F. F. Bruce

Frederick Fyvie Bruce (12 October 1910 – 11 September 1990), usually cited as F. F. Bruce, was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester from 1959 until 1978 and one of the most influential evangelical scholars of the second half of the twentieth century. His importance comes from the fact that when the academic community looked down upon Evangelicals, Bruce demonstrated that a scholar holding evangelical views could do worthwhile academic work. At the same time, he persuaded Evangelicals that they should not turn their backs on academic methods of Bible study, even if the results might differ from traditional evangelical views. As a result, he has been called the "Dean of Evangelical Scholarship".

I. Howard Marshall remembered F. F. Bruce "first of all for his highly distinguished academic career as a university teacher and a prolific writer who did more than anybody else in this he 20thcentury to develop and encourage conservative evangelical scholarship. Possessed of outstanding intellectual ability, a phenomenal memory, encyclopedic knowledge, a colossal capacity for work, and a limpid style, he produced a remarkable output of books and essays that will continue to be read for years to come, and he trained directly or indirectly many younger scholars now working in all parts of the world."

"The issues which, for Bruce, were non-negotiable," said his biographer Tim Grass, "may be summarized as the reliability of the New Testament, the person and work of Christ, the Christian life as one of forgiveness and liberty as befits those who are being led by the Spirit, and the right and duty of every believer to use whatever gifts God has given them."

F. F. Bruce was charitable, gentle, and respected those with whom he disagreed and those who disagreed with him. He seemed to be genuinely humble, teachable, and diplomatic. J. I. Packer said, "No Christian was ever more free of narrow bigotry, prejudice and eccentricity in the views he held and the way he held them; no man did more to demonstrate how evangelical faith and total academic integrity may walk hand in hand."

Early life

F.F. Bruce was born in Elgin, Moray, Scotland, in 1910. His father, Peter Fyvie Bruce, was an itinerant evangelist for the Plymouth Brethren. He encouraged his son to think for himself and accept as a biblical doctrine only what he could see for himself in the Bible.

“Young Fred early gave evidence of exceptional intellectual ability, which was encouraged to the full by his family and schools.” He studied Latin and Greek at University of Aberdeen where he won a scholarship in the Classics and received an MA.

At Aberdeen, he also met Betty Davidson, who was from a Brethren family, and they married in 1936. They had two children. Iain married and became a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Canada. And while lecturing at a teacher training college in Uganda, Sheila married Christopher James Lukabyo. They fled Uganda during the time of Idi Amin and moved to Australia.

After Aberdeen, Bruce studied classics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He then went to University of Vienna (Austria) to study Indo-European philology with Paul Kretschmer and others.

Career

Although he intended to study for a Ph.D. at Vienna, F.F. Bruce took a post as an assistant lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh and then taught Greek at the University of Leeds. He never earned a doctorate, although he received several honorary doctorates. His increasing focus on biblical studies led in 1947 to his becoming the first head of a new Department of Biblical History and Literature at Sheffield University. In 1959 he was offered the Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at Manchester University, a position he held until his retirement in 1978.

About the time Bruce began at Sheffield, he was also “active in the formation and early development of an evangelical agency seeking to promote academic biblical study, Tyndale House at Cambridge and the associated Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical and Theological Research.” These were formed in association with Inter Varsity Fellowship (later UCCF, The Christian Unions) and Bruce had a life-long association with this student organization.

Writings

A prolific author, F.F. Bruce wrote nearly sixty books and booklets, hundreds of articles and more than 2,000 book reviews. Early in his career, he edited '' Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words'' and supervised its publication in one volume from the original four volumes. Later in his career, he was named general editor of the New International Commentary of the New Testament after the death of Ned Stonehouse

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