Book Critique: Fee and Stuart Book Review

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, pp.69-70.] [5: Ibid., p.85.]

The rather stern critique offered of Fee and Stuart herein should not indicate that this book is entirely without value, merely that its presentation in title and chapter headings is somewhat misleading. There is plenty of common sense in what Fee and Stuart are doing here, but the difficulty is that very often an intelligent decision on their part is mingled with an overall failure to highlight many of the most important issues involved in the interpretation of a Biblical text. Their last chapter on Revelation indicates both the best and worst of their method. In some sense, Fee and Stuart are going to be on their most careful behavior in this passage, as the idiotic handling of Revelation by any heretic with a penchant for paranoia has been well-evidenced over the past two millennia. But the history of this particular Biblical book, such as has been outlined by a responsible (and practicing Christian) scholar like Elaine Pagels, is entirely left out. For example, the early church arguments over whether to include Revelation in the New Testament at all are not mentioned. The fact that the book was unknown to Paul himself likewise goes unmentioned. What is salutary in the chapter is Fee and Stuart's emphasis on caution in interpreting the book, yet they leave out the abundance of disinterested historical evidence indicating that much of the text is referring to events in the immediate lifetime of its author (such as the solution to the 666 gematria which widely acknowledges this is probably a coded reference to the emperor Nero) rather than an attempt to predict some sort of eschatology yet to come. This, again, reflects a particular social and political positioning of American Evangelical Protestantism, and it would be foolish to pretend it was actual scholarship rather than a rather blandly-phrased form of indoctrination.

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In conclusion, Fee and Stuart offer what poses as a comprehensive guide to reading the Bible "for all its worth" but which instead focuses on the most narrow and limited form of interpretation available. Two millennia of church history, and even the beliefs of competing Christian or Jewish exegetes, are basically ignored to keep Fee and Stuart's own co-religionists in line. Yet this seems to indicate a fundamental insecurity in their faith that they do not even know what competing faiths believe. The authors do not seem to know what the Arian heresy entails -- it is not, as they claim on page 18, "denying Christ's deity" but rather a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity by denying the identity of God the Father and God the Son -- and could presumably not distinguish it from Docetism or Adoptionism. This suggests they are afraid of beliefs that are not their own -- whereas if they actually were confident of possessing a correct interpretation, they would not fear being exposed to alternate interpretations, even if potentially heretical.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fee, Gordon D. And Stuart, Douglas. How to Read the Bible for All Its….....

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