In 1974 I was called to be student pastor at Cornton near Stirling. By 1976 I would soon be moving to my first full pastoral appointment in Partick, Glasgow. By then I had started to build a study library. One day that summer, in the John Smith Bookshop on Stirling University Campus, I came across a new commentary by G B Caird, someone I had only recently been reading on the Book of Revelation. The new volume was on Paul's Letters from Prison.
Now you need to know, I read biblical commentaries. I know they are reference works to be consulted, not novels with a narrative, an unfolding plot, character development and mysteries to be resolved and revealed. But some commentaries do have some of those features. There is a story behind the text, there is an inner coherence that answers to situations and circumstances outside the text, there is indeed a flow that moves forward and characters within and outside the text. A text is written for a reason, by someone and for someone. And we are talking about the Bible. For me it is a sacred text rooted in the realities of human life, and so is of a different order from other texts that need notes, learned commentary and contextual studies to understand and not misinterpret them.
Exegesis is detective work. The aim is to identify writer and written for, situation and circumstance, meaning and purpose. Which brings me to my thin book, 224 pages, on four letters of Paul. It cost £2.95, which today equates to £21.76. Over the summer I read it, and ever since Paul's Letters from Prison have been my favourite letters of Paul. And ever since I have read commentaries, especially when they are as readable and careful as Caird.
In sixty pages I was drawn into the drama of Paul's love affair with the Christians at Philippi. Every time Paul thinks of them he is filled with joy, gratitude, confidence and love. As a young minister reading this very personal letter from Paul the pastor in prison, to the church that has supported him through thick and thin, I was given an education in encouragement, affection and generosity as fundamental virtues in Christian relationships.
The crux passage of Philippians 2.5-11 takes just over six pages; that compares with the standard major commentaries which take respectively Bockmuehl 34; Fee 37; Hawthorne 45; Hansen 50; O'Brien 84. There's a set of figures you don't really need to know! The point is, Caird was working within clear publisher's word limits. But that's the point. Not everyone could have reduced the complexities of an immense amount of scholarship to six readable pages of elegant, lucid conclusions.
G B Caird's most famous student is N T Wright. Wright's first commentary was on Colossians in the Tyndale series. The Preface includes a moving tribute to the influence of Caird's scholarship in the formation of his student who has since become a major and global voice in New Testament scholarship. That makes it all the more intriguing that Professor Caird's six pages on the Christ Hymn in Phil 2.11, is given explicit support in Wright's widely influential treatment of the passage: 'Jesus Christ is Lord, Phil.2.511', in an early collection of essays, The Climax of the Covenant, ch.4).
Two comments about N T Wright, and Professor Caird's ongoing influence in his writing. When Tom Wright came to Aberdeen for a day of seminars on his magnum opus, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, (just short of 2000 pages!), there was a book signing afterwards. I took my much prized hardcover copy of The Climax of the Covenant and asked if he would sign it instead of the big Paul book. He was visibly moved, and said of all his books this one had given him the most pleasure as it showcased some of what he considered his most important work, especially the fourth chapter.
My second comment is a long held and fervent hope; footnote 2 reads "I shall discuss these in my forthcoming commentary on Philippians in the ICC series." That was in 1991. For those who might not know, The International Critical Commentary has long been considered the premier critical commentary on the Bible. The volume on Philippians by N T Wright remains a scheduled volume. It won't be thin book!
Back to Caird. Here is his take on Phil.2.5-11.
"The decisive point is the rhetorical balance of the passage as a whole; he who renounced equality with God to become man can adequately be contrasted only with a man who sought equality with God. The contrast therefore is with Adam, and it is because he grasped at equality with God that Christ is said not to have done so. The logic of this balance further requires that Adam, who grasped at a dignity to which he had no right, should be contrasted with Christ,who renounced a status to which he had every right..." (page 121. emphasis original)
Less than 100 words. A thickly textured thin book.
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