Author's Preface
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
For the rationale as to the form and style of this commentary, one is invited to read carefully the Author's Preface to my volume on I Corinthians in this series (pp. ix-xii), which I had the opportunity to spell out in greater detail in a symposium on the writing of commentaries in Theology 46 (1990) 387-92.
But I do need here to reiterate some presuppositions and idiosyncrasies for the sake of the reader. First, without apology I have consciously written this commentary to help the parish minister and teacher of Scripture better understand this letter as the Word of God for a contemporary congregation. At the same time I have been very well aware of the scholar and the classroom teacher. Everything about the format and style gives evidence of this twofold audience. For the primary readership I have tried to make the exposition as uncluttered and as readable as possible. Hopefully, even those Bible students without formal training (and who are not turned off by the appearance of so many footnotes!) will find much profit by reading the text and skipping the notes altogether. For that reason, I have reserved almost all technical discussions of textual criticism, grammar, and lexicography, for the footnotes. There also one will find my indebtedness to, and (sometimes vigorous) interaction with, those who have written on Philippians before me. The notes, therefore, are full of many things; and the user is invited to read around as many of these as he or she needs to in order to keep a steady eye on the meaning of Philippians itself.
That leads me, second, to say a further word about my relationship to previous literature. As with the commentary on I Corinthians, I assiduously avoided reading anything on a given paragraph — and tried to keep out of mind what I had read previously — until I had written and rewritten my own exposition of the text, along with the various textual, grammatical, and lexical notes. I then went through the literature (basically 25 commentaries covering a broad range of time and perspective, plus all known specialized studies on the passage) in chronological order (through early 1994), after which I interacted, rewrote, or made adjustments, as the case may be — and acknowledged indebtedness for points of view I had not noted before. For this reason the references in the notes are also in generally chronological, not alphabetical, order — although that became difficult to sustain at times when there was more than one edition to a commentary. It also meant that, for me, I always saved the best till last. Even though I differ from them at times, sometimes with characteristic vigor, I learned much from the recent commentaries by three friends: Gerald Hawthorne, Moisés Silva, and Peter O'Brien. Of the older commentaries I found those by Meyer, Lightfoot, and Vincent consistently to be the most helpful (for a very useful overview of commentaries on Philippians, see I. H. Marshall, "Which is the Best Commentary? 12. Philippians," ExpTim 103 [1991] 39-42).
Third, although the writer of a commentary assumes that its users will never read the Introduction (!), here is an instance when it seems quite important that the user do so — at least Part I on Philippians as a first-century letter, since the entire commentary has been written from the perspective spelled out there. On other introductory matters, I simply forewarn that there is nothing new, and that the traditional provenance (Rome) and dating (ca. 62 ce) are presupposed — with explanation but with little argumentation.
Fourth, since I think there is some usefulness in doing so, the references to Paul's letters are given in their presumed chronological order (1 and 2 Thessalonians, I and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy); as before I consider the Pastoral Epistles "Pauline" in the sense that they ultimately derive from him in the first half of the seventh decade ce (between 62 and 64).
Finally, in a day like ours, when Greek is no longer required in the majority of seminaries, and when sociological and literary concerns have far outstripped grammatical ones in exegesis, one is a little hesitant to make too many references to "the Greek." Hopefully, this commentary has taken into account, not always in agreement with the secondary literature, what we can learn from the sociology of the first century and from its various literary and rhetorical devices. But let me here enter a plea for grammar, which also counts for something. To be sure, I am on the side of those who find many of my predecessors — and some contemporaries — to engage in finding more "meaning" in grammar and words than surely Paul intended. (I wonder if he thought through his talk anymore than many of us do, especially in the writing of letters.) "Over-exegeting," I call it. On the other hand, neither do I think Paul simply wrote willy-nilly; I am convinced on the contrary that the way he says things often gives us clues to what he says — and intends. Therefore, in this commentary I have engaged in several very lengthy grammatical discussions in the footnotes, where I have the sense that grammar has received short shrift in our day of greater expertise in matters sociological (see, e.g., nn. 58 and 59 on 2:17; n. 12 on 4:8; and n. 16 on 4:19). I fear that at times I have been a bit ruthless with my colleagues in these notes, to whom I herewith apologize for the "style" but not for the substance.
It remains, then, to acknowledge those to whom I am indebted for making the writing and publishing of this commentary possible (besides my indebtedness to Sven Soderlund noted in the Editor's Preface):
To my wife Maudine, who not only "suffered" with me through the six months during which this commentary was written, but also read most of the sections — with a keen eye for language and general usefulness for the lay reader — who also creatively interacted with me (and Paul) during the long sessions (usually at meals) where she had to endure the overflow of my exegetical work of the day. (I mention her first as yet another example in this commentary of breaking with "formal" traditions!)
To Regent College, whose generous sabbatical policy made it possible for me to be relieved of all other responsibilities from January to June, 1994, during which time this work was undertaken.
To my two teaching assistants (stretching over two academic years), Rick Beaton and Michael Thomson. Rick gathered the vocabulary data that made the analyses on pp. 18-20 possible; he also served as my legs and eyes, spending hours chasing rabbits down library paths and through bibliographical briar patches. Michael prepared the list of abbreviations and collected the comprehensive bibliography from the footnotes, as well as prepared the Scripture and Author indexes.
To students in two seminars over the past five years, who listened and interacted with new ideas about this letter, and from whose papers I also often learned much — especially from those who dug in their heels and would not let me find "division" and "opposition" where there was none.
To Zondervan Publishing House for permission to use the NIV, which is very useful as a translation, but sometimes difficult to use as the basis of comment because of its (correctly so) use of the principle of dynamic equivalence.
As in my 1 Corinthians commentary, I have used brackets occasionally to modify the NIV, where its gender-specific language (especially "brothers" and "man") no longer reflects contemporary English usage and thereby misses the generic intent of the Greek.
I save (what for me is) the best till last. The writing of this commentary is unlike anything I have heretofore experienced as a part of the church. In a regular stream of divine appointments, in a variety of church settings over the four and half months in which I wrote the first draft of the commentary, one Sunday after another either the worship (including liturgy) or the sermon was in some very direct way associated with the text of the preceding week. It was as though the Lord was letting me hear the text played back in liturgical and homiletical settings that made me pause yet one more time and "hear" the text in new ways. It is hard to describe these experiences, which had a profound impact on my sabbaths during the sabbatical; and their regularity seemed beyond mere coincidence. All of which made my Mondays take on a regular pattern as well, as I would go back to the prior week's work and think and pray it through yet one more time. Some of these moments have made the footnotes as well (e.g., n. 42 on 2:9-11, easily the most memorable of these moments; but see also n. 22 on 4:4 and n. 35 on 3:20-21). So the final word is Paul's — his doxology in 4:20: "To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen."
GORDON D. FEE
July 1994