Holly Beers and Craig Keener: We love the Bible, and at heart we want to understand it well and help others understand it also. That’s how we see our scholarship – as a way to serve the church. We both have our specific areas of interest and specialty, including how Craig works with ancient Greek and Latin texts which help us better understand the New Testament, and Holly studies the way that the Old Testament is incorporated into the New Testament, but we both simply love to study and teach more generally. We are both very involved in our local churches: teaching, preaching, and offering our gifts in a variety of ways.

PneumaReview.com: If they asked, what would tell this leader about your experience with the contemporary ministry of the Holy Spirit?

Beers & Keener: Both of us are Pentecostal and desire to deeply know and be led by the Spirit. We regularly practice the gifts of the Spirit both individually and in (church) community. Craig especially has traveled extensively and observed and participated in the Spirit’s work around the world. Holly teaches at a college where most students come from non-charismatic/Pentecostal backgrounds, and she regularly exposes interested students to the Spirit’s contemporary work and trains them to engage in it.

PneumaReview.com: Where did the idea for the Word & Spirit Commentary on the New Testament series originate?

Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament Series from Baker Academic (as of July 2025)

Beers & Keener: We noticed that there have not been very many biblical resources authored by scholars from Pentecostal/charismatic traditions. When researching for projects or preparing for classes, we had difficulty finding those voices. The need for a series like this was even more apparent because of the documented growth of Spirit-filled movements around the world. In conversations with an editor at Baker Academic we suggested this series, and Baker was happy to support us as editors and publish it.

PneumaReview.com: How were the various contributors selected?

Beers & Keener: We wanted to be intentional about including scholars from across the global Pentecostal and charismatic spectrum, so we recruited accordingly. The range of voices includes denominational Pentecostals, Reformed charismatics, charismatic Methodists, and others. They also reflect a range of cultures, including Spirit-filled voices from multiple continents.

PneumaReview.com: In what ways is the importance of the Word emphasized in these commentaries?

Beers & Keener: They are, at their core, biblical commentaries; in that sense the Word is central. They explain the best of what biblical scholars know about the original context of the books as they work through the entirety of each. They also highlight the Spirit’s inspiration of the biblical texts.

PneumaReview.com: How is the work of the Holy Spirit highlighted in these volumes?

Beers & Keener: This series focuses on how the same Spirit who inspired the text speaks and works today. Our authors “preach” their way through the texts, emphasizing how we listen alongside the ancient audiences for the Spirit’s voice in our time and contexts.

PneumaReview.com: What is the most unique aspect of this commentary series?

Beers & Keener: The authors engage the biblical text in both its ancient setting and its message for Spirit-filled Christians today. The commentaries do not separate the exegetical and application sections, as readers in Spirit-filled traditions tend to integrate and move naturally between these categories. In other words, Spirit-filled readers traditionally blend the ancient and modern horizons so as to read themselves within the continuing narrative of salvation history—that is, as part of the ongoing biblical story (not culturally but theologically/spiritually/eschatologically). Particularly distinctive of this approach, then, will be observing how God works in the biblical texts and how Christians can expect God to be working today, even if in new and/or culturally surprising ways. The commentaries are written with distinctives of the tradition(s), including testimony, a conversational style (“preaching”), and sidebars that feature connections to Spirit-filled history and interest, such as healing, exorcism, spiritual gifts, etc.

PneumaReview.com: In your opinion, is the divide in the church regarding the Word and the Spirit declining?

Beers & Keener: Yes, we see a growing interest in and commitment to keeping the Word and Spirit together. We find this to be very encouraging, and are convinced that the Spirit’s own prompting is the main reason.

PneumaReview.com: What factors are contributing to this?

Beers & Keener: Beyond the Spirit’s own initiation, it seems due to our increased global awareness and connectedness. More and more Christians have contact and even relationships with Christians from different traditions in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and online. We hear about what the Spirit is doing around the world.

PneumaReview.com: Can you tell us about some of the forthcoming volumes and who is writing them?

Beers & Keener: This summer Craig’s co-authored volume with Robert P. Menzies on Acts will be published, and this fall Craig’s volume on 1-2 Peter and Jude will also be released. In the next couple of years you will see commentaries on 1-3 John by Jamal-Dominique Hopkins, 1-2 Timothy and Titus by Amy Anderson and Gordon Fee (revising Fee’s earlier contribution), Matthew by David Instone-Brewer, and Galatians by Roji George.

PneumaReview.com: What do you hope the lasting legacy of this commentary series will be?

Beers & Keener: Although the series naturally welcomes all readers, we especially hope to serve those who identify as Spirit-filled (broadly defined) leaders: pastors, seminarians, theology and ministry students, youth leaders, and Bible study leaders. We pray that the series testifies to the creative work and restorative goodness of the triune God.

PneumaReview.com: When will the series be complete?

Beers & Keener: The goal is 2030; at this point the date appears realistic, as authors are very excited about and committed to the series.

Craig S. Keener (PhD, Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is author of thirty-seven books, with some 1.4 million copies in circulation. The books have won fifteen national or international awards, including six in Christianity Today; together the books take up 19,000 pages. He has also authored roughly one hundred academic articles; seven booklets; and roughly two hundred popular-level articles. In 2020 Craig was president of the Evangelical Theological Society. He is ordained with the Assemblies of God. His YouTube channel is: www.youtube.com/c/CraigKeenerPhD; his blog site is www.craigkeener.com/.

Learn more about this series and series co-editor, Holly Beers:

“The Relatable Zeal of Puritan Women: They were extremely into religion without being extreme” Christianity Today (January 3, 2023).

Catherine Parks interviews Pneuma Review author Jenny-Lyn de Klerk about Puritan spirituality.

Max Lucado, “Help, Wisdom & Strength for You Right Now” Charisma (Jan-Feb 2023).

In this excerpt from Help Is Here: Finding Fresh Strength and Purpose in the Power of the Holy Spirit (Thomas Nelson, 2022), Max Lucado describes his early struggles with burnout and how to move past four common misunderstanding about the gifts of the Spirit and keep growing.

From the archives: Tim Stafford, “The Pentecostal Gold Standard: After 50 years in ministry, Jack Hayford continues to confound stereotypes—all to the good” Christianity Today (July 2005).

John Lathrop suggested this significant article, the cover story from Christianity Today’s July 2005 issue, as another way of marking the passing of Jack Hayford.

Kyle Duncan, “Just Call Me Jack: Pastor Hayford’s heart, humility & authenticity allowed the Holy Spirit to shine through” Charisma (February 20, 2023).

Wolfgang Vondey, “Pentecostal Theology” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (January 25, 2023).

Thanks to Rick Wadholm Jr for this recommendation by PneumaReview.com author Wolfgang Vondey. This entry includes recommended further reading and works cited.

Image: Jeremy Thomas

Craig Keener, “Opinion: What is Revival—and is it Happening at Asbury?” Roys Report (February 16, 2023).

John K. Jenkins Sr., “The Apostle Paul’s Secret to Preaching” Outreach (March 14, 2023).

“This article is adapted from a talk John K. Jenkins Sr., pastor of First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Maryland, gave at the 2022 Amplify Outreach Conference.”

David Livermore, “Leadership Advice You Should Ignore” DavidLivermore.com (March 16, 2023).

Global pioneer in Cultural Intelligence, PneumaReview.com author David Livermore writes to business leaders, emphasizing principles that also speak to the world our parishioners live in: “So much advice to leaders and entrepreneurs is ill suited to leading in a digital, diverse world. It often includes kernels of truth; but if we’re committed to being an effective global leader, we need to rethink a lot of what passes as essential leadership advice …”

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis, “Company that Trademarked ‘Worship Leader’ Makes Others Drop the Term” Christianity Today (March 20, 2023).

Subtitle of the article reads: “Popular meme accounts lose social media pages after being reported by Authentic Media, which says it coined the phrase.”

Stanford E. Linzey, Jr., “Is Speaking in Tongues Just Gibberish?” CharismaNews.com (March 25, 2023).

Does speaking in tongues seem foolish? The late Stanford Linzey wrote: “So when speaking in tongues, if it sounds foolish, silly or like gibberish, and one does not think it is a language, he should remember this: There is nothing one can utter that does not have meaning as far as God is concerned.”

PR

Gordon Donald Fee (May 23, 1934—October 25, 2022) arguably stands as one of the most widely known and influential Pentecostal scholars of the late twentieth to early twenty-first centuries. His works range broadly on topics of hermeneutics, translation, textual criticism, New Testament, Pauline studies, and theology (among other topics) and have been translated into numerous languages worldwide. Sadly, I only once was able to meet him in person for an all too brief conversation, though some of my family moved to Canada in the nineties specifically to study with Fee while he taught at Regent College in Vancouver, BC.  The following are my own personal reflections on the writings of Fee that impacted my own life and calling and are neither comprehensive of his many writings nor intended as reflective of others’ experiences of his life and ministry upon themselves, but only an offering of one student of Scripture desiring to honor the legacy of another student of Scripture.

It was, in significant measure, owing to Gordon Fee maintaining ministerial credentials with the Assemblies of God, USA (AG) that I also received and maintain credentials with the same Pentecostal fellowship. He served as a constant reminder that the AG might be a broad tent among Classical Pentecostals to allow one (such as himself) to hold credentials even though Fee publicly diverged in writing on such issues as “initial physical evidence of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit” and the traditionally held Dispensationalist eschatology of the AG. It has not always been the case that Pentecostal scholars (in the AG or elsewhere) have been able to maintain such tensions. I thanked him in person for this testimony at a celebration of his life held by the Society for Pentecostal Studies at the joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA, in November, 2014 (see below for video links to the archives on YouTube of this event).

However, Fee did not always enjoy wide embrace by AG leadership. His views (some of those, for example, published in Agora: A Magazine of Opinion within the Assemblies of God) found him removed from the faculty of Southern California College (now Vanguard University), but he was never defrocked. This removal may precisely have been the opening needed for Fee among the wider Church in relocating to Gordon-Conwell. He was regularly challenged by AG leadership yet remained staunchly committed to the life of the Spirit and its proclamation in the church and academy globally. It was this commitment which encouraged me as a young pastor and emerging Pentecostal scholar to remain within the AG despite pressures against scholarship which seem to present themselves to those committed to the life of the church as part of the academy. Fee was a stalwart and potent example that one could indeed do this.

Further, Fee contributed greatly to my sense of commitment to the study of ancient manuscripts and to not fear such historical critical inquiries—inquiries which had seemed to be something to fear in many of the contexts I had found myself growing up and in my early education. This was furthered when, in my first few years as a twenty-something year-old pastor, I read two volumes Fee co-edited with Eldon Jay Epp, New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Exegesis: Essays in Honour of Bruce Metzger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) and Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993). These two volumes suddenly opened to me the world of NTTC (and more broadly the work of textual criticism) that created an insatiable appetite to study more within the field. I found myself suddenly consuming the works on NTTC of Kurt and Barbara Aland, Bart Ehrman, Bruce Metzger, Daniel Wallace, and others on the OT, most particularly the many articles and publications of Emanuel Tov. I was preaching anywhere from 3-8 times a week and during my “free” moments reading every bit of these works I could find thanks to Fee’s inspiration. While I do not work professionally in TC I do teach on TC and have led many churches and classes on the topic as a way of addressing questions of faith and serious commitment to study of Scripture and faith. It has also meant that I have made several trips over the years to visit ancient biblical manuscripts in libraries and traveling museum collections as part of my love of the history of manuscripts and the preservation of Scripture.

As the young pastor tasked to preach for youth and adults many times a week I turned regularly to commentaries as learned companions to help in our congregation’s meditation of Scripture. Here I also discovered the help of Gordon Fee. The two commentaries which most impacted me were his commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles and 1 Corinthians: 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (New International Biblical Commentary 13; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988) and The First Epistle to the Corinthians (New International Commentary of the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987; Revised Edition: 2014). In the first of these, I found help for wrestling with the texts of Paul to two young pastors (and I needed that). I also found help in how to reconsider the words of Paul with regard to what seemed a silencing of women (something which seemed in my thinking to be out of sync with Paul’s ministry in the book of Acts). The egalitarian approach of Fee provided scholarship for my own pastoral concerns about the female members of Christ’s body and how they are also called and empowered by the same Spirit as co-equal workers and preachers of the good news of Jesus.  In my reading of Fee’s (first edition) commentary on 1 Corinthians, two things (among many others) still remain firmly in my mind: (1) Fee’s proposal that the instructions regarding the silencing of women in 14:24-25 was perhaps an interpolation into the manuscript tradition based on some other locations for this text in the manuscript tradition (pp.705-708), and (2) that the body of the resurrection was not going to be “spirit” (as in disembodied), but Spirit-ed as transforming the body to be alive by the Spirit to the utmost.

The first of these issues was not something I found support for among other scholars and frankly questioned myself whether Fee might be overclaiming. Yet, some scholars have since found further support for precisely this sort of claim and I have come to be persuaded of Fee’s early claim (though this view still seems a minority interpretation of the data). The most notable recent potential support of Fee’s claim was an article by Philip B. Payne, “Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Corinthians 14.34-5,” New Testament Studies 63.4 (2017): 604-625. On the second issue, the revolution in my own pastoral thinking and preaching shifted from a very spiritualizing notion of life after death to a very Spirit-ed notion of embodiment made right in Jesus at the resurrection (this happened long before I read N.T. Wright’s very helpful, Surprised by Hope). I found myself turned from ideas which owed more to Gnostic-like distinctions between “spirit” and “body” and to the Lord’s intentional redemption of all creation as very good. One thing that struck me in one of the recently published stories about Fee concerned him telling a class to not believe he had died when they hear about his death, but that he “is singing with his Lord and his king” [Editor’s note: This was also published in Regent College’s “Remembering Dr. Gordon D. Fee”]. This seemed both in line with Fee’s work on 1 Corinthians, that we live because he lives and we do not simply go to non-existence, but also disjunctive with Fee regarding the hope that has consistently been the confession of the church (and which Fee goes to great lengths to contend precisely for): we believe in … the resurrection of the dead. This is a hope not in our spirits dis-embodied living in a heavenly sphere after death, but in the resurrection of bodies that are Spirit-enlivened in every way at the return of the Lord Jesus to consummate God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Gordon Fee’s name was such a household word among the Pentecostal pastors I found myself regularly engaging while pastoring and continuing graduate studies that we would regularly discuss his work with one particular highlight and turned-to-reference: God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994, 2012). It was this massive collection of exegesis of the Greek text of Paul’s writings followed by theological essays intended to articulate a Pauline theology of the Spirit that was part of the very inspiration for my own later PhD work (since published as) A Theology of the Spirit in the Former Prophets: A Pentecostal Perspective (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2018). Fee’s attention to the nuances of the Greek text (grammar, discourse, TC, etc) and attempts at a cumulative theology of such drove me to consider how this magnum opus among his writings might be applied to other corpora of the Scriptures.

During my later graduate work, I read Fee’s newly published Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007) and found a potent articulation of early exaltation of Jesus in light of the OT revelation of Yahweh and Jesus’ unique revelation of the God of Israel (spurring my readings Larry Hurtado and James Dunn). This proto-trinitarian argument was an aid in considering the ways theology continued to develop not just into the NT, but into the earliest church who would only later give voice to a trinitarian confession and would do so as acts of worship. It served me well to seek to hear the texts of Scripture in their own contexts even as the Church was inheritors and proclaimers of that word seeking always to hear better what had once and for all been delivered. I was grateful to see that a more accessible form of this publication has become available for a wider readership in Jesus the Lord according to Paul the Apostle: A Concise Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018).

While I have found many of Fee’s publications to be great aids to myself (even if only in spurring on further studies that move well beyond his own contributions), I would be remiss to not mention a particular aspect of Fee’s work with which I have found myself opposed. One of his most well-known writings (which has also spurred on numerous spin-off publications), How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth coedited with Douglas Stuart (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, originally published in 1981; Fourth Edition, 2014) finds its mention here at the end of my reflections, not because I encountered it after all of these other writings (it was his first book I read while in college), but because of my own critique of it. It also is not because it essentially espouses what some Pentecostal scholars might consider simply another Evangelical hermeneutic (which is reductionistic of Evangelical hermeneutics as if it is monolithic). When I first read this volume, I found one of the most helpful and accessible proposals for a Biblical hermeneutic that I had read to that point (his part being specific to the NT texts). It was only later while in graduate school and pastoring that I found myself pushing against his claims in one very specific area: historical narrative. Fee argued in this book, and at greater length in his Gospel and Spirit: Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), that historical narratives (with Acts as the aim) were insufficient as Scripture toward developing theological claims because of lack of perceived authorial intent. This was a challenge to the Classic Pentecostal reading of Luke-Acts as setting a precedence and expectation of tongues bearing public evidence of this experience Pentecostal’s labeled “Spirit Baptism”. To be fair, my own rejection of Fee’s argument was not because of the Classical Pentecostal theological claims (which in my own estimation bear too many marks of a modernist epistemological impulse as influencing such), but because the Scriptures, OT and NT, are intended toward theological confession and worship as we find ourselves taken up into these words in adoration and conformity to the Word made flesh and now exalted at the right hand of God. My own contention is that theological intent is true not only of didactic texts (like Paul’s) but of narrative texts (like Luke-Acts, or the Joshua-Judges-Samuel-Kings as my own work contends). Roger Stronstad (who also passed away this year) was one of the most outspoken critics of Fee early on regarding Fee’s proposal (and their engagements at the Society of Pentecostal Studies remain the stuff of legend). It was the works of Stronstad which (for me) articulated the beginnings of a far more theologically defensible hermeneutic of narrative texts though I have traveled in yet other directions, see Stronstad’s, The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke: Trajectories from the Old Testament to Luke-Acts (2^nd edition; Baker Academic, 2012), The Prophethood of All Believers: A Study in Luke’s Charismatic Theology (Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010), and Spirit, Scripture and Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective (2^nd edition; APT Press, 2019).

This critique notwithstanding, I am forever in the debt of Gordon Fee. He has inspired me to love the Scriptures as faithful witnesses to God’s self-revelation in Jesus. He has inspired me to seek to lovingly and faithfully follow God’s self-revelation even when it pushes against the norms of one’s theological and ecclesiological tradition. He has inspired me to be a faithful preacher and teacher, to pass on to others what I have received and to do so with words audible and written until all know and proclaim with the Spirit that Jesus is Lord.

Video Archives of SPS Honoring of Gordon Fee at AAR-SBL 2014

Blaine Charette, Mark Fee, Russell Spittler, and Murray Dempster (Blaine Charette chaired the special session)

Sven Soderlund

Andrew Lincoln (shared by John Christopher Thomas)

Rick Watts

Marianne Meye Thompson

Ron Herms

Gordon Fee’s Response

Other Tributes to Gordon Fee

“Honoring Pentecostal Theologian Gordon Fee” by Rick Wadholm Jr

“Craig Keener on Gordon Fee, Giant of Pentecostal Scholarship”

“Michael Brown on Gordon Fee, Pioneer and Scholarly Role Model”

Gordon D. Fee, PhD (University of Southern California) was Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

Gordon D. Fee went home to be with the Lord on October 25, 2022.

As a Pentecostal scholar, Gordon Fee was both a pioneer and a role model, showing us that you could be academic and Spirit-filled at the same time. Not only so, but as the general editor of the prestigious New International Commentary on the New Testament, as well as author of the highly-acclaimed commentary on 1 Corinthians, he established a new benchmark for Pentecostals in the larger world of scholarship. Added to this was his brilliant writing on the Spirit’s presence and work, and his accomplishments were huge.

We know that the early Pentecostals were not only known for being non-scholarly. They were often anti-scholarly, and in the church where I came to faith in 1971, I sometimes heard the joke, “Seminary, cemetery.” And this was often true! For me, then, going to college and then grad school, there was a sense of having to choose either the things of the Spirit or solid academics, and I had to go through my own journey before soundly and simultaneously embracing both. But knowing that a man like Dr. Fee existed was of great encouragement to me. Although I never met him, he impacted me through his example and work.

Part of his legacy is that there are so many Pentecostal and charismatic biblical scholars and theologians today. May we continue to see the joining of the Word and the Spirit in our day.

Michael L. Brown, Ph.D.

See also: “Honoring Pentecostal Theologian Gordon Fee” by Rick Wadholm Jr.

Gordon D. Fee, PhD (University of Southern California) was Professor Emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.

Gordon D. Fee went home to be with the Lord on October 25, 2022.

I learned of Gordon Fee’s passing yesterday [October 26] from his gracious and kind daughter, Cherith.

Gordon and his family always treated me so graciously. Gordon kind of took me under his wing and looked out for me. Also, by his being a giant in Pentecostal scholarship and a scholar that was respected outside Pentecostalism, he did so much for the movement and for the generation of scholars I’m a part of. We build on his shoulders.

See also: “Honoring Pentecostal Theologian Gordon Fee” by Rick Wadholm Jr.

Ronald W. Pierce, Rebecca Merrill Groothuis, gen. eds., Gordon D. Fee, contributing editor, Discovering Biblical Equality: Complimentarity Without Hierarchy (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2005), 528 pages, ISBN 9780830828340.

Ronald W. Pierce (Biola) and Rebecca Merrill Groothuis have edited a carefully constructed volume that aims to inform and persuade while remaining calm in the midst of discussion. The editors have done a good job making sure the authors speak with one voice; the chapters cross-reference each other, do not overlap, or contradicted another.

The 29 essays are divided into 5 sections starting with a historical review on women in ministry. Section 2 is a review of key Biblical texts from Genesis to 1 Peter. Section 3 focuses on the logical and theological perspective. An excellent response to complementarians is put forward here. Section 4 looks like the hermeneutical and cultural perspectives. Roger Nicole and Gordon Fee explain the basics of evangelical hermeneutics. Section 5 is aimed at practical application and is the weakest section with some chapters a bit polemical. Overall, it is a good survey of the topic but more reliable on the evangelical egalitarian position than the patriarchal side. A reader seeking to see that side must consult another book.

Reviewed by Patricia Riley.