine Untersuchung zu Röm 1, 16–18 (Frankfurt: Lang, 1973). Stuhlmacher and Schmithals here oppose the more common view, usually associated with
C. K. Barrett, “I Am Not Ashamed of the Gospel,” in Foi et salut selon S. Paul, ed. Markus Barth, AnBib 42 (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1970), 19–41, which thinks Paul employs rhetorical litotes so that the denial serves as a confession.
Some have suggested that Paul anticipates the arrival of rival missionaries in Rome. They are not there yet, but Paul thinks it is just a matter of time before they reach the capital. For a discussion of this and related positions, see A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), 26–52;
James C. Miller, The Obedience of Faith, the Eschatological People of God, and the Purpose of Romans, SBL Dissertation Series 177 (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 17–19;
Douglas A. Campbell, “Determining the Gospel through Rhetorical Analysis in Paul’s Letter to the Roman Christians,” in Gospel in Paul: Studies on Corinthians, Galatians and Romans for Richard N. Longenecker, ed. L. Ann Jervis and Peter Richardson, supplement, JSNT 108 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 320–31.
The most compelling case in recent years for an entirely Gentile audience in Romans has been put forward by Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 21–33. A generation before Stowers, a similar case, though less detailed, was made by
Johannes Munck, Paul and the Salvation of Mankind, trans. Frank Clarke (Atlanta, GA: John Knox, 1959), 200–209.
See also Neil Elliot, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Constraint and Strategy and Paul’s Dialogue with Judaism, supplement, JSNT 45 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990), 290–92; and Das, Solving the Romans Debate, 53–114.
Schmithals, Der Römerbrief, 74–91, long ago conceded that Romans is addressed exclusively to Gentiles despite the discussion of “Jewish” topics. He proposed that the Gentiles in question were former Godfearers who already had been attracted to Judaism and, despite their conversion to Christ, were struggling to abandon their adopted Jewish ways. I am sympathetic to Schmithals’ approach, though a correction is certainly in order: While Gentile reluctance to Paul’s gospel may well have come in part from Godfearers, it is no less reasonable that some Gentiles became attracted to traditional Jewish beliefs or customs as a result of their conversion to Christ. For a critique of Schmithals, see A. J. M. Wedderburn, “The Purpose and Occasion of Romans Again,” in Donfried, Romans Debate, 195–202. Interestingly, the first criticism from Wedderburn, 196, features the standard effort to add Jews to the implied Gentile readership in Romans: “But here it must be asked, against Schmithals, whether it is likely that there would be no Christian Jews in Rome? There was there a large Jewish population and, however diminished their community may have been by Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews, there seems little reason to suppose that Rome was for long cleared of all Jews, especially once Claudius was dead.” The presence of Jews in Rome simply does not require that Romans is addressed to them. See also A. J. M. Wedderburn, The Reasons for Romans, ed. John Riches (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988).
Stowers, A Rereading, 32–33. See also Caroline Johnson Hodge, If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 10, who writes, “Indeed, Paul writes about Ioudaioi; this does not mean he writes to them.”
For the most successful treatments of Paul from this perspective, see Lloyd Gaston, Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987);
John G. Gager, Reinventing Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);
Neil Elliot, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994); Stowers, A Rereading;
Pamela Eisenbaum, “A Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman: Jesus, Gentiles, and Genealogy in Romans,” JBL 123, no. 3 (2004): 671–702;
Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not a Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle (New York: HarperOne, 2009).
Stuhlmacher, “Theme of Romans,” 337, makes the same case. Acknowledging that Stendahl and other proponents of the Gaston-Gager hypothesis are correct to assume that Paul’s particular rhetorical and apologetic concern is the justification of Gentiles and the implications of the gospel for them, he adds that “even with the apologetic accentuation of the writing, the theme of the letter to the Romans remains the gospel of the divine righteousness in Christ for those who believe from among the Jews and the Gentiles. According to Paul, this gospel is not simply a message which proclaims the acceptance by God of the Gentiles as well, without having to be circumcised. Instead, the gospel is the only saving revelation of the end-times salvation ‘for everyone who believes’… From Paul’s perspective, therefore, there is only one way of salvation and only one single gospel. The heart of this one gospel is the divine righteousness in and through Christ available for everyone who believes.” For a recent critique of the Gaston-Gager hypothesis, see Das, Paul and the Jews (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003), 96–106.
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© 2012 Joshua D. Garroway
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Garroway, J.D. (2012). Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In: Paul’s Gentile-Jews. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137281142_4
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