Michael Brown on Gordon Fee, Pioneer and Scholarly Role Model

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Gordon D. Fee, PhD (University of Southern California) was Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

Gordon D. Fee went home to be with the Lord on October 25, 2022.

As a Pentecostal scholar, Gordon Fee was both a pioneer and a role model, showing us that you could be academic and Spirit-filled at the same time. Not only so, but as the general editor of the prestigious New International Commentary on the New Testament, as well as author of the highly-acclaimed commentary on 1 Corinthians, he established a new benchmark for Pentecostals in the larger world of scholarship. Added to this was his brilliant writing on the Spirit’s presence and work, and his accomplishments were huge.

We know that the early Pentecostals were not only known for being non-scholarly. They were often anti-scholarly, and in the church where I came to faith in 1971, I sometimes heard the joke, “Seminary, cemetery.” And this was often true! For me, then, going to college and then grad school, there was a sense of having to choose either the things of the Spirit or solid academics, and I had to go through my own journey before soundly and simultaneously embracing both. But knowing that a man like Dr. Fee existed was of great encouragement to me. Although I never met him, he impacted me through his example and work.

Part of his legacy is that there are so many Pentecostal and charismatic biblical scholars and theologians today. May we continue to see the joining of the Word and the Spirit in our day.

Michael L. Brown, Ph.D.

See also: “Honoring Pentecostal Theologian Gordon Fee” by Rick Wadholm Jr.