6 - To the Romans a Roman? The rhetoric of Romans as a model for preaching the Gospel in Rome

Summary

ROMANS AS A DOCUMENT OF MISSIOLOGY AND THE IDEA OF CONTEXTUALISATION

In the last decades the exegesis of Romans has moved away from a doctrinal interpretation, which took Paul's teaching as timeless truth without asking to whom and for what he was writing. Instead, attention has focused on the letter's purpose(s) in the context of Paul's missionary work. Some commentators have specified this in apologetic terms: large portions of the letter can be read as a defence of the Gospel which Paul has been proclaiming in previous years. He had met opposition against his course of receiving Gentiles into the Church without requiring them to accept Jewish ritual traditions. In his letter to the churches of Galatia, he had been fighting fiercely against agitators who tried to win over Gentile-Christians as converts to Judaism. The Letter to the Romans has much in common with the Letter to the Galatians. It is therefore reasonable to assume that in Romans Paul is continuing this discussion about the principles of evangelism among people of non-Jewish origin. His impending visit to Jerusalem may have increased the urgency of additional arguments for his case. Surely this is one of the reasons why we find so much reflection on ‘Jews and Greeks’ in the Letter to the Romans.