Irish1975 wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2019 7:34 am
Romans 15:
14 I myself am satisfied about you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. 15 But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 17 In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. 18 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has wrought through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, 19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyr′icum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ, 20 thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man’s foundation...23 But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, 24 I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be sped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little.
Doing my best to summarize Baur's suspicions about the authorship of the above--
Thank you for this summary.
1) Why is the author suddenly modest, almost apologetic, for preaching the gospel? Galatians!
I detect no such modesty, and certainly no apology for preaching the gospel in Romans 15. To the contrary, in verses 15-16 Paul asserts that he has spoken "boldly" to the Romans precisely
because of his metaphorical status as a priest of the gospel of God. In verse 19 he claims the power of signs and wonders in his ministry; and in that same verse he boasts of having veritably
fulfilled the gospel by preaching in so wide an arc.
2) Why is he suddenly satisfied that the Romans are full of all goodness and knowledge and instruction, when in 1:11 he had expressed the desire to visit them in order to impart spiritual gifts that would build them up?
This is simply a nonobjection, an attempt to find discord where there is none. There is no contradiction or tension,
especially rhetorically, between affirming the basic goodness of one's readership or audience while simultaneously expressing a wish to build that same readership or audience up. Modern preachers do this literally every Sunday (and Wednesday, and on holidays, and at church retreats and camps). It is practically a cliché that someone can be virtually a saint and yet still benefit from some Christian upbuilding and encouragement.
3) The verb hierourgein in verse 16, according to Ryder, occurs nowhere else in the NT. Nowhere else in Paul is there a conception of offering gentiles to God as a sacrifice. Does he ever even mention priests or priestly imagery, apart from the passing reference to latreia in Romans 9:4?
It is not common, but he does, yes:
Philippians 2.17: 17 But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service (σπένδομαι ἐπὶ τῇ θυσίᾳ καὶ λειτουργίᾳ) of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all.
2 Corinthians 2.15-16: 15 For we are a fragrance [εὐωδία] of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; 16 to the one an aroma [ὀσμή] from death to death, to the other an aroma [ὀσμή] from life to life. And who is adequate for these things?
Raymond F. Collins, Commentary on 2 Corinthians, page 72: The aromatic imagery takes a different turn in verse 15. In an explanatory clause beginning with because, Paul affirms that we are the fragrance of Christ to God (2:15). “Odor” and “fragrance” are biblical terms used to describe the pleasant smells that arise from sacrificial offerings (Gen. 8:21; Exod. 29:17–18; Lev. 1:9, 13, 17; Num. 15:3, 7, 10). Thus, Paul seems to be alluding to Christ’s sacrificial offering of himself, which Paul and his companions exude through their apostolic ministry. The biblical language suggests that not only the participants in the sacrifice and the onlookers can smell the pleasant aroma, but also that the smell is pleasing to God himself, a sign that the offering is acceptable to God. Not only is Christ’s sacrifice acceptable to God; so too is the ministry of Paul and his evangelizing companions.
Each of these metaphorical usages of priestly protocol stands alone: one compares Paul himself to an offering; another compares the gentiles to an offering, with Paul as the priest; and the other compares Christ to a priestly sacrifice, with Paul and his colleagues as the smoke therefrom. Sacrificial language was (and still is) a very flexible motif.
4) Why does Paul characterize his missionary activity as proceeding from Jerusalem? Galatians!
I agree completely that this is a good question, and I would like to see it addressed.
5) When did Paul ever go to Illyricum?
Such an objection depends completely upon our confidence that we know most of what there is to know about Paul's career, and such a confidence can arise only from treating the later Acts (of the Apostles or of Paul) as comprehensive and/or accurate. If we do not put quite so much stock in those later writings, we are forced to admit that we are getting mere snatches of Paul's overall career from the epistles, and it is quite plausible both that Paul preached there (possibly unsuccessfully) and that he preached in other locales of which we are even less aware. Alternatively, Charles H. Talbert notes in his Commentary on Romans, "The expression 'as far around as' translates the word
mechri which can denote simply 'up to' instead of 'into.'"
More about Illyricum later, though.
6) Is it plausible that Paul no longer had room in the East?
No, it is not possible. But that is the boring question. The real question should be: is it possible that Paul wanted to make a name for himself in places that no apostle had even ventured to visit yet? Modern missionaries, especially of the "church planter" variety, often prefer to go to some tribe which has never even been touched yet by Christianity rather than to go to some equally untouched town or village in a country which already has a Christian presence or among a people who have already been at least partially evangelized.
7) Why has Rome suddenly become a layover on the way to...Spain?? "Because the apostle had so filled the East with his preaching, that he could not remain in it without being idle, and because if he went to Rome he would be in a place where he could not remain without building on another man's foundation, nothing remained but that he should go to Spain! How completely without motive this all is."
Some of this is answered by the above. If Paul felt that the East was full enough of apostles and preachers (Cephas, Apollos, the "brothers of the Lord," and so on), then his ego may easily have led him to wish to go somewhere less traveled. This is a common enough missionary motive. As for the specific question of why Spain should be the target country, the short answer is that I do not know. I once read an intriguing suggestion about that in a book by Roger David Aus, but I do not have access to that book at this precise moment; nor do I recall the overall argument well enough to present it here competently. But it may not matter in the long run. Sometimes missionaries just want to go where they want to go. My parents became evangelical missionaries when I was a child, and their first target country was Bolivia. Why Bolivia? I honestly have no idea. They said that the Lord led them there. But it never worked out, because my father was diagnosed with some sort of condition which high altitudes would complicate; so the target became Mexico: same language, so no language lessons were wasted, but a very different country. And, again, I really have no idea why. Maybe, for Paul, the lure of the "ends of the earth" was, by itself, enough of a reason. (That said, I could equally well see the "ends of the earth" as a good target for a later forger to put into his mind, so to speak. I simply think that, pending further information, this point could go in either direction.)
The crucial and decisive parallel is between Romans 15:20 ("thus making it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on another man’s foundation") and 2 Cor 10:16 ("so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you, without boasting of work already done in another’s field"). The author of Romans 15 has Paul using his own standard against himself, the upshot being that Paul doesn't have any apostolic mandate towards the church in Rome. He suddenly needs to correct himself for having had the audacity to write them this very epistle. And he will be going into "lands beyond you," i.e. somewhere completely beyond even Gaul (arguably within the ambit of the Roman church), onto Spain and, who knows, the Pillars of Hercules.
There is, in fact, no tension between these two passages:
Romans 15.20-21: 20 And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man’s foundation; 21 but as it is written, “They who had no news of Him shall see, and they who have not heard shall understand.”
2 Corinthians 10.14-16: 14 For we are not overextending ourselves, as if we did not reach to you, for we were the first to come even as far as you in the gospel of Christ; 15 not boasting beyond our measure, that is, in other men’s labors, but with the hope that as your faith grows, we will be, within our sphere, enlarged even more by you, 16 so as to preach the gospel even to the regions beyond you, and not to boast in what has been accomplished in the sphere of another.
1 Corinthians 3.6, 10: 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. .... 10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on it.
Yes, if a person harbored the motive of denying Paul any sort of apostleship over Rome, then he or she could use 2 Corinthians 10.14-16 in this way. But, if Paul himself really
did try to avoid doubling up on other apostles' areas of influence, and if Paul really was
not the founder of the church of Rome, then Romans 15.20-21 is also exactly what we should expect from
him.
Back to Illyricum:
Marjeta Šašel Kos, "Roman Conquest of Illyricum (Dalmatia and Pannonia) and the Problem of the Northeastern Border of Italy," in Studia Europaea Gnesnensia 7, page 182: After the Pannonian-Dalmatian rebellion in AD 9,
Illyricum may have been divided into superius and inferius, but was officially called Dalmatia and Pannonia probably not earlier than under Vespasian; after this division, no Roman province bore the name Illyricum. [Link:
http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/media/files/Stud ... 69-200.pdf.]
The mention of Illyricum actually fits nicely with the dating of this passage to the time period from Augustus to Vespasian. We can probably see the effect of the change of provincial nomenclature elsewhere:
2 Timothy 4.9-10: 9 Make every effort to come to me soon; 10 for Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.