Kerygmatic Hermeneutics

Formulating a Pentecostal-Charismatic Practice of Reading Scripture in the Spirit in Community

Swee Sum Lam

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781666701449
  9781666701456
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666701463
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Kerygmatic Hermeneutics takes a reader at once into a concrete apprehension of God in his scriptural truth through flowing in the Spirit. With the Spirit working with Scripture, a reader navigates in a to-ing and fro-ing between the general claims of God and the patterns of his actions in the world, and the embodiment of these general claims in the concrete particularity of contemporary living. This to-ing and fro-ing shapes an embodied witness to the world. In this account, an interpretation of scriptural truth is incomplete until Christ is proclaimed in the power of the Spirit to bring life. This brings the world into an encounter with God. Kerygmatic Hermeneutics is an account of how one may make theology in the Pentecostal-charismatic tradition. This constructive theological account also yields a practice of interpretation of Scripture in a community of faith. This formulation of kerygmatic theology and its hermeneutical practice opens theology to empirical enquiry and spiritual discernment in a post-Christian western world. This account is also existentially relevant for the global south and east, especially where readers find themselves having to speak apologetically into diverse religious and spiritual practices in daily encounters.

1

INTRODUCTION

Pentecostal theology emphasizes the immediate experience of the Spirit in the present. Harvey Cox points to experience as a distinctiveness recognizable at Pentecostalism’s origin and early stages of growth; Pentecostals give primacy to the immediate experience of the Spirit.1 Here, I want to draw attention to some aspects of this focus on experience that are relevant to this research.

First, there has been a recent emphasis on an immediate experience of the Spirit speaking through Scripture. In the 1990s, scholarly work on Pentecostal hermeneutics became extensive. Most of that work emphasized the way that the Spirit speaks through Scripture or shapes the interpretation of Scripture. Similar themes and approaches also appeared outside circles that may be directly associated with Pentecostalism, in diverse charismatic contexts and beyond. New voices included Kenneth Archer, Timothy Cargal, Gordon Fee, Stephen Fowl, Richard Israel, Daniel Albrecht, Randall McNally, Clark Pinnock, Roger Stronstad, Theodore Stylianopoulous, and N. T. Wright.2 Kevin Spawn and Archie Wright, in a project that explores pneumatic hermeneutics, bring together seven other scholars to address the Spirit’s role in biblical hermeneutics: Mark Boda, Ronald Herms, John C. Thomas, Mark Cartledge, Craig Bartholomew, James Dunn, and Walter Moberly.3 Besides taking a biblical theological approach that explored how Scripture described the work of the Spirit, scholars also applied an inductive approach in understanding how the interpretation of Scripture evolved in the first century church after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.4 They were looking at the interpretive practice of first-century readers who understood themselves to be filled with and guided by the Spirit.

Second, there has within this work often been a focus on the multiple messages the Spirit might use a text to convey, in different circumstances. The early Pentecostal scholars in the 1980s, like French Arrington, Mark McLean, and William Menzies, advance Pentecostal hermeneutics as that which focuses on experience informing scriptural interpretation, and this inevitably opens up the text so the same text can speak differently in multiple contexts.5 The development of this theme in formal Pentecostal hermeneutics coincides with the era when theological interpretation was developing, with Anthony Thiselton as one of its main protagonists, to move hermeneutics beyond the horizons of the author, and the text, to embrace the horizon of the reader as well.6 That is, Thiselton’s move would be consistent with this emphasis on the multiple messages the Spirit might use a text to convey, in different circumstances.

Third, one of the things that lingers in this discourse is the persistent general question of discernment and testing. Among the diverse senses of what ‘experience’ may inform an interpretation of Scripture, there appears to be a leaning toward considering how corporate (rather than simply personal) experience can generate a fresh reading. That is, this discernment has to do with the way a community can help guard against individual waywardness. Moreover, there has been discussion of how any fresh reading has to cohere with the canonical text to be a valid reading.7 Fee analyzes the problem bluntly: “it is probably fair—and important—to note that in general the Pentecostals’ experience has preceded their hermeneutics. In a sense, the Pentecostal tends to exegete his or her experience.”8 By focusing on the work of the Spirit in relation to the interpretation of Scripture, in thinking in particular about how the Spirit can generate multiple readings of the same text, and in seeking to acknowledge and answer the question about discernment, my work aligns with these trends.

Outside the developed Western world, Allan Anderson studies global Pentecostal movements in Africa and Asia and advances a taxonomy in reading these with multidisciplinary lenses.9 Similarly, William Kay and Anne Dyer observe that Pentecostal-charismatic engagements in missions, migration, globalization and all facets of public life show up the Spirit’s work in fast growing churches in, say, Latin America, Africa, and Asia in myriad visible ways.10

In this research, I speak, to varying extent, into these discourses in Pentecostal-charismatic theology. I speak into the Spirit’s working from Singapore, an Asian gateway that offers a unique blend of the east and the west in religious and secular thoughts and practices. I come from an evangelical contemplative charismatic community in Singapore. It has four church congregations worshiping out of two locations in Singapore, and missionary churches in Philippines, Thailand, and Myanmar. Each church congregation is structured to hold no more than 300 members. There are many charismatic communities in Singapore, many of which have remained within the traditional Christian denominations including the Catholic church. Among the independent charismatic communities, notably dominated by four or five mega-churches, we have the rare distinction of being contemplative and charismatic at the same time. A journey that started in 1975 with extremely charismatic and ecstatic experiences has evolved into the current blend of contemplative charism. I have personally experienced this evolution since 1977. We practice healings and deliverances, pray and sing in the Spirit, work signs and wonders, exercise the charismatic gifts, and do all good.11 Yet we also can be contemplative in prayer, meditation, and quiet in devotional worship in the pursuit of God and faith, hope and love in Christian living. In this research, I am exploring how Scripture can and should be read in a Pentecostal-charismatic community like this, whether in the developed western world or the developing south and east.

I next explain my motivation for this research. In section 1.2, I lay out the research problem, research question, and thesis statement. Section 1.3 explains my methodology in using a constructive theological approach to formulate this account. Section 1.4 lists some of the terms formulated in this research and their definitions. Finally, section 1.5 gives the structure of this research.

1.1 Motivation of Research

This research springs from my experience in this church community; nevertheless, this is not a study of this church community. I am motivated in particular by a specific practice of Christian spirituality that has been developed in this church, which aims at realigning individuals, ministries, practices, and structures for sustainable transformation of the church community. This practice involves praying in the Spirit and listening to the Spirit. It trains discernment for learning, correction, and transformation under the guidance of the Spirit. This practice provides the inspiration for my account of how a Pentecostal-charismatic community like this might also read Scripture in the Spirit. I seek to answer questions raised from this experience. It is hoped that my research would feed back into this practice and speak to a wider Pentecostal-charismatic community.

After giving an account of the renewal movement since the 1970s, Stibbs argues for “a betrothal of academic theology and the pneumocentric spirituality of charismatics and Pentecostals.”12 Consistent with the present work of the Spirit in the church and the world, “there is a responsibility on the part of Pentecostal and charismatic church leaders to embrace a more critical, theological emphasis in their ministries.”13 This project is consistent with a call for a renewal of Pentecostal-charismatic theology that critically discerns the Spirit’s work in creation and the world.14

1.1.1 A practice of praying in the Spirit in search of a theology

A practice of praying in the Spirit is fluid and can take diverse forms and modes. This could take place in small groups at one level, or at church-wide prayer meetings at another.

Prayers can be silent, in patient waiting on the Spirit. This involves being in attentive waiting upon the Spirit for him to speak. Prayers can also be vocalized in the Spirit (i.e., in ‘tongues’) or in the vernacular. Vocalized praying in the Spirit calls for simple trust as one willingly flows where the Spirit leads and that the Spirit will give ‘words’ when one opens one’s mouth, not knowing specifically what one is going to saying. Here, the mind is silenced and does not control the tongue. These ‘words’ can ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1: INTRODUCTION
• 2: LOCATING THIS PROJECT
• 3: THE HOLY SPIRIT: FORMULATING THE MARKS OF THE SPIRIT
• 4: KERYGMATIC HERMENEUTICS: A THEOLOGY
• 5: KERYGMATIC CRITICISM
• 6: KERYGMATIC HERMENEUTICS: A PRACTICE
• 7: CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY