bridge uniting it with Bourg-de-Peage (pop. 4668) on the other side of the river. Both towns owe their prosperity to their situation in the most fertile part of the valley of the Isère. The present parish church belonged to an abbey founded in 837 by St Bernard, bishop of Vienne. The principal portal is a fine specimen of 12th-century Romanesque, and the lower part of the nave is of the same period; the choir and the transept are striking examples of the style of the 13th century.
Romans has a tribunal of commerce and a communal college. Its industries include tanning, leather-dressing and shoe-making, silk-spinning, hat-making, absinthe-distilling and oil-refining. There is trade in walnuts, walnut-oil, silk, cattle, &c.
ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE. In this book of the New Testament, the apostle Paul begins, after a brief pregnant introduction (i. 1-7), by explaining that he had hitherto been prevented from carrying out his cherished project of visiting the church of Rome, whose faith was world-wide (i. 8 f.). Meanwhile, he outlines the gospel which he preached as an exhibition of God's righteousness, ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. This forms the leading theme of the epistle.
Both Gentile (i. 18-32) and Jew (ii. 1, iii. 20)[1] alike have missed this righteousness up till now, but the revelation of God in Jesus Christ (iii. 21-31) had brought the divine boon within reach of all. The condition of its reception was not nationality but faith. Hence, as Paul stops for a moment to argue (iv. 1-25), the Jew cannot claim any preference; Abraham himself, before circumcision and the law came into force, was a man of faith, and consequently all believers (not all legal Jews, iv. 16) are true descendants of Abraham.[2] Returning to the blissful results of this δικαιοσύνη revealed in Jesus Christ (v. 1-11), Paul proceeds to contrast these with the sombre effects produced in humanity by the fall of Adam. Life had now triumphed over death, grace over sin (v. 12 f.). But the supersession of the law, which was bound up with the régime of sin and death, does not mean the relaxation of the moral bond. On the contrary (vi. 1 f.), the reception of God's grace and spirit implies the death of the believing man to sin. The struggle of the soul[3] between the thwarting power of sin and the ethical demands of the law (vii. 1 f.) cannot be ended happily save by the interposition of Jesus Christ, whose Spirit guarantees a sound life in this world and life eternal in the world to come (viii. 12 f.).
The splendid and unfettered[4] prospects of faith, which thus break on the apostle's vision, only serve to deepen his distress in one direction.[5] As a theologian and as a patriot, he is confronted with the problem of Israel's collective repudiation of a boon to which their own history, as he read it, clearly pointed. Reverting to the thought of ii. 17 f. and iv. 1, Paul now essays, in ix.-xi., to show how this unbelief of Israel is to be reconciled with the justice and the promises of God. He begins by showing, as in Gal. iv. 7 f. (cf. Rom. ii. 28-29), that mere physical descent could not entitle a Jew to the promises. Besides (ix. 14-29), no Jew has the right to challenge God's sovereign freedom. If God determines to extend the promise of faith to the Gentiles, who shall accuse Him of injustice? The rejection of the Jews is their own fault, due to their, obstinacy and legalism (ix. 30-x. 21). Finally, Paul tries to see this fact of Israel's unbelief in the light of a wide religious philosophy of history; it (xi. 1-10) cannot be anything but a temporary and partial (xi. 11-24)[6] phase; the future will clear up the present; the final result will be the inclusion of all Israel in the heritage of the messianic kingdom of Christ. The prospect of this consummation stirs him to an outburst of adoration, with which the whole section ends (xi. 33-36).[7]
Applying the thought of God's mercy to the obligations of believing men (xii. 1-2), Paul proceeds now to sketch the ethical duties of Christians in the church (xii. 3-21), in society, and in the state (xiii. 1-7); love is the supreme law (xiii. 8-10), and the nearness of the end the supreme motive to morality (xiii. 11-14). These considerations are still before Paul's mind as he descends from general counsels to a special problem of practical ethics, raised by the varying attitude of Christians at Rome towards food offered to idols (xiv. 1 f.). After laying down the principle of individual responsibility, he appeals for charity and mutual consideration (xiv. 13-xv. 6), and for Christian forbearance.[8] Finally, he exhorts all, Gentile and Jewish Christians alike (xv. 8-13), to unite in thanksgiving for God's mercy to them in Christ.
In a brief epilogue, the apostle justifies himself for having thus addressed the Roman Christians. He alleges (xv. 14 f.) his apostolic vocation and informs them of his future movements. With an appeal for their prayers and a brief benediction, the epistle then closes (xv. 30-33). It ends as it began (i. 8 f.) with the apostle's hope and plan of visiting Rome on a subsequent missionary tour.[9]
Rom. xvi. contains a separate note (1-23), together with a doxology (25-27). The former came from Paul's pen, but Critical problems. it did not belong originally to this epistle.[10] In all likelihood it is a letter of commendation for Phoebe[11] which includes vers. 1-23 (so, e.g. Weizsäcker, McGiffert and Jülicher), though most break it off at ver. 20 (so Eichhorn, Ewald, Schulz, Renan, Weiss, Lipsius, von Soden, &c.), while others do not begin it until ver. 3 (so e.g. Ewald, Schürer, Reuss and Mangold: Der Römerbrief, pp. 136 f.). Vers. 21-23 might indeed follow xv. 33, but it is not Paul's way to add salutations after a final Amen, and the passage connects as well with xvi. 20, though it may have lain originally (Jülicher) between 16 and 17. The main reasons[12] for conjecturing that this section was addressed separately, not to Rome but to a city like Ephesus, lie in its contents. Paul was as yet a stranger to Rome, and it is extremely difficult to suppose that he already knew so many individuals there. The earlier tone of Romans shows that he was writing as a comparative stranger to strangers. Any touches of familiarity with the local circumstances (as in xiv.-xv.) are no more than might have percolated to him through hearing and
- ↑ On iii. cf. G. W. Matthias's Exegetischer Versuch (Cassel, 1857).
- ↑ “Paul here unconsciously changes the conception of law. By introducing the example of Abraham he shows that the book of the law contains the doctrine of justification by faith, and through the latter, therefore, is not made of none effect. This proof rests, objectively regarded, on a fallacy; for the law, of which the validity is threatened by the doctrine of justification, is that part of the book of the law which demands the observance of all commands, not that which relates anything about Abraham. But this error of thought would be easily concealed from a mind with the rabbinical training of Paul's” (Schmiedel, in Hibbert Journal, 1902, pp. 548-549).
- ↑ Cf. Engel's exhaustive monograph, Der Kampf um Römer vii. (1902), and, for the ideas of i.-viii., Du Bose's The Gospel according to St Paul (1907), and Titius, Der Paulinismus (1900), pp. 159 ff.
- ↑ The word all, as Matthew Arnold observes (St Paul and Protestantism, ch. i.), is “in some sense the governing word of the Epistle to the Romans.”
- ↑ As arranged in the canonical edition, ix.-xi. are closely interwoven with i.-viii., and xi. 32-36 concludes not simply ix.-xi. but i.-xi. (cf. Bühl in Studien und Kritiken, 1887, 295-320). Certainly what Paul has in mind throughout the epistle is not a Judaizing tendency among the Jewish Christians at Rome, but the general and perplexing question of Judaism in relation to the new faith. Cf. Hoennicke's Das Judenchristentum (1908), pp. 160 f.
- ↑ In this passage Paul has generally been held to have erred botanically in his allegory. For a defence of his accuracy, see W. M. Ramsay's Pauline and other Studies (1907), 219 f.
- ↑ On the method of dialectic in this section, see Bishop Gore's paper in Studia Biblica (vol. iii.). The literature up to 1907 is summarized in H. J. Holtzmann's Neutest. Theologie, ii. pp. 171 f., one of the most significant essays being that of Beyschlag on Die paulin. Theodicee (1868). Wernle (Beginnings of Christianity, i. pp. 315 f.) sums up his discussion by pointing out that “the Jesus of history is simply non-existent for St Paul when he treats apologetic problems of this nature. No mention whatever is made of him in the three chapters of Romans which treat of Israel's fate. The literal text of the Septuagint seems to be the only decisive authority, and that is so sacred and almighty, that, whenever it comes into collision with the human conscience, the latter is silenced when the voice of revelation speaks.”
- ↑ The weaker minority probably were a Jewish-Christian circle (cf. Riggenbach in Studien und Kritiken, 1893, pp. 649-678). For the religious aspect of vegetarianism in these and other circles, see von Dobschütz's Christian Life in the Primitive Church (1904), pp. 125 f., 396 f.
- ↑ “It was a sufficient reason for writing to the Romans that Paul was expecting to visit them, but was obliged once more to postpone an event to which he had long looked forward. There was nothing in the circumstances of the church that required his intervention, and, as he was therefore free to choose his subject, he wrote out of the fullness of his heart that grand defence of the gospel which, though shaped by the conditions of the times, is animated by the timeless Spirit, and has proved to be a possession for ever” (Drummond, p. 246).
- ↑ For the literature, cf. the present writer's Historical New Testament (1901), pp. 209-213. The hypothesis has won very wide acceptance, but several editors and critics (including Harnack, Zahn and Clemen) remain unconvinced. Cf. also Wabnitz in Revue de théologie et des quest. religieuses (1900), 461-469.
- ↑ On her functions, see Zscharnack's der Dienst der Frau in den ersten Jahrhunderten der christlichen Kirche (1902), pp. 45 f.
- ↑ Cf. Lucht (Über die beiden letzten Kapitel des Römerbriefes, 1871. pp. 126 f.), with Weizsäcker's brilliant pages in his Apostolic Age, i. pp. 379 f.).
