The Hermeneutical Spirit

Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century

Yong

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532604904
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In the contemporary biblical studies climate, proposals regarding the theological interpretation of Scripture are contested, particularly but not only because they privilege, encourage, and foster ecclesial or other forms of normative commitments as part and parcel of the hermeneutical horizon through which scriptural texts are read and understood. Within this context, confessional approaches have been emerging, including some from within the nascent pentecostal theological tradition. This volume builds on the author's previous work in theological method to suggest a pentecostal perspective on theological interpretation that is rooted in the conviction that all Christian reading of sacred Scripture is post-Pentecost, meaning after the Day of Pentecost outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh in anticipation of the coming reign of God. In that respect, such a pentecostal interpretative perspective is not parochially for those within the modern day movement bearing that name but is arguably apostolic in following after the scriptural imagination of the earliest disciples of Jesus the messiah and therefore has ecumenical and missional purchase across space and time. The Hermeneutical Spirit thus provides close readings of various texts across the scriptural canon as a model for Christian theological interpretation of Scripture suitable for the twenty-first-century global context.

Part I

Theological Hermeneutics: Perspectives after Pentecost

Chapter 1

The Science, Sighs, and Signs of Interpretation

An Asian American Post-Pentecost-al Hermeneutics in a Multi-, Inter-, and Transcultural World72

I have been writing about hermeneutics in global and cross-cultural perspective as a Pentecostal theologian for a while.73 Along the way, my hermeneutical considerations have been enriched—or complicated, depending on one’s perspective—by work on theology’s dialogue with the natural sciences, by inhabiting more fully my location as a 1.5 generation (born in Malaysia but raised and educated in the USA since my middle school years) Asian American naturalized immigrant, and by research about the role of affectivity in the theological task.74 The following thus represents my current thinking about Pentecostal hermeneutics in global context.

In brief, my argument is that the way forward for Pentecostal hermeneutics in a pluralistic world, understood variously as the following will unpack, is to develop not so much a confessional approach founded on any genealogical connection with the Azusa Street Revival at the turn of the twentieth century,75 but to adopt the Day of Pentecost apostolic experience as exemplary for biblical and theological interpretation. I will delineate such a post-Pentecost-al—the dual hyphenation highlighting connections first and foremost to the Day of Pentecost rather than to the modern Pentecostal movement—proposal in three steps, working backward across the triads in the title of this essay. First, we will look at the challenges for hermeneutics in contemporary glocal context that need to navigate multi- and intercultural projects in search of a more transcendent, overarching, or transcultural vantage point; second, we will unfold the opportunities inherent in this glocal (all situatedness being irreducibly local, but yet now also global in various respects in our interconnected world) space for Asian American Pentecostalism in particular; finally, in the longest part of this essay we will sketch the contours of a hermeneutical paradigm that is observant of its interpretive rules (science), its subterranean impulses (sighs), and its historical practices and teleological performances (signs). The following is intended to invite further hermeneutical reflection not only from Pentecostals but all who believe there is something else to be considered when thinking about human interpretation in relationship to divine presence and activity opened up in the Day of Pentecost narrative.

Multi-, Inter-, and Transcultural Hermeneutics?

Our contemporary context is rife with proposals in intercultural hermeneutics.76 Such projects come in many forms, but the underlying theme is how to generate a coherent interpretive stance amidst a global situation constituted by many oftentimes conflicting vistas or standpoints. In order to elaborate on the issues, let us focus for a few moments on the triad of multi-, inter-, and transculturality.

Although multiculturalism has become politically charged vis-à-vis the politics of identity and representation, at the descriptive level such a notion highlights nothing more than that there are many cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and other groups within human history and experience. While this has been the case for millennia, our present information and global age simply means that we are confronted by the multiplicity of human difference more starkly than ever before. Even the notion of culture masks more than it communicates since often we think of cultures homogeneously and we overlook (consciously or unconsciously, usually the latter) the heterogeneity and developmental character of cultural formation.77

Yet to stay within the cultural-linguistic orbit for a moment in order to have a handle by which to discuss the issues,78 the point is that in our contemporary postmodern, postcolonial, post-Western, and even post-Christian time, it is accepted that there are many viable hermeneutical starting points for Christian biblical and theological interpretation.79 Cultural-linguistic horizons and ways of life provide perspective on the biblical and theological tradition that are understood to be representative of at least some aspects of the diversity of world Christianity and are (generally) assumed to enrich the ongoing task of Christian traditioning.80 What needs to be emphasized here is that the plurality of cultural-linguistic springboards for hermeneutics ought not to be conflated prematurely. Rather, the process of each quest for biblical understanding and theological reflection ought to be respected. In other words, multiculturality, at least in this view, emphasizes the distinctiveness of each cultural-linguistic project, and the need for such to be attended to, each one on its own terms.

From a biblical and Lukan perspective, such hermeneutical multiculturality can be seen as embraced within the Day of Pentecost narrative. Acts 2 notes that at the sound of winds (of the divine spirit), “the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?’” (Acts 2:6–8, italics added). Following this Lukan account, the particularity of each cultural-linguistic witness is not to be subsumed too quickly under other discourses.81 This does not mean every cultural testimony is to be accepted uncritically, but that each needs to be weighed and understood according to its own norms and terms, at least initially. Translated into our contemporary global scene, such a multicultural stance insists on the plurality of hermeneutical and theological approaches in local contexts that need to be valued and engaged.82

Yet even if we embraced multiculturality, no cultural-linguistic frame is static and, as already indicated, each is impacted by cross-cultural fertilization. Hence without undermining the importance of cultural-linguistic particularity and diversity, there is also no hard and fast line between multi- and interculturality, the latter denoting the perennial and ongoing meeting and overlapping of cultural-linguistic encounters. Over prolonged periods of time, new syntheses emerge, reflecting an intercultural mixture that often later becomes incomprehensible to those of the originally distinct cultures. In considering intercultural contact and transformation, we need to take into account not just synchronic but also diachronic factors: the ongoing tasks of traditioning involve intercultural work not only with living cultural-linguistic options but also with those mediated by texts and traditions from the bygone past. We are just as apt to develop intercultural proposals from cross-cultural conversations with contemporaries as with the ancients (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Buddha, Shankara).

It might well be the case that the meeting of many cultures and languages in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost generated just such an inter-cultural project that we call Christian faith. We see snapshots of such an interculturalism in the nascent Hellenistic, Hebraic, and Judean group of messianists that struggled to survive in the ensuing weeks, months, and perhaps years. As the Acts narrative depicts, such interculturality was not without its challenges, even if there were clearly many other factors that impinged on the dispersal of that early apostolic community.83 What needs to be recognized in the present context is what we will further develop in the next section: that there is a sense in which all local hermeneutical and theological work is also intercultural in various respects, especially in light of migration and globalization realities.84

Theologically, however, registration of the specificities of the witness of particular cultural-linguistic perspectives (the project of a multicultural approach as I have defined it here) and exploration of cross-cultural achievements (the result of intercultural efforts here understood, and to be elucidated further in the next section), beg for synthesis having transcultural applicability. Whatever any particular cultural perspective might insist upon, whether on its own terms or in cross-fertilization with other cultural dynamics, theological claims ultimately aspire to universality: what is true theologically is true for more than that cultural group, even if its initial articulation derives from a particular vantage point or even from intercultural exchange. This is because “God so loved the world” (John 3:16), even if such an insight first emerged, in all probability, within around the turn of the second century CE in a community in Asia Minor. In other words, multicultural and intercultural theological formulations are sustained as they are deemed to be viable across as many cultures as they might encounter while not losing their distinctive contributions.85 As such they are deemed to be of transcultural import, having cross-cultural relevance, ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Theological Hermeneutics: Perspectives after Pentecost
• Part II: Theological Anthropology and the Spirit: The Lukan Imagination I
• Part III: Pneumatological Soteriology: The Lukan Imagination II
• Part IV: Theological-Scriptural Interpretation in the Spirit: Apostolic Pathways
• Conclusion
• References