Conclusion
Once when I was a pastor a visitor explained that after forty days of fasting he had achieved a particular eschatological view: pretribulational Christians would escape the tribulation, while posttribulational Christians would stay behind to evangelize during it. Although I was duly impressed with his dietary sacrifice, which undoubtedly offered many other spiritual benefits, I found his eschatological approach untenable based on the context of the verses in question. Too young to be diplomatic, I retorted that even forty days of fasting would not coerce from the Holy Spirit something that contradicted the biblical text that the Spirit had already inspired.
Although the first two sections of the book highlighted readers’ engagement with the biblical text, Part III warns against what I believe is a dangerous overreaction against texts’ ancient sense. Some sorts of churches have emphasized only the rational elements of Christian faith to the exclusion of others. Most of us who have spent many years in Pentecostal or charismatic churches, however, have witnessed some excesses in the other direction.
The Shape of the Canonical Documents
Insofar as we believe that God has spoken to us in Scripture, we should pay careful attention to the Scripture that God gave us, not the sort of Scripture we want God to have given us. As Craig Bartholomew, a leading theological interpreter of Scripture, rightly warns, “The text as the instantiation of a communication event comes into existence at a certain historical point: in all its synchronicity, it is embedded in history, and it is crucial that this historical aspect of the text be taken seriously in interpretation.” 4
God did not send Scripture to us in some random way, but in particular languages, cultures, and genres normally already accessible to the first audiences. The message came to us already contextualized, so if we wish to hear it fully, we must hear it first in the shape in which God provided it. Had God spoken to us most directly in a multicultural language of, for example, sparrows’ chirping, we would invest considerable time in deciphering their chirps. Had God spoken through radio waves, we would invest in researching radio waves. So if God has spoken in some ancient Near Eastern narrative genres, we should learn those genres. If God has spoken through genres such as letters to particular congregations, we should try to hear what God inspired his servants to say to those congregations.
Some preachers are more committed to evoking particular audience responses than to hearing God’s message in the text. This approach pragmatically reduces Scripture to, at best, Bible memory verses as useful decorations, and, at worst, a respected text to which one may deceptively appeal for authority while ignoring its message. God provided the message in texts; therefore some principles useful for studying texts will be useful for studying the Bible. God gave us this message in specific, enculturated forms and literary contexts; respecting the Bible that God actually gave us (rather than how we in our human wisdom might assume that it should be given) therefore invites us to explore its message given in these forms and contexts. Preachers should not pretend a prophetic omniscience in areas where God expects us (with the Spirit’s help) to study, even if we must rely on translations and background helps to assist us.
Interpretive Goals Dictate Methods
Different interpretive approaches sometimes address different goals, and some can be complementary. Scholars continue to debate the proper goals of interpretation. To some degree, the underlying semantic question regarding determining meaning is what we mean by “meaning.” Since language is socially constructed, as part of culture, a term’s definition or phrase’s sense normally depends on its generally accepted usage. Otherwise we could not communicate.
Different scholars have different objectives in pursuing “meaning.” 5 We can speak descriptively of how reading communities understand texts; this is a useful historical and social approach already mentioned earlier. Yet we can also seek to reconstruct, insofar as possible, how authors in a given past setting could have expected hearers (whether those apparently targeted by the work or hearers more generally in that setting) to have understood their work.
This goal is extremely relevant if we care about why the text is shaped in the particular, concrete way that it is—why we have different texts in different genres addressing different situations rather than simply one universal communication that automatically transcends culture and language. That is, why we have the Bible as literature, as texts, rather than having only the testimony of nature or of (in a nontextual way) the Spirit. We have those other testimonies, but God gave us the Bible in a different way, partly because texts were needed to preserve for us the testimony of God’s specific acts in history that climax in Jesus’s death and resurrection—the narration of the gospel (for Paul’s summary of the gospel, see 1 Cor 15:1–4). I return to this subject later in this section, drawing briefly on relevance theory and how we read many kinds of texts as communications.
Some scholars accept the legitimacy of questions about how the earliest audiences would have understood literary works, but as simply one set of possible contexts among a potentially infinite array of valuable readings. 6 That is, some accept the question of the earliest audiences’ understanding as legitimate yet ultimately of relatively marginal importance. 7
But while chronological priority need not dictate theological priority, the very use of an ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern text, composed in Greek or Hebrew and presupposing particular cultural assumptions, invites our attention to the text in the contexts that generated both it and the signs it employs (insofar as these contexts can be reconstructed from the interplay between the text and what we know of antiquity). Understanding the text in its earliest general cultural context is fundamental in some sense for those subsequent readings for which a major objective remains hearing the text (again, as a collection of signs generated and most directly intelligible in a particular milieu).
This approach contrasts with some interpreters who (at the extreme) are not interested in the biblical texts as we received them (written in ancient languages and presupposing specific ancient contexts), who simply wish to exploit “canonical” texts to attach canonical status to their own readings or those of their interpretive community. 8 Such readers do not, apart from that conferred status, actually need these particular texts to communicate the different ideas they prefer to emphasize. 9
Our goal in interpretation shapes the approach we will take to it; but for those for whom the earliest text is foundational (or even canonical), producing readings (however recontextualized) somehow analogous to those most plausible to the text’s ideal audience 10 or at least to general first-century culture 11 will be vital, hence demands careful attention to the earliest contexts. Because discussion of ancient context is often linked to discussions of authorial intention, I will address that question before returning to the ancient context and designed sense.
Pentecostal Tradition and the Canon
For Christians, Scripture has epistemic primacy. This is evident both in Jesus’s appeal to the Scriptures of his day (as an authority above tradition and arbiter of spiritual activity) and in subsequent, long-standing Christian tradition itself. Nearly all Christian movements and denominations enshrined their respect for Scripture’s authority in their doctrinal statements, if it was not already assumed and demonstrated in their leaders’ appeals to Scripture in their writings. They presumably have believed that their other doctrines came from Scripture.
This being the case, Scripture merits epistemic priority over, and is the optimal resource for verifying or falsifying the claims of, other doctrinal statements. Indeed, for Pentecostals to value Pentecostal tradition as an arbiter of Scripture’s meaning is inconsistent with a basic impulse in early Pentecostal tradition itself: the rejection of church tradition. 12 An ahistorical American restorationism often shaped this needlessly extreme rejection, but it certainly should serve as a warning against enshrining Pentecostal tradition. 13
An example in a Pentecostal church context would be Scripture’s epistemic priority over the Assemblies of God’s Statement of Sixteen Fundamental Truths (not all of which are equally emphasized in practice today in Assemblies of God churches). 14 (I select the Assemblies because of my appreciative affinities there and because of lively, late-night conversations among Assemblies of God Bible college students from 1978 to 1982, but one could also examine the doctrinal commitments of Church of God or other denominations accordingly.) Pentecostal historians regularly point out that the doctrines highlighted reflect the historical context in which they were written—for example, the lengthy statement on the Trinity reflects the Oneness debate that divided early US Pentecostals. In its current form, the prologue itself notes that Scripture is “our all-sufficient rule for faith and practice,” that the wording of the statement is not inspired, and that it is meant to meet the church’s fundamental needs rather than to articulate all possible doctrines. The first truth articulated is that of Scripture’s inspiration.
What would happen if careful biblical study led to rethinking one or more of these “fundamental truths”? Do we grant epistemic priority to the church’s tradition or to what exegesis of Scripture reveals? And if the former, do we really believe the first of the fundamental truths? (My interest here is not, by the way, in challenging any particular doctrines on the list, the majority of which I in fact agree with; I raise the point simply to offer what in Pentecostal circles may provide a stark illustration.) 15 Of course, the diehard defender of any church’s traditions will insist that Scripture, rightly interpreted, supports their traditions. But without careful study of Scripture such a claim is offered prematurely, and removes the canonical groundwork for dialogue with other traditions that interpret Scripture differently.
If we really grant Scripture epistemic priority, we ought not to fear seeing where inductive study of Scripture will lead us, especially if we engage in this process corporately and honestly. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches may have more right to want to nuance such claims, but for Protestants to get defensive about someone biblically probing their tradition is inconsistent with their own Protestant tradition. 16 Such malaise might require further Luthers to prophetically challenge them back to the Scriptures.
Luther’s interest in Scripture reflected a wider rediscovery of earlier sources of the faith, and wider call for renewal, that already existed within the church of his day. At great cost, many Christians reemphasized Scripture, which they regarded as more divinely inspired than church tradition, as the foundation of their faith. 17 God forbid that, in the name of fresh renewal, we should undermine earlier renewals that God has already provided, most of which called the church back to Scripture or to some neglected biblical emphases. 18
While all interpretations are historically contingent, some are more helpful than others. 19 One continuationist scholar recounts his experience with a charismatic preacher who insisted that the Lord had shown him the meaning of a particular passage. The scholar had worked through this passage in Greek and warned that the preacher was dependent on an inaccurate translation. The preacher and his wife maintained that the Lord had revealed this truth to them, and that someone who could not see it lacked discernment from the Spirit. The scholar then replied that the Lord had told him that his own, contrary interpretation was correct. After a protracted silence, the minister conceded, “I guess that means the Bible means different things to different people.” 20 For this minister, subjective personal revelation, rather than the original communication preserved in the biblical text, functioned as the locus of authority.
A biblically grounded Pentecostal preacher once complained of some theologically fringe Pentecostals as Pentecostal granola: the nuts, fruits, and flakes of the Spirit. 21 Some charismatic pastors have had to deal with members who have insisted that their revelations were true, even when such revelations contravened Scripture. Some Christians have gone so far as to justify adultery and other sins by appeal to a word from the Lord, when in fact their passions make it difficult for them to hear God clearly. That is not a new problem; prophets supporting indulgence in sin have long troubled God’s people, requiring correction by faithful shepherds with solid discernment (Jer 6:14; 8:11; 23:14–18; 2 Tim 4:3; Rev 2:14, 20).
Sometimes we have to confront interpreters who, lacking understanding of historical or even literary context, produce interpretations wholly disconnected from the sense in the text. In such cases, these interpreters often justify their interpretations by appeal to an authority that they deem higher than the contextual sense: “You see only the literal meaning, but I have greater spiritual understanding.”
Yet when God inspired the first authors of Scripture, many of them apostles and prophets, they were inspired to write with particular flows of context, using particular language and allusions to particular cultures and situations. Are we so sure that we have insights so “spiritual” that they should supplant what God inspired the first authors to mean? Paul warned some prophetically gifted Corinthian Christians, “If anybody supposes that they’re a prophet or a ‘spiritual’ person, then let them recognize that the matters I’m writing to you are the Lord’s own command” (1 Cor 14:37).
Like the false prophets of Jeremiah 23, some appear to be prophesying what the Lord has not spoken. Some new traditions of interpretation, such as secure promises of material wealth and ease, defy what God’s Spirit inspired through a succession of tested prophets and other servants of God for centuries. My concern with Pentecostal hermeneutics at this point is not with the teaching of fellow scholars or others who emphasize the Spirit’s role in embracing the text’s message; my conflict is with those who supplant the text’s message by interpretations that do not flow from it.
When we speak not simply of biblical books but of the Bible we are speaking of a canon—the collection of particular books that have proved themselves among God’s people over time. A “canon” is literally a “measuring stick,” what we can use to evaluate other claims to revelation. 22 I am not exploring here how the canon arose but addressing those who share the belief that the canon (or, with Luther, at least most of it) provides a way to measure theological beliefs. 23
The full experience of the Spirit cannot appeal solely to spiritual experience irrelevant to biblical foundations. On the one hand, biblical narratives offer repeated models of believers willing to be changed by their experiences of divine encounters, as we have noted. On the other, we who look to Scripture for its models should recognize that it functions in a specially authoritative way. 24 Any prophecy today must be tested (1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:20–21), but the canon is largely by definition what has passed the test.
To say that the Bible functions canonically is not to deny the existence of other revelation. 25 It is in fact quite clear from biblical narratives themselves that revelation is not limited to the Bible. For example, Obadiah hid a hundred prophets (1 Kgs 18:13), who presumably prophesied the word of the Lord; yet their prophecies are nowhere reported in Scripture. God apparently speaks to angels (Ps 103:20), yet few of these instructions are recorded in Scripture. It is God’s word that acts regularly in creation (Pss 147:15–18; 148:8), 26 yet few of these divine commands in nature are preserved for us. Jesus promises in John 16:13–15 that the Spirit will continue to speak and reveal the things of Jesus; the Spirit surely did not reveal all the things of Jesus in the New Testament, and the Spirit continues to enable us to know him. 27 If even just two or three prophets prophesied in the average first-century house church per week (1 Cor 14:29; though the average could have been higher, cf. 14:5, 24, 31), and we assume for the sake of argument an impossibly low average of merely one hundred house churches in the first century, 28 we might think of nearly a million prophecies—yet barely any of them ended up in the New Testament canon.
What then is the point of speaking of a canon? It is the minimal revelation that all of us can agree on as the “measuring stick” for testing other claims to revelation. As a young Christian I was jealous of an even younger Christian who was having visions. I had been one of the first people to teach her about hearing God’s voice, but I had never had a real vision. Now as an immature peer I was competing with her rather than partnering with her so that both of us could grow. My friend, however, stubbornly insisted that she did not need to read the Bible; God spoke to her just as he spoke to people in those days, so why should she get her teaching secondhand from them? Inevitably, when her hearing erred, she did not have the theological means to get herself back on track. Somehow God used me, others, and her own common sense to bring correction to that specific error, but later, when a pastor rejected her prophetic gifting, she fell away from the faith completely. 29 I still mourn her tragic loss of faith; once intimate with God, she was one of the little ones who stumbled (Matt 18:6, 10, 14).
There were many prophets in Jeremiah’s day, but among them Jeremiah stood virtually alone in announcing impending judgment. The other prophets were more popular in their day, but after Jerusalem fell their words settled into the dustbin of history. By contrast, Jeremiah’s message, confirmed by its fulfillment, became part of Israel’s canon. The Bible is not just any claim to revelation; it is what has stood the test of time. Our personal hearing of God is important, but God will not speak something now that contradicts what he has already spoken over centuries through tested apostles and prophets. God gave us the Bible, and provided the spiritual gift of teaching it so that we could evaluate our experiences and let Scripture direct what we do with them.
The Holy Spirit can speak through a poem, a song, and even a donkey if God wills. Yet we do not grant these personal words canonical status, and we also should not treat a message from a verse out of context as that verse’s public, canonical meaning. 30 If Scripture can mean whatever a given interpreter thinks or feels, if some approximation related to the original communication is not important, then how is “Scripture” special in a way different from whatever else God uses to speak to us? Does not this relativistic approach, much as it appeals to our increasingly relativistic culture and therefore is often hailed as progressive, necessarily lead to an erosion of biblical teaching and to ideas that most Spirit-people have traditionally considered false? 31 If biblical texts can mean anything, there is no such thing as erroneous teaching, nullifying many debates in the New Testament (e.g., whether Gentiles must be circumcised), since many of the criticized sides in those debates reported in Scripture also claimed to build on prior Scripture.
Moreover, far from being a distinctively Spirit-led approach to Scripture, depending on random thoughts occuring as one reads Scripture can flourish in circles that allow God to speak to them only there; those for whom Scripture is no special authority have no reason to read it when they think they can hear God equally elsewhere. Those who recognize its special Spirit-inspiration, though, should hear the Spirit there by studying the text carefully in the form in which God gave it.
It hardly honors the Spirit to exalt our own untested experiences above the cumulative tested experience of the Spirit preserved in Scripture. As Pentecostal tradition has long observed, the Spirit will not contradict what he has already spoken over centuries through apostles and prophets, many of them directly affirmed or commissioned by Jesus during his earthly ministry.
The Spirit gets blamed for too much of our indiscipline with study, sometimes substituting imagination for hearing God instead of submitting our imagination to God (Jer 23:16; Ezek 13:2, 17). Those who have been charismatics very long, at least in the United States, recognize that human error and spiritual counterfeits try to derive credibility by attaching themselves to genuine experience of the Spirit. This has normally been true of past revivals, as discerning writers of those times (such as Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley) noted. 32 Indeed, in Jeremiah’s day, not only did most prophets prophesy falsely (Jer 23:9–31), but many of them wanted Jeremiah killed for speaking the truth (26:8, 11). Claims of inspiration must be tested. Not all claims to hear from God are correct; prayerful consideration of Scripture feeds into a hermeneutical circle in hearing God’s voice. Scripture’s message remains normative for us but must be interpreted and applied afresh to the present.
How do we distinguish the Spirit’s message from counterfeit claims? Consider first the difference between Jesus’s miracles and counterfeit ones. God’s miracles have always been greater (Exod 7:12; 8:18–19), but Jesus warned of a proliferation of false signs in the eschatological time (Mark 13:22; cf. 2 Thess 2:9; Rev 13:13), i.e., now (Mark 13:5–8; 2 Thess 2:7; 1 John 2:18). Jesus’s miracles were benevolent, mostly healings and deliverances from demonic oppression. They were only rarely destructive, and then usually for a specific reason. Jesus curses a fig tree as a prophetic warning (Mark 11:12–21), and allows pigs’ destruction for the sake of rescuing a human (Mark 5:11–13). 33 Indeed, they sometimes appear the opposite of judgment miracles. John’s Gospel may depict Jesus’s benevolent signs in contrast to the judgment signs of Moses: the first sign is water turned to wine instead of blood (John 2:7–10; cf. Exod 7:20–21), and the last sign before the resurrection is the restoring of life rather than the killing of the firstborn (John 11:43–44; cf. Exod 12:29). 34
Another partial tool for discernment is considering whom the miracle is designed to honor. In response to Jesus’s signs many people glorified the true God (e.g., Mark 2:12; cf. Deut 13:2) and Jesus himself gave glory to his Father (John 8:49–50; 17:4). Those who seek credit for God’s works as opposed to offering them freely are either spiritually immature or false prophets (cf. John 5:44; Acts 3:12; 8:9–10; 14:15). Unlike other ancient exorcists, Jesus needed no magical formulas or rituals (Matt 8:16; Mark 1:27). These characterize Jesus’s works, though Jesus and his followers did work through material means at times (Luke 8:44; Acts 5:13; 19:12), as had God in Moses’s day (Exod 4:2, 17; 7:19–20; 8:5, 16–17; 9:23; 10:13; 14:16).
Yet Satan may imitate even benevolent activity. That might be the case in Matt 12:27//Luke 11:19: “by whom do your own sons cast out demons?” Presumably the seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19:13) had been thought successful on some earlier occasions. Perhaps demons sometimes cooperated with magical system to keep people enslaved to it. Spiritual discernment is thus needed.
We must examine claims even among professing Christians. The Spirit of God sometimes uses people simply because the Spirit is strong among others in a place (1 Sam 19:20–24). Likewise, someone who is disobeying God may still have a remnant of anointing for a time (Judg 16:1–3; lost eventually, 16:20). That false prophets come in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15) means that some of them look like sheep. Some may prophesy, drive out demons and perform miracles in Jesus’s name—yet be lost because they do not follow him (Matt 7:21–23). Gifts are important, but Jesus did not say, “You’ll know them by their gifts”; rather, he warned, “You will know them by their fruits ” (Matt 7:16, 20), i.e., in the context, by their obeying God (7:17–19).
Still, we must exercise great caution about judging someone a false prophet (as opposed to simply some with whom we disagree on some points). Even prophecies from genuine Christian prophets must be evaluated (1 Cor 14:29). 35 Christians in this age “know in part, and prophesy in part” (1 Cor 13:9). Even John the Baptist wrongly doubted Jesus’s identity because of his preconceptions and his limited revelation (Matt 11:2–3//Luke 7:18–19). Just because someone is imperfect or we think they are wrong does not give us the right to condemn them as a false prophet. John was certainly a true prophet (Matt 11:9–11//Luke 7:26–28).
Genuine “false prophets” are a more serious threat than someone mishearing God, despite the undue weight some critics fix on the general statement of Deut 18:22. 36 Even if prophecies are accurate, the prophets are false
If someone rightly emphasizing love wrongly claims that the Spirit condones sexual immorality, they are false prophets (Jer 23:14; 2 Pet 2:1–2; Rev 2:14, 20; cf. Jude 8). If they turn the teaching of grace into an excuse to sin freely, they are false (Jude 4). If they exploit God’s people for their own profit, they are false (2 Pet 2:1–3; cf. 1 Tim 6:5).
But we must be careful with accusations; slander and gossip are serious sins (Rom 1:29–30). Scripture repeatedly exhorts us to love and unity (e.g., Rom 12:9–10; 13:8–10; 14:15; 1 Cor 13:1–14:1; 16:14; Gal 5:6, 13–14, 22; Eph 4:2–3, 13–16; 5:2; Phil 2:2; Col 3:14). Shepherds must guard our flocks (Acts 20:28–31), but we cannot assume that every accusation is true; many rumors get circulated about true servants of God (e.g., Acts 21:21; Rom 3:8; 2 Cor 6:8), and we are not to accept accusations against elders until we have multiple independent witnesses (though we should then reprove the elders publicly; 1 Tim 5:19–20). Even when someone sins, our goal is their repentance and restoration, not their destruction (Matt 18:12–17; 1 Cor 5:5; Gal 6:1; 2 Thess 3:14–15; 1 Tim 1:13–16, 20; 2 Tim 2:25–26).
Biblical Spirit, Spirit-inspired Bible
Scripture is the one revelation that virtually all Christians agree on as the “canon,” or measuring stick, for all other claims to revelation. Thus we need to do our best to properly understand it, preach it and teach it the way God gave it to us, in context. If Scripture is our measuring stick, then it does matter what God inspired it to mean. What we can be sure it means is at least what God meant when he inspired the various authors to communicate their message (the subject of chapters 8 and 9).
Respecting Scripture Requires Respecting the First-inspired Sense
Valuing spiritual revelation requires us to value most of all the divinely commissioned and inspired message of our Lord Jesus—God in the flesh—and the circle of those whose experience of him we can be sure, by providential arrangement, was unmediated and substantial. As already noted, Paul warns us: “If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that what I write is the Lord’s command. If one ignores this, he himself will be ignored” (1 Cor. 14:37–38). All claims to hear God’s voice must be evaluated (1 Cor 14:29; 1 Thess 5:20–21), and listening to someone else’s revelatory claim can get us in trouble if we do not test it carefully (1 Kgs 13:18–22). 37 Individual spiritual experience is necessarily subjective, but it can be balanced with something objective: tested past revelation, corporately affirmed by God’s people in all times and places since its books’ acceptance.
The purpose of a canon is not to provide fodder (one might say, “cannon fodder”) for whatever we wish to find there. Its purpose is to provide a measuring stick for other claims to revelation, an objective standard against which we may compare our own subjective experience. This is by no means, as we have pointed out already, an invitation to ignore experience; it is rather an invitation to read our experience in light of Scripture. The reverse is true, but not in the same way: we will intuitively read Scripture in light of our experience, bringing our questions to the text. Rather than imposing our answers on the text, however, we must submit to the text’s guidance.
That means that it matters what the text is saying in its context. Exploiting the Bible to say only what we mean—to communicate merely our own opinions—is simply wrapping our own ideas in the cloak of biblical authority. Hijacking the biblical text’s authority for our own agendas is a dangerous venture. The Bible spoke harshly of prophets who claimed God’s authority for their own ideas.
Apart from context, including the context of the languages and cultures of which they were a part, the letters on a page are simply scratches that communicate nothing in particular. 38 When we read in context, we need to read Scripture the way God provided it, which in general means a book at a time. A passage in Mark fulfills a particular role in the larger context of Mark’s full story; a passage in Esther likewise fulfills a particular role in the larger context of that book. Knowing the customs and culture to which these books regularly allude also helps us understand the original point.
When I was a new Christian, I was taking second-year Latin and was supposed to be translating Caesar for my homework. 39 Wanting to read only my Bible and not do my homework, I flipped open the Bible and stuck my finger down, hoping to find a text that said, “Forsake all and follow me.” Instead, I found, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). God chose to answer my random approach to Scripture on the level that it merited, but this hardly means that God revealed to me a new, universal meaning for this passage. It would be unfortunate indeed if I began traveling the lecture circuit summoning all Christians to heed this passage by translating Caesar’s Gallic War !
Nor do all appropriations of Scripture out of context prove so fortuitous. The true story is told of a woman who “explained to her therapist that God had told her to divorce her husband and marry another man (with whom she was romantically involved). She cited Paul’s command in Eph 4:24 (KJV), ‘Put on the new man,’ as the key to her ‘divine’ guidance.” 40
Spontaneity Is Not Identical to Inspiration
Unfortunately, some Christians zealous for fresh experience do not find careful study exciting enough. This verdict may not apply to academic interpreters, but it seems a common enough malady among popular-level readers.
The Bible urges us to labor for wisdom (Prov 2:2–3; 4:5; 15:14; 22:17; 23:23); shortcuts are not the way to attain it. In our culture, we want everything instant; fast-food devotions fit our active lifestyle. Instant, however, is not always, and perhaps not usually, God’s way. Sometimes in the Bible God did things instantly, such as many of Jesus’s miracles, but usually God worked through a process. Consider the testing that Abraham and Sarah endured before Isaac’s birth, the testing that David endured before being exalted king, and so forth. God could have formed the world or fulfilled his purposes in a moment rather than billions of years, but even young earth creationists (of whom I am not one) grant that he took at least several days to do it. God often works through long processes. 41
Contemporary culture exalts tweets and sound bites. Sound bites out of context misrepresent people; such out-of-context quotations destroy reputations, damage ministries, end political careers, and so forth. On a popular level, however, most Christians use Bible verses like sound bites. Rather than reading Scripture deeply and imbibing the context, we use verses the way we have always heard others use them. Sometimes we employ them simply the way they strike us at the moment, sometimes blaming them on inspiration even if our application runs precisely counter to the text’s point. 42
The process of careful study may not sound inspiring to those who believe that the Spirit is experienced or pursued solely in a context of spontaneity, but Proverbs insists that we be diligent in seeking wisdom and knowledge. Pentecostals affirm that Luke wrote his work by the Spirit, yet Luke tells us that he did research before he wrote (Luke 1:1–4). Was the Spirit involved only in Luke’s writing and not in the research that he did to provide accurate information about Jesus and some of his early followers? If so, why should it make much difference whether Luke was writing material that was historically true (as I and many other Acts scholars have argued) or was making his stories up like a novel (as some other scholars have suggested)?
Some of the earliest Pentecostals wanted to communicate in tongues on the mission field without having to endure the rigor of language learning; 43 Pentecostal missionaries quickly discovered the need to learn languages, and language school has long been a crucial step in their preparation. Those who want to “understand” biblical texts without using appropriate tools for textual understanding may miss the purposes for which such texts were designed, and so fail to receive communication fully just as some early Pentecostals failed to provide it.
God works through the process, not only through spontaneity. God sometimes did not even give a prophet a message until after an immediate confrontation (e.g., Jer 28:10–17), nor did a prophet always hear as soon as he asked (42:7). Granted, we often experience spontaneous blessings, but often we or someone else devoted considerable time in prayer or a daily life consecrated to God before we had those spontaneous experiences. As we read about God’s servants in Scripture, nearly all of those about whom much is recorded experienced lengthy testing before God fulfilled his promises. Consider the particularly long wait of Abraham and Sarah; Joseph’s years of slavery and prison; David’s years of fleeing from Saul; and so forth. When the Spirit first empowered Jesus, he led him into the wilderness to be tested before the rest of his public mission; and even that mission led to the cross before the Father vindicated him with the resurrection.
The Spirit Gives the Gift of Teaching
Determining what the biblical writers were communicating in their original historical setting may not seem flashy like some revival phenomena, but it is foundational to a sound pentecostal hermeneutic. What did the Spirit inspire Spirit-moved prophets in the past to say to God’s people then? This approach is not distinctively pentecostal, but then again, neither is calling Jesus Lord; yet the Spirit certainly inspires the confession that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor 12:3). The activity of the Spirit poured out at Pentecost is hardly limited to merely what non-Pentecostals traditionally rejected. Teaching is an essential spiritual gift, one that Paul ranks highest next to apostles and prophets (1 Cor 12:28; cf. Rom 12:6–7; Eph 4:11). Yet “teaching” at the very least often includes expounding the Scriptures (1 Tim 4:13; 2 Tim 3:16).
Some groups of Christians have been too arrogant about their gift of Scripture exposition to respect gifts that are often more spontaneous in more popular circles, but sometimes more popular circles have also been arrogant about their gifts and despised “mere” teaching. If we humbled ourselves, we might be able to learn and grow through each others’ gifts. Today, happily, there are many biblically strong teachers in Pentecostalism; I suspect that in some places, however, the traditional tension between “mere” teachers and flashier gifts remains. We inherited the tension from tensions between academic and revivalist nineteenth-century evangelicalism, and for the sake of Christ’s church it is high time we got over them. (See the discussion later in this book, especially p. 266.)
If what the Spirit led the biblical writers to proclaim is a normative guide for us, then it will not do to make the text mean whatever we want it to mean. That is not to say that we cannot get a sound idea from a text that was meant to teach a different sound idea; this happens all the time. But then there is little other than the Spirit to keep us from also getting an unsound idea from the text, and we are back to untested experience.
At times I have experienced the Lord speaking to me in dreams and found profound insights regarding his character or activity with regard to passages or themes in Scripture. I have found such “revelatory” experiences enlightening, as also at times when insights would come to me in prayer or preaching as well as in study. 44 Presumably such revelatory experience should qualify as a charismatic hermeneutic. But in each case I also evaluate the apparent insight in light of Scripture before deciding whether or not to accept it, because the tested deposit of countless generations of prophets in Scripture must trump any individual’s (or even any contemporary community’s) apparently revelatory insight. That is, it is more truly the way of the Spirit to honor the greater inspiration over the lesser one.
Scripture is meant to function as a measuring stick—not as just a place where, when we get a revelation, we can look up verses to support our experience. If we come to Scripture only to support our experience and not to understand it, we are justifying rather than measuring our experience by Scripture. This approach sometimes leads to almost complete subjectivity, so that if one’s experience is not divinely directed, one lacks a superior authority to expose and correct it. Rather than wrapping Scripture around our experience, we should be so full of the biblical message—not simply its wording but its message and theology—that we read our experience in light of Scripture.
But this process also inevitably involves a hermeneutical circle. Whenever we bring theological or other questions to the text, we read the text in light of the present. When pastors seek answers in Scripture for issues with which their congregations are struggling, they read the text in light of current needs (even when they do so to challenge overindulgence of felt needs). Everyone does this, whether the questions are prompted by their experience, their church’s teaching, current ethical or social issues, or something else.
In 2008 I experienced an abrupt, extreme, and unrelenting spiritual attack for two days; it made no sense in my immediate context. On the third day I was recovering, and my wife, son David, and I went for a walk. We paused under a tree that was some three stories tall, and within moments after we stepped out from under it, the tree suddenly split at the bottom—without uprooting—and crashed where we had been standing. Because of the tree’s wide structure, all three of us would have been crushed to death. The information that reached us from Congo soon after this event made clear that this was a direct and deliberate spiritual attack, from which God had protected us.
It was an experience too direct to deny, yet it violated my theology. 45 Without assuming that every detail of reality is addressed in Scripture, I did not understand biblically how a spirit could have power to do more than deceive and work in individuals. How could forces of evil actually knock down a tree? For several years I left my experience and my theology in tension, not understanding how to resolve the question. Then one day I was reading Job 1 in Hebrew for my devotions, and suddenly noticed what I had read many times previously: Satan sent a strong wind, causing a house to collapse on Job’s children (Job 1:12, 19). I had already written a commentary on Revelation, where an evil figure brings fire from heaven (Rev 13:13). But somehow it had remained disconnected from my theology about the real power of evil. Experience helped trigger that recognition of what was already in the text, albeit belatedly.
Spirit hermeneutics, then, may be more than simply traditional exegesis, as argued earlier. Yet it should also not be less than traditional exegesis. Granted, when believers lack understanding of literary context a true relationship with the Spirit often protects them from serious error; access to background is even more often limited, and we must trust the Spirit’s help to cover lacunae in our knowledge. But the Spirit is not a shortcut to reading Scripture deeply, for the Spirit surely leads us to engage Scripture deeply if we have access to Scripture at all. And whatever else reading deeply may involve, it must include reading Scripture in the shape in which God gave it, rather than isolated verses out of context. My sense is that those who ignore context or minimize the value of background are generally those who spend little time engaging the texts as God has given them.
If we use the Spirit as an excuse to forego deeply reading the very works that we claim that the Spirit inspired, our spiritualized shortcut will short-circuit the point of having a canon as an objective external control on our more subjective claims to inspiration. I merely summarize some traditional principles here, since they are widely known, taught elsewhere, and so fundamental to the process of reading intelligently that a reader unfamiliar with them would probably not have reached this point in the book. 46
The last point includes considering the way the ancient audiences would have understood the text’s genre. In some circles it is popular to argue that these principles stem from modern historical critical method and that ancient readers did not follow them. Unhappily for those who so argue, this claim is not correct. As I will explain in greater detail later, reading a work in its context is not a modern invention but is the usual way of writing and reading texts; 47 it is also common sense, and the inspired book of Proverbs values common sense. 48
The new Spirit dynamic is not a dismissal of the old, textual one; it simply submits to the Spirit’s leading and affirms application by analogy, which we seek to do with the Spirit’s guidance. The OT sometimes speaks of “walking” or “going” in God’s commandments or ways informed by his commandments, employing a Hebrew idiom for behavior (Exod 18:20; Lev 26:3; Deut 8:6; 19:9; 26:17; 28:9; 30:16). For Paul, believers do not need to be under the law in the traditional sense because we “walk” by the Spirit and are led by the Spirit (Gal 5:14–23, esp. 16, 18, 23). Surely whatever else this guidance may involve it also informs our ethics and behavior; and if Paul is a model of following such guidance, this guidance is compatible with looking to the OT for models by means of analogy (a pattern often found in his letters; e.g., Rom 8:36; 13:8–10; 1 Cor 1:31; 9:9; 10:7). 49
Nevertheless, as we embrace the new dynamic by the Spirit, we need to keep in mind that the more subjective our guidance, the more it is that our personal revelation needs testing, and the further we move from the objective standard by which it must be tested. Keeping Word and Spirit in balance is essential; because of our respective giftings, a teacher may emphasize one side more and a prophetically gifted person the other, but the body of Christ needs both.
In Josiah’s day, the words of the Book declared God’s standard, and Huldah the prophetess declared what that violated standard would mean for their time (2 Kgs 22:8–20). All prophecy must be tested, and teaching likewise is fallible, for we “know in part, and prophesy in part” (1 Cor 13:9). Keeping the right balance between sound exegesis and Spirit-guided, relevant application for our lives is important. We cannot emphasize only the latter because it has been seen as more distinctive to some of our faith communities.
A prominent early Pentecostal leader prophesied a revival greater than the Pentecostal revival that he had experienced; this new revival would bring together Word and Spirit. 50 Imagine what can happen when we bring together the best of charismatic experience with the best of evangelical attention to biblical exposition (and, for that matter, the best of many churches’ emphases on caring for the poor, for ethnic reconciliation, and so forth).
The Spirit still speaks today; that is what Scripture leads us to expect. We can be most confident of the Spirit’s voice, however, when we attend to what the Spirit has already spoken. The canon provides us the opportunity and the responsibility to submit our hearing the Spirit to what the tested prophetic tradition has heard, and thus to grow in hearing correctly.