Authorship

Pauline authorship of the letter to the Romans is almost universally undisputed, and the

few who have argued to the contrary have been unable to sustain their argument in a manner to

seriously convince the larger body of scholarship. 1 However, the role of Tertius, the amanuensis,

is less clear: ―ἀσπάζομαι ὑμᾶς ἐγὼ Τέρτιος ὁ γράψας τὴν ἐπιστολὴν ἐν κσρίῳ‖; ―I greet you, I

Tertius, the one writing this letter, in the Lord‖ (Rom 16:22). There were three different

practices in antiquity of dictating a letter

1. The dictator would give the scribe the general themes of his letter and the scribe
would have great freedom in filling in the body of the letter
2. The scribe used a style of short hand during dictation, and later the amanuensis would
write up the document in full
3. The dictator would speak very slowly waiting for the scribe to write in full 2

The first option given above is not very likely; the second or third are more probable given the

many similarities between Romans and other Pauline letters that, as far as we know, were not

written by Tertius. The second option could raise some questions as to style; however, the letter

could have been dictated slowly. Pliny the Elder reports of Julius Caesar dictating up to four

letters at once if the matter was serious and up to seven if he was relaxation,3 therefore, if Paul

was dictating a single letter he could have brought his full attention to even the smallest of

details. For this paper it will be assumed that Paul is the ―author‖ of Romans and dictated it in a

manner that is indicative of his own style and thought. This presupposition is the general

1
James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8. (WBC 38A; Dallas, TX: Word, 1998), xxxix; C. E. B. Cranfield, A
Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans: Volume 1 (ICC 31; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1975), 1-2; Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Grand Rapids, MI: 1996), 1; Thomas R. Schreiner,
Romans (BECNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), 2; John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans Vol. I (NICNT;
Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), xiii; Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 1988), 2.
2
Schreiner, Romans, 2.
3
E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition and Collection
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004) 66.
consensus in scholarship (Pauline authorship) and will make any interaction with the above

proposed thesis much easier, e.g. ―Paul wrote‖ as opposed to ―The author of Romans states.‖

Audience and Purpose

In Romans 15:23-29 Paul expresses his desire to visit his Christian brothers and sisters in

Rome, and when he plans on doing so:

But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have
been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit
you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have
enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I am on my way to Jerusalem in the
service of the saints there…. So after I have completed this task and have made sure that
they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that
when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.

The passage, along with other information, suggests Paul wrote the letter to the church at Rome

towards the end of his third missionary journey, possibly from Corinth 4 between 55-58 CE.5

Beyond this observation the question can still be asked: why did Paul construct the sort of

letter that Romans is? How does one explain the purpose of a letter of this sort? A variety of

suggestions have been proposed, and the majority of those can be grouped into two distinct

classifications: the situation of Paul, or the situation of the Roman church. There are several

arguments related to Paul's purpose in writing as understood through his own state of affairs.

The first proposal is that Romans was a self-introduction: Paul is coming to Rome, therefore, he

feels the need to introduce himself and his gospel. Another suggestion is that Paul wrote to gain

the support of the church in Rome for the mission to Spain. Bornkamm proposes Romans was

4
Dunn, Romans 1-8, xliv; Schreiner, Romans, 4; Moo, Romans, 3; Morris, Romans, 5; Murray, Romans,
xvi.
5
Schreiner, Romans, 3; Dunn, Romans 1-8, xliii; Moo, Romans, 3; Cranfield, Commentary on the Epistle
to the Romans, 12–16; Morris, Romans 6-7; Murray, Romans, xvi.
written as a last will and testament: Paul wrote to provide a theological legacy for the church. 6

Along this line of reasoning it is argued that Paul was going to return to Jerusalem and he was

fully aware that he might not survive, and perhaps he felt this was an appropriate time to lay out

what his understanding of the gospel was in as full a way as possible due to the fact that he might

no longer be able to give it orally, and even if unintended this letter has become the last will and

testament of the apostle Paul. 7

The second set of explanations as to the occasion of Paul’s writing is related to the situation

of the people in the church at Rome. One suggestion by Klein is that Paul wrote his epistle

because the church in Rome lacked a proper apostolic foundation.8 He argues that as Paul

observed the situation of the church there, whatever that was, it was a church that had not been

properly established. At the time there was no New Testament (NT) as a standard for what

Christians believed and practiced— in the early church this came from the disciples of Jesus—

but if the church in Rome had been more grass roots where would this come from? Paul never

uses the term ekklesia to describe the community of believers in Rome, so the argument may be

that though they are believers they do not constitute a proper ―church‖. However, it is difficult

to accept that Paul thought of the church as so deficient seeing as he speaks of them so highly in

his letter (cf. 1:6-15; 16:1-15, 19).

More common is the suggestion that the epistle to the Romans was written to address

Jewish-Gentile relations. This view is probably the most widely held today. The proposal is that

the situation which prompted Paul to write the type of letter that Romans is was tensions between

the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. It is suggested that some Roman Christians wanted

6
Gunther Bornkamm, ―The Letter to the Romans as Paul’s Last Will and Testament‖ in The Romans
Debate (ed. Karl P. Donfried; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 16-28.
7
Ibid., 27-8.
8
Schreiner, Romans, 19; Günter Klein, ―Paul’s Purpose in Writing the Epistle to the Romans‖ in The
Romans Debate, 29-43.
to maintain a very conservative attitude towards the Law and Jewish practices from before the

time of Jesus as opposed to those were arguing for a more liberal approach. Within this

suggestion there may be a middle ground between the two proposals above: The letter to the

Romans addresses a similar state of affairs in Paul’s circumstances and in the Roman church.

The relationship between the Gentile church and the Jewish church was heavy on Paul’s mind at

the time of writing this letter; he had only recently finished with his confrontations with the

Judaizers, and this letter was probably written nearing the end of his third missionary trip when

he was gathering money for the church in Jerusalem. This would suggest and ecumenical

dimension: in gathering this fund he is creating a bridge between the Gentile churches he has

founded and the predominantly Jewish church in Jerusalem. At this time, according to the letter

to the Romans, Paul was so concerned with the situation he made it a matter of prayer that he

hoped the church in Jerusalem would find his gift acceptable (cf. Romans 15:31). Apparently,

there was the possibility that the church in Jerusalem would not accept any help from Gentiles.

The historical situation in Rome had potential for Jewish-Gentile tensions as well. The

Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (ca. 70-140 CE) wrote: ―He [Claudius] expelled

the Jews from Rome, since they were always making disturbances because of the instigator

Chrestus.‖9 While Seutonius incorrectly assumed that Christ was a living person it could be that

the debates about Jesus’ messiahship were so severe between Gentile and Jewish Christians that

they came to the attention of even the emperor. This is the historical situation of Acts 18:1-2,

―After this, Paul … went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila … who had recently

come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave

Rome.‖ Whatever the relationship between Jews and Gentiles was in the church at Rome, at

9
Robert E. Van Voorst, Jesus Outside the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 30.
least after the decree of Claudius while Priscilla and Aquila are in Corinth, it seems probable that

Paul would have had an insider understanding of the issues from first-hand participants.

The contents of Romans fit with this theory also. The vocabulary has more references to

words such as Jew than any other letter and more references to Israel than all other letters

combined; these terms are usually used in co-ordination with the term Gentile, and most of these

are used with the priority of the Jew over the Gentile. In appraising the different suggestions

offered by scholars as to Paul’s purpose in writing Romans one is favoured for this paper: Paul

had several reasons.10 After Paul had decided to write Romans several themes and issues could

have come to bear in the eventual final form of the letter. For the purposes of this paper,

especially the pericope under consideration, one of the primary purposes in writing was the

relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Therefore this letter, in addition to whatever

else it may be, can be viewed as an occasional letter as well: the tension in the church at Rome.

10
A. J. M. Wedderburn, Reasons for Romans (New York, NY: T & T Clark, 1988).