Editor’s Preface to the First Edition
In accordance with the policy of keeping the New International Commentary on the New Testament up to date, by revision or replacement, a new volume on 1 Corinthians is now presented.
The original NICNT volume on 1 Corinthians was one of the earliest in the series: it was published in 1953, and was the work of the veteran Dutch scholar Dr. F. W. Grosheide, who for over forty years had been Professor of New Testament at the Free University of Amsterdam. Since its appearance a full generation has elapsed. The study of 1 Corinthians—one of the most exciting of Paul’s letters—has been energetically pursued. New problems have emerged and new questions have been asked, and on all of these today’s reader expects to find some help.
Dr. Gordon Fee is fully abreast of these issues and is well qualified to give the required help. He is best known in the world of New Testament scholarship for his expertise in textual criticism, but his exegetical gifts have been continuously exercised during his years of teaching at Wheaton College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and now Regent College, Vancouver, as well as in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles.
He treats the successive sections of 1 Corinthians with an eye to the place of each in the overall development of the letter and its argument; he treats the letter itself in the context of the epistolary exchanges between Paul and the Corinthian church as well as in its historical, cultural, and social setting. Some elusive questions arise with regard to the Corinthian Christians’ unexpressed presuppositions—presuppositions of which Paul had to take account when he was dictating the letter and of which we must be made aware when reading it. This is a real letter (not a literary composition disguised as a letter): in it Paul interacts with living, articulate, and argumentative men and women. Readers who try to use it as a manual of church order, a directory of public worship, or a digest of canon law for today will miss its point; but under Dr. Fee’s guidance they will grasp, and perhaps even apply, its abiding message.
F. F. BRUCE