F.F Bruce on the Victoria Institute and the Bible

The following article is now on-line:

F.F. Bruce, "Annual Address: The Victoria Institute and the Bible," Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute 86 (1954): 75-81.

I found this an extremely illuminating article. I am very familiar with the line of thought that maintains that theologians are the last people who might have anything relevant to say about the Bible. As F.F.B. puts it:

I have long been struck by the widespread view that any man’s opinion on Biblical subjects is as valid as any other man’s, but the prevalence of this idea has been brought home to me with special force since I ex­changed the teaching of classical philology for the teaching of Biblical history and literature seven years ago, because I do not remember meeting a comparable idea in the field of classical studies. I know that this idea in the Biblical field to some extent reflects a healthy instinct which will not permit the Bible to become the preserve of specialists, but insists on its remaining (as it is) Everyman’s book. Sometimes, however, this idea takes the extreme form of a conviction that the specialized study of Biblical subjects positively disqualifies a man from expressing an acceptable opinion on the Bible. It is possible that this conviction has even been ventilated in our Institute; at any rate, as I read some back numbers, I get the impression at times that some experts in other realms of study who have read papers on Biblical subjects are persuaded that Biblical specialists very often do not really know their own business.