Friday, December 10, 2010

Making the Cut

Of the making of New Testament commentaries there appears to be no end. With the launch of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series the field has become even more crowded. My working theory is that a pastor only needs three solid commentaries on any particular book of the Bible. If a pastor is reading more than three commentaries he is probably spending too much time following the judgments of other men and insufficient time digging through the Greek or Hebrew text for himself. That's the rub. There are more commentaries on the New Testament competing for the pastor's time than he can productively use. To name just the major series which are up to date in terms of scholarship, we have:
  1. The Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
  2. The New International Greek Testament Commentary
  3. The New International Commentary on the New Testament
  4. The Pillar New Testament Commentary
  5. The Word Biblical Commentary
  6. And now, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary

This list doesn't even consider the less academically demanding series such as The New American Commentary nor the many outstanding commentaries on individual books.

This leaves us with an obvious question regarding any new commentary: Can it make the cut and move into the top three available choices? This challenge is particularly daunting for Paul's letter to the Ephesians which is well served by outstanding commentaries by Peter O'Brien (PNTC) and Harold W. Hoehner as well as highly regarded commentaries by Andrew T. Lincoln (Word), Ernest Best (ICC), along with a less than fully satisfactory commentary by F.F. Bruce (NICNT). Additionally, Frank Thielman has just released his commentary on Ephesians (BECNT) which I haven't read. Where does this leave Clint Arnold's ambitious commentary?

Professor Arnold's commentary on Ephesians makes the cut by simply offering a superior commentary. Strengths of the commentary include:

  1. Professor Arnold is a mature scholar who has been working with Ephesians for a quarter of a century. With Arnold the student has a sure footed guide who has been down this path many times before. He knows how to keep the student aligned with Paul's thought including where further explanation is helpful.
  2. The commentary is exceptionally well written and edited. It is simply a delight to read.
  3. The Introduction is excellent. Arnold addresses the common belief that Ephesians wasn't written to deal with concrete concerns and concludes that "Paul therefore speaks in a pastoral and apostolic manner to a variety of real needs of which he had become aware through Tychicus and others." By the nature of the case, Arnold's arguments cannot be fully compelling. Nevertheless, this alerts the reader at the outset that although Arnold has a mastery of the secondary material he is actually writing a commentary on Ephesians and not a commentary on the other commentaries.
  4. The format of this commentary (and presumably the entire series) is the best that I have ever seen. The large clear fonts and attractive layout are a joy to my middle-aged eyes. The inclusion of the author's discourse analysis is so helpful that I wonder why no other commentary series has done this before.
  5. Close attention is paid to the Greek text of the letter throughout the commentary. One concern I had in first looking at the commentary is that it printed the English translation before the Greek text. I was concerned that this pointed to the commentary being essentially a commentary on the English text with bits of Greek thrown in. This concern was entirely unfounded.
  6. Professor Arnold makes excellent use of excursuses throughout the commentary to help pastors and students bridge the gap between the original text and application to the modern world. For example, on pages 407-410 he offers an extensive excursus: "In Depth: Why It Is Legitimate to Apply the Teaching of This Passage to Marriages Today." Later, he offers two shorter excursuses on "The Distinctive Features of Roman-Era Slavery" and "Was Paul an Advocate of Slavery?" In the later he concludes: "It is therefore inappropriate to compare the institution of slavery to the male leadership in the home and label both as unjust social institutions. Such a conclusion fails to take into account the essential difference between the two social structures and the fact that one is theologically grounded and the other is not." This is precisely the type of answer that pastors must be able to clearly explain when dealing with the questions our culture raises regarding this passage.
  7. There is a nice 22 page "Theology of Ephesians" at the back of the commentary. It would be helpful for pastors to read this section before they preach through the epistle rather than discovering it at the very end.

Normally reviewers try to point out a few problems with the book under review to show that they are careful critics. In this case, I simply have nothing worth pointing out. This commentary does exactly what it set out to do and it achieves this in a manner that is simply a delight for the reader to work with. I could not recommend this commentary more highly.

You can find this commentary here.

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