387 - Reflections on Commentary Writing

Reflections on Commentary Writing
By Gordon D. Fee

WOULD think myself to be the least likely person ever to have written a commentary. While this reflects a degree of insecurity on my part (why would anyone care to read what I had written?), more significantly it reflects a longstanding concern as to what a good commentary ought to look like-not to mention whether I could ever bring it off.

Not only have I regularly had to use commentaries (gladly so, but often with frustration), but as a seminary professor I am regularly asked to recommend the "best" commentary(-ies) to others. Over the years, I had come to some provisional conclusions about what I thought should go into a good commentary, and finally I built up enough courage (integrity?) to give it a try for myself (under the rubric, "those who live in glass houses," etc.). Whether I have succeeded in satisfying the needs of others remains to be seen, but at least I can set forth what motivated me to engage in this folly that someone has called "the least creative of all scholarly art forms."

I

First, a demurrer. I do not in fact consider most commentaries bad, although their degree of usefulness is often dictated by the parameters of a series (and free-standing commentaries are usually less than successful). But to find all the features that I look for in a single commentary is not easy. Five faults come to mind: expounding the obvious while skirting the difficult; erring on the side of "exposition" without paying adequate attention to exegetical details (textual issues, lexicography, grammar); its opposite, expounding on the nuance of every preposition or participle without an adequate exposition of the text; engaging in a running debate with scholarship without adequately engaging in conversation with the biblical author; and expounding verses seriatim without adequate discussion of the historical and literary contexts.

When I accepted the invitation to write the commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (PE) in the Good News Commentary series (Harper & Row, but now revised as the New International Biblical Commentary, Hendrickson), I knew the limitations of the series would mean an exposition without enough space either to discuss points of detail or to interact adequately with scholarship. As a friend put it, "I liked your

Gordon D. Fee is Professor of New Testament at Regent College, Vancouver. He received his doctorate from the University of Southern California and is the author of New Testament Exegesis, A Handbookfor Students and Pastors (1983), I and II Timothyand Titus: A Good News Commentary (1984), and Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1987).

388 - Reflections on Commentary Writing

conclusions, but it would have been helpful to see how you arrived at them." Nonetheless, there is a place for such a commentary, especially for the inquiring lay person (always hoping, of course, that pastors might find the exposition itself useful to their purposes).

On the other hand, the offer (which in this case I initiated) to replace Grosheide's considerably outdated commentary on I Corinthians in the NICNT series gave me the opportunity I was looking for. I was fortunate that both the editor of the series (F. F. Bruce) and the copy-editor at Eerdmans (Milton Essenburg) were congenial toward some slight modifications of the format of the series, so that I could indulge most of my personal interests. Moreover, between the writing of the PE commentary and that on I Corinthians, I experienced the ultimate personal quantum leap of learning to use a word processor. The PE commentary was written in long hand and passed through four full stages of typing, plus galleys and pageproofs; I Corinthians was submitted both in hard copy, 1800 pages of typescript, and disk and went from copy-editing to pageproofs.

I was held up for a long time at the beginning trying to decide on which translation to use as the basis for comment. Editorial policy for replacement volumes allowed me to abandon the ASV of the first volumes and either to create my own or to use anything else available. I had long determined not to create my own, since I thought the reader ought to have the advantage of a Bible in common with others. My own choice boiled down to the RSV, NASB, and NIV. In some ways the sheer woodenness of the NASB would have made it an excellent basis for comment, but I finally settled on the NIV mostly because I thought it to be the most common translation among those who constitute the greater market for the series-but also partly because of some dissatisfaction with the RSV on 7:25 and the NASB on 7:36-38 (plus the fact that Professor Bruce had written his New Century commentary on the RSV). As I began to work my way through the text I also came to be a bit disillusioned with the NIV and finally secured permission from Zondervan Publishers to alter its text in several places where I found it exegetically impossible or, in many cases, where it employed unnecessarily sexist language. Although I tend to favor dynamic equivalence as a translational theory, both commentaries (the first was originally written against the GNB) have given me reason to pause. For my own tastes I found far too many absolutely wrong exegetical choices now locked into the biblical text as the reader's only option.

II

I began the actual writing by experimenting with several paragraphs in I Cor. 1, until I had satisfied myself on several counts: First, I was driven by the desire to offer a readable exposition of the text, as uncluttered by technical jargon and other commentary paraphernalia as I could possibly make it. Both reviews and personal letters have

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indicated that here there has been a measure of success, the secret to which for me was the word processor. Every morning I ran off hard copy of the previous day's (sometimes days') work and read it aloud in its entirety, including footnotes. Every time I stumbled over a sentence, or had to catch my breath, I assumed another reader would also have difficulty; so I rewrote until I felt it read aloud smoothly. I also read the entire product through aloud one final time before submitting it to Eerdmans; not all the bugs are out, but I am convinced this has been the key to what measure of readability it might have.

Second, my greatest disappointment with most commentaries has been what I felt to be an inadequate placement of any given text into its historical and literary context. I was determined that whatever else, this commentary would be the opposite-so much so that I could easily be accused of overdoing it. I chose to introduce each major section in terms of its relationship to the historical situation in Corinth; then, in keeping with the series format, each paragraph received its own discussion, but in this case with a considerable introduction that tried to do three things: (1) show how the paragraph related to what had been said to this point; (2) show how it in turn advanced the argument; and (3) overview the argument of the paragraph itself, so that the reader could see how Paul's thinking proceeded. I then tried to do the same for each verse, always beginning with a word as to how it fitted into what had preceded and how it functioned in the argument before taking up the various pieces of the sentence seriatim.

The greatest difficulty I had at this point was to determine what belonged in the body of the text and what should be relegated to footnotes. Certain criteria emerged early on. Some things automatically belonged in the notes, including most technical discussions of the Greek text (especially textual criticism and grammar) as well as almost all interactions with scholarship. On all other matters, the decision was made on the basis of the two criteria of a readable exposition and the significance of the issue for understanding what Paul had said. The interchange of matter between text and notes continued right up to the final draft.

Third, I was also concerned that Paul's own theological urgencies get their proper hearing. From my perspective, it has been a blight on the landscape of much New Testament scholarship-probably related to our twin concerns to affirm pluralism and not to offend others-that we have been good technicians of the text, but have avoided theology like the plague. It is hard to imagine anything less fair to Paul himself who was an intensely theological person. So for good or ill, I wanted Paul's theological emphases, as I perceived them, to get their full hearing. Whether I have understood the Apostle adequately remains for others to judge, but surely one fails to comment adequately on Paul who does not try to "hear" him, to come to grips with what drives him, what motivates the words and the rhetoric.

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Finally, and I wrestled long and hard with this one, I decided to conclude the discussion of each paragraph with some hermeneutical observations, either as to its overall theological import or how it might apply. My nervousness here stemmed not only from my awareness that such things simply are not done (scholarship seems also to be embarrassed by belief), but by the obvious pitfalls of such an undertaking, namely, the danger that such comments might become too quickly dated, or otherwise too parochial or local; the possibility of being overly simplistic (which in fact was suggested by one reviewer); or that I might be doing for others what they should be doing for themselves.

On the other hand, two things made me willing to give it a try. First, I have taught this letter for so many years in seminary and church settings, where hermeneutical issues are always the greater urgency, that it seemed a matter of personal integrity to wrestle with these issues again in the commentary itself. Second, it seemed to me to be in keeping with the aim of the series not only to offer an exposition of the text, but also to give some hints as to how it might apply to our own setting. I have no illusions as to whether everything is either right on or helpful to others, but I have spent years wrestling with the matters of application and it seemed appropriate to offer some suggestions that might serve as a point of departure for a pastor's own thinking since the commentary is aimed primarily for her or him. In fact, there has been far more favorable reaction to this dimension of the commentary than I had dared hope.

Although not all will be convinced, I do hope to have cut new ground at several points. On some smaller details, I would like to think I have resolved an issue regarding the grammar on 4:6 and 7:7. I also have given a more elaborate case than can be found heretofore for "flesh" -"sinful nature" in 5:5, and as far as I know I am the only commentator to eliminate 14:34-35 on textual grounds alone. I hope to have made more significant contributions, or at least to have opened paths for new discussion, on my overall view of the letter as basically one of conflict between Paul and the church over the matter of what it means to be "spiritual," on the historical issue lying behind chapters 8-10, and on 11:2-16 as reflecting a breakdown between the sexes, not the subordination of women.

This latter text is one of several in this letter that should cause one to think twice before writing a commentary. It remains as one of the four places (along with 11:19, 12:3, and 15:29) where I am convinced that none of us really knows what the text means. The problem with writing a commentary, of course, as over against teaching a course, is that in the latter one can more easily glide over some things that the writing of a commentary will not allow. The personal Angst comes from the realization that these are some of the first places to which others will turn in opening the commentary and then judge the whole by these.

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III

On the more personal side, several things stand out. First, I continually wrestled with the personal struggle between writing a commentary for scholars or for the church in a more direct way (pastors and students). There were two events that kept me honest (in favor of the church more directly). The first of these is to be found in the dedication to a longtime friend Wayne Kraiss, who became president of Southern California College several years after I had left there for Wheaton and then on to Gordon-Conwell. We were both in a conference for church leaders at Arrowhead Springs, where I was doing some things from I Corinthians. In a passing moment, of those kinds where one has to make a personal transition because the time is getting away, I commented that I had the contract to write a commentary on this letter, but did not have sabbatical time coming in which to do it. The next day Wayne asked me how long it would take to write it if I could get a leave of absence (the answer: an academic year with summers on either side). It turned out that there was a special fund at the college, directed and disbursed by a committee of which he was chair. The result was an offer from my former institution of a full year's salary, with absolutely no strings attached (I am not used to the church acting in this way; it has given me new hope), to take a leave of absence from Gordon-Conwell, because, as Wayne put it to me, "the church needs that commentary." Whether that was so or not, those words always came ringing back in my ears whenever I started to get carried away in the body of the exposition with some long, involved argument with scholarship over some detail.

The other event was equally significant. On a Sunday morning early on in the writing, one of members of my local assembly, Bob McManus, stood during prayer time and said that he felt led of the Holy Spirit to pray for me during the time that I was writing the commentary and invited others to join him. The result was a group of about ten people who each took a day of the week, committing themselves to prayer for me, and to whom I "reported in" once a month. I simply cannot describe how significant this became for me. I recall many a moment when I was starting to go astray after scholarship-or when the muse ceased, or I was simply stuck at one of the difficult texts-when the awareness that some friends were in prayer for this enterprise caused the log jam to burst and direction and purpose to return. My gratitude and indebtedness to them for reminding me in this very tangible way of the ministry of the body to its own can never be fully expressed.

Finally, I must mention the several times when I had very personal encounters with the living God through the power of the text itself. These, of course, are very personal, but they were gentle reminders from the Holy Spirit that this is God's Word after all, and that God will have the final say, not I. Such encounters shine through at several places, such as 1:18-25, 4:7, 14:33, to name a few I clearly remember.

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One of the more remarkable of these moments came with 4:9-13, commenting on Paul's hardship list, which served for him both to set forth his own apostolic ministry as in keeping with the gospel of the Crucified One and to offer the Corinthians a model for themselves. I was simply overcome with the dissonance of my sitting in the comfort of my study, with my word processor and surrounded by my books, while trying to comment on these hardships as Paul's own norm for apostolic existence. It was not a matter of false guilt, but an overwhelming sense of my need, and that of those around me, to take stock of our life styles and values.

Perhaps for me the single most significant of these moments came at 13:4. One must first appreciate the kind of dread with which I finally came to these verses (13:4-7). Here is a passage so well known, and so full of inherent power, that comment by me would seem to be both profane and pedestrian. But as I began to reflect on the significance of the first two words on the list (longsuffering [KJV] and kindness), I was suddenly struck by the clear reality that these are two words that Paul elsewhere uses to describe the character of God (the passive and active sides of divine love). As I sat and reflected on what that meant, I was overwhelmed with an indescribable emotion, as it came to me that not only is God like this-eternally and faithfully so-but where would I be, and those I love, if it were not so. What if God loved with the same degree of longsuffering as I have toward those who have sinned against, or disappointed, me. It was one of those grand moments of hearing the gospel afresh and being renewed in the presence of God. It is also the kind of moment very difficult to capture in a commentary.

Much of the writing was simply hard work, keeping at it some twelve hours a day, six days a week, for fourteen months of actual writing. Along with the Sabbath, for which I came to have a new appreciation as God's gift to us, these moments of encounter with God through the text of the word were "seasons of refreshing." I only hope that something of my own love for this text and its power have shone through the commentary itself.