Gordon D. Fee > Quotes

“Show me a church's songs and I'll show you their theology.”
― Gordon D. Fee

“A text cannot mean what it could never have meant for its original readers/hearers.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“The concern of the scholar is primarily with what the text meant; the concern of the layperson is usually with what it means. The believing scholar insists that we must have both. Reading the Bible with an eye only to its meaning for us can lead to a great deal of nonsense as well as to every imaginable kind of error—because it lacks controls. Fortunately, most believers are blessed with at least a measure of that most important of all hermeneutical skills—common sense.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“Interpretation that aims at, or thrives on, uniqueness can usually be attributed to pride (an attempt to “outclever” the rest of the world), a false understanding of spirituality (wherein the Bible is full of deeply buried truths waiting to be mined by the spiritually sensitive person with special insight), or vested interests (the need to support a theological bias, especially in dealing with texts that seem to go against that bias).”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth

“to be saved” in the Pauline view means to become part of the people of God, who by the Spirit are born into God’s family and therefore joined to one another as one body, whose gatherings in the Spirit form them into God’s temple. God is not simply saving diverse individuals and preparing them for heaven; rather he is creating a people for his name, among whom God can dwell and who in their life together will reproduce God’s life and character in all its unity and diversity.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself: a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies; a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure; a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation; a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself; a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:3).”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible Book by Book: A Guided Tour

“One crucial thing to keep in mind as you read any Hebrew narrative is the presence of God in the narrative. In any biblical narrative, God is the ultimate character, the supreme hero of the story.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“The key to life in the Spirit for some is to spend much more quiet time in thanksgiving and praise for what God has done—and is doing, and promises to do—and less time on introspection, focused on your failure to match up to the law.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“God has made us this way, in his own image, because he himself is a personal, relational being.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“One reads Paul poorly who does not recognize
that for him the presence of the Spirit, as an
experienced and living reality, was the crucial
matter for Christian life, from beginning to end.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“For many in the Arminian tradition, who emphasize the believer’s free will and responsibility, texts like Romans 8:30; 9:18 – 24; Galatians 1:15; and Ephesians 1:4 – 5 are something of an embarrassment. Likewise many Calvinists have their own ways of getting around what is said quite plainly in passages like 1 Corinthians 10:1 – 13; 2 Peter 2:20 – 22; and Hebrews 6:4 – 6. Indeed our experience as teachers is that students from these traditions seldom ask what these texts mean; they want only to know “how to get around” what these various passages seem clearly to affirm!”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“Paul can hardly help himself: his focus and concern are always on the people as a whole. Though entered individually, salvation is seldom if ever thought of simply as a one-on-one relationship with God. While such a relationship is included, to be sure, “to be saved” means especially to be joined to the people of God. In this sense, the third-century church father Cyprian had it right: there is no salvation outside the church, because God is saving a people for his name, not a miscellaneous, unconnected set of individuals.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“Truly Christian conduct is not predicated on whether I have the right to do something, but whether my conduct is helpful to those about me.”
― Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians

“Whether one likes it or not, every reader is at the same time an interpreter. That is, most of us assume as we read that we also understand what we read. We also tend to think that our understanding is the same thing as the Holy Spirit’s or human author’s intent. However, we invariably bring to the text all that we are, with all of our experiences, culture, and prior understandings of words and ideas. Sometimes what we bring to the text, unintentionally to be sure, leads us astray, or else causes us to read all kinds of foreign ideas into the text.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“the primary goal of salvation: an eschatological people, who together live the life of the future in the present age as they await the final consummation.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“Paul says the fulfillment of this promised blessing for the Gentiles is in their having experienced the Spirit as a living and dynamic reality. The blessing of Abraham, therefore, is not simply “justification by faith.” Rather, it refers to the life of the future now available to Jew and Gentile alike, achieved through the death of Christ but applied through the dynamic ministry of the Spirit—and all of this by faith.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“For Paul the fact that both Jews and Gentiles are included in God’s family is the most remarkable aspect of this newly formed fellowship. In Christ’s death God has triumphed over the former prejudices on both sides (Eph 2: 14–18).”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“1. Old Testament narratives are not allegories or stories filled with hidden meanings”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“Our theology and experience of the Spirit must be more interwoven if our experienced life of the Spirit is to be more effective.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“I begin with a singular and passionate conviction: that the proper aim of all true theology is doxology. Theology that does not begin and end in worship is not biblical at all, but is rather the product of western philosophy.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text

“The resurrection of Christ marked the beginning of the End, the turning of the ages.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“Building the church with human wisdom or eloquent speech that circumvents the Cross is building with wood, hay, and stubble.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth Video Lectures: An Introduction for the Beginner

“In urging his readers in Ephesians 4:30 “not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” Paul uses the language of Isaiah 63:10, the one certain place in the Old Testament where the concept of the divine presence with Israel in tabernacle and temple is specifically equated with “the Holy Spirit of Yahweh.”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“As a distillation of some of the things we have talked about in this chapter, we present here a brief list of hermeneutical guidelines that we hope will serve you well whenever you read the Old Testament Pentateuchal law. Keeping these principles in mind may help you to avoid mistaken applications of the law while seeing its instructive and faith-building character.
1. Do see the Old Testament law as God’s fully inspired word for you. 2. Don’t see the Old Testament law as God’s direct command to you. 3. Do see the Old Testament law as the basis for the old covenant, and therefore for Israel’s history. 4. Don’t see the Old Testament law as binding on Christians in the new covenant except where specifically renewed. 5. Do see God’s justice, love, and high standards revealed in the Old Testament law. 6. Don’t forget to see that God’s mercy is made equal to the severity of the standards. 7. Do see the Old Testament law as a paradigm — providing examples for the full range of expected behavior. 8. Don’t see the Old Testament law as complete. It is not technically comprehensive. 9. Do remember that the essence of the law (the Ten Commandments and the two chief laws) is repeated in the Prophets and renewed in the New Testament. 10. Don’t expect the Old Testament law to be cited frequently by the Prophets or the New Testament. Legal citation was first introduced only in the Roman era, long after the Old Testament was complete. 11. Do see the Old Testament law as a generous gift to Israel, bringing much blessing when obeyed. 12. Don’t see the Old Testament law as a grouping of arbitrary, annoying regulations limiting people’s freedom.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“First, we must recognize his own sense of continuity with his heritage. Paul sees himself and his churches as being in a direct line with the people of God in the Old Testament; and despite his deep convictions about the radical implications of the coming of Christ and the Spirit, he regularly reaffirms that continuity. He includes a primarily Gentile church in the events of the exodus: “all our forefathers were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor 10:1–2).”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“This theological concern—God's essential character on display in Christ, who redeems us to share that likeness—also underlies the other well-known themes in this letter: suffering, joy, unity, pressing on toward the prize. The proper response to hardship is, as in the Psalter, to "rejoice in the Lord always," for "the Lord is near" (4:4-5). The Lord is”
― Gordon D. Fee, Philippians

“In very many cases a clear principle has been articulated, which usually will transcend the historical particularity to which it was being applied.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“Rather than the reflective theology of the scholar or classroom, his is a “task theology,” the theologizing that takes place in the marketplace,”
― Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God

“The problem with all of this, of course, is that it tends to leave us with little that is normative for two broad areas of concern — Christian experience and Christian practice. There is no express teaching on such matters as the mode of baptism, the age of those who are to be baptized, which charismatic phenomenon is to be in evidence when one receives the Spirit, or the frequency of the Lord’s Supper, to cite but a few examples. Yet these are precisely the areas where there is so much division among Christians. Invariably, in such cases people argue that this is what the earliest believers did, whether such practices are merely described in the narratives of Acts or found by implication from what is said in the Epistles. Scripture simply does not expressly command that baptism must be by immersion, or that infants are to be baptized, or that all genuine conversions must be as dramatic as Paul’s, or that Christians are to be baptized in the Spirit evidenced by tongues as a second work of grace, or that the Lord’s Supper is to be celebrated every Sunday. What do we do, then, with something like baptism by immersion? What does Scripture say? In this case it can be argued from the meaning of the word itself, from the one description of baptism in Acts of going “down into the water” and coming “up out of the water” (8:38 – 39), and from Paul’s analogy of baptism as death, burial, and resurrection (Rom 6:1 – 3) that immersion was the presupposition of baptism in the early church. It was nowhere commanded precisely because it was presupposed. On the other hand, it can be pointed out that without a baptismal tank in the local church in Samaria (!), the people who were baptized there would have had great difficulty being immersed. Geographically, there simply is no known supply of water there to have made immersion a viable option. Did they pour water over them, as an early church manual, the Didache (ca. AD 100), suggests should be done where there is not enough cold, running water or tepid, still water for immersion? We simply do not know, of course. The Didache makes it abundantly clear that immersion was the norm, but it also makes it clear that the act itself is far more important than the mode. Even though the Didache is not a biblical document, it is a very early, orthodox Christian document, and it may help us by showing how the early church made pragmatic adjustments in this area where Scripture is not explicit. The normal (regular) practice served as the norm. But because it was only normal, it did not become normative. We would probably do well to follow this lead and not confuse normalcy with normativeness in the sense that all Christians must do a given thing or else they are disobedient to God’s Word.”
― Gordon D. Fee, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth

“When a church met in this kind of household, where they would gather in the atrium, the semipublic area where business was regularly carried on, the householder would naturally serve as the leader of the house church. That is, by the very sociology of things, it would never have occurred to them that a person from outside the household would come in and lead what was understood as simply an extension of the household. To put it plainly, the church is not likely to gather in a person’s house unless the householder also functioned as its natural leader. Thus”
― Gordon D. Fee, Listening to the Spirit in the Text