F. F. Bruce: A Mind for What Matters: A Conversation with a Pioneer of Evangelical Biblical Scholarship

W. WARD GASQUE AND LAUREL GASQUEW. Ward Gasque is the E. Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Criticism at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Laurel Gasque is a cultural historian and author.

Frederick Fyvie Bruce, 78, towers as a giant over the field of contemporary biblical scholarship. His commentary on the Greek text of the Acts of the Apostles (1951) is generally recognized as the first important work in what has since become a contemporary renaissance of evangelical theological research. He is the author of more than 40 books and nearly 2,000 articles and reviews. His main love has been the letters of the apostle Paul, writing a commentary for each epistle, two on the Acts of the Apostles, as well as a much-used textbook, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Eerdmans).

From 1959 until his retirement in 1978, Bruce occupied the prestigious John Rylands Chair of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at Manchester University in England, where he supervised more Ph.D. students in biblical studies than any other professor in British history.

Although he has had to deal with a heart condition, Bruce’s health now seems to have stabilized. Yet even during two years of uncertain health, he managed to edit several commentaries, revise three of his own, and complete a new book, The Canon of Scripture (IVP).

Bruce has been a pioneer among evangelical biblical scholars, and like all pioneers, he is a man of both vision and strong opinion. Not all evangelicals will agree with the positions he takes, but all can appreciate his commitment to thorough and painstaking scholarship.

In one of your early writings you mention your father, who was an evangelist in Scotland, saying you had the sense of his looking over your shoulder as you wrote. Did he have an influence in your becoming a biblical scholar?

Yes, a very great influence—but in no sense was it an inhibiting influence. He always encouraged me to think for myself, and that’s one of the many debts I owe him.

Has your church tradition, the Plymouth Brethren, shaped your study and teaching of the Bible?

As far as my experience goes, it has been part of the tradition of the “Open Brethren” to encourage independent Bible study and independent thinking, without following one school of thought rigidly as sometimes happens in other ecclesiastical groups.

Your university education was in the Greek and Latin classics rather than in biblical studies. You subsequently started a Ph.D. but never finished. Why?

I had an offer to take a university lectureship in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I seized it. Wisely, I think.

I have often felt disposed to lecture some of my American colleagues and their students on what I call “the cult of the Ph.D.” The idea of the Ph.D. in itself sometimes seems to be more important than the actual work you do to get it!

When you were a university student, you were involved in Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. And you have continued a lifelong association with this evangelical student movement. What has been your involvement?

My involvement has taken two forms. As a university teacher, I have been available as a senior adviser to Christian student groups. If they have wanted to avail themselves of my advice, or use me as a speaker from time to time, I have helped them in that way.

My other major involvement, beginning in 1940, has been with what was originally the Biblical Research Committee, which was to become the Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical Research, an association of evangelical men and women who wish to engage in serious biblical research.

When you began your academic career, there were very few people in British universities who were committed to combining an evangelical faith with academic biblical studies. Things are quite different today, I believe.

Oh, completely different! For instance, in the first edition of The New Bible Commentary (IVP, 1953) there were very few contributors who were actually involved in university teaching. The people just were not around. Ten years later, when the revised edition was being worked on, the situation was completely changed: We had lots of younger scholars who were not only holding teaching posts in universities and colleges but capable of making much better contributions to a volume of that kind than had been possible ten years earlier.

What brought about the change?

This was very largely the result of the Tyndale Fellowship’s encouraging young men and women who had the necessary interest and aptitude to go in for this sort of thing.

It has been 45 years since you defended the essential truthworthiness of the New Testament in your little book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (IVP and Eerdmans). Do you still stand by what you wrote then?

I may differ in details, but I still maintain the same outlook that I argued for in that book.

How do you, as a Christian and as a scholar, approach the study of the Bible?

I would distinguish between academic study and more general study. At one level—and perhaps this is the most important level—I approach the Bible with a readiness and an expectation to hear the voice of God there. But there is no conflict between that more devotional use of the Bible and its academic study. Over the years I have played a pretty full part of Bible ministry in churches—preeminently, of course, in the local church that I happened to be associated with at any particular time. In this ministry I have tried to combine the two approaches.

I have sought to make available to my hearers, in a form they can assimilate, the results of my academic study, while at the same time trying to enable them, like myself, to recognize and apply the voice of God in Holy Scripture.

The term “biblical criticism” normally has a positive connotation in your writings, in spite of the negative connotation it has in some circles. Why is this?

Because biblical criticism is the study of the biblical text. It involves the establishing of a reliable text on the basis of manuscripts and other early witnesses; this is the work of “textual criticism.” And when that is done, it involves the interpretation of the text, what is technically called “exegesis.” This requires the study of such matters as the structure of individual books, a consideration of the dates at which they were written, how they fit into their contemporary setting, and the question of authorship.

It is in these three areas—structure, date, and authorship—that we have the group of studies that used to be summarized in the single term “higher criticism.” Thus biblical criticism is a very positive study. Its aim is to help people understand the Bible better.

One of my eminent Manchester predecessors in the Rvlands Chair, Arthur Samuel Peake, who was no mean practitioner in biblical criticism, has put it on record that “criticism for its own sake has never interested me. The important thing is to pierce to the core of the meaning.” And any technique that enables us to penetrate to the central meaning of Scripture is helpful.

Is there a uniquely “evangelical” view of biblical criticism that differs from other types of biblical criticism?

Not so far as I’m concerned.

In North America there has been a lot of debate concerning the “inerrancy” of the Bible, with “inerrancy” often being viewed as a touchstone of evangelical orthodoxy. What do you think about this concept?

Happily, from my point of view, that is a North American phenomenon which one does not find very much in Britain. The term that has been traditionally used to describe a high view of the authority of Scripture in this country is “infallibility.”

What is the difference between the two terms?

When one looks at the words themselves, there is no difference. Inerrancy means “not going wrong” and infallibility means “incapable of going wrong” or “incapable of leading astray.” But the infallibility of Scripture as traditionally defined relates to its function as “the rule of faith and practice.” Inerrancy seems to imply more than this.

What term would you prefer to use in describing the Bible?

Truth. What’s wrong with that word? The truth of Scripture is what we’re talking about. If one says that the Scripture is the Word of God, why bother about terms like infallibility or inerrancy?

Some years ago you objected to being labeled a “conservative evangelical.” You said you preferred to be known as an “unhyphenated evangelical.” What did you mean by that?

Conservatism is not the essence of my position. If many of my critical conclusions, for example, are described as being conservative, they are so not because they are conservative, nor because I am conservative, but because I believe them to be the conclusions to which the evidence points. If they are conservative, then none the worse for that.

Your work over the years might be described as a love affair with the writings of the apostle Paul, in that you have written commentaries on every one of his epistles, as well as on the Acts of the Apostles, which sets them in their historical setting. What do you think are Paul’s major legacies to the church?

Of course, anything I say about him would do him less than justice! But I believe his main legacy is his law-free gospel, his affirmation that the grace of God is available on equal terms and manifested in an equal degree among human beings of every kind. When Paul says that in Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free person, neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28), he is saying that distinctions of those kinds are simply irrelevant where the gospel is concerned, and where Christian witness, life, and fellowship are concerned.

We have noticed that though many Christians adhere to Paul, they do not live lives characterized by Paul’s theology of freedom. How do you resolve this apparent contradiction?

If they are obviously not free, they don’t adhere to Paul! They may think they do, but they haven’t begun to learn what Paul means by “the liberty with which Christ has set his people free” (Gal. 5:1).

Many people, including many Christians, are afraid of liberty. They are afraid of having too much liberty themselves; and they’re certainly afraid of letting other people, especially younger people, have too much liberty. Think of the dangers that liberty might lead them into! It seems much better to move in predestinate grooves.

Who do you think have been the most accurate interpreters of Paul?

Certainly the great Reformers—Luther, for example. Or John and Charles Wesley in the eighteenth century. Paul played such a dominant part in their conversion experience that they could not help assimilating the very heart of Pauline teaching and communicating it to others.

Do you think the current theologies of liberation—for example, Latin American and feminist theologies—are correct in applying Paul’s theology of freedom to social and political issues?

Basically, yes. The liberation that is at the very heart of the Pauline gospel can’t be restricted in any way. It must have its social implications and applications.

I do not know too much about liberation theology, but it does sometimes seem to be linked to a Marxist interpretation of history, and of human life, which is quite different from the Pauline approach.

You seem to interpret Paul as a liberator, if not a revolutionary. But many others see him as a conservative—one who wanted to keep people in their places, who tells slaves to be satisfied with their position in society and who tells women to be silent. To these interpreters Paul is anything but a liberator.

Paul’s attitude to slavery must be seen in the context of the social condition of the time. There was no point in telling slaves to rebel against their condition of bondage. They were in no position to do anything about it. What he did was to show, as the Stoics of his day also did, in a way, that a slave can be a free person just as truly as a sociologically free person is very often a slave. Slavery and freedom are matters of the inner life, primarily, and a person’s economic or societal position is not of the first importance.

How would you apply this to the role of women?

Paul’s teaching is that so far as religious status and function are concerned, there is no difference between men and women.

What about in practice? Does he not limit women’s roles in leadership and teaching in the church, and in leadership in society?

No. If we have regard to the place that women have in Paul’s circle, he seems to make no distinction at all between men and women among his fellow workers. Men receive praise, and women receive praise for their collaboration with him in the gospel ministry, without any suggestion that there is a subtle distinction between the one and the other in respect of status or function. Anything in Paul’s writings that might seem to run contrary to this must be viewed in the light of the main thrust of his teaching and should be looked at with critical scrutiny.

Personally, I could not countenance a position which makes a distinction of principle in church service between men and women. My own understanding of Christian priesthood is quite different from the understanding that dominates so much of the current discussion of the subject. If, as evangelical Christians generally believe, Christian priesthood is a privilege in which all believers share, there can be no reason that a Christian woman should not exercise her priesthood on the same terms as a Christian man.

How do you interpret 1 Timothy 2:9–15, which suggests that women are not to teach?

It is merely a statement of practice at a particular time.

How do you answer people who say that you are picking and choosing among the various doctrines of the New Testament, using one strand of Paul’s teaching to set aside another strand of Pauline tradition?

If there is any substance in that criticism, then the strand that I am choosing is the strand that contains the foundation principles of Paul’s teaching in the light of which those other passages must be understood.

What about 1 Corinthians 14:34–35, where Paul suggests that women should be quiet in church?

In the same chapter, he indicates certain occasions when men should be quiet or silent in church also! My own view about 1 Corinthians 14 is very similar to the view expressed by Gordon Fee in his recent commentary (in the New International Commentary on the New Testament [Eerdmans, 1987]), namely, that the textual evidence throws doubt on the authenticity of the words “let your women keep silence in the churches.” But even if they are part of the original text of Paul’s letter, they have relevance only to the uttering of prophecies in church, where women are advised not to question publicly and vocally the interpretation of prophetic utterances.

In most of our churches today, we don’t have prophetic utterances of the kind envisaged in 1 Corinthians 14. Therefore, the application of that negative injunction does not apply.

In general, where there are divided opinions about the interpretation of a Pauline passage, that interpretation which runs along the line of liberty is much more likely to be true to Paul’s intention than one which smacks of bondage or legalism.

If someone wished to embark on a career of teaching the Bible as you have done, what word of advice would you give that person?

Go ahead and do it—if you have been given the necessary gifts and are willing to take time to develop the linguistic tools and do the historical study necessary to understand the Bible in its original setting as a basis for applying its lessons to our contemporary setting.

How important do you think it is to study Hebrew and Greek?

For the serious study of the Bible, it is indispensable.

Yet the trend in many theological schools is to deemphasize the biblical languages.

I know this is so, and it is a deplorable tendency. It is no use for someone who wishes to be regarded as a specialist in the Bible to be in a position that he or she must take translations on trust. That does not mean to say, of course, that everyone who studies the Bible in its original languages can hope to be an expert in either of those languages. But at least he or she will be in a position to assess the value of one translation against the other.

Do you think we are living in the last days?

I have no idea.

Our impression is that you have a great sense of confidence and an independence of spirit. If this is a valid observation, why do you think this is so?

Independence of spirit may largely be the result of my having always been in a position where my personal comfort, income, and the like were not affected by what I affirmed. A person who always has to be looking over his shoulder, lest someone who is in a position to harm him may be breathing down his neck, has to mind his step in a way that, as a university teacher, I have been a stranger to.

Has your father’s influence on your life been an influence in this?

In teaching me to think for myself, not to believe a thing just because some preacher says it is so, unless I see it clearly for myself—that was excellent advice.

What has been the greatest personal challenge to the development of your character?

I could say the great credibility gap, as it seems to me at times, between my Christian profession and my Christian practice, in terms of the ideal and the reality.

What word would you give to a young man or woman seeking to be faithful to Christ in today’s world?

Whatever your work in life is, do it in a spirit of obedience and service to Christ.

What do you think Christians can do to further the cause of peace in the world?

They can start by living peaceably one with another, showing themselves to be, in reality, as they are in the divine purpose, a fellowship of reconciliation, a community of those who, having experienced the reconciling power of God in their own lives, proclaim his message of reconciliation to others, in the widest conceivable sense.

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