Romans, THE EPISTLE TO THE, described by Luther as an absolutely perfect summary of the gospel (absolutissima epitome evangelii), was written by the apostle Paul (q.v.) in late winter or early spring of 58–59 A.D., at Corinth, while he was living in the house of Gains, and just before his setting out for Judea with the money that had been collected at his instance in Macedonia and Achaia for the poor of Jerusalem. Apart from chap. xvi., which stands by itself, the epistle consists of two portions, marked off respectively by the doxology in xi. 36, and by the benediction in xv. 33. The first portion, which is mainly doctrinal, again falls into two sections—i.–viii. and ix.–xi.—in the former of which the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith is explained. The need for a justification through grace and received by faith alone, if there is to be effectual justification at all, is elaborately shown, and the doctrine is vindicated, historically and experimentally, against various conceivable objections, first from the religious, and then from the moral point of view. In the second division of the first portion the disparagement and neutralisation of the divinely bestowed privileges of Judaism apparently involved in the preaching of this doctrine without restriction among the Gentiles are considered. The second, or practical, part of the epistle deals with points of Christian morality and problems of Christian tolerance.
The epistle is addressed to the Christians in Rome. Who these were—whether they were Jews or whether they were Gentiles—and how they had come to be Christians, can only be conjectured. It is impossible to infer much about them or their circumstances from the epistle itself, for the church in Rome was not one with which the apostle, at the time of writing, was personally acquainted. Most probably he did not exactly know in what numbers or proportions the Jewish-Christian and Gentile-Christian elements existed within it; but he was warranted in assuming (as he seems to have done) that it contained both, and that the controversies with which he had become only too familiar elsewhere might break out at any moment in Rome also. The epistle gives no support to the tradition that the church in Rome had been founded personally by Peter; but doubtless it had relations with Jerusalem, and so may well be believed to have owed something to his indirect influence at least. The immediate object of the apostle Paul in writing to the Romans when he did is easily explained by the outward and inward circumstances through which, as we know, he was at the time passing. Having completed his preaching in the eastern part of the empire ‘from Jerusalem to Illyricum’ (xv. 19), he was purposing to extend his apostolic activity among the Gentiles westward as far as to Spain; and with a view to his success in the new field it was only natural that he should desire, so far as he could, to obviate possible misconceptions of his teaching, and to prepare for it a friendly and sympathetic reception in the metropolis of the world.
The Pauline authorship of the epistle as a whole has never been called in question; indeed it is one of the four canonical epistles which, along with the Apocalypse, were regarded by Baur as the only quite indubitable relics we possess of the apostolic age. Baur, it is true (following Marcion), rejected chaps. xv. and xvi., regarding them as additions of the 2d century. His arguments, which were based chiefly on what he conceived to be the too conciliatory character of certain expressions (such as xv. 8, 14, 15, 19), have not found general acceptance, and their force is disallowed even by some of his own followers (Hilgenfeld, Schenkel, Pfeiderer). At the same time there is some evidence, both internal and external, which indicates that these chapters are somewhat loosely attached to the main body of the epistle; in some ancient copies it closed with xiv. 23, immediately followed by xvi. 25–27 (see Revised Version, margin). A view widely accepted by scholars of various schools is that they consist of a postscript, or postscripts, or (the view of Lightfoot) that at some period after the original composition and trans- mission of the epistle the apostle, in order to adapt it for a wider circulation, re-issued it with omission of the last two chapters, as also of the word Rome at the beginning. Schultz in 1829, following up a hint of Semler (1769), suggested that xvi. 1–20 was really a fragment of a Pauline epistle to the Ephesians, and this suggestion, with various modifications, has been accepted by very many critics, among whom may be mentioned Reuss, Renan, and B. Weiss.
See the introductions of Reuss (6th ed. 1887), B. Weiss (2d ed. 1889; Eng. trans.), and Holtzmann (2d ed. 1886; this account is the fullest); and the commentaries by Philippi, Jowett, Godet, Gifford (in Speaker's Commentary), Moule (in Cambridge Bible), Liddon (1893), Lipsius, and Sanday and Headlam (1895).