OCCASION
OCCASION
From its situation in the capital city the Roman church would have had good means of communication with the churches in other cities. Christians would be coming and going. This church might well have a widespread influence, and from the respectful way Paul addresses it the inference is that it had not only had such an influence but had used it well. It had set a good example to believers everywhere.
Two questions arise then. Why did Paul write to such a church? And if he did write, why write such a letter as this? It is curious that, despite the importance everyone concedes to this epistle, there is no agreement about the answers we should give.20
One searches the epistle carefully for information that might help with the answers. What emerges is that Paul had never been to Rome, though for a long time he had wanted to visit the Christians there (1:8–13; 15:23). He says that he had been hindered from coming to Rome (1:13; 15:22), which seems to mean that he had tried to come but had been stopped. When he wrote, however, he had the prospect of a trip to Spain (15:22–29), which would give him the opportunity to visit the Roman Christians along the way. Some of the things he says are not easy to harmonize with one another. Thus, on the one hand he wanted to impart some spiritual gift to the Roman Christians, to have “some fruit” among them, and to preach the gospel among them (1:11, 13, 15). On the other hand he says that it was not his custom to preach the gospel where Christ was already named lest he build on someone else’s foundation (15:20). Why did the man who did not build on other people’s foundations want to preach in the flourishing church in Rome? It is not at all obvious.
Romans does not deal with local issues in the manner of, say, 1 Corinthians. It is a majestic epistle, dealing with grand themes. It has proved relevant to the needs of Christians in a great variety of situations. But sometimes Paul addresses himself to specific difficulties in Rome. Most students feel, for example, that the discussion of the weak and the strong (14:1–15:13) shows that Paul had information about one of the problems at Rome.21
From all this a broad classification emerges. Some scholars are impressed by the paucity of references to Rome and see the letter as originating in questions outside that city. Others hold that it was written to meet some specific need in the Roman church.22 There is great variety in both camps and no approach to agreement. We notice a number of suggestions.
1. A Compendium of Christian Teaching. This is the traditional view.23 Something like it has been expressed in recent times by Anders Nygren.24 This approach is based on the steady treatment of great themes throughout the epistle. But it does not allow for the specific references to Rome. Nor does it appear why Paul should write such a compendium to Rome (Colossians, another letter to a church Paul had never visited, is quite different). Nor does it account for some important omissions. Much needs to be added in some areas for a compendium, such as christology (cf. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians), the resurrection (1 Corinthians), the church (Ephesians), and eschatology (1 and 2 Thessalonians). Nothing is said about holy communion. If Romans is a compendium of theology, there are some curious gaps.
2. Paul’s Mature Thinking on Essential Christianity. Günther Bornkamm calls it Paul’s “last will and testament”.25 Bornkamm finds many topics in Romans already dealt with in earlier epistles, but there in polemical contexts. In Romans they are given “a strongly universal meaning”.26 Bornkamm thinks that Paul has gone back to his conversion experience and that Romans reflects his history and struggles. He sums it up in this way: “This great document, which summarizes and develops the most important themes and thoughts of the Pauline message and theology and which elevates his theology above the moment of definite situations and conflicts into the sphere of the eternally and universally valid, this letter to the Romans is the last will and testament of the Apostle Paul.”27 One cannot but agree with much of this. But it scarcely gives a reason why Paul should have written the letter. Granted that Romans contains the apostle’s mature reflection on what Christianity is all about, we must still ask, Why did Paul set this mature reflection down in writing? And if he did, Why send it to Rome?
3. A Discussion of the Church. Franz J. Leenhardt finds the occasion in Paul’s preparation for his missionary work in Spain. He had concluded his work in the East, where he had fully proclaimed the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyrica (15:19). Thus far the church had what we might call geographical unity. There was no problem in all the converts Paul had made looking to Jerusalem as the mother church. But “for regions as distant as Spain, what specific role could this church still claim?”28 Where he might have written a “Doctrine of the Church” Paul preferred to tackle the problem another way. “The object of his letter is to show that all believers benefit from the promises made to Abraham and that, by faith and baptism, they are thus incorporated into the people of God, thanks to the secret operation of the Holy Ghost.”29 But it is not easy to see this in the letter. Baptism comes before us only in 6:3–4, while the term “church” is confined to chapter 16. It is not Protestant prejudice but careful attention to the language of the letter that compels us to see the aim elsewhere. And in any case, Why Rome? Leenhardt does not produce a sufficient reason for addressing a treatment of the nature of the church to the Roman Christians.
4. A Circular Letter. Some who emphasize the wide applicability of the letter see it as originally a circular. There is convincing evidence that at one time there was a 14-chapter edition and some indication also of a 15-chapter edition (see below, pp. 36ff.). It is also true that in some MSS the words “in Rome” are lacking in 1:7, 15 (see above, p. 3). The suggestion is made that Paul wrote an original letter of 14 (or 15) chapters to be sent to a number of churches. Rome was, of course, one of them, and it is in the form addressed to the church in that city that the letter has come down to us. T. W. Manson sees an original 15-chapter edition of which one copy went to Rome and another, with chapter 16 added, to Ephesus.30 The letter was written at the end of a very controversial period, as we see from the earlier letters. Manson reminds us that throughout Romans Paul frequently answers objections, and he holds that “we have here a record made by Paul and his clerical helpers of a real discussion.”31 It represents Paul’s summing up of positions he and his friends had reached. “Looked at in this way Romans ceases to be just a letter of self-introduction from Paul to the Roman church, and becomes a manifesto setting forth his deepest convictions on central issues, a manifesto calling for the widest publicity, which the Apostle did his best—not without success—to give it.”32
There is something undeniably attractive about such views. But the question persists, Why Rome? That Paul was setting down his deep convictions after a period of conflict is no reason for sending the result to a church to which he was a stranger. Further, there must be a reason for a circular, just as for a letter to a definite destination. What is the reason for this one? No really convincing suggestion has been made. Nor is there any real evidence that it was ever sent anywhere but to Rome. Most scholars find a decisive argument against all circular-letter theories in the very personal tone of some parts of the letter, for example, 1:8–15.33 It is very difficult indeed to think that 1:10–11 was originally written to no one in particular. Moreover, it would be strange to have a record of controversies without one reference to a specific opponent.34
5. The Jerusalem Church. Paul was about to start for Jerusalem when this letter was written. He was taking a large sum of money for the church there but was obviously doubtful about the reception he would get. Some hold that it is this that gives us the key to Romans. Jacob Jervell entitles his study of our letter, “The Letter to Jerusalem”.35 He points to our inability to be certain about the composition of the church in Rome (was it Jewish? or Gentile? or both?) and its circumstances. We cannot accordingly show that Paul was writing with the circumstances of the Roman church primarily in mind. Moreover, “the letter itself states clearly that its raison d’etre does not stem from the situation in the Roman congregation, but is to be found in Paul himself at the time of writing.”36 His major concern at that time was the reception of his gift of money by the saints in Jerusalem.37 Thus “The essential and primary content of Romans 1:18–11:36 is a reflection upon its major content, the ‘collection speech,’ or more precisely, the defence which Paul plans to give before the church in Jerusalem.”38 Why then write to Rome? Because Paul wants the Romans to pray for him and to stand behind him so that he can claim their support. “Paul wants to represent the entire Gentile world in Jerusalem, including the West.”39
It is, of course, highly probable that when Paul wrote to the Romans he had in mind that he would face a difficult task in Jerusalem. We need not doubt that some of the things he writes in Romans he would say in Jerusalem. But there still remains the stubborn question, “If his letter really was ‘The Letter to Jerusalem’ why send it to Rome?” That makes no sense. The reason Jervell gives is insufficient. In any case, nothing in Romans indicates that Paul wanted assurance that he would represent Rome in the coming debate. If he wanted Roman support, why does he not ask for it? And how would Roman support (if he could get it) be brought to bear, or even be known, in Jerusalem? This view points to some interesting facts, but it does not carry conviction. It does not account for the epistle as a whole.
6. Personal Claims. Another view which roots the origin of the letter in Paul’s own circumstances is that of Käsemann. “The most important theological epistle in Christian history is undoubtedly also the record of an existence struggling for recognition and of an apostolicity called into question. Apart from this insight Romans cannot be interpreted correctly.”40 Käsemann holds that Paul continually asserts an apostolic authority which many in the church refused to concede to him. We may freely accept this without drawing the conclusion that Paul was continually worried and embarrassed by the rejection of his claims (his list of troubles in 2 Cor. 11:23–29 would not lead to such a conclusion). Romans does not read like the desperate product of a man on the defensive and worried that people will not recognize him. Its calm, magisterial tone has often been noted, and passages like 1:11–12 do not prove Käsemann’s point.
7. Apostolic Foundation. Günter Klein is impressed by the statement that Paul does not build on another’s foundation (15:20). But he does plan to preach the gospel in Rome (1:15). Klein sees the reconciliation of these passages in the fact that the Roman church had not been founded by an apostle. The situation was unique. Paul “was dealing with addressees whose faith was beyond question but who still were lacking the authentic apostolic stamp.”41 Paul’s aim in this writing and in the preaching he planned in Rome was to give this “authentic apostolic stamp” to the church in Rome.42
But this is more than the letter says and it smacks of an ecclesiasticism that is foreign to all we know of Paul. It is more than difficult to see how, on New Testament premises, preaching the gospel to Christians whose faith was well known (1:8) and who were full of goodness and knowledge and able to admonish one another (15:14) could be justified. Klein simply says, “Paul can consider an apostolic effort in Rome because he does not regard the local Christian community there as having an apostolic foundation”;43 the Romans lacked “the fundamental kerygma.”44 He recognizes that his view points to “a shockingly authoritarian understanding of the apostolic office”45 but gives no reason for seeing Paul in this shockingly authoritarian role. There must have been many churches in the first century which had been founded by itinerant Christians of the rank and file.46 Must some apostle have visited each of them before it could be accepted as a Christian church?
A related but more acceptable view is that of A. Fridrichsen: “I believe that the main motive of Romans is to assert, in a discreet way, the apostolic authority and teaching of Paul in the church of Rome.”47 But even this way of putting it goes beyond the evidence. If the view of E. A. Judge and G. S. R. Thomas were accepted, namely that there was no church in Rome at the time Paul wrote,48 it might be possible to work out the view that Paul wrote to gather the scattered Christians in Rome into a church. But in the form Klein gives it the theory can scarcely be accepted.
8. The “Weak” and the “Strong”. Quite a number of scholars have in recent times seen the key to understanding this letter in the references to the “weak” and the “strong” in 14:1–15:13.49 They usually see the weak as Jewish Christians who had long been accustomed to the Jewish food regulations and to the observance of special days such as the Sabbath and the feast days laid down in the Old Testament. The strong, then, are the Gentile Christians who have no such inhibitions but enter more wholeheartedly into Christian freedom. Sometimes this is given precision by referring to the edict of Claudius which caused all Jews to be expelled from Rome (Acts 18:2).50 The reasoning is that the Roman church consisted originally almost entirely of Jews who presumably worshipped in synagogues (see above, p. 4). When the Jews were driven out, the Gentile Christians remained. Their numbers grew. Then when the edict of banishment was rescinded, Jewish Christians returned and found Gentiles in control of the church. The two groups found it difficult to adjust to one another.51 Wolfgang Wiefel thinks that at first the authorities did not permit the returning Jews to organize synagogues and that this stimulated the development of Christian house churches with a multiplicity of small congregations and obvious possibilities of friction.52 This was assisted by the fact that the synagogues were originally independent and that in Rome there was no coordinating figure like the ethnarch in Alexandria.53 Paul wrote to the Roman church to admonish the two factions to live at peace.54
Against all such views is the fact that nowhere in Romans does Paul appear as the mediator between warring factions. He indicates that he wanted to come to Rome to preach the gospel (1:15) and to impart some spiritual gift (1:11). There is not a word, however, about bringing fighting factions together. It is, moreover, incredible that if such a problem existed, and indeed was the reason for writing the letter, he would wait until chapter 14 to deal with it. When he did face factions, as in the church at Corinth, he put off everything, even the letter the church had written to him with specific questions for which they wanted answers, until he had repudiated division in the strongest of terms. “Is Christ divided?” he asked. “Was Paul crucified for you?” (1 Cor. 1:13). There is no equivalent in Romans. There Paul’s tone is consistently mild. It is also curious on this view that he addresses the Roman church as Gentiles (1:5–6, 13; 15:15–16). This is no way to maintain the balance between feuding factions.
It must also be borne in mind that it is far from certain that 14:1–15:13 refers to Jews and Gentiles.55 The positions assigned to the weak are not known to have been held by Jews and some seem very difficult to assign to them, namely the use of vegetables and the abstention from wine. These practices could just as easily be seen as characteristic of Gentiles. Further, when Paul does refer to Jews, a good deal of what he says applies to non-Christian Jews, not Jewish Christians (especially in chs. 9–11). It is also true that views of this kind are usually far too confident in their descriptions of the church in Rome. The origins and early history of that church are lost in obscurity. It has never been proved that 14:1–15:13 refers to parties rather than to individuals, and if it does, to the precise membership of those parties. Robert J. Karris argues strongly against views which make this section the key to the epistle.56 He holds that no such specific reference can be demonstrated. “Rom 14:1–15:31 has no specific referent within the Roman community. It is part of a letter which sums up Paul’s missionary theology and paraenesis.”57 Karris is not so much outlining how he thinks the letter came to be written as denying that the section 14:1–15:31 describes a concrete situation with sufficient clarity for us to see in it the occasion for the letter. I do not see how his argument can be resisted.58
9. Liberalizing a Reactionary Church. Matthew Black thinks that the Roman church was a large one (“next to Jerusalem, it was probably the largest in the Empire”), and that it was, from Paul’s point of view, “reactionary”, “imperfect”, “immature”, “still probably little more than a sect within Judaism”.59 Paul wrote, accordingly, to win it over to his way of thinking. If the Roman church were as Black depicts it, we need not doubt that Paul would make strenuous efforts to see that it came to embrace the doctrine of God’s free grace. But do we know all this about the Roman church? On the same evidence Judge and Thomas argue that there was not even a church in Rome, let alone a strong one.60 We must accept the fact that we do not know how the Roman church compared with other churches in respect of size or ecclesiastical outlook. The hypothesis is an attractive one, but there does not seem sufficient evidence to sustain it.
10. Rhetorical Genre. In an article entitled “Paul’s Rhetoric of Argumentation in Romans: An Alternative to the Donfried-Karris Debate over Romans”,61 Wilhelm Wuellner finds the Donfried-Karris discussion of the epistle “unfruitful” and suggests a new approach: “I propose to replace the traditional priority on propositional theology and the more recent priority on letters as literature with the new priority on letters as argumentation.”62 He speaks of three basic rhetorical genres: the forensic/legal, the deliberative/symbouleutic, and the demonstrative/epideictic. Romans belongs to the last mentioned, “the epideictic genre, which is concerned with judgments about some present situation. The traditional categories for judgment are called ‘praise or blame’; we might call them today ‘ok or not ok’ judgments.”63 The argumentation “sets out to increase the intensity of adherence to certain values, which might not be contested when considered on their own but may nevertheless not prevail against other values that might come into conflict with them.”64
This is an interesting approach and one which draws attention to features of Romans which have received scant attention. But it is possible to feel uneasy at the rigidity of literary style it ascribes to an unlikely conformist such as Paul.65 And in any case this approach scarcely answers the main question. Granted that this was the way Paul wrote, why did he write at all? Why did he decide that an epideictic communication to the Roman church was what was needed? Did this arise from Paul’s situation or that in Rome?
A more acceptable form of this view has been put forward by Robert Jewett.66 He notes that there is a great variety in epideictic literature and demonstrates the point by reproducing Theodore C. Burgess’s list of 27 subtypes. He holds that Romans is properly to be understood as an ambassadorial letter, though with features of other subtypes, “the passionate letter, the hortatory letter, and the philosophical diatribe.”67 The need to include these other subtypes perhaps shows that Jewett is oversimplifying; Romans is too complex to be regarded as simply an example of the ambassadorial letter. But Jewett has done us a service in drawing attention to the many diplomatic touches in this epistle, and specifically to Paul’s acceptance of a variety of teachings as long as the essentials of the gospel are preserved. “It is the synthesis that constitutes Paul’s distinctive perspective, the serious effort to unite the Gentile and the Jewish Christian confessions, hymns, and interpretive traditions.”68
11. A Dialogue with Judaism. J. Christiaan Beker holds that Paul is concerned in this letter to respond to questions Jews might ask, such as “What is Israel’s role in salvation-history?” and “What is the function of the Torah and circumcision?” He says that “Romans is a dialogue with Judaism” and again, “Romans must be characterized primarily as a dialogue with Jews.”69 It is a novel idea that this great Christian writing, possibly the greatest of them all, is really not directed at Christians but at Jews. The novelty need not disturb us, but the argumentation is not convincing. The letter is addressed to Roman Christians, and Beker has not given a convincing reason why it should not be understood as directed towards the addressees. While no one knows what the precise composition of the Roman church was at the time, it is usually held that there was a strong Gentile component. Moreover, Beker confines “The Jewish Character of the Argument” to 1:16–4:25, which leaves out most of the letter. And it includes 1:19–32, which most see as addressed to Gentiles (and which does seem pointless if directed at Jews; Beker’s idea that it is Paul’s intention here “to set a trap for the Jewish auditor”70 is not convincing). The viewpoint is interesting, but the evidence does not support it.
12. Preparation for a Visit. Paul had never been to Rome, but for a long time he had wanted to visit the Christians there (1:8–13; 15:23). He had been hindered from coming to them (1:13; 15:22), which appears to mean that he had tried to come but had been stopped. But when he wrote, he had the prospect of a trip to Spain. He saw this as a good opportunity to visit Rome. When he headed West, it was unthinkable that he would pass by this great church which he had so greatly longed to see. The epistle must be seen, then, as a means of preparing the way for a visit. Paul wanted to exercise a ministry in Rome (1:11–15). This was to be more than a halt by the way as he enlisted support for his mission to Spain. He wanted to get to know the Roman church and to preach in the world’s greatest city. He wanted the support of the Roman Christians in his further missionary work as he had had that of the church of Antioch in the preceding period.
Since Paul was not the most popular of men in the early church, it is likely that he had been criticized in Rome as elsewhere (cf. 3:8). He clearly regarded it as important that the Roman church support him on his Spanish mission (15:24). If they were to support him, it was not unreasonable that they should know what he preached. Accordingly he sets forth a clear but profound statement of the essential message of Christianity as he proclaimed it.71 This will show the Romans where he stands. The result is one of the most important Christian documents ever written.72
With the experts so divided, it is plain that the evidence does not all point in one direction. In my opinion the last-mentioned view is on the whole the most satisfactory (which is not to say that it clears up all the difficulties; it does not). It takes cognizance of the fact that Paul had been a missionary for 20 years or so. With the completion of his mission to the East (15:19) an important chapter of his life had closed. It is not unreasonable to suppose that, with this work done and with a mission field in Spain before his mind’s eye, Paul hoped to transfer his base from Antioch to Rome. But before anything else happened he had a little time when he could be quiet (the three months of Acts 20:3). He used the time to write to the Roman Christians to let them know of his plan to visit them and to set down in order something of what the gospel meant.73 If Rome was to be his base, the Romans would need to be assured of his message and theological position. Thus such a weighty epistle is very much in place.
We may discern at least three things Paul specifically says he wanted to accomplish by his letter. First, he wanted to prepare the way for a visit to Rome (1:13; 15:22–24). Second, he wanted to secure the support of the Roman Christians for his Spanish mission (15:24). Third, he sought the prayers of the Romans, specifically prayers that he might be delivered from unbelievers, that the Jerusalem church would welcome the gift he was bringing,74 and that he might come to Rome “in joy” (15:30–32).