Gordon D. Fee Quotes & Sayings

A text cannot mean what it could never have meant for its original readers/hearers. — Gordon D. Fee

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

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

God has made us this way, in his own image, because he himself is a personal, relational being. — Gordon D. Fee

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

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

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

Because the Bible is God's Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all humankind, in every age and in every culture. — Gordon D. Fee

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

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

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 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

1. Old Testament narratives are not allegories or stories filled with hidden meanings — Gordon D. Fee