Recently I heard that Gordon Fee had passed away. I saw Christians praising his theological work, so I thought it would be good to lay down a counter to this, and show the grave errors of Fee’s work.

One of the greatest compromisers who brought the enemy into the midst of the camp has been Gordon Fee. Gordon Fee, a Pentecostal theologian, has most famously written about “How to read the Bible for all its worth”. His other less known but equally misguided book is “How to choose a translation for all its worth”.

Besides various commentaries, Gordon Fee codified the entire unbelieving approach of modernist-influenced Evangelical-Pentecostal interpretation in his 1983 book “New Testament Exegesis”.

In reading the Bible, it needs to be interpreted. Fee’s approach is first to practice exegesis, which is to say, what did the transmitter intend to communicate. His second step is to practice the application and apply the relevance to the receiver. This would in some ways be acceptable. In Fee’s teachings, all of this comes under the broad unbelieving approach as tainted by modernist thinking called “hermeneutics”, which is to say, the field of study of modernist-influenced interpretation.

Let’s state two facts about the writing of Scripture, first that it is from God, and second that it was written by people at certain places at certain times. However, we cannot take a modernist-influenced view, which leans heavily towards natural elements and the human aspect, when in fact all things that exist in the natural are under the divine order of God. Pure modernism is purely naturalistic, which is not, of course, as far as Fee (and much of modern evangelical-Pentecostalism) has slidden.

Fee’s view, like much of modernist-influenced “orthodox evangelicalism”, exists between true belief and unbelief or Infidelity. As if to fulfil the very warning to the Laodicean Church, much of such theology exists in a middling, lukewarm place, that is neither cold nor hot. In this place we find people who do believe in Christ, who are probably saved, yet who have slipped not only in individual doctrines (whether it be on creation, Bible version and translation accuracy, Bible prophecy understanding, etc.) but more importantly on the very overarching approach and understanding of theology, Christian “philosophy”, the full counsel of God, universal learning, pansophy and attaining of wise counsel itself.

When you begin from “we cannot know the full truth because we are sinful, fallible, limited beings” type foundation, you are already defying myriads of scriptures and the work of the Holy Ghost Himself!

So then, Gordon Fee had a view about how to understand Scripture laced with the unbelieving leaven of naturalistic, human-based Enlightenment philosophy. And further, he taught his method, even as he had learned it from a variety of more advanced unbelieving masters (including the notorious Karl Barth).

In fact, Fee was just the latest espouser of unbelief drawn from a long line of compromisers with the German Rationalistic Unbelief (i.e. theological influenza).

To take a brief excursus, the modernistic error, known as “Biblical hermeneutics”, arose in the late 18^th century, with the text-based Grammatical School of J. A. Ernesti, and the Historical School of J. S. Semler.

These German schools of thought deviated from proper interpretation in two ways. The Grammatical placed emphasis upon words in a robotic fashion (and ultimately in the original languages, therefore not in the received vernacular that Protestants had so long strived to provide), while the Historical practised historical revisionism by trying to read the Scripture in light of its contemporary audience (as Noah Webster himself indicated that since the early writers were ignorant of geography, then geographical statements were indicative of their ignorance, and scripture certainly not to be taken as ultimate truth).

These were men who were thoroughly infected with Deism and French Infidelity!

The rationalist German theologian Karl A. G. Keil followed Ernesti, and sought to read the Bible like any other book, but in the light of the Higher Critical ideas of Semler. This led to a mediation of both schools of thought to form the Historical-Grammatical School.

Schleiermacher, a theologian at the beginning of the 19^th century, tried to accommodate the rationalist view while rejecting its excesses. In 1834, the two schools were drawn together in a new, eclectic position under the guidance of Schleiermacher (the father of Modern Liberal Theology).

The Swiss theologian Cellerier attempted to formalise the Grammatico-Historical School (1852), though his work was so tainted by the unbelief of German Criticism that Fairbairn criticised it, but the influence filtered through. And so the virus spread: Fairbairn (1859), Doedes (1862), Immer (1877), after which came Farrar (1886), Terry (1890), Tenney (1957), Mickelsen (1963), Ramm (1967), Berkhof (1969), Kaiser (1981), Fee (1983), Carson (1984), Moo (1986), Osborne (1991), Tate (1991), Zuck (1991), Klein (1993), Silva (1994), etc.

Sitting down the line in this unillustrious company was none other than Gordon Fee, who had learned somewhat poorly from his masters, for Fee wrongly called the application of Scripture “hermeneutics”, which in fact was the term to be used for the entire science and art of interpretation of Scripture.

Therefore, we are left with two positions, either the believing interpretation of Scripture or the art and science of hermeneutics. Essentially hermeneutics is in contradiction to believing interpretation.

Now in brief, because of the unbelief and assumptions of Infidelity, Fee and many other Christians were adamant that there was no exact text or textual reconstruction of Scripture, likewise that there was no precise translation of Scripture. There was not, in their view, one final English Bible, nor could there be.

Modernism says you can choose your translation, which slips too often to post-modernism which is, I will make the scripture say what I wish it to say (and I will chose a translation accordingly). Once on the slippery slope, people like Fee had no everlasting arms upon which to rely in order to stop the full slide into humanistic atheism.

So when these people say that the culture of Bible times differs to our own, we may easily counter: the Holy Ghost was communicating truth to us when the Scripture was written. The Bible was written for us, not merely for the contemporary audience. The Holy Ghost is able to communicate to us today, and the Scripture has been designed as such. In fact, in whatever was written, the Holy Ghost had us, future believers, in mind! (That’s what Paul said.)

This comes to a greater view, that Scripture not only was prewritten by God in Heaven before it was ever inspired on Earth, which itself counters all the unbelieving interpretation-clouding imposed by modernistic hermeneuticists, but in fact, Scripture existed in the mind of God before, beyond and outside of all creation.

That’s why I believe in the manifestation in history of a perfect 66 book Bible version, translation and edition. I believe that this answers inside of creation to the concept of the perfect God having the full knowledge of the perfect Scripture outside of these temporal bounds.

When Jesus said “Ye shall know the truth” (John 8:32), He really meant it. He actually meant it in two ways. First that we should know or have the perfect Scripture ultimately before the end of creation come about. And second, that the Holy Ghost speaks to each person to have them be the best dispenser of the love of God they can be, as manifested in the grown up Church (see the Book of Ephesians throughout).

There is no limit on advancing to perfectibility, because the enemies of Christ are through time being made His footstool (see Psalm 110). Therefore, there are two works of God through history. One is the work of His perfect word and it being made known to the nations. This is what the Historicist interpretation of the first half of Revelation is all about. The other is that His work is in perfecting the saints, the perfectly functioning Church, which is seen in the victory of the saints in the second half of the Book of Revelation.

Gordon Fee did not believe in the perfect text, perfect translation or perfect interpretation. He was of a whole panoply which is intrinsically against ultimate perfection.

I believe a mighty and spiritual hail is coming to destroy all such unbelief, Infidelity and Left-wing ideology.

I believe in the day of visitation and the latter days glory of the saints.

A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:

To understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

(Proverbs 1:5, 6).

Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge,

That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?

(Proverbs 22:20, 21).

Is there a separation of church and state? Those who advocate for Christians getting involved in politics means they don’t believe in a separation. Yet, strangely, some such lobbyists and organisers say they do believe in the separation of church and state.

Political organiser Dave Pellowe claims that the separation “is only rightly understood as a synonym for religious liberty, not Christian political suppression.” What he is doing is using the wrong terminology, “the separation” to describe the free marketplace, free concourse and neutrality view of the Australian Constitution.

The Australian Constitution is open to religion, religion in politics, politics in religion, just not to making specific laws about establishing a religion, imposing religion, prohibiting religion or religious tests. All of that does not prohibit or disallow religion, nor does it stop any steps to endorse and support a religion, as long as it does not strictly violate Section 116, The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

It is disturbing that in his quest to promote religion in politics, Dave Pellowe turns to the most unlikely source, the social agitator and dubious activist, Martin Luther King Jnr, who could hardly be a good representative for the Christian Right.

Pellowe agrees with King, quoting him favourably, “The Church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the State, but rather the conscience of the State. It must be the guide and the critic of the State, and never its tool.”

In the USA there is a strong doctrinal and philosophical doctrine against the dominion of any specific brand of Christianity in the political system. The fact that the Church is demoted from being an authority or having mastery is to pander to the French Infidel approach. That’s the view of the Left too.

Why would Australian Christian lobbyists/activists who are pushing ostensibly for a Right-leaning view draw upon or allow the poison of a Left-leaning ideology?

We must take a much stronger view. One where a more authoritarian Christianity thrives under the liberty of the state. We need to turn back to our direct roots, rather than to the USA, as a starting point.

In Bobrick’s book on the Cromwellian era Puritans, Wide as the Waters Be, he wrote that, “the Church had been looked upon primarily as an instrument for securing, by moral and religious influences, the social and political ends of the State. Under the Commonwealth, the State, in its turn, was regarded primarily as an instrument for securing through its social and political influences the moral and religious ends of the Church. The aim of the Puritan had been to set up a visible kingdom of God upon earth. In the Puritan theory, Englishmen were ‘the Lord’s people’; a people dedicated to Him by a solemn Covenant, and whose end as a nation was to carry out His will. For such an end it was needful that rulers as well as people should be ‘godly men’. Godliness became necessarily the chief qualification for public employment.”

In the Elizabethan, Stuart, Jacobite and British Empire view, the Church was a partner with the state. As with the Eastern Roman Empire, the Church and the Empire were inextricably linked.

In the Puritan view, it was the common faith, which was partner with the state. The common faith manifested as a particular brand of Christianity with tolerance or openness toward a wider practice of various Protestant beliefs.

In the Australian Constitution the Protestant toleration view has moved far to total religious toleration. That no doubt could include Wiccans, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and so forth.

If a particular brand of Christianity is truly right and truly empowered of God, then it will prevail. That’s what the Australian Constitution allows. It allows that every member of society and government can all be part of the same religion. As long as no laws are being made specifically to enforce or bar, it could be so.

In order to defeat Infidelity’s leavening of society (and the Left’s long march through the institutions), then Christians have to understand the national implications of its message. No more should Christians fear fake labels put on them like “dominionism”, “Trumpism”, “triumphalism”, “Christian nationalism”, “theocracy”, “fundamentalism” and so forth.

It is estimated that only 10% of the British population were Cromwellians, yet they ruled the day in the 1650s. There is a broad minority which today has “values” in Australia, including Hindus, Catholics, Mormons and Protestant groups. Of that minority, there are a minority of Christian activist types, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, who are trying to take political participation to the next level. Good on them for wanting to participate in democratic processes, of course, but in the big picture such movements are generally weak, talking about “separation”, quoting Martin Luther King Jnr., upholding Bonhoeffer and being obsessed over single social issues.

Let Christians and Christianity get itself right before it does anything too much in the democratic free market of politics. Current Christians are really so chaotic and largely in an identity crisis that to take them as they are and have them make a real change through political activity is undesirable. The Christianity that has the right and the power to become THE Christianity in Australia is not yet openly manifest. Until such a Christianity is birthed, any major reforms through Christians having constructive influence in politics is going to be negligible. People may mean well and do good, but the capacity of rising bad examples is just as real.

A theological revolution around Christ’s enemies being made his footstool is required. Until adherents know how to press into the kingdom and believe in establishing a national church with particular beliefs, then the current blunderbuss of religious conservatism will suffice as a broad front of influence.

Until the coming bishops and the superior Christians are at hand, there is still the need for the ongoing preparations for this day of visitation. As it is, the current system itself would be incapable of producing the King Arthur-like “last” Christians. The answer therefore does not depend upon slick Christian political websites, the talent pool of well funded mega-churches or the online and travelling fame circuit. It is much more that out of the desert the prophets come.

“Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.” (Psalm 45:3).

In recent times, generic Christian political speakers have been discussing issues around the influence of Marxism in society and how Christians should be more politically engaged and involved in politics.

In the 1840s, the only politics was Catholics versus Protestants. Proto-Victoria’s fledgling political democracy was the battleground around fundamentally religious issues. How far things have fallen!

Margaret Keech runs an organisation promoting Christians being involved in politics. But she says Christian Left or Christian Right doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter?! Her own partner in her “ministry”, Dave Pellowe, has called fake conservative moderates “Marxists”. There is not much room for the “Left” according to Dave Pellowe.

City on a Hill, an Anglican Church sub-movement which began its Geelong operation in a pub recently promoted a series of political lectures. They took a mixed look at issues like illegal immigration. One of their own leaders was famously fired from a football club for his involvement with City on a Hill, with that leader saying he disagreed with his own church on fundamental issues. This lack of clarity or conviction on standing with the Christian Right is concerning.

Dave Pellowe tries to explain that he believes in the separation of church and state. He’s not the only Christian political activist to claim to believe that. Today that separation is said to mean (by secularists) no spirituality and no religion in politics. That’s the French meaning. But historically in the USA it meant that no single denomination, as in a state church, like the Anglican Church, should be part of the political apparatus.

Pellowe has an Australian-specific definition, because he uses that term to mean something entirely different than how it has been used. He uses it to mean he supports what the Australian Constitution says about religion. However, it is actually misleading to use such terminology to describe an Australian meaning, when the other secular and traditional US meanings are known.

If a Christian in Australia is saying they believe in the separation, it seems to be cover for them to appear to agree with the secularists, or at least to believe what the American Baptists and American founding father’s believed, viz., that no single religion should have total political control.

In fact, we should reject those meanings altogether, and say we reject the separation of church and state.

Pellowe is really meaning that he supports these words from the Australian Constitution, known as Section 116, The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

The first notion, of not establishing any religion, is the American doctrine (as opposed to the French secularist doctrine of anti-religion). The second notion, of imposing, seems close to the French view, but is a historical secularist view, which essentially is based upon religious neutrality. The third, on prohibiting, makes that clear. The final corollary that no religious test be required was designed to undo the limitation against Catholics, which was a long time practised method, by certain oaths (not believing in the central Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation), having hindered Catholics from public office.

The Australian traditionally-based religious neutral-secularist approach is one for allowing open grounds to both truth and error.

Dave Pellowe is wrong to use the terminology of separation of church and state because the Australian Constitution allows all, any or no religion, and therefore religion is not separate to the state.

Therefore to espouse a “separation” is to firmly place Christianity as not having its rightful place in Australia. But the constitution does not affirm a separation at all!

What is scramble-brained about those who claim to support separation while promoting religion in politics and talking about politics in church is that there is no separation at all. They should get this word “separation” out of the way, since it is not right, and not mentioned in the Constitution at all in any way in Section 116.

These Christian political lobbyists have a choice. Either they really are promoting Christianity, or they are promoting compromise.

Surely, the real and underlying motives of such Christians in politics is all about making politics Christian? Being honest would go a long way. Who of them will say, “I want Australia to be a Christian nation. Christian from the top to the bottom,” or similar?

If we treated the Australian Constitution as a providential document, and said that the words of 116 ought not be altered, then what does it mean?

First that the Commonwealth does not have to make a law, yet it may be that all the people in political office were in one brand of Christianity, and that the authority of such was placed in bishops, not in laws of some parliament. Second, that outside of Commonwealth laws, the executive power (e.g. the Governor General or the Sovereign) could establish without Parliamentary laws a particular brand of Christianity. Third, that any or all states could establish and make laws, meaning that the State Parliaments with State Governors could establish a particular brand of Christianity.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. Psalm 33:12

Martyn Iles has been very active in in social media and with prominent causes around issues to do with expression of religion.

Iles used to head the Human Rights Law Alliance before taking on his current role as the front man for the Australian Christian Lobby.

He states that he wants Australia to have a Bill of Rights or legislation which enshrines freedoms as based on the United Nations Covenant of Human Rights.

As a quick history: the first declaration of human rights came in with the violent French Revolution. This and all ensuing declarations are based upon a secular humanist viewpoint.

Human Rights are obviously not based upon the Bible, church teachings or religious laws, but on a view that mankind, in an atheistic sense, is ascribing rights to himself.

Christians should understand that the basis of freedom is upon divine authority, not merely by some legislation. Alarm bells should be ringing at the idea of taking what is fundamentally an anti-Christian declaration of Human Rights to somehow use it to grant “rights” for the free pursuit of all religions and irreligion. In effect, it would be a subjugation of true religion to human controls. The truth is not just like any other religion.  

The Australian constitution and historical practice have been for the possibility for the pursuit of freedom of conscience and belief until this time. Just because the Left with their political correctness want to destroy traditional society and morality does not justify Christians embracing their “Human Rights” as ours, or as a shield for us; on the contrary, such an idea should be completely rejected.

If we say that we should be free by new laws, this same “freedom” is then available to be used as a weapon for anti-Christian belief systems to be “free” from any influence of the truth.

The battle is first spiritual, and secondly ideological, a public relations exercise and a numbers game. Iles therefore is misguided as he inadvertently could be using issues for an agenda which is intrinsically against Christianity.

The way forward for us and to fight extreme Left wing attacks on Christianity is to actually have the practical advancement of Christianity. Genuine conversions and meaningful transformation of society by the Gospel is the only way forward for Christian unity and advancing proper authority.

The Gospel itself is the program of the societal reign of Christ in Oceania through the hearts of Christian believers.

Having a proper Christian dominance brings true freedom and requires no meaningless legislative “solution” for some open ended “freedom”.

We should take the opportunity to pursue truth despite any current opposition. We should be promoting truth not putting our trust into “religious freedom”.

“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12).

“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:” (1 Peter 4:12).