Gordon Fee: a scholar on fire

Cherith Fee Nordling and her father, Gordon Fee

Roughly three decades ago, I stood in a Zondervan bookstore thumbing through a book that would go home with me that day - and play an important role in the direction of my life.

That book, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, confirmed many of the instincts that I had about proper Biblical interpretation. But, the authors - Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart - also taught me many things that I did not have instinct for. 

The authors' expertise and clear writing were worth exponentially more than I paid for the book. Even the commentary recommendations in the rear of the book were a treasure. 

I have not been alone in appreciation of the book - four editions have been published and over 900,000 copies sold.

When I found that Professor Fee, like me, was a Pentecostal, there was no move in his career - professorships or publications - that I did not follow with great interest.

Eventually, I made my way to Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, with hope of taking occasional courses with the then professor emeritus Fee. While that was not to be because just when I arrived in Vancouver he was headed to New York to live, I was able to have lunch with him once.

It's inconceivable that I would have attended Regent College and earned a master's degree if I had never read How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth and later learned that Gordon Fee had moved to Vancouver to teach. As I did from Gordon Fee's writings, I learned a great deal at Regent. I am grateful to both.

Part of my pursuit of all things Fee was the purchase of I (Still) Believe: Leading Bible Scholars Share Their Stories of Faith and Scholarship. Fee is one of the scholars who wrote a chapter for the book, which was edited by John Byron and Joel N. Lohr. His chapter is entitled, "Scholar on Fire", based on his commitment to the Lord "to pursue excellence in scholarship and remain passionate in my walk with God; I would try to be a scholar on fire."

Anyone familiar with and favorably disposed toward Fee would have to assess that he has kept his commitment to the Lord. Perhaps no better confirmation of that can be found than the foreword to his 2018 book, Jesus the Lord According to Paul the Apostle: A Concise Introduction. His daughter, theologian Cherith Fee Nordling, included the following in her foreword,

My high school years in New England included belonging to a house church that met on our living room floor. Weekly we sang, shared, prayed, cried, laughed, and ate together. And I watched my father regularly well up in tears of wonder and love at the grace of God in Christ, often expressed through Paul’s love for Christ permeating that space as my dad would share from one of Paul’s epistles. My dad’s tears were not unique to our living room floor, however. I heard students in that gathering talk of how my dad couldn’t make it through a lecture without tearing up. And then, early one November evening after my shift ended at work, I stopped by the seminary to pick up my dad on the way home. His office was the only one lit up, and I headed into the building to get him. The office door was open, but I didn’t see him inside. Then I heard a muffled sound. Walking around the side of his desk, I found him on the floor, in tears. “Dad, are you OK?” “Sure am, honey,” he said, as he sniffled, got up, and blew his nose. “I was just preparing the lecture for class tomorrow. The gospel never ceases to amaze me.” Looking at his desk, I saw his Greek outline of one of Paul’s epistles for an advanced exegesis class. Not everyone’s devotional cup of tea, I grant you! But for my dad, who was spending time again with Paul, immersed in the lavish good news of God in Christ by the Spirit, this was familiar worship space. I had interrupted him there, on the floor, held in the love of the Triune God.