The purpose of this paper is to categorize recent scholarly interpretations of Romans 12:1-2, as a stage needed before any attempt to decide what St. Paul may have intended in this passage. Interpretation of the passage will depend in part on whether one believes that the extant text of Romans is exactly what originally came from the hand of the apostle.
The range of opinions in the literature seems to reflect contrasts between conservative and liberal approaches to Scriptural interpretation, as well as between Roman Catholic and Protestant tendencies. Con servative scholars would generally like to argue that all 14 of the Pauline epistles are exactly as Paul himself wrote them. In contrast, liberal scholars tend to argue that most of the ôPaulineö letters are proba bly not by Paul himself and that none of PaulÆs letters may have survived exactly as he originally wrote them, because of the efforts of compilers and editors during the next 50 or so years. (Romans and I Corinthians were once considered exceptions to this generalization, but several scholars discussed here doubt the inviolability even of Romans, though others still accept it. )
In practice, most scholars take an intermediate position. Even most conservative schol ars admit that the Epistle to the Hebrews (which does not make any claim to be by Paul) and the Pastoral Epistles seem to present a theology and address a situation very different from that of Paul in the least-disputed letters (e.g., Rom, Gal, I Cor, and I Thess). And even lib eral scholars think that all the ôPaulineö writings were composed by com mitted members of the Christian community by, at the latest, very early in the second century and therefore deserve serious respect as both historical and theo logical documents.
One difficulty in interpreting Rom 12:1-2 is that this passage lies between the evidently quite different halves of the letter. Romans 1-11 is overall (as is notorious among Bib...