Jerusalem
Jerusalem
This same objection applies to the view that Paul’s letter to Rome embodies the speech he anticipates giving in Jerusalem when he arrives there with the collection. 44That this upcoming visit and its consequences were on Paul’s mind as he wrote Romans is clear (see Rom. 15:30-33). Moreover, this understanding of Paul’s purpose would explain his preoccupation with issues pertaining to the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, since this was his underlying concern as he looked ahead to Jerusalem. But in addition to its failure to explain the Roman destination of the letter, this view shares with the previous one the problem of leaving the purpose of the letter separate from Paul’s desire to visit Rome. His stress on this last point in both the introduction and the conclusion implies that the purpose for the letter must be related to the purpose for his visit.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, F. C. Baur initiated a new way of looking at Romans. He rejected the then-popular "timeless treatise” approach to Romans and insisted that it be treated like any other letter of Paul’s—one directed to issues arising from the church to which it was written. 45Baur’s general approach has enjoyed a resurgence in the last few decades. Unlike Baur, however, who thought Romans was a polemic against Jewish Christians, most modern scholars who share his approach think that other concerns are primary. Attention in this regard is directed particularly to the one text in Romans in which it appears that Paul has in mind a problem in the community at Rome: Rom. 14:1-15:13. This text rebukes two groups—the "weak in faith” and the "strong in faith”—for their intolerance of each other. It is likely that the weak are mainly Jewish Christians, and the strong are Gentile Christians. Here, it is argued, is the center of Romans. The treatise that precedes these chapters provides the necessary theological groundwork for this rebuke. And the rebuke, as the letter as a whole, focuses on the Gentile Christians, who are becoming arrogant toward the increasingly smaller minority of Jewish Christians. 46 To be sure, this interpretation has been rejected on the grounds that Rom. 14:1-15:13 is general paraenesis, ethical guidance that has no basis in a specific circumstance. 47 But this is not convincing: the section is more naturally interpreted as arising from known divisions in the community in Rome. 48One of Paul’s purposes was to heal this division in the Christian community in Rome. But we doubt whether this was his primary purpose. Were this so, it is hard to understand why Paul would have waited until chapter 14 to make a practical application of his theology. Moreover, much of what Paul says in chapters 1-11 cannot serve as a basis for the exhortations in 14:1-15:13. Nor is it necessary that Romans be directed to the needs of the church addressed in just the same way that some of his other letters are. After all, Romans stands apart from all the other letters Paul wrote to churches (except perhaps Colossians), as being the only one not written to a community that Paul had founded or been closely related to. Moreover, we have too few letters from Paul to justify any dogmatic judgments about the kinds of letters Paul could or could not have written. Finally, we must insist that even a theological treatise without specific reference to problems in Rome could still be directed to the needs of the church there—what church is without need of clear theological guidance?
Paul’s purpose in Romans cannot be confined to any of these specific suggestions. It may be better to speak of Paul’s several purposes in Romans. 49Several intersecting factors come together to form what we might call Paul’s missionary situation, and it is out of that situation that he writes to the Romans. The past battles in Galatia and Corinth, the coming crisis in Jerusalem, the need to secure a missionary base for the work in Spain, the importance of unifying the divided Christian community in Rome around the gospel—these circumstances led Paul to write a letter in which he carefully set forth his understanding of the gospel, particularly as it related to the salvation-historical question of Jew and Gentile, law and gospel, continuity and discontinuity between the old and the new. 50 We should note another factor that probably influenced Paul to focus on these questions: polemic against his theology as being antilaw, and perhaps anti-Jewish. Paul’s need to combat Judaizers in Galatia and Corinth could very well have led to this false picture of the apostle to the Gentiles; and Rom. 3:8, where Paul mentions some who are slandering his teaching, suggests that Paul knew he had to defend himself against such accusations at Rome.