I. A Theological Reading Toward Praxis and Mission
A THEOLOGICAL READING TOWARD PRAXIS AND MISSION
Scripture itself invites us to read it theologically with interest in praxis and mission. 1 That is, most biblical writers wanted their audience to implement the lessons they communicated, and their teaching frequently highlights God, Christ, and the church’s mission. Although sometimes disparaged by modernist academic readers, reading Scripture for theological interests characterized premodern interpreters and finds itself back on the table of postmodern interpreters. 2 The church never abandoned this interest, and early Pentecostal emphases offer one example of this focus.
Scholars today often describe understanding texts in terms of two horizons, the original text’s or author’s horizon and the reader’s horizon. Nearly all of my academic work in biblical studies has been dedicated to the ancient horizon, but because this book focuses on a distinctive element of Spirit hermeneutics I focus here more fully on reading that moves beyond that horizon. Nevertheless, if we truly respect the biblical text as authoritative, that horizon is a necessary foundation for interpretation, and I therefore return to it especially in chapters 8 and 9.
By contrast, recent discussions of Spirit hermeneutics have so focused on the reader that they have sometimes reacted against earlier interpretive emphases on the first horizon. The purposes for which a text was apparently designed, however, suggest its most obvious uses, and a genuinely Spirit-illumined interpretation should be consistent with the originally Spirit-inspired design. Our readings of Scripture as communication are best anchored, insofar as possible, in the contexts of the biblical texts.
But the recent discussions raise a crucial question: how do those texts go on to speak to us in different settings? Here informed analogies are helpful, a matter to which I turn later (especially in chapter 16). First, however, I want to show the value of experiential and eschatological readings of texts, provided that they correlate with the range of meaning implied in the original inspired communication.