Also, a correction to #6 above: Bruce met with the founders of Regent College but was not offered the principalship. Rather Ward Gasque (see above) suggested James Houston’s name who ended up being the first principal.

Thanks.

Interesting to read that you don’t think Bruce was an evangelical. I will weigh that opinion as I read more about Bruce in the future. There is not a biography in existence about FF Bruce that I know of but I guess there should be! I didn’t know Bruce personally as Ward did - having done his dissertation under him and dined regularly in his home with him - but I am happy to tell you why I have always assumed Bruce was a British “evangelical.”

I will have to check out his references to the resurrection (2 Cor 5) to see if his views are orthodox. I would be highly surprised if they were not. He has written many many books - perhaps more than any other writer about the reliability of the gospels - so I would be very surprised if he was somehow disturbed in his faith by the “discrepancies” in the gospel accounts of the resurrection. I think his comment about “seeing through a glass darkly” is a “trusting-in-God” statement that says we cannot figure out every Scriptural question definitively this side of heaven, though Bruce helped us in understanding so many of them. (Cf. Hard Sayings of Jesus).

I tend to think of people like Reinhold Niebuhr and Emil Bruner as neo-orthodox - not Bruce. Alister McGrath doesn’t even want to use the term to describe Karl Barth: “I sometimes wonder if there is some confusion among some North American evangelicals between Barth and Brunner, both of whom are very often lumped together in a rather unhelpful way as ‘neo-orthodox.’” George Hunsinger agrees: “The term neo-orthodox is one of the most useless terms in the theological lexicon. It lumps together all sorts of disparate views.” See “Alister McGrath, author of A Passion for Truth“.

Here are my reasons for thinking Bruce is an evangelical:
1. His apologetic works The New Testament Works: Are They Reliable? and The Hard Sayings of Jesus are regularly referred to by Nicky Gumbel and the Alpha Course, the leading evangelism program in the UK, and possibly the world, at the moment.
2. His commentaries are standard works upon which all evangelical commentators draw. No evangelical commentary is written without looking at what Bruce had to say.
3. He edited the New International Commentary on the New Testament commentary series for many years before passing that responsibility to Gordon Fee - another evangelical.
4. Attending a Brethren church indicates you are probably an evangelical.
5. Bruce was offered to become the editor of Christianity Today (the flagship evangelical publication) but turned it down. But he was a regular contributor.
6. Bruce was offered to become the first principal of Regent College but turned it down and recommended James Houston who accepted the position.
7. From my understanding, inerrancy is not a word that is commonly used among evangelicals in Britain or anywhere else outside the U.S. It is my understanding that British evangelicals do not emphasize the word “inerrant” but rather use the words authoritative or infallible. Alister McGrath calls F. F. Bruce, John Stott, I. H. Marshall, and N. T. Wright “European evangelical scholars.” He writes, “One of the things that we notice about North American evangelicalism from our European perspective is that it’s been very heavily influenced by a series of extrabiblical presuppositions.” See the link above.
8. The back of Bruce’s book New Testament History has this endorsement: “The best available treatment by an evangelical.–Christianity Today.”
9. In the 1959 work, Revelation and the Bible: Contemporary Evangelical Thought, Bruce contributed to the volume that disagreed with both liberal and neo-orthodox views of inspiration.

Thanks again to anyone reading this. It is delightful to discuss with you the important topic of Biblical understandings of women in the context of such an interesting scholar as F.F. Bruce. Grace and peace.