I wanted to follow up on  a comment that I made in my last post about all of Paul’s letters being “occasional” (i.e., written to deal with certain situations that had arisen in his churches), with one partial exception: his letter to the Romans.  Now would be a good time to explain why Romans is the exception.   Here is what I say about the occasion and purpose of Romans in my  discussion of the book in The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ******************************************************** In one important respect the letter to the Romans is unlike all of Paul's other letters: it is written to a congregation that Paul did not establish, in a city that he had never visited (see 1:10-15).  Given what we have already seen about Paul's sense of his apostolic mission, this should immediately give us pause.  Paul's other letters were written to deal with problems that had arisen among those whom he had converted to faith in Christ.  That clearly is not the case here.  Why, though, [...]