Matthew: A Commentary, Volume 1

By Frederick Dale Bruner

Recognized as a masterly commentary when it first appeared, Frederick Dale Bruner's study of Matthew is now available as a greatly revised and expanded two-volume work -- the result of seven years of careful refinement, enrichment, and updating.

Through this commentary, crafted especially for teachers, pastors, and Bible students, Bruner aims "to help God's people love what Matthew's Gospel says." Bruner's work is at once broadly historical and deeply theological. It is historical in drawing extensively on great church teachers through the centuries and on the classical Christian creeds and confessions. It is theological in that it unpacks the doctrines in each passage, chapter, and section of the Gospel. Consciously attempting to bridge past and present, Bruner asks both what Matthew's Gospel said to its first hearers and what it says to readers today. As a result, his commentary is profoundly relevant to contemporary congregations and to those who guide them.

Bruner's commentary is replete with lively, verse-by-verse discussion of Matthew's text. While each chapter expounds a specific topic or doctrine, the book's format consists of a vivid, original translation of the text followed by faithful exegesis and critical analysis, a survey of historical commentary on the text, and current applications of the text or theme under study. In this revision Bruner continues to draw on the best in modern scholarship -- including recent work by W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr., by Ulrich Luz, and by many others -- adding new voices to the reading of Matthew. At the same time he cites the classic commentaries of Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Bengel, and the rest, who, like Bruner himself, were not simply doctrinal teachers but also careful exegetes of Scripture. Such breadth and depth of learning assure that Bruner's Matthew will remain, as a reviewer for Interpretation wrote, "the most dog-eared commentary on the shelf."

Volume 1 of Bruner's commentary is called The Christbook because the first twelve chapters of Matthew are focused on the nature and work of Christ. As Bruner proceeds through these chapters, he shows how Matthew presents, step by step, central themes of Christology: Jesus' coming (chapters 1–4), his teaching (5–7), his miracles (8–9), his sermon on mission (10), and his person (11–12). Throughout the book there are also thoughtful discussions of significant topics such as baptism, marriage, Jewish-Christian relations, and heaven and hell.

Eminently readable, rich in biblical insight, and ecumenical in tone, Bruner's two-volume commentary on Matthew now stands among the best in the field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Jun 25, 2007
• ISBN: 9781467421201

Frederick Dale Bruner

  Frederick Dale Bruner is the George and Lyda Wasson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Whitworth University. His other books include A Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament Witness and commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John.

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© 2004 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

All rights reserved

Original edition © 1987 by F. Dale Bruner

Paperback edition 2007

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bruner, Frederick Dale.

Matthew, a commentary / Frederick Dale Bruner.

—Rev. and expanded ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contents:—v. 1. The Christbook, Matthew 1–12.

ISBN 978-0-8028-4506-1 (v. 1: pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Bible. N.T. Matthew—Commentaries. I. Title.

BS2572.53.B78 2004

226.2′077—dc22

2003064346

Quotations from the Bible within this volume are the author’s own translation unless identified otherwise. Scriptures identified RSV are from The Revised Standard Version, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Scriptures identified TEV are from Today’s English Version, copyright © American Bible Society, 1976. Scriptures identified NEB are from The New English Bible, copyright © the Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970. Scriptures identified NRSV are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the United States. Scriptures identified REV are from the Revised English Bible, copyright © 1989 Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. Scriptures identified JB are from the Jerusalem Bible © 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Scriptures identified NJB are from the New Jerusalem Bible © 1985 Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd., and Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Permission to quote from these versions is gratefully acknowledged. Scriptures identified AV are from The King James Version.

Permission to quote from the Book of Confessions of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is gratefully acknowledged.

For

Katherine Booth Bruner

Companion

In Life and in Theology

Contents

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Major Abbreviations and Sources

Chapters 1–4: The Coming Messiah: The Christmas Stories

INTRODUCTIONS TO THE DOCTRINES OF GOD, MAN, INITIATION, AND MINISTRY

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Doctrine of God

The Title of the Gospel, 1:1

I. The Genealogy: God the Father, the Over-Us God, Bringing Deity to the World, 1:2–17

A. Line One: From Abraham to David: The Four Women and the Doctrine of Divine Mercy, 1:2–6

B. Line Two: From Solomon to the Exile: The Four Alterations and the Doctrine of Divine Judgment, 1:7–11

C. Line Three: From the Exile to the Christ: The Long March and the Doctrine of Divine Good Faith, 1:12–16

Summary One: The Kingdom of God: Introduction to the Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, 1:17

Summary Two: Biblical Freedom: Introduction to the Doctrine of Holy Scripture

Summary Three: The Genealogy as a Whole and Its Little Theology of God

II. The Birth of the Messiah: God the Spirit, the Inside-Us God, Bringing Deity into the World, 1:18–20

A. The Gospel of the Story: God’s Ways Are Not Ours

B. The Doctrine of the Story: The Christocentricity of the Spirit

III. The Naming of Jesus: God the Son, the With-Us God, Bearing Deity in the World, 1:21–23

A. The First Name: The Lord Saves (Ye-Shua), 1:21

B. The Second Name: The With-Us God (Emmanu-El), 1:22–23

Excursus 1. The Question of the Historicity of the Virgin Birth

Excursus 2. The Deity of Jesus and the Questions of Incarnation and Trinity

Summary and Conclusion

Excursus 3. Quiet Joseph: An Early Model of Matthew’s Understanding of Righteousness: An Introduction to Christian Ethics

Excursus 4. Mother Mary: An Introduction to the Sexual Ethics of the Gospel

Chapter 2: Introduction to the Doctrine of Human Nature

An Outline of Chapter 2

I. The Magi: Humanity under the Power of Grace, 2:1–12

II. King Herod: Humanity under the Power of Sin, 2:1–8, 16–19

Excursus 1. The Doctrine of Original Sin

III. The Child: Representative Humanity, 2:13–15, 19–23

Excursus 2. The Doctrine of Human Nature in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World

Summary

Conclusion

Chapter 3: The Law of Repentance and the Gospel of Baptism

THE DOCTRINE OF INITIATION

I. John the Baptist: The Repentance-Law of God and the Demands of Baptism, 3:1–12

A. John the Baptist’s Repentance Sermon and the People’s Admission of Sins, 3:1–6

B. John the Baptist’s Fire Sermon and His Promise of the Spirit Baptizer, 3:7–12

The Repentance-Law of God in the Reformation Confessions

II. Jesus’ Baptism: The Gospel of God and the Supplies of Baptism, 3:13–17

A. The Ethical Meaning of Baptism

B. The Sacramental Meaning of Baptism

The Church and the Para-Church

1. Jesus’ Baptism

2. The Church’s Baptism

The Gift of the Spirit

The Voice of the Father

A Discussion of Infant and Believer Baptisms

A Closing Word to Matthew 3

Chapter 4: The Doctrine of Ministry

I. The Three Temptations: The Ministry of the Son and Servant of God, 4:1–11

A. The First Temptation: The Temptation of Cheap Miracles. Sensationalism (The Stomach Test), 4:1–4

1. On the Devil and Temptation

2. On the Existence of the Devil

B. The Second Temptation: The Temptation of Cheap Manipulation. Spectacularism (The Scripture Test), 4:5–7

C. The Third Temptation: The Temptation of Cheap Mastery. Successism (The Salvation Test), 4:8–11

II. The Three Services: The Ministry of the Son and Servant of Man, 4:12–25

A. Jesus the Light of the Nations (The Service of His Heralding Person), 4:12–17

B. Jesus the Lord of the Church (The Service of His Discipling Word), 4:18–22

C. Jesus the Life of the Body (The Service of His Healing Work), 4:23–25

Chapters 5–7: The Teaching Messiah: The Sermon on the Mount

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOCTRINE OF DISCIPLESHIP

Chapter 5: The Call of Mercy

I. The Blessings, 5:3–16

The Beatitudes

A. The Inaugural Need (or Poor) Beatitudes of Grace and Faith (B 1–4), 5:3–6

1. The First Beatitude (B 1), 5:3

2. The Second Beatitude (B 2), 5:4

3. The Third Beatitude (B 3), 5:5

4. The Fourth Beatitude (B 4), 5:6

B. The Central Help (or Full) Beatitudes of Service and Love (B 5–7), 5:7–9

1. The Fifth Beatitude (B 5), 5:7

2. The Sixth Beatitude (B 6), 5:8

3. The Seventh Beatitude (B 7), 5:9

C. The Concluding Hurt (or Persecution) Beatitudes of Joy and Hope (B 8–9), 5:10–12

1. The Eighth Beatitude (B 8), 5:10

2. The Ninth Beatitude (B 9), 5:11–12

Summary. The Beatitudes as a Whole: Jesus Saves The Questions of Religious Pluralism and of the Catholic and Reformation Doctrines of Salvation

1. Religious Pluralism

2. The Catholic and Reformation Doctrines of Salvation

D. The You Ares: The Ordination of Disciples to World Service (UR 1–2), 5:13–16

1. The Salt Shaker (UR 1), 5:13

2. The Light House (UR 2), 5:14–16

Summary: The Blessings as a Whole: How the Sermon on the Mount Starts: The Foundation of Ethics

II. The Commands, 5:17–48

A. The Spiritual Command

1. Introduction. Scripture Day: The Sunday Command of Biblical Piety (C 1), 5:17–20

B. The Social Commands

1. The Three Moral Commands: Against Anger, Lust, and Divorce (C 2–4), 5:21–32

a. Mercy Day: The Monday Command of Temperamental Mercy: Against Anger (C 2), 5:21–26

b. Trues Day: The Tuesday Command of Sexual Purity: Against Lust (C 3), 5:27–30

c. Wedding Day: The Wednesday Command of Marital Fidelity: Against Divorce (C 4), 5:31–32

A Summary of Jesus’ Moral Commands

2. The Three Political Commands: Against Oaths, Retaliation, and Hatred (C 5–7), 5:33–48

a. Truth Day: The Thursday Command of Truthful Speech: Against Oaths (C 5), 5:33–37

b. Friend Day: The Friday Command of Peacemaking: Against Revenge (C 6), 5:38–42

Biblical and Traditional Material on the State and the Problem of Coercion

c. Sanctiday: The Saturday Command of Love of Enemies: Against Hatred (C 7), 5:43–48

Four Concluding Notes to the Seven Commands

The Relation between Faith and Works (Beatitudes and Commands) in the Reformation Tradition

Chapter 6: The Call to Faith

I. The Devotions, 6:1–18

Introduction, 6:1

A. Doing Charity (D 1), 6:2–4

B. Prayer (D 2), 6:5–15

1. How Not to Pray (Wrong Prayer), 6:5–8

a. No Show, For He Spies

b. Not Much, For He’s Wise

2. How to Pray (The Lord’s Prayer), 6:9–15

a. The Address (LP 0), 6:9b

The First Table of the Lord’s Prayer (LP A) (The Your Petitions), 6:9c–10

b. The First Petition (LP 1), 6:9

c. The Second Petition (LP 2), 6:10a

d. The Third Petition (LP 3), 6:10b

e. The Mid-Course Correction (LP MCC), 6:10c

The Second Table of the Lord’s Prayer (The Us Petitions) (LP B), 6:11–13

f. The Fourth Petition (LP 4), 6:11

g. The Fifth Petition (LP 5), 6:12

h. The Sixth Petition (LP 6), 6:13

Summary

i. The Postscript (LP PS), 6:14

C. Fasting (D 3), 6:16–18

II. The Goals, 6:19–34

A. The Two Treasures (G 1), 6:19–21

B. The Two Eyes (G 2), 6:22–23

C. The Two Lords (G 3), 6:24

D. The Two Anxieties (G 4), 6:25–34

Chapter 7: The Call to Justice

I. The Sums, 7:1–12

A. Don’t Be So Critical (S 1), 7:1–5

B. But Be a Little Critical (S 2), 7:6

C. Ask in Prayer (S 3), 7:7–11

D. And Use Your Imagination (The Golden Rule) (S 4), 7:12

II. The Warnings, 7:13–29

A. The Two Gates (W 1), 7:13–14

B. The Two Prophets (W 2), 7:15–23

1. The Two Trees, 7:15–20

2. The Two Doers, 7:21–23

C. The Two Houses (W 3), 7:24–27

The Main Interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount

Assurance and Warning, Certainty and Insecurity in Reformation Theology

A Summary of the Sermon on the Mount: The Relation of Faith and Works

Chapters 8–9: The Touching Messiah: The Ten Miracles

INTRODUCTION TO THE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION

Chapter 8: The Five Miracles of Grace

THE DOCTRINE OF GRACE

I. The Three Outsider Miracles, 8:1–17

A. The Leper, 8:1–4

B. The Centurion’s Son, 8:5–13

C. Peter’s Mother-in-Law and the Sunset Healings, 8:14–17

1. Peter’s Mother-in-Law, 8:14–15

2. The Sunset Healings, 8:16–17

Excursus: On Healing Meetings

II. The Chaos Miracles, 8:18–34

A. The Disciples in the Storm, 8:18–27

1. Introduction: The Would-Be Disciples, 8:18–22

2. The Disciples in the Storm, 8:23–27

B. The Demoniacs, 8:28–34

Summary: The Five Miracles of Grace

Chapter 9: The Five Miracles of Freedom

THE DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM

I. The Religion-Critical Controversies, 9:1–17

A. The Paralytic: Freedom from Sin (The Forgiveness Controversy), 9:1–8

B. The Call of Matthew: Freedom from Separatism (The Fellowship Controversy), 9:9–13

C. The Question about Fasting: Freedom from Scrupulosity (The Fasting Controversy), 9:14–17

II. The Society-Giving Miracles, 9:18–34

A. The Leader’s Daughter and the Woman Who Touched Jesus’ Robe: Freedom from Sickness and Death (The In-Extremis Miracles), 9:18–26

B. The Two Blind Men and the Demonic Deaf Mute: Freedom to See and to Speak (The Communalizing Miracles), 9:27–34

1. The Healing of Two Blind Men (Pursuing Faith), 9:27–31

2. The Healing of a Demonic Deaf-Mute (Pursued Faith), 9:32–34

Summary: The Ten Miracles of Prayer, Matt 8–9

The Gratis propter Christum per fidem Teaching of Salvation in Reformation Theology

Chapter 10: The Sermon on Mission

THE DOCTRINE OF EVANGELISM

I. Mission Sources, 9:35–10:4

A. The Heart of Christ for People, 9:36

B. The Prayer of Disciples for Workers, 9:37–38

C. The Gifts of Ministry for Healing, 10:1

D. The Apostolic Fellowship of the Church, 10:2–4

II. Mission Instructions, 10:5–39

A. Travel Instructions, 10:5–15

1. Where to Go in Mission (Not Here But Here), 10:5–6

2. What to Do in Mission (Heralding and Healing), 10:7–8a

3. How to Do Mission (Simply, Not Grandly), 10:8b–10

4. With Whom to Do Mission (The Receptive), 10:11–13a

5. How to Handle Rejection in Mission (Peace Retrieving and Dust Shaking), 10:13b–15

B. Trouble Instructions, 10:16–23

1. The Animal Motto of Mission (Introduction), 10:16–17a

2. The ABC’s of Missionary Persecution, 10:17b–18

3. The Assistance of the Holy Spirit in Mission, 10:19–20

4. The Animus of Family and World to Mission, 10:21–22

5. The Arrival of the Son of Man before the End of the Mission, 10:23

C. Trust Instructions, 10:24–39

III. Hospitality Awards, 10:40–42; 11:1

The Doctrine of Means in the Reformation Tradition

Chapters 11–12: The Six Portraits

THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST

Chapter 11: The Fish Messiah

THE DOCTRINE OF JESUS THE SAVIOR

I. Jesus Is the Promised Messiah, 11:2–19

II. Jesus Is the Coming Judge, 11:20–24

III. Jesus Is the Present Savior, 11:25–30

A. Jesus’ Thanksgiving, 11:25–26

B. Jesus’ Claim, 11:27

C. Jesus’ Invitation, 11:28–30

The Solus Christus and Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus Teachings of Reformation Confessional Theology

A. Solus Christus (Christ Alone)

B. Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus (Outside the Church No Salvation)

Chapter 12: The Fire Christ

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST THE JUDGE

I. The Sabbath Lord: The Sabbath Controversy, 12:1–21

A. The Grain-Picking Incident, 12:1–8

The Reformation Interpretation of the Sabbath

B. The Healing Incident, 12:9–14

C. Prophetic Postscript: The Servant-Lord, 12:15–21

II. The Spirit King: The Spirit Controversy, 12:22–37

III. The Significant Kinsman: The Sign Controversy, 12:38–50

Gospel Parallels in Mark and Luke, I

Preface to the Revised and Expanded Edition

This commentary is directed to pastors, teachers, and students, young and old. Through it I want to help God’s people love what Matthew’s Gospel says. The commentary seeks to be both historical and theological—historical by listening to church history’s most helpful commentators (especially Chrysostom in the east and Augustine in the west, from the ancient church; Thomas Aquinas’s Catena Aurea from the ancient and medieval churches; Luther and Calvin in the Reformation church; Henry and Bengel in the post-Reformation church, and the best interpreters in the modern church); and to be theological by bringing the texts into conversation with the major Christian doctrines. I am most keenly interested in what texts mean doctrinally and what they seek ethically.

I have worked gratefully in the sweaty mines of the great historical-critical exegetes who write mainly for biblical scholars. However, I have written a theological commentary that is not addressed mainly to biblical scholars. I see before me men and women who preach, teach, disciple, and work in the church and world and who want to know what the text says and means today. What a text says and means today, of course, can be responsibly discerned only when we first know what it said and meant yesterday, when it was written, insofar as we can ascertain the original meaning. But I do not intend to bring much preliminary spadework—the text’s background—into my commentary. For most of us who teach and preach long mainly to know the foreground of our texts—where they are aiming. Though my life is almost one of full time study, I am surprised at my own impatience with commentaries that will not get to the point—What Does This Text Say and Mean Today? I have taught a weekly Sunday-school class my entire adult life, largely through the influence of Dr. Henrietta Mears in a college Sunday School class. The challenge to be ready every week with a fresh interpretation and application of a biblical text has been exhilarating, and I hope it has kept me close not only to Holy Scripture but also to all the not-so-holy places where modern men and women live and struggle. (An ample question and discussion period every lesson is one of the most important experiences in my week.) I have tried to write a commentary that will help people understand the meaning of this great ancient text.

Two superb sets of commentaries were completed between the first edition and the present second edition: the three-volume work of W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison Jr. in the International Critical Commentary series (1988–97) and the four-volume work of Ulrich Luz in the Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar series (1985–2002). Of most importance, Luz’s fourth volume, Matthew 26–28, and the fifth edition of his first volume (!), Matthew 1–7, both in German, came out almost simultaneously in 2002, just after I submitted my manuscript to Eerdmans. But by the good graces of William B. Eerdmans Jr. (and, in particular, through the patience and skill of Milton Essenburg), I have incorporated all of Luz’s relevant suggestions into my work. I have been deeply moved by the quality of these three great commentators (Davies, Allison, and Luz), and would very much like to have met them personally. Nevertheless, I feel I know them quite well. When one watches another person wrestle with a text’s meaning, one gets to know that person quite well. In this sense, in doing the research for this commentary I have met and made many friends across the centuries and continents. Matthew himself seems a friend. Like all Christians, of course, I would most like to be a friend with the one whom Matthew and all his commentators are trying hard to understand, believe, and obey. He is the point.

In my experience, the great company of serious Matthew commentators is a committed Christian company. Surprisingly, the modern quest for the historical Jesus has seemed on the whole rather detached from the living church and her long historical interpretation of the biblical books. The company of the historical Jesus has seemed lacking in a thorough conversation not only with the history of interpretation but even more simply with the interpretation itself of a whole canonical book. Do they not have to preach next Sunday? Most of the Jesus Seminar people, for example, are outside the Great Conversation of Commentaries because few write commentaries. (The great exception in the modern Jesus Quest is John P. Meier, a Matthew commentator and the author of the seminal A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, so far in three volumes, 1991, 1994, and 2001. Three other commentators come happily to mind: L. T. Johnson, B. Witherington, and N. T. Wright.) By the nature of my work as an interpreter of a biblical book, I take commentators more seriously than any other New Testament scholars. (Incidentally, the most concise and, I would say, definitive dismantling of the historical Jesus of the Jesus Seminar occurs in the Appendix to Raymond E. Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament, New York: Doubleday, 1997, pp. 819–23, a dismantling as impressive as it is measured. Brown, himself a distinguished commentator on the Gospel of John, presents in his Introduction what I think can fairly be called the great consensus in modern New Testament scholarship on each of the books and major issues in the New Testament, and I recommend his book warmly.)

As I wrote in the Preface to my first edition, this work was born in mission. My friendship with Matthew began in the first decade of my first professional call—as a professor of systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary, Philippines, just outside Manila. I soon discovered that the great Christian doctrines connected more pictorially and asiatically when I used the classical biblical stories than when I used contemporary (and mainly Western) systematic theologies. Matthew, the most systematic of the Gospels, proved to be the ideal vehicle for teaching the major Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformation convictions that it was my privilege and responsibility to pass on in a living way to the next generation.

I had been raised as a young Christian to be a little suspicious of the Synoptic Gospels. My major influence in college had been Henrietta Mears, the storied thirty-five-year teacher of the College Department of the First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, California (1928–63). She taught especially Paul (and sometimes John) magnificently and passionately. (She once said that the only reason she never married was that Paul had been born two thousand years too early.) Later I discovered that Dr. Mears had been strongly influenced by the Dispensationalist conviction that the Synoptic Gospels were written for another age, not ours. (See, for example, the note at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, in Scofield’s influential Scofield Reference Bible, the Bible of choice for a long period among those who held Dispensational positions.) Dr. Mears was a closet Dispensationalist—closet because happily she had no end-times charts, never mentioned Scofield, and blessedly was not at all into distinguishing various dispensations or in any other tricky or esoteric doctrines. She taught Paul only to honor Jesus Christ, and she did this exceptionally well. But she shared with Dispensationalists and with many other evangelical Christians at that time the persuasion that one could get christocentric grace better from Paul than from Matthew, Mark, or Luke. I used to wonder, Why did the church put these seemingly moralistic Gospels at the front of their canon where the clearly more gracious and chronologically earlier-written letters of Paul should have been? Since biblical inerrancy was the largely unspoken doctrinal premise underneath Dr. Mears’s Pauline teaching, I never could quite figure out why the Gospels of Jesus of Nazareth were less dependable in teaching people than the Epistles of the apostle Paul. (I vaguely remember someone telling me that it was because Pentecost had not yet happened for Jesus.) But in graduate study in Germany, while studying Pentecostalism and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I was surprised to discover that there is actually a gracious gospel in the Gospels, too.

And just in time, because when thrown immediately after Germany into Asian mission (with the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and the United Church of Christ in the Philippines), I found the earthy Gospels to be much closer to my Asian students than the profound yet more abstract Paul (there are not many parables, stories, or conversations in Paul). So began a love affair with Matthew that I hope to communicate in the commentary. I hope, too, that my work retains the missionary shape with which it was born. I mine Matthew to discover how to teach and preach the gospel in today’s exciting and demanding mission world, north and south, east and west. We all live in a missional context. So, full disclosure, I intend for my commentary to be "historical-theological-missionary" in orientation—historical in canvassing the two-thousand-year commentary tradition; theological in referring texts to creeds; and missionary in aiming the texts at the world.

What is new in this second edition? As already mentioned, I have learned most from the now completed work of Davies-Allison and Luz. And I hope I have learned a little more from wider reading in systematic theology. For just the first six chapters of the Gospel, let me give examples of additions or changes in the second edition.

Matthew 1. I now find Karl Barth’s theological arguments for the virgin birth stronger than before and so give them more space than I did in the first edition. The historical arguments for the doctrine are famously (and in the nature of the case) rather tenuous (only one person would know if Jesus was, in historical fact, born of a virgin, and how available was she to the canonical evangelists generations later?). When I read modern attempts to teach alternative doctrines for the historical origin of Jesus, I become increasingly convinced that we are all finally (or perhaps even primarily) driven to theological reasons for our final positions on the most hotly contested issues. For I think it verifiable that behind every historical method there is a hidden dogmatic (Wilhelm Lütgert).

Matthew 2. In my first edition, formally, I was guided as much by systematic questions as by exegetical ones. Hence in this second chapter I asked myself: How is Matthew teaching the doctrine of human beings (Christian anthropology), as exemplified by the Magi (the prevenient grace of their star) and by Herod (the original sin of his resistance) in their two dramatically different responses to God’s self-revelation in the baby Jesus, who himself was the climactic figure in chap. 1’s doctrine of God (Christian theology), where we saw the veritably triune coming of God through the Holy Spirit’s conception of Jesus. In this second edition I hope to have given, as a biblical commentator should, closer attention to Matthew’s text, and not so much to my systematic questions about the text. But I have not stopped asking theological, doctrinal, meaning questions because I am still a missionary; I still teach Sunday school.

Matthew 3. Baptism as traditionally practiced has become more problematic. I see the missionary power of what Baptists call believer baptism. But I still feel the tug of the church’s classical teaching of infant baptism. My ambivalence shows more this time in the struggle with the contemporary meaning of Jesus’ historical baptism in this third chapter. I still believe that something really happens in baptism, as Jesus’ baptism classically displays (the gifts of an open heaven, the Spirit’s descent, and the Father’s voice colorfully picture what happens). I think that Christians should draw much more encouragement from our baptisms than we ordinarily do (Luther’s theology is exemplary here). But the Baptists have something to teach us. How can we bring together effective baptism (the Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformation teachings that God really gives the Holy Spirit to the baptized and does not just symbolize this giving) and obedience baptism (Matthew’s clear emphasis when Jesus receives baptism and says his first words in the Gospel, addressing John the Baptist, "Let us do baptism this way now so that we can fulfill all righteousness," 3:15)? The question is more raised than answered. Exegesis requires the raising. Theology attempts the answer. Karl Barth’s mid-career move from infant to believer baptism has been challenging. I believe that Wolfhart Pannenberg caught hold of the two horns of the dilemma with baptism concisely:

If we regard baptism simply as an expression and public confession of a turning to faith, then we have to reject infant baptism. But if baptism does something that even those already converted before baptism cannot do for themselves but have to receive, namely, the definitive linking of the baptized to the destiny [i.e., to the ministry, death, burial, and resurrection] of Jesus, then the matter is obviously much more complex than those who espouse believers’ baptism have often assumed. (Systematic Theology, 3:260, emphases added)

Matthew 4. Calling the second half of this fourth chapter Jesus’ Services is arbitrary and pedagogical. I simply wanted to find as much material for a doctrine of the foundations of Jesus’ public ministry in this last half chapter as the church traditionally found in the first half’s Temptations. If Matthew could shape Mark to make him more teachable in mission, cannot later church teachers shape our texts to address our missions? I think so. Hence I stand by my title for the second half of chap. 4 with good conscience. Jesus’ sermons in the second half chapter, Turn your lives around, because here comes the kingdom of heaven! (4:17) and Follow me, and I will make you fishers who catch people! (4:19) really do state in a positive way the purposes, or the Services, of Jesus’ public program, and so are as important as Jesus’ better-known Temptations for teaching the foundations of Christian ministry, which is the subject I see the whole of Matt 4’s teaching.

Matthew 5. Chapter 5 is Matthew’s single greatest contribution to the canon. Here I have changed the most. I still see the Inaugural Beatitudes as launching Jesus’ great State of the Universe Address, in which he first describes how he feels about the wretched of the earth. There is much more gospel in the Beatitudes than we have traditionally been taught to see. Usually the Beatitudes are preached as not-so-subtle commands: "Become poor in spirit, etc., and then I will bless you," which not only preaches a horrendous works-righteousness theologically but also turns Jesus’ words entirely upside down exegetically. I still hold with majority New Testament scholarship that Jesus’ first Beatitudes mainly bless people in miserable situations rather than command them to admirable dispositions. In other words, I take the Beatitudes to mean exactly what they say. (The later Beatitudes, admittedly, inculcate good dispositions and actions; but they do so only after several deep blessings of needy people.) The Inaugural Beatitudes are mainly gospel.

Then the Commands of the fifth chapter set the bar as high as the Beatitudes lay the foundations deep. Here my greatest changes occur in what I call Jesus’ Political Commands—Against Oaths, Against Revenge, and Against Hatred of Enemies (5:33–48). Jesus really (and, for contemporaries, uncomfortably) wants to forbid disciples all oath-taking, violence, and hatred of enemies. (I cannot follow Tolstoy, with whom I became acquainted between editions, into his strange abolitions of courts and government.) I think the pre-Constantinian church of the first three centuries got these three commands exactly right, absolutely abjuring oaths, violence, and hate, and so, against the great cultural tide, won the Roman Empire. It is time for our post-Constantinian church to return to our pre-Constantinian roots. And the fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel is the best road map back—and so ahead. In regard to most Matthean doctrines I found the Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformation convictions the most persuasive; in this second edition’s second half of the fifth chapter, however, I give the palm to the Peace Churches. I believe that we must all go to school to them to learn afresh how to become the peacemakers Jesus blesses (Matt 5:9) and commissions (5:33–48). The newness of this discovery means that I have more research to do. But I will contend that the arguments for the Peace-Church exegesis of the Political Commands of Matt 5 are the most straightforward reading of the texts. I know that for all of us Constantinian Christians the peace interpretation raises as many questions as it answers. But here Matthew’s Jesus stands, and so should his interpreters.

Matthew 6. This chapter’s biggest change is found in the discovery that the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the Prayer that is the centerpiece of the chapter and of the entire Sermon on the Mount, can read Let us not be led into any temptation, but deliver us from the evil one (6:13). This rendering, happily, gives a more attractive doctrine of God. Also this time around, the money texts in the last half-chapter seem more radical. Making lots of money really did become culture’s major idol after the demystification of the ancient gods of wood and stone. This modern god needs radical demystification. Jesus’ teaching again provides the church with her best resources for a radical change in lifestyle.

Perhaps these six indications will suggest some of the new directions in this edition. However, I believe that my reading and experience in the intervening decade has confirmed many of the first edition’s interpretations. As I try to show throughout, most of what I find and teach in Matthew was found long before by our fathers and mothers in church history, and I have become endemically suspicious of novel interpretations. I would like my commentary to be, on the whole, a fair representation of mainstream Reformation-Christian interpretation. The most helpful interpreters of Matthew for me, in roughly this order, have been Luther, Calvin, Luz, Schlatter, Davies and Allison, Augustine, Chrysostom, Henry (a new friend in this edition), and Bengel.

It remains for me to thank those who have helped me do the work: the gracious staff of the McAlister Library at Fuller Theological Seminary, the school that has been the happy goal of my one-hour walk every morning, and the quiet, beautiful, and helpful setting of all my research. This library’s good ministers of books, under the leadership of David Bundy, are Diane Bradley, Olive Brown, Kelly Chisholm, Denyse Conkel, B. J. Dabhade, Gail Frederick, Caroline Gener, Adam Gossman, Nancy Gower, Anita Hutches, Mitsuko Iwasaki, Steve Magnuson, Daniela Matei, Genalyn McNeil, Ashita Pallil, George Pallil, Sharon Ralston, Dorothy Stassen, Endalkachew Tefera, Tom Wheeler, Reta Wu, and Gideon Yohannes. May I also thank William and Peggy Welsh for the privilege of association with their distinguished Welch Family Foundation Special Collection of Reformed and Renewal Theology of North America and Europe at the University of Tulsa, for the good company there of Marva Dawn, Lola Kirkland, Andrew Purves, and Eugene Peterson, and for the gracious hospitality of the Welch family, President and Mrs. Robert and Marcy Lawless of the University of Tulsa, Chaplain and Mrs. Jeff and Martha Francis, and Pastor and Mrs. James and Diane Miller of First Presbyterian Church, Tulsa. I love the Presbyterians for Renewal community, their leader Joe Rightmeyer, and their work of a rather unique ecumenical evangelicalism within our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Back home, at critical moments, I had big computer problems and breakdowns. At different times and in different ways, but on each occasion savingly, first Derek Dohn, then Jim Noe and Steve Salyards, and most recently Chris Smutny came to my rescue. How can I thank them enough?

Several churches, para-churches, classes, organizations, groups, and individuals along mainly the west coast of the United States have encouraged me repeatedly in my teaching of Matthew (and John) over the last decade since my first edition. To express my thanks to them in print, may I work from north to south, use this code—(F)PC = (First) Presbyterian Church—and as far as possible, to avoid the invidious, be alphabetical. In Washington state, in particular, the adult class at FPC Spokane (under Woody Garvin, Kevin and Karen Finch, and Don Meekhof); at Whitworth College in Spokane (under President and Mrs. Bill and Bonnie Robinson), the Religion and Philosoply Department (Forrest Baird, Terry McDonigal, Steve Meyer, Roger Mohrlang, and Jerry Sittser); our Spokane Support Group (Ed and Carolyn Holmes, John and Liz Little, and Foster and Jeannie Walsh); Clearwater Lodge at Camp Spalding, the Presbyterian campsite near Spokane (Andy and Krissy Sonneland); our close Spokane friends, Ron and Marianne Frase and Don and Deanda Roberts; FPC Bellevue (first Dick and Caroline Leon, and now Scott Dudley and Randy and Evelyne Working); University PC, Seattle (Earl and Shirley Palmer and Dave Rohrer); FPC Walla Walla (Albert Ginnin and Greg Graybill); FPC Port Angeles (Ted Mattie); and especially our Seattle-centered Booth extended family.

In Oregon, convening the last several years in Portland at the Multnomah Bible College and Seminary, the New Staff Training of Young Life International (headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, under Denny Rydberg), again may I mention alphabetically these lovers of adolescent culture: Cliff Anderson, Les Comee, Justine Conley, Lee Corder, Liz Dewberry, Pat Goodman, Julie Jacobsen, Jerry Mann, Cindy Matthes-Loy, Mal McSwain, Mona Patel, Mason Rutledge, Charlie and Mary Scott, and Herb Wagemaker.

In California, in particular, the Good News Sunday School Class every Sunday of the school year at FPC Hollywood (under Alan Meenan, with Bill and Mary Ellen Hansen, Cynthia Peterson, and Susan Rigby); our Southern California Support Group (Gary and Marilee Demarest, John and Anne Huffman, Ernie and Peg Lewis, and Donn and Carol Moomaw); the Pasadena Friday Morning Group (Bill Dyrness, Doug Millham, and Dale Young); the Johanneum (Tom Elson, Darrell Johnson, Donn Moomaw, and Marianne Meye Thompson); the West Coast Presbyterian Pastors’ Conference, which meets annually at Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center (under Barry Moller and David Worth); Neil and Marylyn Warren, counsellors; LaVerne Heights PC (Steve Metcalf); Pastor Bruce Byrne, Dublin; the Duarte-based English Language Institute in China (its founders, now with the Thornston Educational Fund, Ken and Jan Wendling, and their ELIC colleague Gary Lausch); at Monte Vista Grove (under Helen Baatz and Bob Lodiwick), my breakfast companions five mornings a week (Thelma Appleton, Ruth Baird, Marian Deemer, Evelyn French, Jo Grove, Mas Hibino, Adele Hutchison, Rita Lawrence, David and Grace Lee, Charlotte Lutz, Flossie MacInnes, Cy McCown, Gladys Millett, Amanda Morgan, Betty Turner, and Trudy Wood), and our Saturday-breakfast friends in this unique community, Deane and Dolores Hendricks; my bag-lunchmates over the years at the statuesque fountain inside the garden of the Pasadena City Hall: Patrick Hare, Chris Kock, Mark Looyenga, Beth McKinney, Jamie Morrison, Chris Murphy, Moses Pulei, and Dustin Stevens. Then especially our very close California family conversational partners—Don and Mimi (Kathy’s sister) Murray.

In Texas, Laity Lodge, headquartered in Kerrville and located in Leakey (under Howard and Barbara Dan Butt’s leadership), let me list the friends and colleagues in lay mission, again alphabetically: Steve and Linda Clapp, Howard and Carol Hovde, Ann Jack, Tom and Brenda Kingery, Dwight Lacy, Lou Lewis, Don and Carol Murdock, Henry and Dorothy Parish, Guy and Judy Parker, David and Deborah Dan Rogers, Eddie and Gail Sears, Bob and Linda Slocum, Laura Stout, David Tolley, Dave and Anne Williamson, Jack and Dee Willome, and John and Linda Worden; Memorial Drive PC Houston (Dave and Terry Peterson), and Covenant PC Austin (Jim and Sara Singleton).

We have dear Philippine-alumni friends across the country who have encouraged our work: Jerry and Joanne Anderson (just-retired directors of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut); Richard and Jan Deats, leaders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation in Nyack, New York; and Eugene and Betty Hessel, our neighbors nearby in Pasadena.

Our sons and their wives, Frederick Carlton Booth Bruner and Signe Schilperoort (U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officers, currently at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), diplomats par excellence, and Michael Mears and Jenna Smyth Bruner (Azusa Pacific University and Brea Junior High School, respectively), teachers par excellence, have been first-class conversational partners and real friends all along this long Matthean road. Our sons were little boys when this Matthew was conceived; they are mature men when he comes full term.

My greatest human debt is expressed on the Dedication Page, and it is to my closest human friend, who talks with me about everything, who loves Karl Barth and me about equally, and who engages me in every Sunday-school (or any) class I teach. She is, in fact, so connected with me and so alive and vivacious that when she is not with me in public settings, I (and others too) seriously wonder if I have any personality at all. Thank you, Kathy.

I was deeply moved when I came to Ulrich Luz’s Dedication Page in the fourth and final volume of his magisterial Matthew commentary (which should soon be available in its entirety in English translation). The last succinct paragraph of his Foreword to the last volume reads simply: The one to whom I must give major thanks that this commentary could come into being and be available at all is really self-understood (versteht sich eigentlich von selbst). But because in our God-distant time this reality is no longer by any means at all self-understood, I have said it expressly in place of a dedication. The Dedication Page has three words: Eulogētos ho Theos (Blessed be God). All Matthew commentators say, Yes, that is it exactly.

F. DALE BRUNER

Wasson Professor of Religion Emeritus

Whitworth College

Spokane, Washington

Preface to the First Edition

I. WHY? MISSION

This commentary was born in the world of mission. My wife and I had been called through the United Presbyterian Church (USA) by the United Church of Christ in the Philippines to teach at Union Theological Seminary, Philippines. My assignment was to teach Christian doctrine. Our students were mainly Filipinos, most of them from rural homes and schools. The seminary also had a modest complement of students from other Asian countries—India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Korea. How does a Westerner teach theology to Third World students?

Badly, to begin with, in my case. I remember trying at one point to teach Romans 1 to 5, thinking the universality of Paul’s Fifth Gospel with its profound doctrines of anthropology and sin (Rom 1–3) and of Christ and salvation (Rom 3–5) might lift the class above my Western parochialism and give these classic doctrines an authority I wasn’t delivering. (Moreover, Paul was at least part Asian, teaching Western Christians at Rome—a nice serendipity.) But Paul’s theology, probably the deepest of all theologies, is pervasively propositional, somewhat abstract, and venerably old. And, finally, in any case, the teaching of the contents of biblical books belonged to another department in the seminary.

Later I tried Karl Barth’s engaging Dogmatics in Outline. This theology was at least closer to our time (1946/47), and it taught my subject, Christian doctrine. But though I think Barth is our finest twentieth-century theologian, his theology is even more abstract and rarefied than Paul’s, and it is very Western. The class was still not alive.

I got Luther’s Large Catechism, the finest one-volume Christian doctrine I have ever read. Happily, Luther’s earthy, colorful, and unabstract language spoke more immediately to the students than had even twentieth-century Barth. Luther’s Roman Catholic provenance helped and it didn’t help: it helped in its closeness to our students’ experience in the largely Roman Catholic Philippines; but it also hindered in that, though Luther is richly catholic and wholesomely sacramental, his anti-Roman animus could make some students unecumenical, and the thrillingly ecumenical era was just then dawning in the Roman Catholic Church (the Second Vatican Council ended the year my teaching began, 1965). And there were twentieth-century Asian issues to which responsible Christian doctrine should address itself. A sixteenth-century European theology, even the profoundest, was still not the answer.

After several years of struggling to find the right text for teaching Christian doctrine in Asia, something good happened in the Sunday School class at our barrio church, Ang Simbahan sa Nayon, where some of the seminary students attended. I was teaching the parables of Matthew 13 where Jesus explains the meaning of the kingdom of God. The same students whose eyes glazed over when I taught the doctrine of God in the seminary’s Christian doctrine class seemed alive with interest when they heard Jesus teach the kingdom of God in parables. This made me think.

Could I teach the church’s great doctrines of God through the medium of Matthew 13’s picture-stories of the kingdom of God? I would begin with an attempt at a faithful exegesis of the biblical text; I would continue by directing Jesus’ teaching to the church’s great creedal and dogmatic statements in the past; and I would end by addressing the church’s major doctrinal and social questions and positions in the present. Perhaps the biblical content would give my doctrinal material a wonted authority with my students, and perhaps the biblical form (parables, Jesus’ penetratingly earthy and unearthly élan) would give the doctrines a needed access to our part of the world in our time.

The project started.

II. HOW? THEOLOGICAL EXEGESIS

I began to teach the Gospel of Matthew doctrinally. Providentially, Matthew turned out to be the most systematic and didactic of all the Gospels. With a little imagination, for example, it is possible to see catechetical Matthew emphasizing particular doctrines in his Gospel chapter by chapter, as I will try to show now in rough outline. (I will underline the sermons that characteristically punctuate and doctrinalize Matthew’s Gospel.)

A. An Outline

Matthew 1 teaches God—present in concrete particular in Jesus Emmanuel (God with us). Matthew 2 teaches Man—present in the two classic responses to God’s visit the responses of the Magi (human nature under the power of grace) and of Herod (human nature under the power of sin). Matthew 3 teaches repentance in baptism, the saving meeting place of God and human beings. Matthew 4 teaches ministry as Jesus learns how (and so teaches his church to learn how) to resist temptation and to enter public service. These first four chapters, then, the Christmas Stories, teach the church the doctrine of the coming of Christ.

The Christbook (Matthew 1–12)

The Churchbook (Matthew 13–28)

Matthew 5–7, the Sermon on the Mount, teach discipleship to the Word of Christ through mercy, faith, and justice. Matthew 8 and 9, the Ten Miracles, teach salvation through the work of Christ—that is, salvation by grace and into freedom. Matthew 10, the Sermon on Mission, teaches evangelism in the mission of Christ. Matthew 11 and 12, the Six Portraits, teach the person of Christ: he is both Savior and Judge. So in the first twelve chapters of the Gospel we have a little Christology in which we learn the introductory facts about the coming, Word, work, mission, and person of Jesus.

In Matthew 13–28 Jesus turns his attention in a visible way to the formation of a church. Everything becomes more corporate. The word church appears in no other Gospel, but Matthew’s Jesus now speaks emphatically of building my church (16:18), and twice he talks of a disciplinary church (18:17a, 17b). Where in Matthew 1–12 Jesus had addressed disciples and Israel, in chaps. 13–28 he addresses Israel also, but now in clear concentration he addresses especially his disciples. In Matthew 1–12 Jesus taught mainly who he is and began to form his church; in Matthew 13–28 Jesus teaches mainly what his church is, while never ceasing to reveal who he is. By virtue of their main audience and aims, then, chaps. 13–28 in Matthew can rightly be called the Churchbook.

The church, according to Matthew 13, is the place where Jesus sows the Word of God in the world of God, forming and preparing a people for the coming kingdom of God. Matthew 13, then, is a reprise of the doctrine of God (cf. Matt 1), but now especially we learn the doctrine of the Word of God in the seven Word-of-God parables. In Matthew 14 (13:53–14:36) there are five responses to Jesus’ Word, teaching a second time the doctrine of human nature and its ways of responding to the visits of God (cf. Matt 2). Matthew 15 (15:1–16:12 in my outline) teaches, as in a summary, the catholic-evangelical church principles, respectively, of Scripture over tradition (sola scriptura), of faith over experience (sola fides), of grace over merit (sola gratia), and of Christ over signs (solus Christus). Matthew 16 teaches the doctrine of the nature of the church, Matthew 17 the doctrine of the authority and power of the church, Matthew 18 the doctrine of church community (in the Sermon on Community), Matthew 19 the doctrine of the church at home, or domestic economics (marriage and money), and Matthew 20 the doctrine of church leadership and service. (I consider the highly ethical chapters of Matthew 18–20, in fact, to be a little Sermon on the Mount, filling in the details of the commands of the great Sermon on the Mount. More comprehensively, Matthew 13–17 teach the church’s faith, and chaps. 18–20 teach the church’s love.)

Matthew 21–23 set forth a kind of Israelology, a doctrine of the history of the people of God. In Matthew 21, first by focusing on a representative history of the people’s Christ (20:29–21:27) and second by focusing on three histories of the people’s faith (21:28–22:14, the three people-of-God parables), we learn the doctrine of the true church. In Matthew 22, by presenting The Four Questions of the people’s critical relations to government, resurrection, the main commandment(s) in the Bible, and the Christ, we learn the doctrine of the wise church. And in Matthew 23, in Jesus’ excoriating Sermon of Seven Woes—against false religious leadership in the people of God—we learn the doctrine of the false church. Matthew 21–23, then, teach church history, or the history of the people of God.

Matthew 24–25 present Jesus’ dramatic Sermon on the End of the World: chap. 24 gives the signs (or anti-signs) of the end (the eschaton) and of Jesus’ coming (the parousia); and chap. 25 highlights the final judgment of God and teaches disciples how to prepare for this judgment. These two chapters, then, present the church’s hope.

The heart of every Christian gospel message is the death and resurrection of Jesus. Matthew 26–28 teach the doctrine of the church’s passion in the double sense of the English word passion—suffering and deep concern. The suffering and triumph of Jesus are in fact the church’s deepest concern, and they are her major gospel. Matthew 26A teaches the church’s doctrine of worship (centered appropriately in the Lord’s Supper); Matthew 26B and 27A, the trial stories, teach for a third time in a sustained way the church’s doctrine of human nature (total undependability); Matthew 27B, the story of the cross, teaches the doctrine of the atonement (total dependability); and Matthew 28 teaches the doctrines of the resurrection and of the church’s world mission.

That is how I have outlined and taught Matthew’s Gospel. The outline gives a much oversimplified picture, but it helps the memory, and that is no little service. It is, in fact, one of Matthew’s catechetical aims to teach Jesus in a more systematic and ordered way than Mark’s Gospel had done.

B. Characterizations

Matthew, the traditional name given both to our author and his document, wrote his Gospel, most NT scholars believe, in the eighties or nineties of the first century of the Christian era in Antioch, using Mark’s Gospel, a Sayings Source (called Q), and his own considerable systematic resources to teach Jesus in a fresh, new way—in a doctrinal (or, ethically doctrinal) way.

Matthew’s distinctive flavor and style can be characterized by some comparisons with the other three Gospels (comparisons that are deliberately and provocatively overstated in order to bring out each Gospel’s salient point or promontory). Matthew took Mark’s rough technicolor stories and catechized them in Matthew’s distinctively black-and-white, rounded, christologically focused, doctrinally stylized, and easily memorized narratives and discourses. Matthew is Revised Standard Version Mark and the Church’s Iron Catechism. Mark is the Gospel for evangelists, Matthew for teachers, Luke for deacons or social workers, and John for elders or spiritual leaders.

Mark sees Jesus from beneath, historically, in all his rich humanity, transparent to the mystery of deity. Matthew sees Jesus in profile, doctrinally, highlighting Jesus’ head (as Rembrandt does with Paul) so that we especially see Jesus’ powerful thinking and teaching. Luke is a study of Jesus’ hands and, behind the hands, a study of the heart that moved the hands into a ministry to all kinds of people but especially to outsiders, the marginal, and the disdained (the poor, Samaritans, women, bourgeois, collaborating tax collectors, the physically, mentally, and spiritually ill, and the like). John is a portrait of Jesus from above, from the eagle’s eye, revealing Jesus to us in all his majestic preexistent deity, visible now palpably in human flesh. In ancient church tradition, with true perception, Mark is pictured as a man, Matthew as a lion, Luke as an ox, and John as an eagle (e.g., Augustine, Tract. in Jn., 36:5:210). Still another way to see the Gospels comparatively is to say that in theological form Mark is Luther, Matthew is Calvin or Thomas, Luke is Wesley or Xavier or Chrysostom, and John is Augustine or Barth.

C. Method

I wrestled first with the texts themselves in Matthew in order to find their real meanings. I confess that my regular Sunday School teaching has predisposed me to find what the texts say and not just what they said. To be sure, we can only dependably know what texts say when we learn what they said, and a too eager attempt to say before having been said to can fill pastors’ and teachers’ libraries with books more comparable to cotton candy than to theological meat, with what Karl Barth disdainfully called paperback theology.

Historical-critical commentary at its best does the indispensable spadework of uncovering ancient philological and cultural parallels and meanings. All other commentary worthy of the name builds on the discoveries made in historical-critical studies. But historical-theological commentary has another concern. Commentaries on texts believed to be the Word of God and not just the words of Matthew and Mark (though the texts are also the words of Matthew and Mark) cannot be satisfied with knowing what texts meant then unless they translate these ancient meanings into modern language and dare to say what they believe the texts mean now. For the genius of Holy Scripture is its perennial ability to keep saying the most important things of all, Scripture’s seminal gift of being, by the power of the Word of God that came then, the Word of God that comes now. Word-of-God (theou logos) commentary is theological commentary.

Historical-theological commentary builds on the work of historical-critical commentary but tries, in consultation with the faithful fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters of the whole catholic church, to say today the theou logos that crackled inside the human words of Matthew and Mark yesterday.

A church that is not nourished yesterday, today, and tomorrow by the wholesome food of the Word of God in Scripture—a church not ruled and dominated by exegesis—is on her way to death. For too long the mainline churches in Christendom have illustrated this death march by teaching and preaching a Bible that has been only marginally appropriated (witness the death of the biblical-language requirement in many seminaries and denominations) because, it is said, there are in fact so many other imperative issues. (What is Hebrew in a hungry world?) We have become churches without doctrinal passion (for doctrinal passion would be fundamentalism, the kiss of death), and a result has been people leaving our churches in droves and flocking to what are called independent or Bible churches where, at least, they are given doctrines served with fire. A return by the mainline churches to a responsible christocentric biblical passion will be a return to apostolic-catholic-Reformation Christianity with all of this Christianity’s perennial sources of spiritual and social renewal.

The great peril of theological commentary, let me say right here at the beginning, is the peril of allegorical exegesis, treating Scripture like a wax nose, making it say whatever the theological commentator already believes it should say, and so using Scripture rather than being used by Scripture to say only what it says. I am aware of this peril, and I am not sure that I have always escaped the sin of manipulating texts to teach my own convictions, the sin, that is, of not allowing Scripture everywhere to correct and re-form my own and my interpreters’ dearly held doctrinal convictions. The historical-theological study of the texts (by a constant reference to the church’s long commentary and creedal traditions) can protect one from private interpretation and from privatizing, parochial readings. I have aimed everywhere to be a catholic interpreter of texts by calling in the major interpreters in the history of the church to help me find the meanings of every verse in the Gospel. But I am sure that at points, perhaps at many points, even after I have cited a whole family of witnesses, pro and con, I have still been eccentric and aberrant in my conclusions. I look forward now to the critique of the church.

In this century the major instance of theological commentary is Karl Barth’s powerful, prophetic, and idiosyncratic The Epistle to the Romans (1919; 1922; and often). Barth’s several Prefaces to successive editions of his commentary make an attractive case for theological exegesis. The opening two sentences of The Preface to the First Edition (1918) make the case all at once: Paul, as a child of his age, addressed his contemporaries. It is, however, far more important that, as Prophet and Apostle of the Kingdom of God, he veritably speaks to all men of every age (p. 1). In The Preface to the Second Edition (1921) Barth took on the critics of his first edition: I have been accused of being an ‘enemy of historical criticism.’ After defending himself against this accusation Barth admits, nevertheless, a certain resentment:

My complaint is that recent commentators confine themselves to an interpretation of the text which seems to me to be no commentary at all, but merely the first step towards a commentary.… Now, [real commentary] involves more than a mere repetition in Greek or in German of what Paul says; it involves the reconsideration of what is set out in the Epistle, until the actual meaning of it is disclosed.… By genuine understanding and interpretation I mean that creative energy which Luther exercised with intuitive certainty in his exegesis; which underlies the systematic interpretation of Calvin; and which is at least attempted by such modern writers as Hofmann, J. T. Beck, Godet, and Schlatter. For example, place the work of [the historical-critical] Jülicher side by side with that of Calvin: how energetically Calvin, having first established what stands in the text, sets himself to re-think the whole material and to wrestle with it, till the walls which separate the sixteenth century from the first become transparent! Paul speaks, and the man of the sixteenth century hears. (pp. 6–7)

The major problem with Barth’s theological commentary, in my opinion, is that one can come away from it more impressed with Barth’s prophetic interpretations than with Paul’s apostolic words. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the conviction that the God of Karl Barth is the God of the Bible. Barth’s theological passions were so strong that he really belonged in dogmatic theology where, after his Romans, he instinctively moved to the service of the whole church.

In my experience, the most compelling treatment of the special problems and possibilities of theological exegesis is Hans Windisch’s essay The Meaning of Theological Exegesis, in his book The Meaning of the Sermon on the Mount: A Contribution to the Historical Understanding of the Gospels and to the Problem of Their True Exegesis, 1951 [from the revised German edition of 1937], pp. 154–67). I will summarize the main arguments of the essay and then comment.

Windisch distinguishes between the two legitimate but necessarily separate disciplines of historical and theological exegesis. The concern of historical exegesis is the message in its original setting, while theological exegesis has to do with the message itself (pp. 154–55). But since theological exegesis’s message itself is always embedded in a historical text, and since only an unprejudiced historical science can decipher this text, it is not just desirable but essential that theological exegesis work very closely with historical exegesis. Historians, for their part, must not let any theology or point of view affect their research. They must restrict themselves to the source in its historical setting … [and] view it only as a historical datum and be governed by a rigid respect for it (p. 155); otherwise we will never be able to trust the historians’ discoveries. If they overlay their discoveries with interpretation and do not distinguish discovery from interpretation, the original text is lost in the subjectivity of the interpreter. Thus historical exegesis does us the greatest service when it is not theological.

The situation with theological interpretation is quite different and requires different restrictions and commitments. Theological exegesis accepts the NT and every part of it as a testimony and a gift of the Church. It looks for the authoritative Word of God in this literature … [and] finally, it closes the gap between past and present and endeavors to interpret the NT, its statements, admonitions, warnings, threats, and promises, as directed to us in our own situation (p. 157). But God’s Word for the present situation does not come magically (deus ex machina) to the theologian; it comes (as a fruit of faith and prayer, one may add) from the theologian’s closest collaboration with the faithful, scientific, and rigorously objective historian. The historian uncovers and translates the text in all the glory of its original meaning. The theologian recovers the text in the contemporary idiom and thus retranslates the ancient text into modern life, trusting that this recovery and retranslation will assist the church today to hear the same Word of God spoken yesterday. Thus it is that theological exegesis, though it goes beyond historical exegesis, nevertheless presupposes it and builds upon it (p. 157).

But both disciplines must remain, for the sake of their integrity, antiseptically separate and distinct. For though they work with the same subject matter—Scripture—historical exegesis works with Scripture according to the norms of the sciences of religion and history, while theological exegesis works with Scripture according to the norms of the sciences of theology and dogmatics. The science of religion and