ethnêhas not lost its basic sense of “nations,” so that the various Roman
provinces function as the current manifestation of the ethnê/goyimover
against which Israel’s identity had always been forged. Further, in keeping
with scriptural expectations about the eschatological salvation of the
nations, Paul is thought to have understood his mission as that phase
which occupied and defined the brief interval between the resurrection
and the parousia. His congregations in Corinth, Ephesus or Philippi repre-
sented the larger nation, or province, of which they were a part. When all
the nations had been evangelized in this representative way, Paul and the
other Gentile missionaries would have accomplished the “full number of
the nations” (to plêrôma tôn ethnôn,Rom. 11:25), which would precipitate the
parousiaand the end-time salvation of “all Israel” (Munck 1959, 277–78;
Hultgren 1985, 127–37; Jewett 1992, 598; Aus 1979, 232–62; Knox 1964,
1–11). In this reading, the collection project functions as Paul’s demon-
stration of the completion of the plêrômain the east, the church represen-
tatives travelling with him functioning as a kind of representative
universalism once removed (Munck 1959, 303–305; Nickle 1966, 129–42).
Patterns of Selection Even when full allowance is made for such notions
of representation, however, a glance at the map will indicate that there
were many provinces between Jerusalem and Illyricum without Pauline
churches. Many scholars are content at this point to appeal generally to the
negative principle enunciated in Romans 15:20–21, that is, Paul’s declared
policy of working only in areas where other missionaries have not already
founded churches (cf. 1 Cor. 3:5–14; 2 Cor. 10:16). While Paul provides us
with nothing in the way of detail, it is assumed that the reason he feels no
need to delay his trip to Rome until after he has worked in Cappadocia,
Bithynia and Pontus, Thrace, and other places in the east, is that other
missionaries have founded churches in these areas (Dunn 1988, 2:868–69;
Hultgren 1985, 131–32; Munck 1959, 52–54; M. Green 1970, 260).
A few scholars, however, go farther than this, proposing schemes that
would account for Paul’s choice of territory much more precisely and on the
basis of more positive principles of selection. John Knox, for example, takes
seriously and literally the word kyklô(in a circular manner) in its appear-
ance in Romans 15:19. Spain was not Paul’s final destination, in this read-
ing; rather, he planned to go on from there to Africa, with the ultimate
goal of planting representative churches in a string of provinces circling the
Mediterranean (Knox 1964, 10–11; followed, at least tentatively, by Hult-
gren 1985, 132–33, Dunn 1988, 2:864, and others). In contrast, Roger D. Aus
argues that Spain was Paul’s ultimate goal. He presents two lines of argu-
ment in support of the idea that Paul would have seen his mission as com-