Gordon Fee's life story - where to read about it

If we were having coffee today and the conversation turned to your life story, I would be interested, especially if we have not been friends long. Among several benefits, knowing your life story would help me understand other things that you say.

Now, if someone is one of the premier New Testament scholars alive today and is also a Pentecostal - that is a story I am intensely interested in.

Gordon Fee is such a person. Raised in the home of Assemblies of God pastor Donald Fee, Gordon soared past the limiting anti-intellectualism that prevaded Pentecostalism in the 1960s and earned a Ph.D., focusing on textual criticism (Fee's 1966 dissertation can be read at this link).

There are two resources that supply a complete summary of Fee's life (his upbringing, marriage, education, career, and spirituality), especially if read together. 

One is a chapter in Bible Interpreters of the 20th Century: A Selection of Evangelical Voices (it is now out-of-print, but it can be obtained by those using Logos software). Besides Fee, the 35 scholars profiled include, for example, F. F. Bruce, Bruce Metzger, N. T. Wright, and the lone female, Joyce Baldwin.

The other is a chapter that Fee wrote in I (Still) Believe: Leading Bible Scholars Share Their Stories of Faith and Scholarship. In this work, Richard Bauckham, James D. G. Dunn, Scot McKnight, Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Morna Hooker, and Bruce Waltke are among the 18 scholars contributing.

In Bible Interpreters, Patrick H. Alexander, a former teaching assistant of Fee's who went on to have a distinguished career in academic publishing, concludes his chapter about Fee with this important observation, 

Fee's work as a scholar who happens to be Pentecostal - and vice versa - has not only opened the door for an entire generation of Pentecostal and charismatic scholars who want to take scholarship and their spirituality seriously. It has also opened the eyes of those not within a Pentecostal tradition to see that a faith that embraces the experiential dimension can also take seriously the role of scholarship.

Fee, in his chapter in I (Still) Believe, gives this important background concerning his youth.

The passion that marked the Assemblies movement in those early years often overshadowed textual accuracy, but this was not true of my father. He was passionate and accurate. I remember often sleeping in my father's study (which from time to time doubled as my bedroom during father's house remodeling or while entertaining guests). His study was filled with books pertaining to Scripture and the Christian walk. It never occurred to me that this was unusual for Assembly pastors until later on as I grew older it became evident to me that most pastors' studies paled in size compared to my father's. My father was the first scholar I had ever met, even though in those early years I didn't recognize it. Still his passion for truth and determination to dig down deep into the Scriptures to find the meaning of the text and apply it to believers rubbed off on me.

NEXT WEEK:  An audio teaching series by Fee based on the best-selling book he co-authored with Old Testament scholar Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth.

This newspaper ad, featuring Fee's father, ran when Gordon was 10 years old:

Donald H. Fee (Feb 1944) Wed, Feb 9, 1944 – Page 10 · The Chilliwack Progress (Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada) · Newspapers.com

THE FEE FAMILY - from left to right, Gordon's older sister, Donna; Gordon; his mother, Grace, and his father, Donald. Donna was three years older than Gordon.