A Legacy from Pentecostal Scholars
Spirit Hermeneutics is primarily designed to function as biblical theological reflection supporting a dynamic, experiential reading of Scripture. At the same time, a genuine sensitivity to the Spirit’s voice in Scripture should welcome deeper understanding of the historical and cultural milieu in which the Spirit shaped Scripture’s form as we have it, a sensitivity against which some proponents of experiential and theological reading have sometimes overreacted.
Although concerned with Christian readings generally, this work engages in conversation particularly frequently with Pentecostal and charismatic traditions because of their special interest in the Spirit and my familiarity with historical examples and discussions in these circles. I am a charismatic biblical scholar at home, albeit sometimes in different ways, both in global pentecostalism 1 and in academic discussions of Scripture.
Because I am a biblical scholar, I can make the strongest distinctive contribution not by analyzing the current state of hermeneutical discussion (a work undertaken by many others) but by focusing on the biblical evidence itself. 2 Such evidence is relevant for all Christian interpretive traditions and is also where my own journey with Scripture, nurtured particularly by Pentecostals, began. Scripture itself provides many precedents for hearing earlier parts of Scripture as applicable to the hearers’ time. Scripture itself thus models an experiential appropriation of its message.
I begin by showing the importance of (and time-honored appreciation for) this experiential emphasis, the value of hearing the text from multiple locations (global Christianity), and the potential consistency of these approaches with a grounding in the original, experiential message in its first context. I then show how these approaches reflect an epistemology grounded in the gospel of Christ and surfacing in multiple early Christian streams (including Pauline, Johannine, and Lukan approaches). I then work to show inductively how Scripture itself invites us to hear it in these ways, especially in terms of how Jesus and Paul read the Scriptures. Finally, I briefly consider what implications these and some other factors might have for what is often called “pentecostal” or “charismatic” hermeneutics.
When in the past I taught hermeneutics to master’s-level pastoral ministry students, much of the course addressed basic exegetical method and models (plus some introductory-level theory). I generally offered an explicit integrative transition to other theological disciplines, especially preaching, yet only relatively briefly at the end of the course.
Yet I myself was regularly preaching, applying texts to my audience’s settings, and even more regularly listened spiritually to what I could learn from the biblical text. I modeled this approach when I taught various Bible courses (including the aforementioned hermeneutics course), but I rarely reflected on or sought to explain it in a deliberate manner. In this book, I want to somewhat redress that theoretical deficiency by comments on why a spiritually sensitive, specifically Christian approach to the biblical text is for Christians a valuable companion to (yet not a replacement for) exegesis.
In this book I presuppose that most readers already understand the value of attention to literary and historical context, which I have addressed frequently elsewhere. This book is thus neither a manual addressing basic principles for basic Bible interpretation, which I have provided at no cost on a popular level elsewhere, 3 nor an advanced philosophic discussion of hermeneutics, which many other scholars (perhaps most notably and famously Anthony Thiselton) have provided better than I could. 4
Thus this book mostly assumes readers’ existing competence in basic literary hermeneutics (including the importance of literary and historical context and genre); that is what I usually teach, and that is more foundational for most ordinary readers of Scripture. This work is meant to complement and supplement these basic approaches, not to supplant them. As will become clear later in the book, I have little patience for approaches that claim to be “of the Spirit” yet ignore the concreteness of the settings in which the Spirit inspired the biblical writings, settings that help explain the particularities in the shape of such writings.
This work thus addresses not everything one needs for understanding Scripture but focuses on a particular question or element of hermeneutics: How do we hear the Spirit’s voice in Scripture? Other techniques, common to other sorts of literature, necessarily remain relevant to various genres of Scripture. After all, biblical texts are texts, communicated in real language, history, culture, and genres that at least resemble identifiable genres from their historical context. The shape of these texts invite interpretive approaches appropriate to their shape.
What is distinctive to Spirit hermeneutics, however, is believers reading the texts as Scripture. 5 During or once we have done responsible exegesis, how may we expect the Spirit to apply the text to our lives and communities? Those of us already trained in exegesis are often the ones who most need to be reminded of this latter concern, which we often do not cover when teaching traditional exegetical methodologies.
The title Spirit Hermeneutics suggests several theological lenses through which I believe Scripture invites us to read Scripture. 6 The genesis of this book further helps explain its trajectory and choice of analogies. Amos Yong and James K. A. Smith graciously invited me to contribute a volume on Pentecostal hermeneutics to their series on Pentecostal theology. Amos’s suggestions also pushed me to consider how I personally read Scripture as Scripture—beyond the more restricted methods on which I have formally lectured in my interpretation courses. Because of the book’s size, Michael Thomson, the series editors, and I agreed to publish this book outside the series, but its genesis explains its orientation.
From the project’s beginning, however, I insisted that the narrower title “Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” accurate as it would be, could mislead potential readers, since I ultimately conclude that the elements that characterize a good “Pentecostal” hermeneutic are elements that should characterize any truly Christian and Spirit-led hermeneutic. That is, it is “Pentecostal” in the sense that all of us as Christians should read from the vantage of Pentecost and the experience of the Spirit. Although a significant proportion of my direct conversation partners in this book’s notes come from Pentecostal, charismatic and other renewal traditions, the hermeneutical observations are hardly relevant for Pentecostals alone.
A title such as “Pentecostal hermeneutics” could further mislead readers because the book’s objective is not a description of how various members of Pentecostal denominations interpret Scripture. 7 Indeed, the expression “global pentecostalism” (with a small “p”) in current usage generally encompasses all those who claim a dynamic experience of the Spirit and his gifts, in no way limited to Pentecostal denominations or independent charismatic churches. Moreover, consensus definitions of “Pentecostal,” and thus of Pentecostal hermeneutics, are elusive. 8 Even classical Pentecostal interpretive practices are as diverse as the historical roots and settings of these churches and the academic settings of their interpreters; most of their approaches are not in fact distinctive of Pentecostal experience per se. 9 Some Pentecostals in fact describe other Pentecostals’ hermeneutical practices as problematic, 10 so mere description, helpful as it would be for sociological analysis, cannot in any case function prescriptively without considerable qualification. 11
Rather, my objective here is to help to articulate how the experience of the Spirit that empowered the church on the day of Pentecost can and should dynamically shape our reading of Scripture. It is less about reading the Bible within a particular denominational or movement’s interpretive community than about ways of reading the Bible that are faithful both to the Spirit-inspired biblical text and the experience of the Spirit within a believer or among believers as an interpretive community. That approach is relevant for denominational Pentecostals, but also for all who share their commitment to reading the Bible experientially, hearing in Scripture God’s inspired voice for us, his people, in all ages.
Insights from Global Pentecostal Emphases on the Spirit
As already suggested, this approach is consistent with some key emphases of the early Pentecostal revival, but is relevant to the wider church as well. What early Pentecostals introduced (or often developed from the contemporary holiness revivals) was something that distinguished them and many of their peers from the widespread and fairly rigid cessationism of their day. But their original vision was ecumenical—the renewal of the entire end-time church—and not the creation of simply one competing movement cut off from others.
Although denominational Pentecostals today comprise a significant proportion of the global church, 12 the contribution of what scholars today often call “global pentecostalism” has become far wider than their immediate circle. 13 Partly because of early Pentecostals’ historic contribution, much of the church today recognizes the importance of depending on the Spirit and the value of the entire range of spiritual gifts. The hermeneutic addressed here must belong to that wider circle—to all who are people of the Spirit. 14
Thus my focus here will be on some hermeneutical principles modeled by intrabiblical, hence Spirit-inspired, readings. In keeping with both my own interests and the editors’ invitation to the series, I will engage Pentecostal scholarship and draw on what I believe are important insights from early Pentecostalism. 15 More broadly, however, the hermeneutic today is no longer merely a classical Pentecostal one but has become to some extent more generally a Christian one. All Christians should read Scripture as people who are living in the biblical experience—not in terms of ancient culture, but as people living by the same Spirit who guided God’s people in Scripture.
This is, however, a distinctly noncessationist (i.e., it is a continuationist) approach to Scripture. As followers of the risen Messiah, we are people of the era of the Messiah and the Spirit, inaugurated at Pentecost, a prophetic, eschatological people. Referring to events that began at Pentecost, Acts announces the era of the Spirit that God had earlier promised: “In the last days . . . I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy.” A “Spirit hermeneutic” seems an apt title for that interpretive location. Moreover, it is one shared by the first Pentecostals and most global Pentecostals and charismatics, including myself.
This means that we are interested in biblical texts not simply for what they teach us about ancient history or ideas (intriguing as that is to me), but because we expect to share the kind of spiritual experience and relationship with God that we discover in Scripture. 16 Jesus’s resurrection is not a mere historical datum; it declares that the Jesus we learn about in the Gospels is now the exalted Lord, who has sent his Spirit so that we may continue to experience his presence.
Throughout Scripture we read about people hearing from God, prophesying, and experiencing miracles. Though we may not all experience all these activities of the Spirit daily, biblical patterns lead us to expect that the God who empowered these activities throughout Scripture is the God who still empowers them. Many traditional approaches fail to do justice to Scripture’s own witness—for example, they read Scripture as if it were merely designed to satisfy our historical interest about past salvation history (the approach of some conservative interpreters) or past ideas (the approach of some liberal ones), or just teaches us doctrine about God without inviting a relationship with him, or exemplifies moral virtues without attesting the Spirit’s power to implement them.
While careful study of Scripture helps counter the unbridled subjectivism of popular charismatic excesses, study that does not lead to living out biblical experience in the era of the Spirit misses the point of the biblical texts. 17 All Christian experience in this era must be properly “Pentecostal”—that is, shaped by the experience of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit on the church.
Pentecostal Hermeneutics and Spirit Hermeneutics
Because this book’s genesis was an invitation to contribute a volume on hermeneutics to a series of studies on Pentecostal theology, the rest of my introduction addresses the relevance of more self-consciously Pentecostal hermeneutics to this book, and of this book to that kind of Pentecostal hermeneutics. Various Pentecostals have different views on how to do hermeneutics, and whether and in what ways Pentecostal hermeneutics are distinctive from others’ hermeneutics.
One could approach a book on Pentecostal hermeneutics from various angles; as noted below, one valuable approach sociologically would be descriptive, but there are others far more qualified to survey descriptively all the various methods. 18 Instead, I am constructing an approach that I believe is biblical, and thus faithful to the original, biblically directed Pentecostal (and restorationist) ethos, 19 one that many other Pentecostal and other pastorally concerned biblical scholars will share.
Nevertheless, I believe that global Pentecostalism can help offer one valuable “inside” perspective on some of the sorts of Spirit-experiences emphasized in the NT. 20 Early Pentecostals believed that they lived within the larger narrative world of Scripture, a world where the supernatural and eschatology were real. 21 Because charismatic experience is an important part of New Testament experience, it provides a much more adequate starting point or preunderstanding for engaging the text than does the lack of such experience. 22 To suggest that pentecostals can offer this perspective is not by any means to limit it to Pentecostals (even in the broadest sense). It is simply to suggest that this is a distinctively Pentecostal emphasis, and one that is therefore a gift that Pentecostals have historically been bringing to much of the rest of the church. 23
Key Pentecostal emphases draw on genuine biblical emphases, just as Anabaptist emphases on caring for the poor, evangelical emphases on understanding Scripture, and other parts of the church each contribute some genuine biblical insights to the rest of the church. Impoverished believers, Messianic Jewish believers, members of house churches, members of religious and often ethnic minorities, those who have experienced power encounters or persecution, and others who have distinctive aspects of their identity in common with that of many or most members of the churches that appear in the New Testament can all offer somewhat “inside” perspectives on early Christian experience by offering sympathetic analogies. Their respective settings allow them to highlight aspects of experience that we might otherwise overlook. 24
This book, then, is not meant to describe or prescribe an entire hermeneutic used by Pentecostal or charismatic exegetes; it is rather meant to highlight emphases that Pentecostals, charismatics and other people of the Spirit may add to hermeneutical wisdom already in place. 25
Moreover, my interest in this book is not simply a hermeneutical approach, but a more fundamental epistemological approach on which it rests, an epistemology both suggested by and pointing toward the voice of Scripture. When I write for the secular academy, I work from the significantly more limited epistemological, hence hermeneutical, approaches shared as an accepted common ground by scholars from a diverse range of persuasions. But outside the academic sphere, barely anyone lives fully with the heavy agnosticism of such approaches; even if one starts with such agnosticism, sooner or later one will learn something and cease to be agnostic on that point. Those of us who embrace the Christian message as true share with one another a broader common ground than do academicians merely laboring for theological neutrality or agnosticism beyond a shared, limited methodology. 26 To adequately address any self-consciously Christian hermeneutic, I must explore elements of a specifically Christian epistemology. I believe that what some today call a Pentecostal hermeneutic is simply an emphatic expression of what should be a wider Christian hermeneutic.
The “Pentecostal” in “Pentecostal Hermeneutics”
The now-burgeoning scholarship on Pentecostalism in many major universities worldwide often speaks of Pentecostal in two ways: Pentecostal denominations (often with a capital “P”) and those who share a basic pentecostal experience or ethos (often with a small “p”), including charismatics, members of Third Wave churches, and others who emphasize similar spiritual experience. 27 This book, like the series, presupposes the broader label, although many of the specific examples I engage derive from the earlier twentieth-century global revival movements that provide important antecedents for our more widespread current practice.
When I speak here of Pentecostal experience, I refer to an experience with God modeled in Acts 2, not a denomination or title that must contain it. Many of the earliest Pentecostals, in fact, disliked human organization; some left the Azusa Street Mission once it put up a title! 28 Happily, Pentecostal denominations have since provided invaluable organization for missions, training, and other benefits. Nevertheless, from the beginning the vision for the Pentecostal revival was the renewal of Christianity as a whole. 29 Today, global Pentecostalism crosses many boundaries; for example, one of the largest single groups within the amorphous movement many sociologists classify as global pentecostalism is the Catholic charismatic movement. 30
Similarly, people employ the term “charismatic” in a wide range of ways. I am using the term with reference to the affirmation of the charismata mentioned by Paul. Some churches today that fit this definition avoid the term because of its connotations in particular circles (which associate the term with, for example, prosperity teaching). Nevertheless, “charismatic” seems the more widely encompassing term (and more widely used than “pentecostal” with a small “p”), so I retain it with the definition offered here.
Although the term “charismatic” has taken on a range of meanings in various circles, the modern classification originates in Paul’s depiction of charismata, or spiritual gifts (Rom 12:6–8; 1 Cor 12:4–11). Such gifts belong to the entire body of Christ; by definition, each member of the body has at least one gift to contribute to the larger body (Rom 12:4–6; 1 Cor 12:12–30). That is, all Christians should be considered charismatic by definition. I will use the title somewhat more narrowly later in the book (chapter 18; esp. Appendix C) only as a concession to popular usage and for lack of another term to describe practicing noncessationists.
Some Protestant thinkers traditionally argued for the specific cessation only of “supernatural” gifts. This dichotomy, however, has more to do with early Protestant reaction against Catholic tradition (similar to early Protestant rejection of missions because Catholics engaged in it) and accommodation to Enlightenment skepticism than it does with Scripture. For Paul, all gifts are empowered by the Spirit. A body that excludes particular kinds of gifts that Paul affirmed would, from a Pauline perspective, thus be a disabled or malformed body, lacking some of the member gifts needed to bring the body as whole to maturity. That some Christian bodies have traditionally amputated valuable members as purely vestigial cannot justify trying to build a new body out of all the amputated members.
In theory, most Christians today believe that the range of biblical gifts continue today, but in practice most churches have only some of the gifts represented. In fact, many churches that in principle allow that the gifts are for today are, with respect to public worship, practical cessationists on any biblical gifts that do not fit their traditional order of service. This is true even of many Pentecostal and charismatic churches, sometimes even with regard to gifts traditionally associated with those churches. It is admittedly true even of most churches where I have ministered (though not so much where I pastored). While I am happy to minister and worship there, I do believe that, biblically, we are missing something important. (Sometimes the size of the congregation prohibits exercise of many members’ gifts, but these can often be accommodated through small groups.)
As noted above, a work addressing “Pentecostal hermeneutics” could be descriptive, showing how a range of Pentecostal interpreters read biblical texts. One common and valuable descriptive reader-response approach involves readings from different social locations, an approach that, like reception history, can broaden our interpretive horizons by placing a wider range of readings on the table. 31
Pentecostal readings, however, can be quite diverse. They may include prosperity teaching as well as asceticism, local syncretism as well as mainstream church tradition, strict traditions against drinking any alcohol as well as eager contextualization. There is no Pentecostal magisterium to decide which views are “the Pentecostal view”—unless various scholars or groups who claim to speak for Pentecostal hermeneutics implicitly intend to set themselves up as one. 32 We cannot assume that by describing even much of Pentecostal hermeneutics that we have prescribed what such a hermeneutic should be; 33 it may be that what empowered Pentecostalism was not especially its hermeneutic, 34 and that Pentecostals can learn from other parts of Christ’s body in this way.
After all, the early Pentecostal figure Smith Wigglesworth prophesied a future revival that would bring together Word and Spirit; 35 perhaps that means that, instead of early populist Pentecostalism supplying both elements, Pentecostal emphasis on the Spirit could combine with evangelical emphasis on the Word. With enough humility, Pentecostals and other evangelicals may and sometimes do learn much from one another. 36 Sometimes evangelicals fear charismatic excesses, and charismatics are impatient with evangelicals’ reticence to engage some genuinely biblical experiences. In our pride and fear, we fail to see how much we need each other as fellow gifts in Christ’s body, and that both are considering genuine elements of the biblical message. Instead of reacting against each other, or posturing about which gifts are most important, let us embrace biblically affirmed experience in biblical ways. The Bible offers repeated models of spiritual experience; it also offers guidance and a framework within which we can keep our experience on track. 37
Pentecostal hermeneutical approaches are as varied as the Pentecostal interpreters who use them; we often tend to favor those hermeneutical approaches in which we have been schooled (e.g., grammatical-historical, historical-critical, or postmodern). What is more helpful in descriptively identifying a common core for Pentecostal hermeneutics is looking at historic distinctives in Pentecostal approaches, especially where these remain useful for a wider readership.
Nevertheless, today the sort of hermeneutic historically characteristic of Pentecostals is not distinctive to them, but is widely shared among other Christians. A “Pentecostal” hermeneutic therefore need not be like some special-interest hermeneutical approaches that are designed simply to produce desired theological, ethical, or political outcomes, nor is any distinctive approach to Scripture needed to produce an outcome that emphasizes the Spirit. If read on its own terms (or even with a brief Pauline concordance search), the Bible does invite us to affirm the life, gifts, fruit and power of the Spirit. The New Testament pervasively emphasizes the new era of the Spirit in Christ, an emphasis missed not by concordance searches or exegesis but only by worldviews that cannot contend with it. This emphasis, then, is the result of a biblical hermeneutic simply attentive to the text; it is relevant for the entire church, and not just the massive segment that is called Pentecostal. If we define pentecostal in this wider sense, ideally all of the church should be pentecostal, reading from the vantage point of Pentecost.
As a biblical scholar rather than a church historian or sociologist, years of grappling with biblical texts has better qualified me to suggest ways to engage Scripture than to survey how some parts of the church do so. Nevertheless, just as readings from various locations may broaden our interpretive horizons and help us catch our blind spots, listening to Pentecostal/charismatic insights may bring to our attention—and has often brought to the church’s attention—points that the wider church has missed.
Through charismatic movements, freer worship, and the like, positive Pentecostal values have affected the larger church. One of the strongest attractions of cessationism today (felt even by many charismatics such as myself) is the extreme subjectivism of some charismatics; evangelical emphasis on careful biblical teaching is crucial here. Yet life is full of subjective experiences, and those who genuinely heed Scripture cannot neglect spiritual experience. The Bible itself is full of dynamic experiences with God, and the broader church regularly needs to be reminded of these.
Whether we call those experiences “pentecostal” or not is a matter of semantics (in my wife’s country, for example, most Christians can experience prophecy and healing, both true and false, outside of denominationally Pentecostal and neopentecostal circles). But if we are to be faithful to Scripture qua Scripture, we must not only explain what it meant to first-century hearers but also learn from its models. Most biblical scholars today recognize that cessationism lacks a strong biblical foundation, but biblical interpretation requires more than that recognition. Too often Western Christians are inconsistent: we are not cessationist in name, but we are in practice. Unfortunately, this has become true of some denominational Pentecostals as well.
We need to read the Bible dynamically as something that speaks to us about how God acts in our world—in our time and not just in the past. That is a contribution that much of the broader church still needs to grasp from global pentecostalism, even as the broader church offers its own contributions to global pentecostalism. Ideally, the entire church must be experiential if it wishes to be biblical.
Ultimately, a “pentecostal” approach is an apology for reading Christian texts in a specifically Christian way, rather than the way we sometimes read those texts in the academy. This is not to devalue the contribution of the historical-critical academic reading. 38 Historical information enriches and is often necessary for our full understanding of the text; the point is simply that analysis of historical questions by itself is not equivalent to understanding, welcoming, or embracing a text’s message.
For now, suffice it to say that understanding a text’s grammar or even recognizing its instructions differs from embracing its message with faith. Most scholars, whether or not they personally embrace the text in faith, recognize that merely knowing information about a text is not the same thing as embracing the text’s message in faithful obedience. 39 Moreover, an approach sterilized from any direct faith in the supernatural differs significantly from how the biblical writers intended their works to be read. For some of the philosophic discussion of this distinction, see Appendix A.
The Wider Christian Hermeneutic of the Spirit
Although most Christian scholars, whatever their tradition, would be impatient with any approach that plays down disciplined study, most also value the Spirit’s work in helping believers to understand and obey Scripture.
How Does Illumination Function?
Divine illumination does not mean pretending away the textual nature of the biblical text; insofar as it is textual, Scripture by virtue of its textual form must be approached in the sorts of ways in which we must approach texts. Some thus suggest that, ultimately, illumination’s object may be less about enabling grammatical exegesis of the sort we are already capable of doing on our own, and instead about enabling us to recognize the text’s demands for us and to embrace the text’s message in faith. 40
Other evangelical scholars further emphasize that the Spirit’s role of illumining the reader is not meant to “redo,” and certainly not to “undo,” the Spirit’s work in inspiration. The Spirit already generated meaning through the inspired human agents writing in their own language and setting. The Spirit’s role of illumination thus focuses on the texts’ perlocution, i.e., “the successful conclusion of the speech act”: normally understanding and response. “Perlocution is what identifies the expected response to a speech act. If the illocution is a command, the perlocution would be obedience. . . . The Holy Spirit is largely involved at the perlocutionary level as we are enabled to understand the truthfulness of the text, recognize what it requires from us and then actually take the appropriate steps to actualize the intentions that the Holy Spirit initially delivered to the human instrument.” 41
Still, the Spirit can be active even on the level of exegesis, most often through the clear functioning of our cognitive faculties in exploring and embracing the text. 42 As one Pentecostal scholar suggests, “Illumination occurs in conjunction with, not in isolation from, normal application of hermeneutical principles.” 43 We should expect such help in light of the Spirit’s role as teacher and as one who reminds us of Jesus’s teaching (John 14:26). 44
In a seminal modern essay on illumination, Pentecostal exegete French L. Arrington notes the importance of the Spirit’s activity in interpretation, in “(1) submission of the mind to God so that the critical and analytical abilities are exercised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; (2) a genuine openness to the witness of the Spirit as the text is examined; (3) the personal experience of faith as part of the entire interpretive process; and, (4) response to the transforming call of God’s Word.” 45 The first of these points helpfully recognizes that the Spirit can work through as well as beyond our cognitive faculties. 46
The Wider Christian Tradition Affirms Illumination
Seeking to hear the Spirit’s voice in the biblical text has a long history. 47 It characterizes the meditative approach lectio divina, developed among Benedictines in the fifth century. 48 (Many elements of both lectio divina and Eastern Orthodox hesychasm can be meaningful for and adapted in ways relevant to believers in a range of cultures.) 49 Indeed, earlier Christian interpreters such as Origen, John Chrysostom, and Augustine insisted on the need for the Spirit’s help in understanding Scripture, in addition to the reader’s own diligence in study. 50
Luther emphasized the need for interpreters to experience faith and the Spirit’s illumination, in addition to grammatical and historical exegesis; 51 “Experience is necessary for the understanding of the Word,” which must “be believed and felt.” 52 Reading the Bible properly included prayer and meditation. 53 Calvin likewise insisted that people could understand God’s Word only through the Spirit’s enlightenment. 54 Both Puritans and Pietists insisted that only God’s Spirit provides true understanding of Scripture’s message. 55 Early founders of Princeton Seminary also emphasized illumination, 56 though in the nineteenth century a conservative scholasticism developed there that played down the Spirit’s role in interpretation. 57 Francis Wayland of Brown University, the best-known Baptist scholar of the 1830s and 1840s, emphasized the need for the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the Bible. 58
Likewise, J. B. Lightfoot, an exegete sensitive to ancient culture and perhaps the leading British biblical scholar of the nineteenth century, articulates well our need to engage the Spirit when hearing Scripture. One of his remarks is so balanced that I must quote it here at length:
Last of all, these remarks would be most defective, if I failed to remind you, as I need to be reminded myself, that above all things prayer is necessary for the right understanding of the Holy Scripture. As speaking to Christians, I might appeal at once to the authority of Scripture itself, an authority which you all recognize. But if it can be said that as a matter of argument, I am arguing in a circle, because the recognition of the duty of prayer presupposes a belief in the truth of Holy Scripture, I could put the matter in this light. If you are studying an ancient writer, a historian for instance such as Thucydides or Tacitus, you would not expect to understand him unless you endeavored to transport yourself into the time at which he wrote, to think and feel with him, and to realize all the circumstances which influenced the life and actions of men of that day. Otherwise, your study would be barren of any results. So it is with the study of Holy Scripture. These documents come before you as spiritual writings, and to appreciate them you must put yourself in communication with the Spirit. Prayer is the medium of communication. And therefore it is necessary for the right understanding of the Bible. 59
Major early-twentieth-century popular Christian interpreters also often emphasized this approach, sometimes even in ways that might invite some subsequent evangelicals’ concern. While affirming written Scripture as God’s Word, Oswald Chambers also “believed that the words of Scripture, though they are the Word of God, ‘do not give us life unless Jesus speaks them to us.’ ” 60 One may compare also the Christian and Missionary Alliance devotional theologian A. W. Tozer: “It is the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful.” 61
Pentecostal, Wesleyan, and earlier exegetes are not the only ones who value this level of engagement. 62 In terms of valuing application, classical scholars and philosophers often look to ancient texts for valuable wisdom. 63 How much more can we expect such interests among those who value biblical texts as canonical? Brethren scholar F. F. Bruce, for example, insisted that readers who engage Scripture as God’s book must not stop with the grammatical and historical foundation, but also hear the text theologically. 64 Likewise, Bernard Ramm emphasized the necessity of devotional reading in the Pietist tradition, provided that it was not disconnected from sound contextual interpretation. 65 “The Holy Spirit alone,” Grant Osborne urges, “can empower the preacher so that his message exemplified not ‘persuasive words of [human] wisdom’ but rather demonstrates ‘the Spirit and the power’ of God (1 Cor 2:4–5).” 66
Advocates of inductive Bible study also recognize that spiritual experience of God helps readers appropriate biblical texts in the sorts of ways they were meant to be appropriated. 67 Simply objectifying and evaluating texts as if we may control them leaves little room for us to hear God there. 68 Catholic scholar Daniel J. Harrington notes that after examining the original meaning most interpreters also desire to hear the text’s significance for us today. 69 The goal of hermeneutical theorists such as Fuchs and Ebeling is to hear Scripture speaking anew in new settings. 70 This interest certainly pervaded earlier Christian readings of Scripture, including among Reformers 71 and many modern interpreters. 72
Most modern theologians also value the Spirit’s role in interpretation. For example, Karl Barth welcomed historical criticism as a first step in engaging Scripture, but insisted that only the Spirit could provide full understanding beyond grammar and history. 73 Carl F. H. Henry considers this the orthodox Protestant position. 74 Donald Bloesch, Thomas F. Torrance, J. I. Packer and others likewise emphasize the Spirit’s role in interpretation. 75 Some have described the traditional division of labor as biblical scholars (historical critics) studying what the text meant a long time ago and theologians figuring out God’s message for today, without interfering much in the other’s discipline. 76 Today, however, many biblical scholars and theologians have sought rapprochement through theological interpretation of the Bible. 77
Many other parts of the body of Christ appreciate and share the pentecostal or charismatic ethos. Representatives of this ethos and experience now may be found among nearly all global communions today. For example, I am ordained as a Baptist minister and teach in a predominantly Wesleyan and Methodist environment. But I pray in tongues (probably often an hour a day), love deep worship in the Spirit, and attended a Pentecostal seminary, and the Baptist minister who offered the charge at my ordination both prayed in tongues over me and prophesied to me. My Baptist ordination did not have to do with complaints about Pentecostal practice but with my commitment to ethnic reconciliation and the local church and community where I was ordained. 78 I have also written works about the Spirit and spiritual experience that explicitly identify me as charismatic. 79 Indeed, presumably because Scripture allowed me no concessions to cessationism at all, a local newspaper review of one of my books by one conservative Presbyterian minister identified me as “wildly charismatic”! 80
My Own Development in Thinking
Nevertheless, this is not a book that I could have written several years ago, for two reasons. First, I was at the apex of my historical-critical work on the Gos pels when I wrote Historical Jesus of the Gospels (2009). 81 I bent over backward to limit my arguments to consensus arguments and data for which I could offer sufficient support. I believed that my conclusions were from a neutral historiographic standpoint far more plausible and better informed historically than those of skeptics. To my disappointment, several skeptics simply dismissed my work by stereotyping it as evangelical “apologetic,” as if only arguments favoring a more conventional position may be deemed a “defense” of something. 82
Their reaction reinforced for me how deep biases can run, even among some scholars who claim to be unbiased, critical and open-minded. Unfortunately, fitting what is often of greatest popular interest in a media-saturated age, some scholarship is geared more toward novelty than accuracy. I often warn my doctoral students that while creativity is ideal, accuracy is more vital. After hearing and reading the most critical responses from scholars in a fairly skeptical tradition, I had to resist the temptation to give up even engaging this circle of scholars. My subsequent work on miracles then forced me to think outside the historical-critical box. Metahistorical questions need not devalue the use historical-critical methods in the historical-critical sphere; still, that sphere need not be viewed as the only one worthy of epistemological consideration.
Second, over the years I had taught biblical interpretation to perhaps a thousand students in person, plus written a short, practical book on the subject that has been circulated among tens of thousands of readers in Africa. 83 My emphasis in such courses was largely a correction of popular interpretation: I was leading my students in taking into account especially context, background, and genre. These are crucial emphases that popular readers often miss.
Yet while I modeled going from text to sermon and from text to living, I left mostly to homiletics and spiritual formation colleagues (if to anyone) the task of explaining the connections. Popular interpreters so often move from text to application that I did not believe that the process needed justification except at a more esoteric academic level, a justification already provided adequately by other scholars.
When Amos Yong invited me to write on Pentecostal hermeneutics, my academic reflex was still primarily corrective. Beyond literary context, my own primary academic contribution has been providing ancient material that helps readers reconstruct the setting, since that is what is most difficult for modern readers to acquire on their own. But Amos pressed me to consider the valuable contribution of a pentecostal hermeneutic, and the more that I wrestled with this question the more intrigued I became.
The result is this book. It is not written, to be sure, the way a theologian, philosopher, or historian of interpretation would have written it. I write as a biblical scholar and have touched more lightly on areas that others can address with much greater competence. Without trying to replace other important work on interpretation, I hope to stimulate some further discussion and contribute to this intriguing area at the interface of various disciplines and the Christian life. My interest is partly in showing that it is biblical for believers to read the text from a location within the biblical theological world. 84
In contrast to my exegetical commentaries, my approach to the biblical witnesses here is deliberately integrative, moving back and forth among different biblical writers in an effort to show that the emphases in question are rarely limited to a single biblical writer. Many of these emphases, in fact, are pervasive. If we find parallels with other early Jewish ideas, we should hardly be surprised to find common streams of thought in early Christianity.
A Legacy from Pentecostal Scholars
Early Pentecostals emerged especially from the radical wing of late-nineteenth-century evangelicals (“evangelical” being the dominant North American religious expression in that century), a wing that emphasized holiness, missions, social justice and reform, and divine healing. Because lines eventually hardened, early-twentieth-century fundamentalists mostly excluded and sometimes demonized Pentecostals. At that time, Pentecostals would have been unwelcome in most fundamentalist educational institutions. Although Pentecostals still often drew on fundamentalist arguments, their primary agendas differed. 85 Partly because of earlier fundamentalist rejection, today many Pentecostal and charismatic scholars train in nonevangelical institutions.
I studied under a number of Pentecostal scholars, including Stanley Horton, Ben Aker, and Gary McGee. With Stanley’s blessing before he passed, I was the first Horton lecturer after he passed. This was at the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, one of the institutions where I studied with him. Stanley did some of his work at Harvard (about the same time as George Ladd), and Ben and Gary did doctoral studies at St. Louis University, a Catholic institution. At the time I went to study at Duke, I understood that as a Pentecostal I belonged to the broader evangelical tradition, but our Pentecostal perception was that we offered a special contribution that cessationists (in name or in practice) did not.
In one class debate at Duke a student kept hammering at me that my approach differed from that of Martin Luther (on some point that I no longer recall); I could not understand why he was arguing on that basis. Finally an Episcopalian colleague interceded for me: “Craig does not feel a commitment to that tradition.” I shared Luther’s valuing of Scripture, but not necessarily all of his interpretations. As an exegete, Luther was willing to challenge traditions of his day, and I was more eager to follow his example in valuing Scripture above tradition than to echo all his interpretations as my own tradition. Supporting any given historical interpretation was not a battle that I felt a stake in. 86
Similarly, although I knew that many evangelicals opposed women in at least particular forms of ministry, I was bewildered by the harsh response that I received from many evangelicals when I argued in support of women in ministry. From the standpoint of some other evangelical traditions, I was now “liberal”—even though on that point I was faithful to my own, Pentecostal evangelical tradition 87 (and by this time the local circle of African-American Baptist churches where I ministered). My mentoring by and friendships with other evangelical scholars largely arose after my doctoral work. Many old barriers of misunderstanding have broken down, and I believe that this is therefore an ideal time for all of us to learn from many other movements in Christ’s body.
The heart of my own calling, like that of many other biblical scholars (as well as the Reformers and many earlier and subsequent renewal movements), is to call the church back to the Scriptures. I recognize that there are other valid callings and that these supplement one another, but features of my calling, as it has worked out so far, seem to include teaching God’s people to read biblical books the way God gave them to us (with concrete literary and cultural contexts), as well as correcting some popular interpretive errors.
At the same time, when we correctly understand the Scriptures, we find there also repeated testimony to divine encounters and a living relationship with Christ. Recognizing in Scripture the prevalence and promise of divine activity, and expecting the Spirit’s presence and pedagogy as we read Scripture, is a Spirit hermeneutic.