Cornerstone Presbyterian Church
Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)
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From the preface:
“This is the second major revision of The New Bible Commentary… In this further edition … nothing remains from 1953 and little from 1970. We have moved from the Revised Standard Version to the New International Version as our English base, and God has called into being a new international team of writers. … But amid all this change there is the unchanging God and the unchanging power of his inspired Word.”
New Bible Commentary, Fourth Edition, Inter-Varsity Press, 1994, 1455 pages.
Let’s
suppose you are studying a part of the Bible, perhaps as a teacher or as
a student in Sunday School, or perhaps you are just doing your own
study. It may happen that, after a while, you decide you need more help
than the notes in your study Bible can give you. A good place to turn
for help is a one-volume Bible commentary.
The New Bible Commentary was first published in 1953 by Inter-Varsity in England. Its general aim was to provide for the serious student of the Bible a new and up-to-date treatment of the text which combines unqualified belief in its divine inspiration, essential historical trustworthiness, and positive Christian usefulness with careful scholarship. In those days the leaders of Inter-Varsity felt there was no such book on the market. It was an immediate success. A second edition appeared the following year. It became widely known by evangelicals throughout the English-speaking world. Further editions followed in 1970 and 1994. The church library has obtained a copy of this fourth edition.
The articles on the various books of the Bible in the commentary were written by different people, most of them from the academic world. For example, the article on Romans was written by Douglas Moo, at the time of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, now at Wheaton College. This is a name familiar in Cornerstone’s Sunday School class on Romans. The article on Daniel is by another familiar name, Sinclair Ferguson, professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, a seminary which has supplied many PCA pastors.
From the preface: “A one-volume commentary on the whole Bible has to be a major exercise in compression, with rigorous discipline governing what is included and what is omitted. We have chosen to concentrate on the ‘flow’ of books and passages, and in this way to make a fundamental contribution to understanding the Bible. Too often the Bible reader … is baffled for want of help to see the wood from the trees. We believe that when our Commentary is used with this end in mind, it will bring its greatest benefits to the user. Nevertheless, as far as space allowed, we have tried not to overlook difficulties of detail”
All commentary users must remember that commentaries are the work of humans, humans who are educated, who know the original languages of the Bible, who have studied their subject at great length, and, we presume, who have prayed over it, seeking the help of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, they are humans and they are not infallible. The Word has priority.
We hope this volume will find good use as we seek to delve into the riches of God’s word at Cornerstone.
--Dean Brown
From the introductory essay:
“Because the Bible is God’s word, it is vitally important
to cultivate humility as we read,
to foster a meditative prayerfulness as we reflect and study,
to seek the help of the Holy Spirit as we try to understand and obey,
to confess sin and pursue purity of heart and motive and relationships as we grow in understanding.
"Failure in these areas may produce scholars, but not mature Christians.
“If the Scriptures are simultaneously God’s verbal revelation and the product of human hands, we must ask for at least some account of the relation between the two. For at least the past several hundred years, the term that has been most commonly used in this connection is 'inspiration' …
"Inspiration is normally defined (at least in Protestant circles) as that supernatural work of God’s Holy Spirit upon the human authors of Scripture such that what they wrote was precisely what God intended them to write in order to communicate his truth.”
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email: info@cornerstonepch.org