G. K. Beale - Colossians and Philemon

The chief concern of the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (BECNT) is to provide, within the framework of informed evangelical thought, commentaries that blend scholarly depth with readability, exegetical detail with sensitivity to the whole, and attention to critical problems with theological awareness. We hope thereby to attract the interest of a fairly wide audience, from the scholar who is looking for a thoughtful and balanced examination of the text to the motivated lay Christian who craves a solid but accessible exposition.

Nevertheless, a major purpose is to address the needs of pastors and others involved in the preaching and exposition of the Scriptures as the uniquely inspired Word of God. This consideration directly affects the parameters of the series. For example, serious biblical expositors cannot afford to depend on a superficial treatment that avoids the difficult questions, but neither are they interested in encyclopedic commentaries that seek to cover every conceivable issue that could be raised. Our aim, therefore, is to focus on those problems that have the most direct bearing on the meaning of the text (although selected technical details are treated in the additional notes) or that pose unavoidable challenges for interpretation.

Similarly, a special effort is made to avoid treating exegetical questions for their own sake, that is, in relative isolation from the thrust of the argument as a whole. This effort may involve (at the discretion of the individual contributors) abandoning the verse-by-verse approach in favor of an exposition that focuses on the paragraph as the main unit of thought. In all cases, however, the commentaries will stress the development of the argument and explicitly relate each passage to what precedes and follows it so as to identify its function in the flow of discourse as clearly as possible.

We believe, moreover, that a responsible exegetical commentary must take into account the latest scholarly research, regardless of its source. The contributors to this series, accordingly, attempt to avoid two pitfalls. On the one hand, they do not consider traditional opinions to be sacrosanct, and they are committed to doing justice to the biblical text in the light of compelling evidence regardless of whether it supports such opinions. On the other hand, they will not quickly abandon a long-standing view, if there is persuasive evidence in its favor, for the sake of theories perhaps currently more in vogue. Contributing to this balance is contributors affirmation of the trustworthiness and essential unity of Scripture. They also consider that the historic formulations of Christian doctrine, such as the ecumenical creeds and many of the documents originating in the sixteenth-century Reformation and its aftermath, arose from a legitimate reading of Scripture, thus providing a valuable framework for its subsequent interpretation. While respect for formulations of classic consensual Christianity (Thomas Oden) may risk an imposition of tradition on the text, we deny that it must necessarily do so or that rejection of any hermeneutic that comports with Christian tradition automatically results in more valid exegetical insights and exposition.