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Biblical
Interpretation
Gerald T.
Sheppard
sophistication scholars of Pentecostal
121
After
Gadamer
in the Fall
over the last decade
among
of interpretation
and an
ability
This
public visibility apparent
to
proposal
on
theological Theological Schools,
The
essays
on the theme of “Pentecostal Hermeneutics”
1993 issue of this
journal
show that the level of hermeneutical
has risen
dramatically
tradition. Here we see social scientific research coupled
with
postmodern methodologies
to
appeal
to the most recent trends in biblical and
theological
studies.
maturation in
scholarship
comes at a time when Pentecostalism’s
as part of the
tapestry
of Christian churches has become
almost
everyone.
Yale
theologian
David
Kelsey’s
recent
education,
Pentecostals
say.
sponsored by
the Association of
Street,”
emblematic I
history.’
If
refers without hesitation to “Azusa alongside Trent, Augsburg,
and
Geneva,
as
“placenames
of”
key
reforms and revivals in ecumenical world
have
finally
won their own fifteen minutes at the lectern of public scholarly opinion, they
had better have
something significant
to
These
essays
show that Pentecostal scholars
certainly
do.
One of the most
compelling
features in these
essays
is their
ability
to cast in a new
light
several distinctive elements from
past
Pentecostal
and tradition. Each in its own
way
succeeds in
addressing
evident within the various branches of the Pentecostal movement. Pentecostals need to evaluate
critically
what within their
deserves
preservation, condemnation,
or
experience several needs
Pentecostal
experience reconstitution. Pentecostals consciousness
understand
it,
reformation from speak prophetically from the
perspective
need
experience
to draw
upon
their
minority culture to
in a manner that allows the
predominant
value
it,
and see it as a source of
spiritual
and
political
which
anyone might
benefit. Pentecostals need to
to
prejudice
and
injustice
in the
prevailing
culture
of a
community
of
people
who often
thrived,
in very
different
ways, among
racial
groups despised by
the middle strata of
society
in the United States.
Finally,
Pentecostals need to
employ whatever
peculiar insights they may bring
from their Pentecostal
to
conjoin
the
larger
human
struggle
toward love and justice, especially
as it finds its full
idiosyncratic expression
in a life of
holiness
through
Jesus Christ and in the koinonia of Christian community responsive
to the
presence
and
power
of the
Holy Spirit.
these needs
by using
hermeneutical
theory
as a
control in their movement between the esoteric world of Pentecostal
experience
and other forms of public discourse. I especially
faith and
Each
essay
addresses critical
Theological
‘David H.
Kelsey,
To Understand God
Truly:
What’s
Theological About a School
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 30, 43.
1
122
enjoyed
the
display
of
agility
as each
essayist sought
to stand
among the common and uncommon folk of the Azusa Street
Revivals,
while resisting
a romantic
misreading
of
them,
or a
naively
anti-critical imitation of
them,
or a dismissal of their testimonies as
anything
less than “a
primary symbol” (to
use
Ricoeur)
of God’s real
presence
with us in the world.
Beyond breaking
new
ground methodologically,
these essays
cast a new
light
on some distinctive “texts” of Pentecostal faith and
practice. So,
in the first
essay,
Richard
Israel,
Daniel
Albrecht,
and Randal
McNally perceptively
describe the
multi-layered
texture of Pentecostal ritual.
Likewise,
Jean-Daniel PlJss re-describes the
“myth” of Azusa Street and the
significance
of glossolalia within it as serving a richer
symbolic
role
prior
to later efforts to define it in more narrow and restrictive doctrinal terms.
Additionally,
several of these
essays highlight
a tendency by Pentecostals-especially among predominantly “white”
groups-in
the United States to assimilate to Fundamentalism or conservative
“Evangelicalism.”
On this score I found
helpful arguments
in the first
essay,
and
especially
the
subsequent essay by Timothy Cargal,
as well as
Roger
Stronstad’s
strong critique
of Gordon Fee’s
hermeneutic,
and the related indirect
implications
in Joseph Byrd’s essay
on
“proclamation.”
All the
essays
exhibit a persistent
vision
beyond
the older modem choices and toward an untested,
but
ultimately promising,
future for Pentecostal scholars.
My
criticisms stand in the shadow of this
profound appreciation
and will
engage only
a few elements in the
densely argued “postmodern” hermeneutical debate that
they
set before us.
Initially,
I want
only
to observe that Paul Ricoeur
emerges
as the
single
most
important hermeneutical mentor within this entire
group
of
essays. My
remarks will be
organized
into two areas:
1)
on social-cultural
descriptions
of Pentecostal
history, ritual,
and biblical
interpretation;
and
2)
on “general
hermeneutics” as the
point
of
departure
for
re-describing Pentecostal
experience
and biblical
interpretation.
On Social-Cultural
Descriptions
One observation from
my reading
of these
essays
is a sense that connotations of racial biases continue to elude the consciousness of many
Pentecostals and
injure
the
creativity
of Pentecostal
scholarship. For
example,
in the first
essay by
Richard
Israel,
Daniel
Albrecht,
and Randal
McNally,
the section
listing
Pentecostal rituaIS2 omits African-American Pentecostal rituals such as the
shout,
or the
ring shout,
much less
any
reference to what within Pentecostal rituals
might be a retention from slave
religion. Likewise,
Jean-Daniel Pliiss’ description
of
glossolalia
and its doctrinal reformulation would be
2 Richard D. Israel, Daniel E. Albrecht and Randal G. McNally, “Pentecostals and Hermeneutics: Texts, Rituals and
Community,”
PNEUMA: The Journal
of
the Society for
Pentecostal Studies 15 (Fall 1993): 153.
2
123
strengthened by recalling
some of the
differences, past
and
present, between its
typical
function in African-American Pentecostal churches distinct from either
Anglo
Pentecostal or
Hispanic
Pentecostal
groups. This matter becomes even more obvious to me when
Timothy Cargal confines his observations to “` classical Pentecostal’
groups…
as represented by
two of the
largest
Pentecostal denominations in the United States
(the
Assemblies of
God, Springfield, Missouri,
and the Church of
God, Cleveland, Tennessee).”‘
He
self-consciously
excludes “African-American Pentecostal
groups”
and “Latin American Pentecostals,” by
which I assume
he, also,
excludes various
Hispanic Pentecostal
groups
within the United States
(Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexican Americans and
others). Cargal asserts,
“This choice is deliberate” because he has “neither the
expertise
nor the
right
to
speak for them.”‘
Nonetheless, Cargal
states that he has “both a vested interest in and a responsibility to the biblical
interpretation
of ‘classical Pentecostals’ within both
academy
and
parish.”‘ If Cargal’s
focus is on “classical
Pentecostals,”
I would
argue
that he
cannot, deliberately
or otherwise,
exclude the racial
expressions
of Pentecostalism that he does without
distorting
his
analysis.
For
example,
the formation of the Assemblies of God
derives,
in part, from racial
separation by
“white” ministers from the
predominantly
“black” Church of God in Christ (Memphis).
Even the
newspaper
advertisement for the first
meeting
of what was to become the
founding
of the Assemblies of God in
1914, was addressed to the ministers in the “Church of God in Christ.” Ironically,
C. H.
Mason, presiding bishop
of the Church of God in Christ,
attended that
meeting
to offer a farewell of sorts. One can
only properly interpret
the Assemblies of God with some assessment of these factors in its formation and its “Pentecostal”
identity. So,
in
my view, Cargal’s
“choice” contradicts
itself,
since the
expression “classical Pentecostals” must include in its attention the
very
racial groups
he wants to exclude from his
analysis.
These
significant
omissions
promote
still another
weakness, namely, a failure to
conjoin
a
sophisticated
hermeneutical debate within these marginalized
cultural-racial dimensions of the Church at
large.
I am disappointed
in the lack of even
passing
attention
hermeneutically
to the
published
work of scholars such as Cornel
West,
Katie
Cannon, James
Washington,
James
Cone,
Cain
Felder,
Renita
Weems, George Cummings,
Delores
Williams,
and
many
others who work at
describing African-American Church
interpretation,
much less
any
reference to studies of African-American
Pentecostals,
such as can be found in the writings
of Arthur
Paris,
Melvin
Williams,
Leonard
Lovett,
and the late
‘ Timothy
B.
Cargal, “Beyond
the Fundamentalist-Modernist
Controversy: Pentecostals and Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Age,” PNEUMA: The Journal the
of
Society for Pentecostal Theology 15 (Fall 1993): 165-166. the
‘ Cargal, “Beyond
Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 166.
‘Cargal, “Beyond
the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy,” 166.
3
124
James
Tinney. Along
these same
lines,
Eldin Villafane’s remarkable book on ethics reminds us of the
very
different hermeneutical issues confronted
by Hispanic-American Pentecostals,
whose
relationship
to the
missionary enterprises
of “white” Pentecostal churches stands in sharp
contrast
6
to the
experience
of African-American Pentecostal churches.6 In sum, the absence of
adequate
concern about the hermeneutics of
racism,
while
acknowledging
the
positive significance of racial-cultural
differences,
will distort our
interpretation
of salient features in the Pentecostal
experience
and will blunt the
acuity
of
any “distanciated”
interpretation
of classical Pentecostal “texts.”
On General Hermeneutics
‘
Each
essay
relied to some
degree
on work
by
the seminal Protestant philosopher,
Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur
proves particularly significant
both because he
goes beyond
Gadamer in the modem debate and because he supports
a relatively
traditional,
late modem hermeneutical
strategy
that remains
pre-deconstructionist. According
to Gadamer’s older
proposal a reader confronts in each effective text an autonomous human expression
embedded in its own alien
historicity. Through
an
interplay of
interpretation,
“a fusion of historical
horizons,”
one
may grasp
the “truth” of a text.
According
to
Ricoeur,
Gadamer
may
be criticized for a
mystification
of
just
what
happens
in this “event” of
interpretation since the “fusion of horizons” lacks criteria to
protect
the free
play
that occasions
it,
between text and
reader,
from false
perceptions
of a revelation of truth. Ricoeur’s more careful focus on the
activity
of the interpreter yields
a far better
proposal.
For
Ricoeur,
the alienation that exists between an autonomous text and its autonomous reader is less a problem to be solved than a feature to be
exploited
in his
methodology
of “distanciation.”
By engendering various kinds of “distanciation” between the text and the
reader, Ricoeur establishes a
procedure
to move from our first
naivete,
or immediate intuitive sense of
knowing
the
meaning
of a text, toward an increasingly
self-critical second naivete in our
interpretation
of a text. Moreover, Ricoeur
avoids a fixation on a modem idea of
“history” by including
in his
strategy
of distanciation a diverse set of
linguistic
and semiotic
descriptions.’
A
reading
based on a “second naYvet6” has the advantage
of a self-conscious
procedure
informed
by
a rich
interplay
of distanciations in
pursuit
of
understanding, explanation,
and assessment of a text. When this
“general
hermeneutics” is applied to
any particular
6 Eldin Villafafle, The
Liberating Spirit:
Toward an
Hispanic
American Pentecostal Social Ethic
(Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1993), ‘ On Gadamer and
87-102.
Ricoeur. see Werner G. Jeanrond,
Text and Interpretation As Categories of Theological Thinking (New
York, NY: Crossroad, 1988), 52-55, and his “From Schleiermacher to Ricoeur,” in his Theological Hermeneutics: Development
and Significance (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1991 ), 44-77.
4
Ricoeur’s theory hermeneutics,
proposal
to
125
scholars a hermeneutical conceived
“evangelical”
Pentecostal
feature,
read as a “text,” or to a “text” from the Bible
itself, we
discover,
as the
essays note, multiple
senses for each text
or,
in other
words,
its
polysemic
character.
offers to Pentecostal
vastly superior
a
narrowly
and I
applaud
the sensitive use of his work in these essays. Precisely
because Ricoeur
espouses
a
relatively conservative,
his hermeneutical
proposal
is ideal for a
of Pentecostal
experience
to the
This effort is itself a
worthy one,
and here I
excel.
However,
I want to
push
the limits of
using Ricoeur’s hermeneutical
theory
in two directions:
1)
on the basis of
in
“general hermeneutics,”
latemodern
approach,
responsible theological apologetic larger
academic world.
think these
essays
other
proposals
Foucault and the deconstructionist the relation of
general interpretation.
hermeneutics to Christian
“general
hermeneutics”
assume
Pentecostal
preaching this unified of acknowledges
that refined now
hermeneutics,
discuss Schleiermacher’s
general
moment I want to comment hermeneutics,
in the aftermath of Michel “experience;”
and
2)
on the basic of
scriptural
After Gadamer
hermeneutics. The first
essay
However,
none of the
essays
proposal
of a
“special
Other
Options
in “General I3ermeneutics”
All of these
essays
either
explicitly
or
implicitly engage
modem
as a foundation shared in a common
public discourse on the natural
sciences, art,
and
philosophy,
before
turning
to examine
specific
instances of
“texts,” namely,
Pentecostal features or Pentecostal
interpretations
of the
Bible,
or a
proper understanding
of the Bible itself. At the risk of
overstatement,
I think all the
essays
that whatever
may
be
peculiar
about
Scripture
or even
or ritual
belongs
to a sub-classification within
theory
this whole debate over a
“general hermeneutics,”
in novel
ways, began
with the father of modem
Friedrich Schleiermacher.
accompanying
hermeneutics” for
Scripture
and what that
distinction,
as abortive as it may
have been at the
time, might suggest
for their
analysis.
For the
only
on the
quest
for a
general
as preferred by the
essays.
I found Pliiss’
essay,
due to his use of
Drewermann,
in its use of
general
hermeneutical
entirely
different
topic, Cargal
saw most
clearly
how
Fundamentalists,
old
Liberals,
and the so-called “Neo-orthodox”
share the same modem hermeneutical
more so than in Canada and in Europe, these
positions-so
their social and
political moorings-asserted
of the normative role of “the author’s or redactor’s
provocative
Evangelicals,
Evangelical Identity,”
the most theory. Yet,
on an
actually theory.
In the United
States,
diverse in
a common modem view
original
intent.”‘
8 Cf. G. T.
Sheppard,
“Biblical Hermeneutics: The Academic
Language
of
Union Seminary Quarterly Review 32 (Winter 1977): 81-94; and “An Overview of the Hermeneutical Situation in the United States,” in Conflict
5
126
Fundamentalists
argued
that this referential
reading
of the text confirmed the
historicity
of the
scriptural presentation
of the authors’ intents;
Liberals found that the same referential
reading usually disclosed
sharp
conflicts between biblical
authors,
if not contradictions between their
presentations
and what
actually happened
in
“history” (using
a
peculiarly
modem construct
they
shared with
conservatives).’ Liberals and
Fundamentalists,
because
they
both laid claim to the same historicism and
theory
of
intentionality, represent,
in
my view,
left and right wing
“modernists.”‘° I am convinced
that,
within this modernist conflict,
the Liberals
decisively
won the
day. Along
these same
lines, many
standard modern
interpretations
of the
history
of biblical interpretation
have been
seriously
flawed
by perpetuating
the same modem
fallacy.
The
Cambridge History of
the
Bible,
for
example,
errs in
repeatedly evaluating
earlier
interpreters according
to their
ability
to anticipate
modem historical-critical
insights
into the biblical author’s intent.”
Several of these PNEUMA
essays brilliantly
attack the modern hegemony
of “author’s
intent,” together
with its
simplistic consequence in terms of what a biblical text “meant” and what it “means.” Nonetheless,
the use of Ricoeur did not
prevent
a temptation followed by
some of the
essays
to assume that all older Pentecostal biblical interpretation
is
essentially
the result of a “first naivete”
(Byrd)
or is “precritical”
or “uncritical”
(Cargal).’2
A better
response
is found in
and Context: Hermeneutics in the Americas, eds. Mark Lau Branson and C. Rene Padilla (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), 11-36. 9 Marion Ann Taylor, in her published Yale dissertation, The Old Testament in the Old Princeton School (1812-1929) (San Francisco, CA: Mellen Research University Press, 1992),
traces this referential
strategy.
On the issue of
authorship
and intentionality,
see her
essay, ‘`Working with Wisdom Literature: Joseph Hall and William
Green,”
in Solomon ‘s Divine Arts:
Joseph
Hall’s
Representation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and
T.
Song of Song (1609), with Introductory Essays, ed. G.
Sheppard (Cleveland,
OH:
modem
Pilgrim Press, 1991), 38-57. On the adoption of a similar, intentionality theory
in Roman Catholic biblical
criticism, see Robert Robinson, Roman Catholic
Exegesis Since Divino Afflante Spiritu (SBLDS 3; Atlanta,
GA: Scholars Press, 1988), 23-24.
10 Cf
G. T.
Sheppard, “How Do Neoorthodox and Post-neoorthodox the
Approach
of Theology Today?,” in
Theologians
World, eds. John D.
Doing
and Thomas E.
Doing Theology in Today’s Zondervan Publishing House, 1991), 437-459.
Woodbridge McComiskey (Grand Rapids,
MI: ” See, for example, how R P. C. Hanson dismisses “the
which their and
distorting effect” of earlier interpreters flagrant “typology allegorical interpretation should not be allowed to disguise” (422) and M. F. Wiles conclusion, “As an exegete Origen fails,” (489) on the basis
of Wiles own theory of recovering “a mind” behind each text
(488-89),
in The
Cambridge History of
the Bible: From the particular Beginning
to
Jerome,
eds. P. R
Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge:
Press, 1970), Vol. 1. By contrast, see
The Lion and the Cambridge Tibor
Lamb:
University
and and Literature
Fabiny,
Figuralism Fulfillment in the Bible, Art, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
12 Cargal, “Beyond
the Fundamentalist-Modernist
Controversy,” 164, 170, 171,
6
127
PlJss’
explanation
of the earliest Pentecostal testimonies as invested in a
“metaphorical”
use of
language. Using
an
insight
from James Washington’s study
of African-American
churches,
I
would,
at the outset, prefer
to call the classical Pentecostal
heritage
“submodem” rather than
“premodern”
or
“precritical.””
Most older Pentecostals were acclimated to cultural values of the lower classes or to
racially marginalized groups
and were not invited as
equal partners
into the modernist debate.
Still, they
all ate from the crumbs that fell beneath the table at the
banquet
of
modernity. They participated self-consciously
or
unwittingly
on an ad hoc basis in the modem experiment.
PlJss’
essay helps
us see that the formula of “initial physical
evidence” is cast in
language
drawn from the modem climate of
opinion
within the
prevailing
culture and can be seen as a cultural-theological-political
effort to formulate a doctrine around 1916 by “sub-modem,” predominantly “white,”
Pentecostals. We
may
ask how this formulation relates to other dimensions in the effort made
by the Assemblies of God to
gain
social valorization for their
“orthodoxy” by
close association with the
right wing
modernism of the National Association of Evangelicals
and, subsequently,
as
agents
in a derivative organization,
the Pentecostal
Fellowship
of North
America,
which rejected applications
from African-American Pentecostal denominations. Such observations
ought
not allow us to
judge
whole denominations as “right” or
“wrong,”
but
they
do constitute
significant hermeneutical factors.
Furthermore,
if we call classical Pentecostals either
“premodern”
or “pre-critical,”
in
general
hermeneutical
terms,
we short-circuit our understanding
of their own
implicit
hermeneutics and criticism. At the end of the nineteenth
century,
Hermann Gunkel evoked a revolution in biblical studies
by describing
“unconscious rules of
poetic beauty”
that governed
brilliant oral tradition in ancient
Israel,
aided
by recent studies of premodern folklore and
fairy
tales. 14 His “aesthetic criticism” of
high and serious folklore from
premodern
times
ought
to
suggest
a similar need for
sophistication
in
anthropological
and
theological descriptions of
preaching, prophecy, ritual,
and music in submodern Pentecostal churches. I recall a conversation with a scholar who
kept insisting
that all
preaching
of Black churches
by
ministers without a
seminary education is “uncritical” in its use of the Bible.
Finally,
I could
agree but
only
with the
qualification
that the best
preaching
is about as “uncritical” in its use of the Bible as is the
accompanying Gospel
music
177, and “uncritically” (169).
James
Washington,
Frustrated
Fellowship:
The Black
Social Power
“Cf. Baptist Quest for
(Macon,
GA: Mercer
University Press, 1986),
187-207. For the non-Fundamentalist
Roots
heritage of Pentecostals, see Donald W. Dayton, Theological
of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan House, 1987). “Hermann
Publishing
Gunkel, “Zeile und Methoden der Erfahrung Alten Testament,” Reden undaufsdtze (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck, 1913), 11-29.
7
128
in its use of
notes, including,
of
course,
its offshoots in “Jazz” and “the Blues.” If we do not think Jazz is naive
music,
we have reasons to suspect
a characterization of the best of Pentecostal
preaching
as merely “pre-critical.” Drawing
on Ricoeur’s model of
hermeneutics, “submodern”
interpretation
need not be either uncritical or
merely dependent
on a “first naYvet6.” The
poor
in formal modem education still have their own means of distanciation. Not
just anyone
with
“soul,” despite
an
inability
to “read”
music,
is welcome to
play a
sax at the famous
Apollo
Theater on 125th
Street,
nor is just
any Pentecostal, “filled with the
Holy Spirit,”
discerned as a
“good” preacher
at a storefront Pentecostal church
only
a few blocks
away.
Here I think we are
helped
even more
by
other
poststructuralist hermeneutical
proposals,
rather than that of Paul Ricoeur. As one example,
Michel Foucault offers a remarkable
critique
of modem French culture
by recalling
the transformation in the “form of knowing” which occurred in the rise of modem consciousness since the seventeenth
century.”
He shows how in the Modem
Age
we sensed a superior way
to name and to
classify
the “facts” of
medicine, history, insanity, sexuality, crime,
etc. Now we are
beginning
to realize that this modem
episteme
secured itself
by maintaining
certain blind
spots, dubious
classifications,
and naive
simplifications.
Foucault describes the emergence
of our “modem” consciousness as a
psycho-philosophical experience
in which the
ground
on which we had stood for so
long turned to
mud,
so we sank
through
the now insubstantial
past perceptions
of
reality
until we could find what
felt,
once
more,
like solid
ground
beneath us. He describes
how, now,
after
nearly
three centuries of this older modem
foundation,
we sense
again
the
ground turning
to
mud,
and as at the dawn of
modernity,
we search with our toes for
something
solid on which to stand
again.
The modem sense of progress
over earlier
periods,
the sense of
being
able to be “critical” in contrast to the
“pre-critical” past,
is itself a
transitory
and limited conviction which conceals its own uncritical
assumptions
about the
past and the future.
So,
our modem views of medicine,
sanity, sexuality,
and healing
have
begun
to be
shaken, just
as have our views of what ancient texts
may
mediate and how.
So, too,
we will
inevitably
need to reevaluate in a new
light everything
in the
past, including
the Pentecostal
heritage,
in a manner not
anticipated by
older modem criticism. I believe that the
present drive to launch a fresh critical assessment of what I have called “submodern” Pentecostal rituals and biblical
interpretation parallels recent efforts to revaluate the
history
of biblical
interpretation.
We
may
“Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York, NY: Vintage, 1973; orig.
in French, 1966), xxii-xxiv, especially his chapter on,
“The Limits of Representation,” 217-249. See the excellent overview and criticism of Foucault in Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Post Modem
Theory (New York,
NY: Guifford Press, 1991), 34-75.
8
129
begin
to discover Pentecostal roots in
unlikely places.
For that
matter, we
may
ask ourselves
just
how “non-Pentecostal” was William
Perkins, the “Calvinist” and so-called “Puritan
Pope,”
who wrote a manual for preaching
at the end of the sixteenth
century entitled,
“The Art of Prophesying.”
Once we
begin
to
question
how our modem
categories can
help
or hinder us in
interpreting
earlier
periods,
we find we must develop
means of renegotiating resemblances and differences.
Certainly,
a
critique
of modem criticism
ought
never be an end in itself Even
Jacques
Derrida’s
gleeful
descent with each text into an abyss
of
meaning
does not
negate
the
pragmatic necessity
of choosing a centered structure in the
interpretation
of texts.’6 Cornel West has profoundly
called
similarly
for a new
pragmatic
and
“prophetic” decision
regarding
the future use of texts.”
Consequently,
these
essays in PNEUMA have cracked
open
a door on the
possibility
of even bolder interpretations
of the
multiracial, culturally diverse,
“sub-modern” Pentecostal
experience,
both in
postmodern
terms and in relation to a much
longer premodern history
of
interpretation. Only by using
a rigorous postmodern strategy
can we circumscribe better the
past experience
of a distance between the alien world of a biblical text and the reader’s
present hope. Though
we can never return to a premodern or submodern
perspective,
we must rediscover how we share common cause with the
past
and ask how our own
continuing interpretation
of Scripture belongs
to a much
longer history
of Christian biblical interpretation.
The Relation of General Hermeneutics to Christian
Scriptural
Interpretation
The rest of
my
criticisms must address a related
topic
within the methodology
used
by
these
essays.
This
topic
is
important
for Pentecostals,
because it
directly
affects how well we
interpret
our own tradition and
re-present
it in conversation with the rest of
Christianity, past
and
present.
All of these
essays employ,
to some
degree,
Paul Ricoeur’s
“general hermeneutics,”
derived from
philosophy
and the natural
sciences,
in order to
explain aspects
of Pentecostal
worship
or biblical
interpretation.
This
strategy, thoroughly
modern in
spirit,
does impressively
illuminate
many features,
as I have
already
stated. Without doubting
the value of this
strategy,
I want to
challenge
how well
‘6 See the discussion with Jacques Derrida in The Structuralist
Controversy:
The Languages of
Criticism & the Sciences of Man, eds. Richard and Donato (Baltimore, MD: The John
Mackey Eugenio
Hopkins University Press, 1972), 271-272; and, Frank Lentricchia’s assessment in “History of the Abyss: Poststructuralism,” in his After
the New Criticism (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1980), 156-210. “See, for example,
Cornel
West, “Postmodernity and Afro-America,” in his Prophetic Fragments (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
and Trenton: Africa World and his
Publishing Company,
Press, 1988), 168-170, Prophesy Deliverance! An
Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Philadelphia,
PA: Westminster Press, 1982).
9
130
“general
hermeneutics” can do
justice
to the Pentecostal sense of an encounter with God, the
overwhelming
sense of divine
presence
and power
of the
Holy Spirit,
associated with the
hearing
of the
Scripture
in “anointed”
preaching
and in the
performance
of what we
call,
now so blandly
and
academically,
“rituals.” I
will, first,
discuss the role of biblical
interpretation
with the idea of a
“general hermeneutics,”
then point
out two areas where I find serious limitations in Ricoeur’s version of it.
When Schleiermacher made his proposal of a “general
hermeneutics,” as an “art” in conversation with the human
sciences,
he tried to allow for
something quite unique
about Christian “revelation.” In the first chapter
of his The Christian Faith, he assures us in the second sentence that “the
present
work
entirely
disclaims the task of
establishing
on a foundation of
general principles
a Doctrine of God.”
Instead,
“a
proper comprehension
of the
peculiarity
of the Christian Church”
requires allowance for its own historical claims of “revelation” that must not be confused with “what is discovered in the realm of
experience by
one man and handed on to
others,
or to what is
excogitated
in
thought by one man and so learned
by other,”
since “the word
presupposes
a divine communication and declaration.”” In his hermeneutical
writing, Schleiermacher retains this
special
allowance for “revelation” as something
not drawn from
“general principles”
or common
experience and
assigns
this dimension to a
“special
hermeneutics.”
Especially regarding
the
“inspiration”
of
Scripture,
he
declares,
The
question
of how far and in which directions
interpretation
will be
pressed
must be decided in each case on practical grounds. Specialized
hermeneutics and not
general
hermeneutics must deal with these
questions.”
Admittedly,
the
precise
character of
“specialized
hermeneutics” remained
underdeveloped
in his hermeneutical
theory. Many subsequent
scholars
ignore
it
entirely
or see it as a token
gesture toward
peculiar literary
features in the New Testament.2o
‘Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, eds. H. R Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (New York, NY: T & T Clark, 1928), 3, 49-50.
“Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher,
excerpts
from his treatment of “General Hermeneutics” and “Grammatical and Technical
Interpretation,”
in The Hermeneutics
Reader,
ed. Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (New York, NY: Continuum, 1992),
72-97. This quotation from page 83.
20 In Hans Frei’s treatment of Schleiermacher in the of his Eclipse of
Biblical Narrative: A
Study
in
concluding chapter
Eighteenth
and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), he states only, “This was
general hermeneutics,
of which
special hermeneutics
was
merely a special instance” (307).
Special
hermeneutics is not even mentioned in Richard R Niebuhr’s
chapter on “The Art of Interpretation.”
in Schleiermacher on Christ and Religion:
A New Introduction
(New York, NY: Charles
Scribner’s Sons,
1964), 77-92.
10
In his
G6ttingen
Barth observed that Schleiermacher’s
While Barth
of The Christian significant
statement found
131
in
1923-1924,
Karl
he observes that it
plays
no
Holy Spirit
question
Holy Spirit.””
Schleiermacher’s
“special attention to the New Testament’s
lectures on Schleiermacher
general
hermeneutics in
practice overrode
anything potentially interesting
about
“special
hermeneutics.”
likes Schleiermacher’s definition of “revelation” at the beginning Faith,
role in the rest of the book.” In his
criticism,
Barth
quotes
a
in Schleiermacher’s Hermeneutik und Kritik: “Here the question
obtrudes
upon
us in
passing
whether the
holy
books of the
have to be treated
differently.”
Barth
retorts,
“A
pressing
indeed! But Schleiermacher’s
system proves
a match for the
Later in the same
lecture,
Barth observes that
hermeneutics”
only
seems to call for unusual
Hebraizing
Greek and its
in favor of
special
hermeneutics failure to
consider,
anomalous reliance on
personal biography.23
Barth himself seems to be
in his
description
of Schleiermacher’s
quantitative possibilities
specifically
general
seriously
These
comments,
riddled as Schleiermacher’s
framing
of
some
Dogmatics.
what is said by someone else, whether with or without his system or other
any
hermeneutics, might be contingently, without any qualitative or
of misunderstanding, the truth or Word of God, and that I should then have
good
reason to treat this address more
and more seriously than any other as the bearer of this content, a reference to this subject. What if special New Testament hermeneutics, whether
gratefully employing
Schleiermacher’s method or
any
other
method, were to consist
sense?”
quite
of taking these texts more
in
simply
this specific
are with
doubts
about
they
the hermeneutical
question, help
us
put into
perspective
of Barth’s later comments in the Church
After
spelling
out how the human words of the Bible relate to God’s
Word,
Barth admits that
explanation
of how
Scripture
works “does not arise out of
any general
consideration
language, etc.,
and therefore out of a general
anthropology.”
instead,
from the
proper understanding
actual
“perceiving
the word of man.” He elaborates
of this
insight
for hermeneutics in the
following
tour de
revelation
by
implications force:
they apply only
on the nature of human
It
derives, of
Scripture
itself and from our
It is in view of the only possible explanation of the Holy scripture that we
have laid the principles of exposition indicated-not, of course,
to
believing
biblical exposition, but
are valid for biblical
believing always that because
they exposition they are valid for the exposition of ‘
Karl
Barth,
The Theology of Schleiermacher: Lectures at
Semester 1923-24 MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Gjttingen,
Winter
of (Grand Rapids, Publishing Company, 1982, 22 orig. in German, 1978), 235-236.
Earth, The Theology of Schleiermacher, 182.
23Barth, The
in
Theology of Schleiermacher, 157, and especially, his comments on
183, a lecture on “General Principles of Exposition,” 178-183.
“Barth,
The Theology of Schleiermacher, 183.
page
11
132
every human word, and can therefore lay claim to universal recognition. It is not at all
that the word of man in the Bible has an abnormal significance and function. We see from the Bible what its normal
significance and function is. It is from the word of man in the Bible that we must learn what
generally recognized.
has to be learned
concerning
the word of man in
general.
This is not
It is more usual blindly to apply to the Bible false ideas taken from some other source
concerning
the
significance
and function of the human word. But this must not confuse us into that the
thinking
opposite
is the
right
one. There is no such thing as a biblical hermeneutics. But we have to learn that hermeneutics which is special alone and
generally
valid
by
means of the Bible as the witness to revelation.2s
hermeneutics rather
theology,
Barth turns the tables on Schleiermacher and the entire
methodology of a
general
and
special
hermeneutics. He insists
theologically
that the real
question
is whether the Bible itself leaves
any
room for a general
than whether
general
hermeneutics can make room for the Bible
by
means of a “special hermeneutics.” In terms of classical
he
argues
that our
learning
how to read the
Scripture scripturally
holds a key to how we
ought
to be able to hear in any
text,
with
profanity
or
heresy,
a
testimony
to the
of God in the world. While I do not think Barth
adequately
the role of
general hermeneutics,
I do think he raises a major theological
issue
regarding
how we frame the
question.
In the
I want to
develop
two
implications
even if it is
replete revelation
accounts for
light
of Barth’s
critique, critique
of Ricoeur’s
methodology:
literary approach
of Ricoeur’s
for a a)
on the nature of “the literal” or
Scripture.
The hermeneutics cannot be
simply
We
may
remind ourselves that Scripture
Testament within Christian
“plain
sense” of Christian
Scripture,
and
b)
on the
Scripture’s
own form and function as
Scripture, despite
an infinite number of other
ways
that it can be read.
On the nature of “the literal sense” of Christian
general
identified with the traditional Christian
conception
of the literal sense.
Judaism did not
interpret
Jewish
in
precisely
the same
way
that Christians
interpreted
the Old
Scripture.
emphasized
the
hearing
of the biblical
text,
the Written
Torah,
to the Oral
Tradition,
the normative
teaching
of the rabbis in a chain of tradition
going
back to the
seventy
elders who
accompanied
relation
Moses on Mt. Sinai. precedence
Therefore,
over
peshat,
or “literal
sense,”
loquendi (Philadelphia,
Rabbinic Judaism
usually
in
midrashic
interpretation
took
and one read the Bible in its
2S Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. T. Thompson and H. (London: T & T Clark,
1956), I/2, 466. Contrast in the
Knight
contemporary debate, the argument for the special nature of Scripture in the
in essay by
Charles M. Wood, in contrast with a more general socio-linguistic theory
Kathryn
E. Tanner’s
appeal to the usus in
Scriptural Authority
and Narrative
Interpretation
ed. Garrett Green
PA: Fortress Press,
1987), 3-20,
59-78. On Barth’s effort to avoid either a univocal or
equivocal
literal sense, see
George Hunsinger, “Beyond Literalism and
Expressivism:
Karl Barth’s Hermeneutical
Realism,”
Modern
3 (April 1987): 209-223..
Theology
12
133
dialectical
relationship
to the Oral Torah as found codified in the Mishnah at the end of the second
century
C.E.
and, later,
in the Talmud(s).26 By contrast,
when Irenaeus in the middle of the second century
C. E.
accepted, perhaps
from his opponent
Marcion,
the idea of a “New
Testament,”
he envisioned it as an extension of the
literary horizon of the “older covenant” of
Scripture
inherited from Judaism. The
resulting
Christian
Scripture
served as a self-sufficient
public testimony,
so that Irenaeus and his successors affirmed that
only
the “literal” or
“plain”
sense of
Scripture provided adequate grounds
for establishing
Christian doctrine. This older
assumption
about the literal sense of
Scripture
was
highlighted
once more in the
Reformation, remaining
a
point upon
which both Luther and
Aquinas,
at least in theory,
found
agreement.” Irenaeus, furthermore, argued
that
proper interpretation
of Christian
Scripture
must be done within the collective discernment of the Church and was
protected
from
any gross misreading
of its
subject
matter
by
the
regula fidei,
a flexible
summary of saving faith that
every
Christian associates with his or her
baptism.’8
Consider, again,
Barth’s hermeneutical
description
of how the human witnesses of
Scripture convey
revelation to
readers,
The Bible says that “They have spoken in the power and truth from the Holy Spirit.” Then, consequently, the Bible speaks from the Holy Spirit, if they speak
of the reality which comes to humanity. The legitimacy, which the biblical witnesses can claim is
answer. live not that ultimately can
only
a mandate of this
They by anything they have, see, know, feel, and experience,
but from the dignity and clarity of the
objectlsubject matter them.
encountering They actually live from the revelation. That is their
and their weakness. And that is the
self-understanding
of the biblical witnesses
strength
Hence,
a hearing of the Bible as Christian
Scripture requires
not
only critical attention to
history, context, philology, grammar,
and so
forth, but, also,
a critical and
spiritual
discernment
regarding
when and “if they,”
the human
witnesses, point
us to the
reality
or
subject
matter of faith.
Only
then does the
interpreter
move
through
the thicket of
26 see Jacob
Neusner,
Midrash in Context:
Exegesis
in Formative Judaism (Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress Press,
1983), 21-52; and,
more generally, Michael A. Fishbane, Judaism: Revelation and Traditions (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, 1987), 25-82.
Z’ Heiko Obennann, Forerunners
of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Illustrated
by Key Documents (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 281-296.
Thought 1981), 28 See the recent examination of the primary sources by Frances
The Bible and
Young, Virtuoso Theology:
and Hans von
Interpretation (Cleveland,
OH:
Pilgrim Press, 1993), 26-87, Campenhausen,
The Formation
of
the Christian Bible (Philadelphia,
PA: Fortress Press, 1972), 147-209.
2’My
translation. See Karl
Barth,
“Das christliche Verstandnis der
Theologische
Existenz heute N.F. 12
Offenbarung,”
( 1948): 20. Cited as a key statement by Ernst Fuchs, Hermeneutik (3rd ed.; Bad Cannstatt: R. Mullerschon Verlag, 1963), in his section
on “Der Text,” 3-12.
13
134
morphemes, words,
and sentences to the
thing itself,
an encounter with the
living
and
life-giving
Word of
God,
as an event of revelation. The possibility
of an event of revelation
is, therefore, partly contingent
on a reader’s
judgment
about the relation of a text as a human witness within the context of other human witnesses in
Scripture
and the subject
matter of
faith, already
familiar to the
interpreter.
For
example, when William Perkins in the seventeenth
century
commented on Hebrews 11:32 and its celebration
of Jephthah
as an
exemplar
of faith for
fulfilling
a vow made to God
by killing
his own
daughter,
Perkins knew he had a
problem.
As a
pastor/scholar
renown for his concern with “cases of
conscience,”
he tried to follow a Jewish
precedent
that translated the Hebrew so that
Jephthah
swore to kill
only
an animal if it appeared
at the door of his
house,
for if a human
appeared
he would dedicate that
person
to the Nazarite vow. Even on that
possibility Perkins has
reservations,
“I
speak
not
here,
how well or ill Jephte did in making
her a Nazarite.”
Still,
he knows the
grammar might
favor the simple literary
claim that
Jephthah
killed his own
daughter
as a
sign
of his faith and
regarding
that
possibility,
Perkins concludes
flatly,
“this faith,
and such a vow cannot stand
together.””
In other
words,
a grammatical or even a literary reading of
Scripture is not
necessarily
the same as the “literal sense”
sought by
a hermeneutic attentive to the
hearing
of the Bible as Christian
Scripture. This
problem
is
approached
in various
ways
in the
history
of Christian interpretation.
Some
interpreters
will
say
that
they
cannot
always
find the literal sense
or,
if the
plain literary
sense is
closely
identified with the literal
sense, interpreters might
recall
Augustine’s dictum,
later condemned
by
the
Church, “Always
to
Keep
the Literal Sense in Holy Scripture
Means to Kill One’s Soul.”3′ In
any case,
“the literal sense” is crucial to Christian
interpretation, yet
it is neither an artificial imposition
from outside of the text nor the
only possible literary reading
of biblical texts.
By
these
qualifications
in the nature of the literal sense of
Scripture,
I do not wish to
deny
the
indispensable
value of
literary descriptive strategies.
In earlier
centuries,
for
example,
Christian
interpreters
have expressed
interest in
detecting
“the
scope”
of a biblical text. The term “scope” belonged
to a “critical”
premodern theory
of hermeneutics taught by
Athanasius and
Origin
who took it from Aristotle and his
30William
Perkins,
A
Commentary
on Hebrews 11
(1609 Edition),
With Introductory Essays,
ed. John
Augustine (Cleveland,
OH: Pilgrim
Press, 1991), 174-175 (in the photo reproduction of Perkins).
” See Brevard S.
Childs,
“The Sensus Literalis of An Ancient and Modem Problem,” in
Scripture:
et al.
Beitrage zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie (FS W. Zimmerli), ed. H. Donner,
(G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 80-93; Karlfried Froehlich, “‘Always
to Keep the Literal Sense in Means to Kill One’s Soul’: The State of Biblical Hermeneutics at the Holy Scripture Beginning of the Fifteenth Century,”
in Literary Uses of Typology: From the Late Middle Ages to the Present, ed. E. Miner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), 20-48.
14
135
students.32 Under this rubric of
“scope,” premodern interpreters distanciated themselves from the biblical text
by viewing
it as a territory of land
complete
with
variegated
terrain and
compass points. Likewise, they
could envision the text
anatomically
as
though
it were a human body,
with its own head and
unique
distribution of
parts.
Both of these hermeneutical
strategies
derived from a Hellenistic tradition of rhetoric highly
valued
by
the Roman world. These views of a biblical text as a territory
of land or as a human
body
were
commonly employed by others as heuristic
strategies
on
non-scriptural
texts. But
Christians, because of the nature of
Scripture itself,
understood their own
peculiar use of it in service to a
possibility unexpected by
non-Christian uses. Christians,
in a manner that would have seemed
strange
to others,
gave attention to “the
scope”
of a text in order to enhance their
perception of its context and intertextual warrants for how
Scripture interprets Scripture.
This
premodern criticism,
in
my view,
finds in the canonical approaches
that have
emerged
since the
1970s,
a better
corollary
than it had before in older modem historical criticism.33
In
sum,
a general hermeneutics
rightly supporting
a “second naivete” in the
interpretation
of texts is
not,
on
strictly literary grounds alone, the same as our
hearing
“the literal sense” of
Scripture
as a witness to its
subject
matter. The current
tendency
to allow modem or postmodern general
hermeneutics to
predetermine
the nature and possibilities
of
interpretation,
followed
by subsequent
effort to fit scriptural interpretation
into it as a
special case, may
not do justice to Christian
interpretation
of
Scripture,
much less to Jewish midrash. In fact,
I think Ricoeur
proves
to be at his best as a Christian
interpreter of Scripture precisely
when his Protestant
preunderstanding intrudes, without clear
justification,
into his
general
hermeneutical
theory. So, Ricoeur often talks about the Bible in terms of its “human
testimony” to Jesus
Christ, despite
so few warrants on
purely literary grounds
for an
overarching language
of “witness” or
“testimony”
as
absolutely integral
to a
proper description
of the
literature,
much less its
literary prehistory. Moreover,
this
older,
traditional notion of revelation as an encounter with God
through Scripture
is
commonplace
in Pentecostal understanding
of “anointed
preaching”
and in the various
J2 See Alan
Clayton’s unpublished dissertation,
The Orthodox Recovery of a Heretical
Proof-text:
Athanasius
of
Alexandria’s
Interpretation of
Proverbs 8:22-30 in
Conflict
with the Arians
(Ph.D. Dissertation; Dallas,
TX: Southern Methodist
University, 1988); and,
G. T.
Sheppard,
“Between Reformation and Modern
Commentary: The Perception of the Scope of Biblical Books,” in William Perkins’ A Commentary on Galatians
(1617), with Introductory Essays, ed. G. T. Sheppard (Cleveland,
OH: Pilgrim Press, 1989), xlii-lxxl.
“For some introduction and see Brevard S.
Childs,
Biblical Theology of the
Old and New Testaments (Atlanta, GA: Fortress Press, 1992); Rolf
bibliography,
Rendtorff,
Canon and Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993); and G. T.
“Canon Criticism,” Vol. 1, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), 861-866. Sheppard,
15
136
congregational responses.34 We are, also,
aware of Pentecostal abuses of this
understanding.
In
my view,
Ricoeur’s
methodology
cannot do justice
either to the traditional
conception
of the literal sense of Scripture
or to another traditional Christian
dimension, enthusiastically shared
by Pentecostals,
of divine encounter in the
hearing
of
Scripture and a
“spiritual” response
to
it,
in terms of
gestures
of
praise, songs, the
shout, interjections
of
“Amen,”
words of
prayer, glossolalia,
the holy dance,
etc.
On the
Scripture’s
own form and function as
Scripture, despite an infinite number of other
ways
that it can be read. Another
major problem
concerns how we
recognize
within biblical traditions their canonical
context,
indicative of their role as
Scripture
and the sub-idioms of revelation to which
they belong. Returning again
to Irenaeus in the middle of the second
century,
I would contend that he surely
realized that the Pauline letters and other traditions were not originally
written to be read
together
as a
“Scripture,”
as
“inspired” human witnesses to the one
Gospel
on the same level as the former “Scripture”
shared with Judaism. The identification in the New Testament of certain books as
“Gospels,”
more often than
not,
reflects a
peculiar hearing
of them
together
as witnesses to the one
Gospel
of Jesus
Christ,
secured in
literary
terms
by
a
post-biblical title,
“The Gospel according
to X.” A
“Gospel” appears
to be far less
clearly
a “genre”
than the
perception
that certain books
belong
to the same arena within the canonical context of the New Testament.
Similarly,
other key
idioms of “the
Torah,”
“the
Prophets,”
and Solomonic “wisdom” within books of
Scripture
do not secure their identities in
Scripture by any
strict
genre designation.
One obvious device for
making
certain traditions the
primary expressions
of a
particular
idiom is the association of a key figure with a whole
group
of biblical books.”
Neither Jewish nor Christian
Scriptures,
if viewed in their
capacity
as “Scriptures,”
ever existed as a literature
per
se.
They always belonged integrally
to an historic
community
of faith that marked a
reception
of these
specific
traditions
by
certain “canon conscious” redactions
or, what we
might call, “scripturally
self-conscious” features within them. Here is one
place
where historical criticism
proves particularly helpful for a modem
understanding
of
Scripture. By
careful attention to late redactions and the semantic transformation of older
pre-scriptural traditions into a later canonical context, we
may
honor both the
literary dimension of
Scripture
and the historical character of its human
“See James Forbes, “Preaching and the Holy Spirit’s Anointing,” in his The Holy Spirit
&
Preaching (Nashville,
TN:
Abingdon Press, 1989), 53-65,
and see Villafane on “Characteristics of Hispanic Spirituality,” in his The
205-211.
Liberating Spirit, 112-119,
)5 Cj
David esp. G.
Meade, Pseudonymity
c& Canon: An
Investigation
into the Relationship of Authorship
and Authority in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids,
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), 194-215.
16
137
witness. Above all, if we are to read
Scripture scripturally,
we need to recognize
its own inner-biblical warrants that
engender
its
capacity
as a witness to revelation.36
By contrast,
Ricoeur refutes certain extreme views of revelation as either secured
solely by magisterial
tradition or anchored in one
overly psychologized
model
of”prophecy.”37 Alternatively,
he tries to describe biblical revelation at
“its most
originary level,”
defined in the terms of different modes of discourse:
prophetic, narrative, prescriptive (especially
the laws in the
Torah), wisdomic,
and
hymnic.38 In this way, Ricoeur reorders the materials of the Bible, on
general literary
critical grounds,
into these distinct discourses.
He, then, explores
the
special nature of revelation
peculiar
to each and concludes that “the notion of revelation differs from one mode of discourse to another.”39 On this
basis Ricoeur can dismiss the affirmation in the Nicene Creed
regarding Scripture
as from God “who
spoke through
the
prophets,”
since “prophecy”
is but one of several discourses found within
Scripture
Along
these same
lines,
“revelation” becomes
only
a
special
instance of various
literary “presentations”
of “a
proposed
world.”4′ Even Ricoeur must ask himself,
“By using
the word revelation in such a nonbiblical and even
nonreligious way,
do we abuse the word?”42 What his
analysis completely neglects
is the
Scripture’s
own attestation regarding
a prophetic capacity inherent in the
diversity
of its traditions, for
example, including
the
hymnic
traditions in the book of Psalms
(c, f.’ 1 Chron.
25 :1 ),
as well as narratives in “the
prophets” (
Samuel-2 Kings). Many prebiblical
traditions with no
original pretense
of
special revelation became biblical, and
only
then were
they
heard within a new canonical context and with new
expectations.43 Moreover,
whatever may
be the nature of the
prophetic
dimension within the Bible’s human
36 See, for example,
Brevard S.
Childs,
Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture
PA: Fortress Press, 1979), and his The New Testament as Canon:
(Philadelphia,
An Introduction PA: Fortress
Press, 1984);
see G. T. Sheppard,
“Canonization: (Philadelphia, Hearing the Voice of the Same God in
Historically Dissimilar Traditions,” Interpretation 36 (January 1982): 21-33, and his The Future of
the Bible:
Beyond
Liberalism and Literalism
(Toronto:
United Church
Publishing House, 1990). 3′ Paul
Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” in his on Biblical
Essays
Interpretation,
ed. with an
introductory essay by
Lewis S.
PA:
Mudge (Philadelphia,
‘g
Fortress, 1980), 90-95.
Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 74-90.
39Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 87.
40Ricoeur,
‘
“Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 78.
Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 102-104, 116. 42Ricoeur,
43
“Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” 103.
Without surveying the flood of relevant academic work on this subject since the 1970s,
I want
only to mention here a remarkable new book
Wilfred Cantwell Smith,
What is Scripture? A
by
Comparative Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress See
Press, 1993). especially chapter 2, “A Practical Example to Illustrate,” 21-44, on the Song of Songs.
17
138
testimonies to
revelation,
originary
to,
and not
simply
and
special to Solomon do not
preserve
alongside “Torah,” “prophecy,” Wisdom is unusual because
it is at most
analogous
identical
with,
earlier forms of prophecy in ancient Israel.
Ricoeur’s reduction of biblical revelation to a few
equally significant
discourses also causes him to overlook the
significance
of biblical wisdom literature for the debate over
general
hermeneutics. The biblical books
assigned
adequately
or
consistently originary
wisdom discourse in ancient
Israel, but
they
do establish within
Scripture
a biblical idiom of
“wisdom,”
in the New
Testament, “Gospel.”
and,
by
primary
including knowledge architecture,
interpretation.
For
example,
it
self-consciously
brackets
out
(see
then the wisdom literature
of
Ethickes,
idiosyncratic
elements
(e.g., covenant,
the
Exodus,
the law revealed in the
Torah)
that are essential to other
parts
of
Scripture
and takes
up many
other
topics neglected
the same. If
Scripture
makes the
claim for a
general
hermeneutics the “biblical”
response from
Deuteronomy
and the
Prophets
to non-Israelite doubts over the possibility
of wisdom in Prov.
30:1-6),
demands that we take
seriously
other
special
or
regional hermeneutics,
of
sciences, art, culture, psychology, sociology,
music, philology,
and so forth.
This role of biblical wisdom is not new to the
history
in the seventeenth
century
at the
height
of the
English Reformation, Joseph
Hall entitled his
anthology
of citations from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes: “Salomon’s Divine
Arts,
of 1.
Oeconomicks.”
wisdom,
he could bracket out
any
mention of
Christ,
the
cross,
and
much less the covenant and the
Exodus,
discuss issues of vital
importance
to the world.”
However, by retaining
sacred
vows,
and
sacrifice,
biblical wisdom could avoid a “secularization” of these
special
hermeneutics
2.
Politickes,
resurrection,
references to
God, prayer,
offering
any
rationalistic
solution
wisdom
warns us not to harmonize
On the basis of biblical
in order to
to the
problem
without of
comparative itself between
religions.
The lack of a full assimilation within
Scripture
and Torah is Judaism, and wisdom and
Gospel
in
Christianity,
away
these differences in our own theological
discourse about God’s revelation in the world.
Literary Theory Szegediensis
Vaage ([a special
Interpretation
“Wisdom,”
Bromiley (Grand Rapids,
G. T. Sheppard, “The Role of Wisdom’ in the Interpretation of Scripture,” in
and Biblical Hermeneutics, ed. Tibor
(“Acta Universitatis
de Attila Jozsef Nominatee, Papers in
Fabiny
English and American Studies,” Vol
IV; Szeged, Hungary:
Attila J6zsef
University, 1992), 187-202;
his “The Relation of Solomon’s Wisdom to Biblical
Prayer,”
in Scriptures and Cultural Conversations:
Essays for
Heinz
Guenther,
eds. John S.
Kloppenborg
and Leif
issue of the Toronto Journal
of Theology 811] Toronto: of Toronto
University
Press. 1992), 7-27; his “The Role of the Canonical Context in the
of the Solomonic Books,” in Solomon’s Divine Arts, 67-107; and his
in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, ed. G. W.
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1988), 1074-1082.
18
139
Pentecostals and the
Scripture
The
implications
of how we describe the canonical context for Pentecostal
interpretation will, similarly,
influence a wide
range
of different issues. On the basis of the nature of
Scripture itself,
we
may criticize Gordon Fee’s
argument
that tends to view the narrative
patterns
in the book of Acts as
merely part
of a rhetorical structure that accompanies
its
report upon
events rather than as
part
of a
testimony making
a theological claim about the
experience
of faith in Christ after the resurrection and in
reception
of the
Holy Spirit.
This same
pattern in most modem churches is reenacted in
many
instances
through
a special study culminating
in a service of
“confirmation,” following one’s
baptism
and other acts of
public
confession. Pentecostals have traditionally replaced
the classroom of “confirmation” with the
prayer room of
“being
filled with the
Spirit.” Superficially
the difference between Pentecostals and other Christians
may appear only
to be a matter of
priorities.
Pentecostals in
comparison
to other Christians often seem
by analogy
to
Judaism,
to be the
Hassidim,
with their visceral conversations with
God,
dervish
gestures,
and zealous holiness that,
at
times,
can drift into
legalism.
We also find in Acts a tension in this book between an
unsatisfying experience
of
reality
on the one hand
and,
on the other
hand,
the experience
of the
Holy Spirit
which fulfills the
prophecy
of Joel and implies
an end to the
injustices
and divisions of human life as we know it.
Certainly,
the
experience
of Pentecost made
concrete,
if
only
for awhile,
an end to
national, racial,
and
gender inequality.
The
position
of Acts in the New Testament makes its
testimony
a
bridge
between the Apostolic Age
and the dawn of an
enduring
Church. We find in it a witness to the
changing
circumstances of the
presence
of the Word of God from the
period
of the resurrection
appearances
to the time of Paul’s
imprisonment
in
Rome, resembling loosely
the
history
of the Word of God in the deuteronomistic
history
in Joshua to 2 Kings. What we find is a
perplexing
tension between a
breaking
into this world of the
kingdom
of
God,
in which Christian believers act as servants in God’s
redemption
of the
world,
and the need to wait for God to fulfill the
promises
of the Old Testament
according
to God’s own
timing. This tension is exacerbated
by
the
ambiguity
one must sense in the announcement in Acts 15:17 of the fulfillment of Joel
9:11-12,
“On that day,
I will raise
up
the booth of David that is fallen… so that all other peoples may
seek the Lord.” The
Church, consequently,
bears witness in Acts to a double
postponement
of prophecy, a delay of the return of the Risen Lord
despite
his
physical appearances
before some of the disciples
and a
delay
of an end to world as we know it
despite people praying
in other
“tongues”
so that
every
nation and race could stand together
in their
hearing
of the Word of God.
19
140
This tension in Acts
plays
an
important
role in Pentecostal self-understanding
of life in this world. It
helps explain
the Pentecostal tendency
to err on the side of the radical reformation and to have
deep suspicions
about liberal
political programs.
Eldin Villafane reminds us that Pentecostal churches
among
the
poor
or
racially marginalized
are “survivalist,” caught
between an
apocalyptic
vision of God
changing the
present
world while
seeking utopian
foretastes of the same
through a variety of local church social
help
efforts.45
Similarly,
Karl Barth was strongly
influenced
by
the Pentecostal socialism of
Christoph Blumhardt. Blumhardt insisted on the
necessity
of
joining
with the world in concerted
political action,
an
activity empowered by
the
Holy Spirit,
but without ever
confusing
these efforts with the
Kingdom
of God itself or with the
plan
of God. God alone must decide what actions are efficacious and can act
upon
the world with or without our
“help.” Barth admired this model of
“hurrying
and
waiting,”
which
directly informs his own views of
political
action
alongside
a confession in faith, which is careful not to confuse our
plans, regardless
of how
good
our deeds
may be,
with God’s
plan.
Pentecostals at their best have
spoken and acted
prophetically, but,
in all
honesty,
at their worst
they
have succumbed to a shallow
apocalyptic
determinism and
political conservativism.’ Just these dimensions of
passionate personal experiences
of the
Holy Spirit
and a tension between
“hurrying
and waiting” lie,
in my
opinion,
at the heart of the Pentecostal tradition and will
require
more than
general
hermeneutics to
grasp fully.
In
brief, these
essays
have
opened
a door,
challenging
us to have the
courage
of mind and
spirit
to walk
through
it. 47
”
‘6 Villafafle, The Liberating Spirit, 103. See Frank D. Macchia, Spirituality
and Social Liberation: The Message of the Blumhardts in the Light of Wuerttemberg Pietism (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1993), 163-175. For
a constructive
example
see
Murray
W.
the Moral Rhetoric of
Dempster, “Reassessing Early American Pentecostal Pacifism,” Crux: A Quarterly
Journal
of Christian Thought and Opinion 26 (March 1990): 23-36; for a see
disappointing response, Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now! The Premillenarian to
Response
Russia and Israel Since 1917 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House,
1977). “A
personal note: The length of my “response” goes far
from
beyond my assignment
the editor. However, the opportunity to interact with the articles on Pentecostal Hermeneutics opened up new horizons in my thinking. This essay is the first time I have tried to hold together so fully my separate studies of Pentecostals, on the one hand, and the Bible, on the other. My admiration for Schleiermacher grew in this research and now I think I know one reason why. Phyllis Airhart, my colleague in Church History, called my attention to a statement made by Schleiermacher late in his life, after visiting with the Brethren among whom he was raised:
There is no other place which could call forth such lively reminiscences of onward movement of at
my mind, from its Here first awakenings for the first time that to a
the entire point
up to the which I have
present attained.
higher life, consciousness of the relations of man to a
it was I awoke to the
higher world…. Here it was that that mystic tendency developed itself, which has been of so much importance to me, and has
supported, and carried me through all the storms of scepticism. Then it was only
20
141
have germinating,
now it has attained its full development, and I may say, that after all I
passed through, I have become a Herrnhuter again, only of a higher order. in his
[In The Life of Schleiermacher as Unfolded
Autobiography and Letters, trans. R. Rowan (2 vols.; London: Smith, Elder & Company, 1860), I, 284.] ]
21
