I posted some observations not long ago about a recent biography of F. F. Bruce. Since I was not totally satisfied with that treatment, I decided to re-read Bruce’s older, autobiographical memoirs. It has a lot more personal warmth than the biography.
F. F. Bruce, In Retrospect: Remembrance of Things Past (Scotland: Pickering and Inglis/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).
For any who do not happen to know of Bruce, he is best known as the Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester from 1959 until his retirement in 1978; he had previously taught at the Universities of Edinburgh, Leeds, and Sheffield. He died in 1990, a month shy of his 80th birthday. The Rylands Chair had previously been held by A. S. Peake, C. H. Dodd, F. C. Burkitt, and T. W. Manson—a distinguished line of NT scholars!
The following are some sample clips which I marked as I’ve read through the book over the past few weeks, usually dipping in for a chapter or two before or after supper, etc. There is no particular theme here, just odds and ends that I found of interest. Perhaps they will be to you as well. And perhaps they won’t! 
After recounting some of the preaching and teaching that was common when he grew up in NE Scotland Bruce comments that “If I learned anything in those days, I learned not to inflict Greek on Greekless audiences!” (25). [Good advice for young preachers these days as well---and for some older ones! RD]
With reference to a well-known Bible teacher of his day, Bruce observes that he “was much better at exposing the fallacies of others than at avoiding fallacies of his own, more particularly in the area of prophetic interpretation” (33).
“I have never been in the position of believing what I do simply because I have never been exposed to any other form of belief!” (58).
“There is no conflict between my critical or exegetical activity in a university context and my Bible exposition in church; the former makes a substantial contribution to the latter. At the same time, membership in a local church, involvement in the activities of a worshipping community, helps the academic theologian to remember what his subject is all about, and keeps his studies properly ‘earthed’. One constantly hears complains nowadays, among Catholics and Protestants alike, of the widening gap between scholars’ understanding of Scripture and the use made of it by ‘ordinary’ Christians. The gap would not be so wide, I am sure, if more scholars were to involve themselves in the day-to day life of a local church and communicate the fruits of their scholarship to their fellow church members in a form which the latter could assimilate. I have know some distinguished scholars who did this, to their own enrichment as well as the enrichment of the others (144).
“The Christian acceptance of the Bible as God’s Word written does not in the least inhibit the unfettered study of its contents and setting; on the contrary, it acts as an incentive to their most detailed and comprehensive investigation” (144).
“When once some people begin to write, they find it difficult to stop: this condition is technically called cacoethes scribendi—in plain English, ‘scribbler’s itch’.
“…Scribbler’s itch normally does not begin at the start of the process; one must have begun to scribble before the itch comes on” (177).
“I have met students who claimed to ‘know Greek’ on the basis of their acquaintance with the Greek New Testament; even if that latter acquaintance were exhaustive, it would no more amount to a knowledge of Greek than acquaintance with the English New Testament would amount to a knowledge of English. There is a story told of A. S. Peake writing a Greek word on the blackboard of his Manchester classroom, and one of his students saying, ‘You needn’t write it down, Doctor; we know Greek.’ To which he replied, ‘I wish I did.’ To know a language, even an ancient language, involves having such a feel for its usage that one can tell, almost as by instinct, whether a construction is permissible or not, or whether a translation is possible or not” (293). [That is a high standard for knowing Greek, one that I will likely never attain; I shall have to settle for knowing a little bit about Greek. RD]
“When I try to review as objectively as possible the movement of my mind over the years, one thing that impresses me is the increasing clarity with which I see as fundamental to my thought and life the justifying grace of God, brought near to mankind in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ and offered for acceptance by faith” (309).
“Many of my positions are indeed conservative; but I hold them not because they are conservative—still less because I myself am conservative—but because I believe they are the positions to which the evidence leads” (309).
“I should not find the career of a Bible teacher* so satisfying as I do if I were not persuaded that the Bible is God’s word written. The fact that I am so persuaded means that I must not come to the Bible with my own preconceptions of what the Bible, as God’s word written, can or cannot say. It is important to determine by the canons of grammatical, textual, historical and literary study, what it actually does say” (311). [*A humble way of referring to the Rylands Chair! RD]
“It is by the patient study of the text that I come to understand better not only what the text itself means but also what is involved in biblical inspiration. My doctrine of Scripture is based on my study of Scripture, not vice versa (311).
