Why are some parts of Romans (e.g. Romans 4 and 14) similar to Paul’s other letters (Galatians 4 and 1 Corinthians 8)? Some scholars saw the lack of concrete situation in these similar teachings in Romans that the other letters have and consider Romans to be a “report or testament” (Bornkamm), “general paraenesis” (Karris). On the other hand, many other scholars preferred to see a specific problem in Romans and emphasized the differences in Romans from the parts in his other epistles. While I agree that Romans was sent to address the specific problem in the Roman Christian community, the question remains as to why Paul sent such similar teachings to the Romans.
A close examination of these similar passages offers some interesting new insights. The thesis of this paper is that the audience of Romans would have included the former members of both the Galatian and Corinthian churches who had migrated from their region to Rome, and the purpose of Romans is that Paul wanted to remind them of his teachings (15:15) so that the former members in Rome could remain firmly in his gospel without being confused by different teachings (16:17). The contribution of this paper is to be able to explain the reason for the similarity between Romans and Galatians and 1 Corinthians, without sacrificing seeing the concrete situation or contingency of Romans.
Admittedly, the similar passages in Romans seem more developed compared to those in Galatians and Corinthians. However, those in Romans sometimes seem too terse to be understood when the listener hears them for the first time. For example, in Romans 4:13, Paul mentions an “offspring” that should refer to Christ (cf. Gal 3:16). However, Paul does not explain the meaning of the offspring in Romans. So if the audience had never heard Paul’s teaching in Gal 3, they would not understand what the offspring means. Paul clearly seems to assume the foreknowledge of the Roman audience in Galatians. Linguistically, such a phrase is called an exophoric or homophoric reference. These references are found elsewhere in overlapping parts of Romans. The exophoric reference tells us that Paul and the audience in Rome have something in common, most likely the transcribed manuscripts of Galatians and also 1 Corinthians. Given the interval between the dates of Romans and those of Galatians and 1 Corinthians, it is likely that migrating believers from these churches brought the manuscripts with them to Rome, suggesting that the audience in Rome consisted mainly of Paul’s disciples from Galatia and Corinth. Thus, Paul wrote Romans to re-educate his disciples in order to keep his gospel strong. This hypothesis is strongly supported by the internal evidence of Romans 15:15 and 16:17.