- Chapters
- 16
- Verses
- 0
- Where it sits
- The Letters of Paul
What it is
Written from Corinth around AD 55 to 57, to a congregation Paul had neither founded nor seen, and which was arguing with itself: Jewish and Gentile believers at odds over food and calendar. He was about to carry a relief collection to Jerusalem, and he hoped Rome would back a mission to Spain.
It is the fullest statement he ever made of what he actually believed — that Jew and Gentile alike are put right with God through faith, and that this does not mean God has gone back on His promises to Israel. Chapters 1 to 11 argue it; 12 to 15 tell you how to live in it.
Known for
Romans 5, Adam and Christ. Romans 8, ending with the sentence about nothing being able to separate us. Romans 12:1–2.
A note for Orthodox readers
Romans 5:12 is the verse behind the difference between the Eastern and Western accounts of what Adam handed down. Augustine, reading a Latin translation, took a Greek phrase to mean in whom — and so read inherited guilt into the verse. The Greek Fathers read what is inherited as death and corruption, with each person answerable for their own sin. That is the distinction between ancestral sin as the East speaks of it and original sin as the West came to.
Where it sits
Undisputed. No serious scholar questions that Paul wrote it.
---