About SECNT — Systematic Evangelical Commentaries on the New Testament

§1 What SECNT Is

The Systematic Evangelical Commentaries on the New Testament (SECNT) is a multi-volume verse-by-verse commentary series on the New Testament. The first volume — the Commentary on the Gospel of John — is under active publication; subsequent volumes will follow as the series develops.

Each volume of the published Commentary is paired with a series of audiovisual lectures that teach the Commentary’s substantive scholarly work. The two formats serve different readers and different ways of engaging the same material. The written Commentary serves scholars, professors, and seminary students who want to engage the underlying scholarly work at depth — the running exposition carries detailed footnotes that document every source, every engagement with prior scholarship, every methodological decision the commentary makes. The audiovisual Lectures serve pastors, teachers, and seminary students who want the same substantive scholarly work opened up in expositional form — taught at deliberate pace, with the restatement and explanation that a listening audience needs to follow the argument and use it in their own teaching ministry.¹ Both formats deliver the same scholarly work; the difference is how the work meets the reader.

The series is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, with a deliberate movement toward public-domain status over time.² The license expresses a substantive theological commitment: the work proceeds under the principle of Matthew 10:8 — freely you have received; freely give. The published Commentary and Lectures are available without charge to any reader or teacher; the series exists to serve the church across confessional and institutional boundaries.

The series is committed to careful, accurate, deliberately-paced scholarly work. The architectural-systematic shape at which the series operates — articulated below — does not yield to rushed treatment. Each passage is studied at depth before its scholarly resolutions are locked, and locked resolutions stand under transparent governance that documents how future refinements operate.³

§2 The Series Title — Systematic Evangelical Commentaries on the New Testament

The series title carries three substantive claims, one per word.

“Systematic” names the series’s architectural distinctive within the evangelical commentary tradition. SECNT operates at the systematic-theological register throughout — at the structural shape that anchors every passage’s theological articulation, at the multi-layered engagement that articulates each passage’s exegetical, theological, and pastoral dimensions together, and at the methodological discipline that runs through every layer of the work. The systematic-theological work is not an occasional supplementary remark within an otherwise exegetical commentary; it is the architectural shape of the commentary itself. This distinguishes SECNT from the surrounding evangelical commentary tradition: BECNT, ZECNT, NICNT, PNTC, NIGTC, NAC, and EEC each names its register as exegetical, or pastoral-exegetical, or grammatical-philological, with systematic-theological reflection treated as occasional or supplementary. SECNT names systematic-theological architecture as the genre.⁴

“Evangelical” names the series’s confessional location. The series operates within the historic evangelical tradition — affirming the inspiration, authority, and full truthfulness of Scripture; reading the New Testament as the Word of God for the church; pursuing the substantive scholarly work in service of the church’s reading and teaching of Scripture.⁵ The confessional location is articulated substantively at §5 below; the brief naming here registers the location for readers encountering the series at the title.

“Commentaries on the New Testament” names the series’s formal genre. The phrasing parallels BECNT (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), ZECNT (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament), and NICNT (New International Commentary on the New Testament) — verse-by-verse commentary at multi-volume scope across the New Testament. The series’s formal genre is recognizable to readers familiar with the evangelical commentary tradition; the architectural distinctive surfaced by “Systematic” operates within that recognizable genre rather than against it. The acronym SECNT is preserved without strain.

The series title’s substantive force is the conjunction of the three claims. Systematic names what SECNT distinctively is; Evangelical names where it stands; Commentaries on the New Testament names what kind of work it does. The three words together name a genre that constitutes a distinct position within the evangelical commentary tradition — not in opposition to the tradition’s exegetical and pastoral-exegetical work, but in development of a register the tradition has not previously sustained at architectural depth.⁶

§3 What Makes SECNT Distinctive — The Genre Claim

The evangelical commentary tradition has produced a rich and continuing body of scholarly work on the New Testament over the past century. Series like the New International Commentary on the New Testament, the Pillar New Testament Commentary, the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, the New International Greek Testament Commentary, the New American Commentary, and the Evangelical Exegetical Commentary collectively represent the tradition’s accumulated wisdom in serving the church through verse-by-verse scholarly exposition of Scripture. SECNT operates within this tradition, builds on its work, and depends on it substantively at every passage where its sources are engaged.

But within this shared tradition, SECNT occupies a distinct position. The position is not a matter of opposing or superseding the surrounding series; each of them does indispensable work at the register each names. The position is, rather, a matter of what SECNT names itself as doing and what the surrounding tradition names itself as doing. The two namings differ, and the difference is the genre claim.

What the Surrounding Tradition Names

Each major evangelical commentary series articulates its register and approach in the series editor’s preface or general editor’s preface that opens every volume. Reading these articulations together yields a striking pattern: each series names itself at exegetical, pastoral-exegetical, or grammatical-philological registers, with systematic-theological reflection treated as occasional, integrative, or supplementary to the primary exegetical work.

The Pillar New Testament Commentary (PNTC), edited by D. A. Carson, articulates its register explicitly in Carson’s Series Preface: PNTC is “designed for serious pastors and teachers of the Bible” and “seek[s] above all to make clear the text of Scripture as we have it”; the writers aim at “a blend of rigorous exegesis and exposition, with an eye alert both to biblical theology and the contemporary relevance of the Bible, without confusing the commentary and the sermon.”⁷ The register is exegetical-with-pastoral-application; biblical-theology integration is named; systematic-theological architecture is not.

Carson’s own author Preface to the John volume articulates the same shape from the author’s side: he names four substantive intentions for the volume — making clear the flow of the text, engaging a representative slice of secondary literature, drawing lines toward biblical and systematic theology, and exposition of John as evangelistic Gospel. The fourth intention is articulated with characteristic precision: “if all of us consciously or unconsciously systematize what we learn from the Scriptures, it may be a help to pause now and then in the course of an exegetical and expository commentary and reflect on the contribution of the text to a mature and holistic Christian faith.”⁸ Pause now and then. Systematic-theological reflection at PNTC is episodic and supplementary to the exegetical exposition — done well, integrated into the commentary’s flow, but not the architectural shape of the commentary itself.

The New International Commentary on the New Testament (NICNT), with its Old Testament parallel NICOT, articulates its register in the series editor’s preface. The NICOT preface by Bill T. Arnold (the New Testament parallel reads similarly) names the series’s commitment: NICOT publishes “biblical scholarship of the highest quality” and does so “respectfully from a position of faith seeking understanding”; the series’s authors hold to the inspiration of Scripture and operate within “evangelicalism” (qualified by Bebbington’s four-mark articulation: conversionism, activism, crucicentrism, biblicism); the series engages “the range of traditional methodologies, always sensitive to newer innovations in recent scholarship.”⁹ The register is biblical scholarship at the highest scholarly quality, confessionally located in the evangelical tradition. The architectural shape of the commentary itself is exegetical-scholarly with attention to literary, historical, theological, and methodological dimensions as each text warrants. Systematic-theological architecture as the structural shape of the commentary is not named.

The New American Commentary (NAC), edited collectively, names its substantive focus in the Editors’ Preface: NAC “focuses on communicating the theological structure and content of each biblical book”; the writers “seek to illuminate both the historical meaning and contemporary significance of Holy Scripture”; the commentary “emphasizes how each section of a book fits together so that the reader becomes aware of the theological unity of each book and of Scripture as a whole.”¹⁰ NAC’s articulation is the closest among the surrounding series to a systematic claim — the theological-unity-of-each-book and Scripture-as-a-whole language is substantive and operates at the structural register. But NAC’s systematic claim is inductive-theological-unity — each book is theologically unified; Scripture as a whole is theologically unified — rather than structural-architectural. The unity is recognized within the book and across the canon; the commentary’s architecture is the biblical text’s own theological structure, not a structural-architectural shape the commentary itself produces. NAC names theological unity; it does not name the locked-structure systematic architecture that constitutes SECNT’s genre claim.

The Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (EEC), edited collectively, names its register in the Editors’ Preface in language that maps closely to SECNT’s own confessional location: EEC authors “affirm both the evangelical faith and a careful exegesis of the biblical text” and operate from “historic, orthodox Christianity and the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures”; the series reflects “the important interpretative principles of the Reformation, while utilizing historical-grammatical and contextual interpretative methods.”¹¹ EEC’s register is exegetical-with-confessional-evangelical-orientation; its methodological articulation (historical-grammatical and contextual) names the standard evangelical-exegetical methodology. The series operates at the same confessional location SECNT operates at; the methodological orientation is recognizably evangelical. But the commentary’s architectural shape is exegetical with theological-and-applicational extensions within each commentary section, not the systematic-theological architecture at the locked-loci structural register that distinguishes SECNT’s genre.

The Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (BECNT), Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (ZECNT), and New International Greek Testament Commentary (NIGTC) each names its register in the series’s title and standard published self-description.¹² BECNT articulates itself as exegetical commentary with attention to both the Greek text and contemporary application; ZECNT articulates itself as exegetical commentary with explicit attention to literary and rhetorical structures within the Greek text; NIGTC articulates itself as exegetical commentary with concentrated grammatical-philological attention to the Greek text at scholarly depth. None of these series names itself as systematic-theological at the architectural register; each operates at the exegetical or grammatical-philological register with theological observations integrated where the exegesis substantively warrants them.

What SECNT Names

Across the seven series engaged here, the pattern is consistent: the surrounding evangelical commentary tradition names itself at exegetical, pastoral-exegetical, or grammatical-philological registers. Systematic-theological reflection happens within the work of these commentaries — and happens well, in many cases at significant depth — but it operates within the exegetical architecture, as integration or supplementation, rather than as the architectural shape of the commentary itself.

SECNT names systematic-theological architecture as the genre. This means several things substantively:

At the structural register, the commentary’s exposition of each passage is anchored to theological loci — explicit theological articulations that the passage substantively grounds, identified by name, treated at the level of substance that systematic-theological reflection requires. The Loci are not topical excursuses; they are the architectural shape of each passage’s theological articulation. A passage is not fully treated until its Loci are developed; the Loci are not developed apart from the passage’s exegetical grounding.

At the methodological register, each substantive resolution within the commentary’s exposition is documented at depth and locked under transparent governance. The dialogical research process that produces each resolution — engagement with the full scholarly tradition; substantive engagement with positions the project does not adopt; resolution under documented convergence — operates uniformly across every passage. The methodological discipline runs through every layer of the work.

At the artifact-landscape register, the commentary’s substantive scholarly work meets readers in two coordinate forms — the written Commentary at scholarly depth, the audiovisual Lectures at expositional depth — so that scholarly readers and pastoral readers can engage the same substantive work in the form that serves each best.

These three substantive commitments together — structural anchoring to theological loci, uniform methodological discipline, audience-stratified artifact landscape — name the architectural-systematic commentary genre. The genre is not a kind of commentary among others; it is a register of commentary work that operates at architectural depth where the surrounding tradition operates at integrative depth. The two registers are coordinate, not competitive. SECNT does what it does because the architectural register sustains substantive work the integrative register cannot sustain at the same depth; the surrounding tradition does what it does because the integrative register serves the church’s reading and teaching of Scripture in ways the architectural register, taken alone, does not.

Why the Genre Claim Matters

The genre claim matters for two reasons.

First, it lets readers know what they are getting when they encounter SECNT’s work. A scholar arriving at the Commentary expecting an exegetical commentary with theological remarks will encounter something differently shaped — and the difference is worth naming so the encounter is on accurate terms. A pastor arriving at the Lectures expecting a pedagogical walk-through of the biblical text will find that the walk-through is anchored to identified theological loci developed substantively within the lecture set — and the anchor is worth naming so the pastor knows how the lecture set will serve the pulpit and the classroom.

Second, the genre claim names what SECNT contributes to the evangelical commentary tradition as a tradition. The tradition has carried substantial scholarly work at exegetical and pastoral-exegetical registers for decades. SECNT enters the tradition with substantive scholarly work at a register the tradition has not previously sustained at architectural depth — the architectural-systematic commentary genre at the seminary-pastoral register, articulated through dialogical methodology that documents every substantive resolution at depth.¹³ The contribution is offered in service of the tradition’s continuing work, not in opposition to it. Where the tradition’s existing series do work SECNT depends on, SECNT engages them at primary-text depth across every passage. Where the tradition’s existing series leave architectural-systematic work to readers who must construct it themselves from the commentary’s exegetical exposition, SECNT carries that work explicitly at the structural register of the commentary itself.

§4 The Paradigm — Architectural-Systematic Commentary at the Seminary-Pastoral Register

§3 articulated the genre claim by contrast — what SECNT does at the architectural register where the surrounding evangelical commentary tradition operates at the integrative register. This section articulates the genre positively. What is the architectural-systematic commentary genre? What does it look like in practice? What does the seminary-pastoral register mean substantively?

The Genre

The architectural-systematic commentary genre is verse-by-verse commentary at full exegetical depth, organized at the structural register around explicit theological loci that each passage substantively grounds. The Loci are not extracted from the passage and developed elsewhere; they are developed within the commentary’s exposition of the passage, anchored to the exegetical resolutions the passage produces, and treated at the level of substance that systematic-theological reflection requires.

In practice, this means a passage’s treatment in the SECNT Commentary moves through coordinated registers. The text-critical work establishes the working text and registers the substantive textual questions. The exegetical work resolves the passage’s grammatical, lexical, and clause-level questions in engagement with the scholarly tradition and the patristic reception. The architectural work articulates how the passage coheres within its larger unit and within the book’s broader structural design. The theological work develops the Loci — the explicit theological articulations the passage grounds — at the depth that systematic-theological reflection sustains. The pastoral hearing articulates how the passage’s substantive resolutions land for the church’s reading, teaching, and pastoral work.

These registers are coordinate, not hierarchical. The text-critical work is not subordinate preparation for the exegetical work; the exegetical work is not subordinate preparation for the theological work; the theological work is not detached from the pastoral hearing. Each register’s substantive contribution operates throughout the commentary, with the architectural shape ensuring that no register’s contribution is lost or compressed when the passage moves to the next register’s work.

The published Commentary articulates all these registers at scholarly depth, with footnote apparatus documenting the source-engagement at each. The paired Lectures teach the same substantive work at expositional depth, with the running explanation that a listening audience needs and the pedagogical scaffolding that lets pastors and teachers carry the work into their own teaching ministry.

The Register

The seminary-pastoral register names who the work serves and at what depth.

The work serves scholars and seminary students engaged with the New Testament at scholarly depth: the kind of reader who works through a passage with attention to the Greek text, the manuscript tradition, the history of interpretation, and the current state of the scholarly conversation. The Commentary serves this reader directly. Its substantive scholarly work — the exegetical resolutions, the architectural analyses, the theological articulations — is documented at the depth that scholarly engagement requires, with footnote apparatus that opens the source-engagement world the commentary operates in.

The work serves pastors, teachers, and seminary students engaged with the New Testament at the depth pastoral and classroom ministry requires: the kind of reader who needs the substantive scholarly work to land in language that serves the pulpit, the Bible study, and the classroom. The Lectures serve this reader directly. Their substantive scholarly work — the same exegetical resolutions, the same architectural analyses, the same theological articulations — is taught at expositional depth, with the restatement and explanation that a listening audience needs to follow the argument and the pedagogical scaffolding that lets the audience use the work in their own teaching.

The seminary-pastoral register is not a compromise register that splits the difference between scholarly and pastoral readers. It is a register where the scholarly work and the pastoral work meet at the substantive register the church’s reading and teaching of Scripture requires. A pastor preparing a sermon on John 1:1–3 needs the substantive scholarly work — what does the Greek say? what does the surrounding scholarship suggest? what does the passage substantively claim about the Word’s relation to God and to creation? — and needs it at depth, not at surface. A scholar working on the prologue’s theological architecture needs the substantive pastoral hearing — what does the passage’s substantive claim mean for the church’s reading and teaching? what is at stake for the congregation? — and needs it at depth, not at gesture. The seminary-pastoral register is where these two readers meet the same substantive work.

The Methodology

The architectural-systematic commentary genre is sustained by deliberate methodological discipline. Every substantive resolution within the Commentary’s exposition is produced through documented research that engages the scholarly tradition at primary-text depth, articulates the substantive options the passage admits, develops the project’s working position under documented convergence with the scholarly tradition, and locks the resolution under transparent governance that documents how future refinements operate.

This methodological discipline is the genre’s reproducibility mechanism. The discipline is documented at sufficient depth that the substantive work is traceable, verifiable, and refinable at every layer. The methodology operates uniformly across every passage; no passage receives a shortcut; no resolution is locked without the documented engagement that the methodological discipline requires.

The methodology that produces the SECNT Commentary is articulated in full at the Methodology page. The dialogical research process, the matured-architecture documentation of every locked position, the engagement-layer disclosure standards, the governance regimes for refinement under new evidence or peer-review feedback, and the means-of-production that makes architectural-systematic work at this scale possible — each of these is developed substantively at /methodology/. The genre articulation at this page names what SECNT does; the methodology articulation at /methodology/ names how.

§5 Confessional Location — What “Evangelical” Names

§2 named the series’s confessional location briefly at the title-articulation register: SECNT operates within the historic evangelical tradition. This section articulates the confessional location substantively.

The Substantive Commitments

“Evangelical” names a confessional location with substantive content. The series operates from the following commitments:

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired Word of God. The biblical text is not merely a religious document of historical importance, nor merely the church’s foundational literature: it is the Word that God has spoken and continues to speak to his people. The series’s exegetical work proceeds from this commitment — engaging the biblical text as the substantive locus of divine speech, with the seriousness that the church’s reading of God’s Word warrants.

The Scriptures carry full authority and full truthfulness in all they affirm. The biblical text speaks truthfully, and what it speaks carries authority for the church’s faith and life. The series’s substantive resolutions at every passage proceed from this commitment — engaging the biblical text as substantively authoritative rather than as raw material for the commentator’s own theological construction.

The New Testament reveals the person and work of Jesus Christ as the substantive center of the Christian Scriptures. The Christological focus of the New Testament is not a theme among themes; it is the substantive center to which the entire Scripture witnesses. The series’s theological work at every passage proceeds from this commitment — articulating the passage’s substantive theological contribution in relation to the person and work of Christ.

The scholarly work serves the church’s reading, teaching, and living of Scripture. The commentary is produced for the church and offered to the church. The substantive scholarly work is not produced for its own sake; it is produced because the church’s reading and teaching of Scripture is served by careful, substantively grounded, methodologically disciplined exegetical and theological work. The series’s articulation at the seminary-pastoral register proceeds from this commitment.

These commitments locate the series within the historic evangelical tradition broadly understood — the tradition of churches and scholars that affirm the inspiration and authority of Scripture, the centrality of the person and work of Christ, and the calling of biblical scholarship in service of the church.

The Cross-Confessional Scholarly Engagement

The series’s evangelical confessional location does not foreclose substantive scholarly engagement across confessional traditions. The commentary engages scholarly work from Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, and other traditions at primary-text depth wherever those traditions’ scholarship substantively bears on the passage at hand. Rudolf Schnackenburg’s Catholic Johannine work, Raymond Brown’s Catholic Anchor Bible commentary, C. K. Barrett’s Anglican commentary on John, the patristic engagements of Greek and Latin fathers across the early church’s confessional traditions — these and many others are engaged substantively at primary-text Tier 1 wherever the SECNT Commentary’s substantive work depends on them.

Substantive scholarly engagement across confessional traditions is not a departure from the series’s evangelical location; it is a working out of one of the evangelical tradition’s standing commitments — that the truth of Scripture is encountered through careful scholarly work that takes seriously the substantive contributions of the church’s reading across centuries and traditions. The series locates itself within the evangelical tradition; it engages the scholarly conversation wherever the conversation substantively serves the church’s reading of Scripture.

What the Confessional Location Does Not Mean

It is worth naming what the confessional location does not mean.

It does not mean that every reader of the series must share the series’s confessional commitments to find the work useful. The substantive scholarly work — the exegetical resolutions, the architectural analyses, the engagement with the scholarly tradition — operates at depths that scholars and pastors across confessional traditions can engage on the work’s substantive merits. A Roman Catholic priest preparing a homily, an Orthodox seminary student studying the Greek text, a Reformed pastor working through a sermon series, a Wesleyan scholar engaged in academic research — each can engage the SECNT Commentary substantively and find substantive scholarly work that bears on their reading and teaching of the New Testament.

It does not mean that the series treats every passage as a polemical occasion. The commentary engages the substantive questions the text raises, develops the substantive resolutions the text grounds, and articulates the substantive theological loci the text carries. Where the substantive work touches on questions that divide confessional traditions — the nature of the church, the sacraments, the work of the Spirit, the structure of ministry — the work engages these questions at the substantive register the text warrants, with the scholarly engagement appropriate to questions of substance.

It does mean that the series operates from a substantive confessional location and articulates that location transparently. The reader knows what register the work operates from; the work invites engagement on substantive terms.

§6 The Publication Trajectory

The First Volume

The Commentary on the Gospel of John is the first volume of SECNT, currently under active publication. The Gospel of John is published in cycles — coordinated publications of a unit’s Commentary text alongside its complete set of paired Lectures, with the unit’s contribution to the volume’s table of contents added at the same publication event. Cycle 1 covers Jn 1:1–3 and will be the series’s first coordinated publication; subsequent cycles work through the remainder of the prologue (Jn 1:4–18) and the body of the Gospel.

The audiovisual Lectures pair with each cycle’s Commentary publication. A reader arriving at a published unit’s Commentary page finds links to the paired Lectures from the section headers; a reader watching a Lecture finds back-links to the Commentary section the Lecture teaches. The two artifacts publish together as the coordinated cycle deliverable.

The Sequential Cycle Approach

The Commentary publishes cycle by cycle, with each cycle treating a discrete unit of the Gospel at the depth the genre requires. A cycle does not close until the unit’s Commentary text, the unit’s complete Lecture set, and the unit’s contribution to the volume’s table of contents are all live together as a coordinated whole. This delivery discipline serves several substantive ends.

First, readers and teachers can engage SECNT’s substantive scholarly work as the corpus develops, without waiting for the volume’s completion. A pastor preparing a sermon series on John’s prologue can use the published cycles as they land; a scholar engaged with a specific passage in the Gospel finds the substantive work on that passage when its cycle publishes.

Second, the cycle-by-cycle approach lets the methodology mature as the corpus grows. Each cycle’s substantive work is informed by the locked work of prior cycles; methodological refinements that surface during one cycle’s drafting inform subsequent cycles. The work improves at its own register as it progresses, without compromising the depth at which any cycle operates.

Third, the cycle-by-cycle approach lets the series’s audience-stratified dual-artifact landscape develop coordinately. The Commentary and the Lectures publish together; the reader-and-listener experience develops together; the substantive scholarly work meets its readers in both forms from the first published cycle onward.

The Substantive Commitments

The series is committed to substantive scholarly work at the depth the architectural-systematic genre at the seminary-pastoral register requires. The work proceeds deliberately. Each passage is studied at depth, its substantive resolutions locked under documented methodological discipline, and its published Commentary and Lectures produced as coordinated cycle deliverables.

The pace of publication will reflect the substantive work each unit requires. As the methodology matures, as the corpus grows and substantive resolutions from earlier cycles inform later work, the pace at any given cycle reflects the cycle’s substantive needs rather than a fixed schedule. The work will not be rushed; it will not be padded. It will proceed at the pace substantive scholarship requires.

The Series Over Time

The SECNT Commentary on John is the first volume. The Johannine epistles (1, 2, and 3 John) are projected to follow the Commentary on John as a natural continuation of the Johannine corpus. The series’s longer-term scope envisions multi-volume coverage of the New Testament. The current first-volume work establishes the genre at depth; subsequent volumes operate within the methodological discipline the first volume establishes and articulates. The pace and ordering of subsequent volumes will develop as the corpus grows.

The Citation and Archive Trajectory

Each published unit of the Commentary carries a stable canonical URL that serves as the citation target for scholarly and pastoral reference. The citation form and the canonical URL discipline are articulated at the Citing page. The work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license with deliberate movement toward public-domain status over time; the licensing posture is itself a commitment to the work’s enduring availability to the church across institutional boundaries.

The series carries an archival commitment that complements the digital publication. The substantive scholarly work — the locked-corpus resolutions, the documented methodological discipline, the matured architecture of every passage’s treatment — is sustained as a body of work intended to endure. The institutional archive trajectory will develop as the corpus grows; the substantive intention is that SECNT’s work remains available to the church and to the scholarly tradition long after its first publication.