When I lived in Nashville, I had a pastor named Jerry that had a profound impact on my life. As is often the case, I realized this more after I left Nashville than while I was there. I have enough little nuggets I’ve picked up from him that I’ve created a category for them, and I’ll going to catalog them. One of the nuggets was when he said to me…

“We don’t read books. We read authors.”

I got it then, but I’ve grown to appreciate that statement even more over the years. I find that more and more, I fill my reading list based on the author I want to read more than merely the subject that I want to learn about.

When we read a book well, we are are interacting with the ideas of the author. If your schedule is anything like mine, your time allocated to reading is extremely precious. We don’t have time to squander on unprofitable reading. So, we want to choose our authors well.

All of that is just a preamble to my more specific point. Our current book is a rare example where the book came so highly recommended to me that I paid no attention to the fact that I had never heard of either author (other than as the authors of this popular work).  

I’ve gotten several questions about the authors of the text for our How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth class. These are good questions because theological bias can be a huge factor in hermeneutics. Are they liberal or conservative? covenant or dispensational? American League or National League?

Gordon Fee (who writes all but three chapters of the book) is Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. According to Wikipedia…

Dr. Fee is an ordained minister of the Assemblies of God (AG) and unabashedly identifies himself as Pentecostal, even though he has written articles disagreeing with a few of the AG’s fundamental Pentecostalism-specific doctrines. Fee is a strong opponent of the “prosperity gospel” (see his little tract entitled “The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel” –Regent College Publishing (January 1, 1985)–1573830666).

Dr. Fee is generally considered theologically conservative, but he is on the Board of Reference of Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), a group that advocates that we should not distinguish between the roles of women and men within the Church. He wrote this article that is posted on the CBE Web site.

Douglas Stuart is professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. He is a pastor at First Church Congregational in Boxford, Massachusetts. There are no doctrinal positions specified on their Web site.

I can find nothing that leads me to believe that either author is strongly committed to either a Covenant Theology or Dispensational Theology viewpoint.

It is interesting to note that both men have served on NIV and/or TNIV translation committees. So, it is not surprising that they feel that the NIV/TNIV is the best all-around translation going. Throw in the fact that our book is published by Zondervan (the publishers of the NIV/TNIV), and it’s hard to imagine that we’d see anything different.

That’s admittedly sketchy. If anyone out there can give us a little more on either of our authors, please post a comment.