F. F. BRUCE: A LIFE by Tim Grass

By Nigel Tomes

“Fiery Fred Bruce”

Rarely does one get to review a biography of a person you’ve known personally. Yet this is one such case. As a young person growing up among the UK “Plymouth Brethren,” I sat under F. F. Bruce’s teaching. But I must confess that, as a teenager, I was too young to appreciate his messages. Young people called him “Fiery Fred;” but he was anything but “fiery.” F. F. Bruce (then in his 50s) had a dull monotone voice, making it difficult for teenagers to listen with rapt attention. (Church young people should be served by young, energetic & committed role models, in their teens & 20s.) Yet looking back I appreciate F. F. Bruce’s heart for young people & his willingness to spend time with us. Since then I’ve come to appreciate his biblical scholarship.

F. F. Bruce (1910-1990) was born in NE Scotland and never forgot his Scottish heritage. But he spent his entire career in N. England—in Leeds, Sheffield & Manchester. Bruce was a committed evangelical Christian; he served as an elder and Bible teacher among the Brethren. But above all F. F. Bruce was a Bible scholar. In an age of skepticism F. F. Bruce showed it’s possible to address Biblical issues with integrity, while upholding the Bible as God’s inspired Word. Bruce became “Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism & Exegesis” at Manchester Univ. in the UK.  

PAUL: Apostle of the Heart Set Free

As the cover indicates, “This [book] is the first-ever full-length biography of Frederick F. Bruce (1910-1990), one of the most influential British biblical scholars of the 20^th century. In his lifetime F. F. Bruce authored some 50 books & nearly 2,000 articles and reviews…” That’s a prodigious output; plus many of his books went through multiple editions & sold thousands of copies. He wrote about the Dead Sea Scrolls & the Canon of Scripture, but he specialized on Paul’s epistles, writing many commentaries and expositions. Bruce’s view of Paul is summarized in his biography—“PAUL: Apostle of the Heart Set Free.” Christian liberty finds expression in Paul’s statements like, “There is neither Jew nor Greek…slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). Based on this Bruce argued for “full equality of role for women and men” in the church. He held that Paul’s “prohibitions on women’s ministry [e.g. 1 Cor. 14:34] related to a particular cultural context and not to the modern world” (p. 192). This was a radical position, given Plymouth Brethren mandates women (sisters) cover their heads and remain silent (except singing) in their gatherings. Consistent with Paul’s “stress on liberty, F. F. Bruce was never likely to sympathize with any approach which sought to derive a set of binding regulations from the New Testament.” (p. 193)

No Local Church “Blueprint”  

F. F. Bruce spoke about recovering the initial church. He “rejected the idea that the New Testament laid down one blueprint to be followed by all local congregations if they wished to be considered ‘biblical’. [Instead] he argued that in the New Testament there were diverse patterns of church order, the common feature being a flexibility which allowed the Holy Spirit to provide for their needs as necessary.” (pp. 134-5) Grass says, “Bruce was wary of attempts to find in the New Testament some kind of divine and unchanging blueprint for church life.” In Bruce’s view, “whenever a group tries to reproduce the pattern of 1^st century Christianity, its successors always reproduce the Christianity of the 2^nd century…a sharp declension from the divine ideal.” (p. 135) We should ask—can his views can help us today?

Spirit’s Move becomes Tradition

Consider also Bruce’s warning, quoted twice by his biographer: “To stay at the point to which some revered teacher of the past brought us, out of mistaken loyalty to him; to continue to follow a certain pattern of religious activity just because it was good enough for our fathers… these and the like are the temptations which make the message of Hebrews a necessary …one for us to listen to. Every new movement of the Spirit of God tends to become stereotyped in the next generation, and… becomes a tenacious tradition encroaching on the allegiance which ought to be accorded only to the living and active Word of God.” (pp. 133-4, 172)

These are just a few of the nuggets in this biography.

(Eerdmans Publishing, Jan., 2012, 283 pages)