etails of his work require to be worked
out, and some of his statements need revision.[4] Older books, such as
Dorner's _History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ_, admirable
though they are, have little value for this purpose, for they were
{102} written chiefly with the object of explaining and leading up to
Nicene and Chalcedonian doctrine. All that can be done in these pages
is to indicate certain lines, which might be profitably followed up, as
to the two chief centres of development, Rome and Ephesus, the former
representing in the main Adoptionism and the latter Pre-existent
Christology.

After Antioch Rome seems to have been the most important centre of
Christianity in the first and early second centuries. Certainly it was
more important than Corinth, though in some ways, owing to the
preservation of Paul's correspondence, we know more about Corinth than
Rome. Fortunately there are extant a number of documents which
illustrate its history, though none of them throw any real light on its
foundation, for it is unknown who was the founder of the Church in Rome.

The first of these documents is Paul's Epistle to the Romans, but it is
very strange how little this tells us as to the history or nature of
the Church in that city. Apparently Paul was acquainted with
Christians in Rome before he went there himself, but there is no
suggestion that he regarded the Church there as the foundation of Peter
or of any other of the leading missionaries. It is therefore by no
means impossible that the Church of Rome sprang up by the coming to the
city in increasing numbers of men who had been converted elsewhere.
Whether the Epistle to the Romans was originally intended for that city
or {103} not is an open question,[5] but at least it was sent to Rome
in one of its forms, and that is after all the most important fact.
The most remarkable thing about the revelation which it makes of the
Christianity at Rome is that the problems which seem to have interested
or distracted the Church are so much more Jewish than Hellenic. The
questions of the Law and of the ultimate fate of Israel are so
extensively dealt with as to suggest a strongly Jewish element in the
Church. Jesus is, as in Corinth, a Redeemer, but the problems of life
for those who accepted him suggest Jewish rather than Greek antecedents.

What is the bearing of Romans on the Christology of the Church at Rome?
Not, that is to say, what is its evidence as to t