The life and work of St. Paul

EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. 451
3. We come, then, to the question, What is the main object of the Epistle
to the Romans ? And here we must not be surprised if we meet with different
answers. The highest works of genius, in all writings, whether sacred or
secular, are essentially many-sided. Who will pretend to give in a few words
the central conception of the " Prometheus Vinctus" or of " Hamlet " ? Who will
profess to unite all suffrages in describing the main purpose of Ecclesiastes or
of Job ? Yet, although the purpose of the Epistle has been differently inter-
preted, from our ignorance of its origin, and of the exact condition of the
Church to which it was written, it is impossible so to state it as not to express
one or other of its essential meanings.
The first question which meets us affects the general character of the
Epistle. Is it didactic or polemical P Is it general or special P The divergent
views of commentators may here be easily reconciled. It is only indirectly
and secondarily polemical ; the treatment is general even if the immediate
motive was special. Its tone has nothing of the passionate intensity which the
Apostle always betrays when engaged in controversy with direct antagonists.
It has been supposed by some that he desired to vindicate to the Roman Church
his Apostolic authority. Undoubtedly such a vindication is implicitly involved
in the masterly arguments of the Epistle ; yet how different is his style from
the vehemence with which he speaks in the Epistles to the Corinthians!
Bishop Wordsworth says that it is " an apology for the Gospel against
Judaism ;" but where is the burning invective and indignant eloquence of the
Epistle to the Galatians P We have no trace here of the ultra-liberalism of
Corinth, or the dreamy asceticisms of Colossae, or the servile Pharisaisms of
Galatia. Clearly he is not here dealing with any special dissensions, heresies,
or attacks on his authority. 1 The very value of the Epistle, as a systematic
exposition of " 1
the Gospel of Protestantism,"
depends on the calmness and
not only to Rome, but also to Ephesus, Thessalonica, and possibly some other Church,
vrith differing conclusions, which are all preserved in the present form of the Epistle.
On the other side may be set the remark of Strabo (xiv. 5), that many Tarsians were at
Home, and that Borne swarmed with Asiatics (Friedlander, Sittengesch. Horns, i. 59) ; the
certainty that even in the days of Scipio, and much more in each succeeding generation,
the majority of the inhabitants of Rome the faex populi were but " stepsons of Italy "
(Sen. ad Helv., Com. 6, "Non possum ferre Quirites Graecam urban," Juv. Sat. iii. 61,
73, seq., "St. 1 tacete quibus nee pater nee mater est ") and predominantly Greek (see
Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 20) ; and that the names of Amplias, Urbanus, Stachys,
Apelles, Nereus, Hermes, Hernias, are all found, as Dr. Lightfoot has shown (ib. 172
175), in the inscriptions of the Columbaria among the slaves in the households of various
Cassarian families ; and not only these, but the rarer names Tryphsena, Tryphosa,
Patrobas, and even Philologus and Julia in connexion, which is at least a curious
coincidence. But when we remember the many hundreds of slaves in each great Roman
household ; and the extreme commonness of the names by which they were mostly
called ; and the fact that Garucci found that Latin nanws were twice as numerous as the
Greek in the old Jewish cemetery at Rome, we must still consider it more likely that
chap, xvi., in whole or in part, was addressed to Ephesus as a personal termination to
the copy of the Roman Epistle, which could hardly fail to be sent to so important a
Church. (See Schulz, Stud. u. Krit. 1829 ; Ewald, Sendschr. 428 ; Reuss, Les JEpttres, ii.
19.) Of all theories, that of Baur, that the chapter was forged to show how intimate
were the relations of Paul with the Roman Church, seems to me the most wanton and
arbitrary.
1 Reusa, Let pttrvit \L 1L