Locating
History, Story,
and
Testimony:
Truth in a Pentecostal Hermeneutic
Scott A. Ellington
Introduction
Commitment to the Bible as the
inspired
Word of God is axiomatic in Pentecostal hermeneutics. ‘ And because the Bible is understood to be God’s Word to God’s
people,
it has an absolute and foundational
authority against which all other truth-claims about life in general and the Christian faith in particular
are measured. Pentecostals
have, however,
never been content merely
to affirm the “truthfulness” of biblical accounts of God and God’s faith
community,
but have maintained from the earliest
days
of the move- ment that encounter with God within the faith
community
in ways similar to those recorded in the
Bible,
is both
possible
and desirable for
every Christian. That is, the truth-claims made
by
the Bible are not
only concep- tual but also
experiential
in nature. Pentecostals have
always placed
a par- ticular
emphasis
on the direct
experiencing
of God and on application when practicing
biblical
interpretation.
The basic claim that God can be
experienced today
as in the
pages
of the Bible
has, however,
become
problematic
to
say
the least. The world- view(s)
of the biblical writers is so
fundamentally
different from our own that
any pretense
of
simply uncritically adopting
their worldview into our own modem
setting
or moving freely and easily between the two is an exer- cise in self-deception. Truth-claims
simply
do not transfer from a pre-scien- tific to a scientific to a postmodern worldview without substantial
interpre- tation. Thus, the task of hermeneutics has become of paramount
importance for Pentecostals. Because Pentecostals claim an
experience
of God and a model of truth that is less at home in a modem and still
heavily
rationalist world than that claimed
by many
other Christians, the task of bridging the gap
between the ages and worldviews is even more difficult.
The
purpose
of this
present study
is to consider some different under- standings
of biblical
truth, evaluating
their
adequacies
and
shortcomings when
applied
to a Pentecostal
setting
in hermeneutics.
Should,
for instance,
1 1 share with a number of my colleagues a sense of reservation in speaking of a distinctive and
different Pentecostal hermeneutic. I will, therefore, use the term in this paper to refer
qualitatively
to points of emphasis and special concern that are common in the practice of hermeneutics only
among Pentecostals and not to setting up a separate enterprise that can in every be
point clearly distinguished from the hermeneutical practices of other Christian traditions.
245
1
the Bible be understood to be a perfectly accurate
history,
so that
questions of inspiration and authority become
inseparably
tied to our ability to defend and demonstrate that
historicity?
Or do the fundamental truth-claims of the Bible reside in the
story-world
that the text
presents,
so that we are invited to enter into and believe the
story
without reference to “what
really hap- pened” ?
That
is, is the truth-claim of the Bible on our lives unconnected
to historical reference?2 Is the Bible a testimony to truth that cannot be verified through
historical and scientific method and that must, therefore, be evalu- ated and
accepted
or rejected on its internal merit alone? Or does the truth- fulness of that
testimony depend
in any
way
on “what
happened”
and,
if it does, how
is that different from a claim of historical
accuracy? Finally,
how can the “truthfulness” of the truth-claims of Scripture best be evaluated in a way
that is in harmony with Pentecostal
approaches
to and
understandings of Scripture? In short, where does and where should Pentecostal hermeneu- tics locate biblical truth? The thesis that this present study will pursue is that, for Pentecostals, the truth-claims of the Bible are best understood as testi- monies
that,
while interested in “what
really happened,”
are more concerned with how God interacts with
people. Furthermore,
I intend to draw a model for the offering and evaluating of testimony from the prayers of Israel found in the Psalms. I propose that a prominent feature of the book of Psalms is a process
of
testing
in which the received
testimony
about God’s words and acts are
repeatedly
tested
against
the lived
experiences
of the
community that wrote and prayed the Psalms. But first, I will examine a number of dif- ferent
ways
in which Christians have located truth within the
Scriptures.
The Problem
of Equating
Truth with
History
The
early
distrust on the
part
of
many
Pentecostals toward education generally
and a critical
approach
to the Bible in particular meant that initial- ly the truth-claims
of the Bible were
simply
asserted without
being
critical- ly examined.
It was
naively
assumed that
meaning
was self-evident. This approach, however,
has
gradually given way
to
approaches
more at home with the modem, rationalist worldview.3
Initially
this
foray
into an histori- cal-critical
approach
to
Scripture sought
out aid and
companionship
from those
groups
of conservative Christians who shared with Pentecostals the a
2 The parable form, for instance, makes its claim on and calls for a response from the reader, regardless
of whether it refers to 4n historical happening or a literary invention.
3
Karkkainen offers an excellent of this movement. Veli-Matti Karkkainen, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics in the summary
Making: On the Way From Fundamentalism to Postmodernism,” Jourrtal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 18 ( 1998), 76- 115.
246
2
priori assumption
that the Bible is the inspired
and, therefore, perfect Word of God. The choice of Pentecostals to enter into the modem biblical discus- sion
through
the doorway of conservative
Evangelicalism
has
not, however, always
been harmonious and trouble free.
Mark McLean has
pointed
out the fundamental conflict of views that separates
Pentecostal
approaches
to Scripture from those
typical
of conser- vative
Evangelicalism:
.
,
On the conservative side we have a set of exegetical and hermeneutical principles
which, when vigorously followed, a dif- ferent mode of God’s presence in and
posit fundamentally
among the faithful during the formative
period of the canon and today… From the other side of the comes
evangelical spectrum
the seductive call of a revived neo-ortho- doxy…Essentially,. Gilkey publically admitted to himself and his col- in the Biblical
leagues Theology movement, that ed the “liberal insistence on the
causal continuum of having already accept- space-time experi- ence,” the use of such biblical language as “God said,” and “God acted” no longer had any real semantic value because the subject of such es had no referent in
phras-
reality.4
‘
Early
Pentecostal
scholarship
has either followed the more conservative track of dispensationalism or the more liberal
path
of rationalism. Both are responses
to the same basic difficulties
presented by a rationalist worldview, in particular the problematic of a God who acts and
speaks
in human histo- ry and who may
be directly experienced
today.
Yet, the direct
experiencing
of God, both
internally through experiences of encounter and
externally through
the manifestation of God’s miraculous speech
and action, is foundational to a Pentecostal
understanding
of the knowledge
of God. As McLean
puts
it:
We as Pentecostals assert that we have experienced the divine person directly acting in our lives, not only by internal renewal, but external
. experiences
such as healings, not merely “religiously sensitive reflec- tions,” but an infilling of the Holy Spirit.5 5
…,
McLean maintains
correctly
that those differences of approach which
sepa- rate Pentecostals from
Evangelicals
have their basis in “an
ontologically
dif- ferent mode of God’s
presence
and
activity
in biblical times as opposed to
4 Mark D. McLean, “Toward a Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” Pneuma: The Journal
Pentecostal Theology 6:2
of the Society for ( 1984), 39.
5 Ibid., 45.
247
3
the here and now.”6
The difference in epistemological approaches to God has its basis in the fact that Fundamentalism in
particular
and conservative
Evangelicalism more
generally
are reactions to nineteenth-century liberalism and have elect- ed to operate within the worldview to which
they
are reacting. Conservative Christian
scholarship generally
has
adopted
the basic
presuppositions
of a scientific worldview and has assumed
that,
because truth about God is his- torical in nature, it must be possible to establish or at least to defend the full historicity
of Scripture. Put another
way, if God has chosen to reveal eternal truth in history, the historical
integrity
of the narrative information contained in Scripture becomes
paramount.7
The
methodology
of historiography places severe restrictions,
however, on biblical
interpretations.
Modem
historiography
is
only possible
if an unbroken chain of cause-and-effect can be established and maintained. Thus such
things
as reports of the miraculous and direct interventions of God in human
history,
while
they may
be affirmed as “true”
by
biblical
scholars, must be excluded from
any attempt
to establish biblical truth
through
exter- nal, historical
means.
The result
among many Evangelical
scholars has
been, as Langdon Gilkey correctly perceived, that,
As modern men perusing the Scriptures, we have rejected as invalid all the innumerable cases of God’s acting and speaking; but as neo-orthodox men looking for a word from the Bible, we have induced from all these cases the theological generalization that God is he who acts and This
speaks.
general truth about God we then assert while denying all the partic- ular cases on the basis of which the generalization was first made.8
The
pursuit
of
scholarship
and the affirmation of
personal
faith result for some in a kind of
linguistic schizophrenia
in which conservative scholars “continue to use the biblical and orthodox
theological language
of divine activity
and
speech,
but
they
have
dispensed
with the wonders and voices that gave univocal
meaning,
and thus content, to the theological words ‘God
6 Ibid., 47. See also Karkkainen, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics in the Making,” 76-115. 7 As part of the move into a postmodem world, the idea that
be and
any history-producing enterprise, modem or otherwise, is or even intends to objective flawlessly accurate has been all but abandoned. Two excellent studies on this as it on the of the Old Testament are Leo G. Perdue, The
topic impacts study
Collapse of History: Reconstructing Old Testament Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1994) and, on a much more provocative note, Philip R. Davies, 8 Langdon B. Gilkey, “Cosmology, Ontology and the Travail of Biblical Language,” Journal of Religion
41 (L961), 203.
248
4
acts’ and ‘God
speaks.”‘9
Pentecostal scholars have in
many
cases been trained in conservative Evangelical institutions, working
within a
methodology
that is, in some ways, fundamentally
at odds with a Pentecostal worldview and understand- ing of Scripture.
Pentecostals have been educated in settings that emphasize a rationalistic worldview and that often locate biblical truth in questions of historicity.
Timothy Cargal
has
argued
that this alliance of Pentecostal and Evangelical scholarship, together
with a strong grass-roots anti-intellectual- ism and a general suspicion of
higher
education
among many
Pentecostal pastors
and
lay people,
has led to “a
growing divergence
in the
practice
of biblical
interpretation
between Pentecostals
primarily working
in the
parish and those
primarily working
within the academy.”10 Veli-Matti Karkkainen has
argued
that the result of this
dichotomy
has been a moving
away
from an emphasis on the intent of the biblical writers:
Pentecostals within the academy have tended to align themselves with
in their move toward adopting the methods of historical criticism while maintaining a commitment to the reliability of the bibli- Evangelicals
cal narrative. As a result, Pentecostal biblical scholars have emphasized their focus on the intent of the
the historical contexts of biblical narratives and reduced increasingly
‘inspired’ authors. These and other devel- opments have, of course, meant either denying or downplaying the ear- lier emphasis on the immediacy of the text, its multiple meanings and relevance ‘here and now’. This has led to a growing divergence in the practice
of biblical interpretation between Pentecostals in the parish and in the academy, I I
Because the
divergence
between Pentecostals and other conservative Christians is often an
epistemological one, involving
a difference in the ways
in which we know and receive revelation from God, Pentecostals often fail to
adequately appreciate
how their
adopted methodologies directly oppose
or hinder the results of their hermeneutics and the
very
reasons for entering
into the hermeneutical
process
in the first
place, namely,
to know God
,
‘
relationally. 12
2
‘
9 Ibid., 199.
10 Timothy B.
the Fundamental-Modernist Controversy: Pentecostals and
Hermeneutics in a Cargal. Postmodern “Beyond Age,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal
Studies 15:2 ( 1993), 170.
11 Karkkainen, “Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” 81-82.
12 For a discussion of the ways in which the adoption of an Evangelical hermeneutic has affect-
ed many Pentecostals’ understanding of the nature and authority of Scripture, see Scott
249
.
5
The
problem
with
locating
truth in history in doing biblical hermeneu- tics is two fold. First, time, distance, and a scarcity of corroborating source materials outside of the Bible have made confirmation and/or reconstruction of the elements of biblical
history
difficult
and, at times,
impossible.
Second, and more
fundamentally, any
direct
participation by
God in the biblical accounts falls outside of the
range
of modem historical
methodology.
God’s speaking, acting,
and revealing are not so much unscientific as they are asci- entific,
that is, such events are
hardly
accessible to examination
using
con- ventional historical methods. So, for example, while it might be possible to demonstrate that the walls of Jericho fell at approximately the time
period assigned
to the Exodus,13 it is not possible to establish that God
was,
in fact, the causative
agent
who knocked down the walls.
Finally,
the historical claims to the
supernatural
in Scripture rest on the testimony
of witnesses.
By definition such events are improbable,
so that the question
becomes whether the
weight
of not-disinterested
eyewitness
testi- mony
can ever be
sufficiently strong
to offset the
weight
of
probability. When it is considered that
many
of the
miracles, theophanies, and revela- tions of God are attested to only by highly biased witnesses, without exter- nal
corroborating evidence,
either
archaeological
or archival, modem his- torical method is obliged to classify such claims as at best unprovable and at worst false
The
inaccessibility
of much of the biblical record to historical and sci- entific examination has led some scholars to fight an increasingly elaborate and,
I believe, unsuccessful
rear-guard
action in which the
shortcomings
of the historical method are shorn
up in an effort to “make all the pieces
fit.” 15 Another
approach
has been to hold on to the rationalist worldview, still iden-
A. Ellington, “Pentecostalism and the Authority of Scripture,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 9 ( 1996), 16-38.
13 Although archaeological evidence is, at best, divided on this point. See, e.g., Kathleen M. Kenyon, Digging Up
Jericho (New York: Frederick A Praeger, 1957).
14 For a discussion of the limits of testimony in addressing questions of probability see George W. Ramsey, The Quesi for the Historical Israel: Reconstructing Israel’s Early History (London: SCM Press, 1981), 107-115.
15 So, for example, LaSor et al. adopt E. R. Thiele’s
and highly speculative explana- tion that attempts to harmonize the dates of the Northern and Southern complex Kingdom monarchies as
in the books of Kings and Chronicles. William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush, Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and
they appear
MI: Wm. B.
Background of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1991 ), 292-297. My point is not that Thiele is, of necessity, wrong, but that he is operating from within a worldview and using a method- ology
that force him into an increasingly speculative defense that is based on a notion of truth- as-history
that is proving increasingly inadequate.
250
6
tifying
truth with
history,
while
abandoning attempts
to establish that truth. So, for example,
French
Arrington
writes that:
While biblical infallibility is an assumption on which Pentecostals build their hermeneutic, they recognize that they have neither the ability nor the responsibility to demonstrate this infallibility. Because the Bible is inspired by
an infallible God, it is infallible. No further demonstration of its infallibility is either necessary or possible.16
Such an
approach correctly recognizes
the limitations of historical method in addressing truth questions in Scripture, and Arrington goes on to note that Pentecostals have
adopted
an
epistemologically
different
approach. “Pentecostals,” says Arrington,
“see
knowledge
not as a cognitive recogni- tion of a set of precepts but as a relationship with the One who has estab- lished the precepts
by which we live.” ‘ Thus,
the epistemological
approach of rationalism, while a valuable foundation for Pentecostal
hermeneutics,
is finally limited by
its
methodology. Truth-as-history
does not
adequately articulate a Pentecostal
understanding
of biblical truth.
Stepping
into a Postmodern World
Cargal
has
argued persuasively
that closer attention should be
paid
to emerging postmodern approaches
to
Scripture
because
postmodernism rejects
the limitation of truth to that which is historically true. From the post- modern
perspective,
truth is located in the
functioning
of the text.1
Cargal does not advocate an
abandoning
of the
gains
of the historical-critical approach
to the
text,
but rather asserts that truth is not located
exclusively (or even primarily?)
in historical truth. The
application
of the historical-crit- ical method to the pages of Scripture has led many scholars to conclude that much of what is recorded therein is not a flawless,
objective,
detached account of “what
actually happened,” any
more than
any
modem historical undertaking
is interested in
simply reporting
“what
happened.” “Postmodernism,” says Cargal, “distinguishes
itself from modernism at the
16 French L.
Arrington, “Hermeneutics, Historical Perspectives on Pentecostal and Charismatic,” in Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, eds. Stanley M. Burgess
and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988), 382.
17 Ibid.
18 Cargal, “Beyond the Fundamental-Modernist Controversy,” 185. See also Kenneth J. Archer, “Pentecostal Babbling: The Narrative Hermeneutic of the
to the 27th Annual Conference of the
Marginalized” (paper present
Society for Pentecostal Theology, 1997).
251
7
most fundamental level
by its critique
and rejection of the notion that
‘only what is historical and
objectively
true is meaningful’; meaning is not limted by positivistic
constraints.” 19 Thus, for
Cargal,
“it is still
possible
to assert that there is truth and
meaning
within
scriptural
texts which one
may
have to concede are not
‘historically
true’
according
to the canons of critical his- toriography.”20
He does
not, however, explain
the
relationship
between his- torical truth and postmodem
truth(s)
in his brief article.
While
Cargal
is
quick
to indicate the
points
of contact between Pentecostal and
postmodem approaches
to
Scripture,
he does not address another more basic
assumption
of
postmodemity, namely,
the
rejection
of any privileged place granted
to metanarratives that would set limits on pos- sible
interpretations
of the text and that
might
exclude some
interpretations as false
readings.
To
quote Jean-Frangois Lyotard’s
oft-cited
statement, “Simplifying
in the
extreme,
I define
postmodern
as
incredulity
toward metanarratives.”21 And
yet,
Pentecostals have maintained a view of bibli- cal
inspiration
that insists on a privileged place for the biblical account of reality.
Nor has
Cargal explored
a
primary exegetical approach
of
postmod- ernism, namely, deconstruction,
which
begins
from the stance of skepticism toward claims made within the text by the author,
seeing
such claims as ide- . ologically driven
and, therefore,
as coercive.
So,
in addressing the
question “How does truth function in the text?”, the voice of the author of that text is accounted no privileged place in answering that
question
and indeed his or her
understanding may
be
adjudged “guilty
unless and until
proven
inno- cent.”
Robert Menzies has
critiqued Cargal
as
advocating
a
loosing
of “the meaning
of a text from its historical
moorings.”
It is far from clear, howev- er, that
this is what
Cargal
has advocated. While
acknowledging
the neces- sity
of
moving away
from a “history-as-truth”
epistemology,
Menzies cari- catures
postmodernity
as completely ahistorical and advocates a repair and refitting
of the Evangelical hermeneutic rather than its abandonment.” But if Evangelicalism
remains committed to a truth-as-history
epistemology
and postmodemity
advocates the abandonment of any authority that
changes
or
19 Ibid., 171.
20 Ibid., 178.
21 Jean-Franqois Lyotard, The Postmodem Condition: A
Report
on
Knowledge,
trans. Geoff Bennington
and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), xxiv. 22
Robert P. Menzies, “Jumping Off the Postmodem Bandwagon,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Theology 16:1 ( 1994), 1 I S-120.
252
8
even
seriously challenges
the local and immediate
interpretation, Pentecostals seem to be forced into a choice between a commitment to truth- as-history
and an abandonment of the notion of a universally authoritative metanarrative.
The
question,
then, is to what extent Pentecostalism can articulate its understanding
of Scripture from a worldview and
using exegetical
methods so at odds with its own? Given their substantial differences, it is better to conclude with Karkkainen that “between
Postmodernism(s)
and Pentecostalism there is such a wide
gap in terms of presuppositions
that one is wise not to exaggerate apparent similarities.”23
‘
Scripture
as Story
A promising middle
ground
has been
proposed by the
narrative theolo- gy that treats Scripture
as story, that invites the reader into a story-world and that,
from within the worldview of that
story-world,
makes claims
upon
the reader’s
perception
of reality. David Gunn has defined narrative criticism as:
‘
the existing text (in its “tinal form”) in terms of its own Interpreting
primarily
the text by attempting to reconstruct its sources and editorial
story world, seen as replete with meaning, rather than understand- its
ing history,
original setting and audience, and its author’s or editor’s intention in writing. 24
Thus,
narrative criticism
lays
aside
completely
the
question
of
history
and focuses on truth-claims of the text that are
only
visible
(and meaningful?) from within the world of the
story.
In its extreme form, narrative criticism
completely
disconnects the meaning
of the text from
questions
of
history.
Dale Patrick, for
example, understands God to be simply a literary device of the biblical writers:
.
The authors of Scripture employed artistic means to represent a human world in which God is an active participant. It is a sign of their success that the reader is able to enter this world imaginatively to such an extent that it seems utterly natural. Only when we step out of that world and
to question the possibility of miracles and other divine interven- tions does the “constructedness” of the biblical world become apparent. begin
If we can surmount our critical skepticism and arrive at a “post-critical naivete,” we can enter this world again but in full awareness that it is an
23
1
Karkkainen. “Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” 97.
24
David M. Gunn, “Narrative Criticism,” in To Each Its Own Meaning: All Introduction to
Biblical Criticisms and Their Applications, ed. Steven L. McKenzie and Stephen R. Haynes
(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993).
253
9
artistic and intellectual achievement.25
The selection of God as the central character in a biblical narrative and the arrangement
of events of that narrative
seem,
for Patrick,
essentially
arbi- trary.
A more moderate
approach
is offered
by George Stroup,
who
argues that the biblical narrative “is
‘history’
in that it attempts to interpret the past and to explain what is done in the present and
expected
in the future in light of the claims made about the
past.”26 Stroup
claims that the
historicity
of biblical narrative is located not in the
accuracy
of its accounts of what
hap- pened,
but in the faithfulness with which it provides the
believing
commu- nity
with its sense of identity.
Christian narrative is unabashedly historical. It makes claims about the
and its judgments about the present (moral, political, and social) and hopes for the future are finally dependent on this
past,
of those events in the
past.
Christian narrative is “historical” interpretation for two rea- sons. On the one hand, its claims about reality are based on and to certain events in the communal of Israel and the
appeal his-
of of Nazareth.
history
Jesus But
personal tory secondly, Christian narrative is not recit- ed in order to amuse or entertain. There is an explicit kerygmatic under- tow to Christian narrative. It is told for a reason, to make a which of course is that the and salvation of
point,
redemption personal and communal histories is to be found in this Christian
story. Persons and communities cannot be redeemed without their histories, for their identity is insepara- ble from them.27
.
‘
Christian communities do not so much recite histories as selectively remem- ber. That is, such communities are not
merely
interested in what
happened, but in the
ways
in which what is remembered creates,
impacts on, shapes, and recreates
community identity.
“It would not do to
suggest
that a com- munity
is constituted
merely by
a common
past.
It is more accurate to say that a community is constituted
by a common memory
in which the
past
is
25 pale Patrick, The Rendering of God in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981 ), 63.
26 George W. Stroup, The Promise of Narrative Theology: Recovering the Gospel in the Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 198I ), 92. Stroup’s work provides an excellent introduction into the epistemological perspective and, to a lesser extent, the methodology of the narrative
to
27
approach Scripture.
Ibid., 94-95.
254
10
remembered and
interpreted.”28
What, though,
is the
relationship
between what is remembered and “what
really happened”? Surely
the way in which a story is understood will affect its interpretation and
subsequently
its appropriation. As Menzies
puts it,
“It mattered to Paul whether the resurrection
actually happened ( Cor. 15:12-19).
How can it be different for us?”29 Or to place the affirmation in a more localized context for a Pentecostal, when someone, in response to his or her
reading
of the biblical
narratives, stands
up to lay
hands on and
pray for the
sick,
it matters whether or not stories of Jesus
healing
the sick “real- ly happened.”
The narrative
approach is, I would argue,
a fruitful one that would reward further
exploration. Nevertheless,
it remains for Pentecostal scholars to articulate more
carefully
the
relationship
between the truth- claims of the
story
and “what
really happened.”
It is my contention that the biblical writers neither understood nor were they
interested in writing history in the modern sense of that term. Neither, however, were they simply about writing creative stories without any
refer- ence to “real events.” Where, then, is truth to be located in the biblical nar- rative, and how is it to be accessed and
appropriated
for Pentecostals?
Testimony
as a Model for
Appropriating
Biblical Truth
The
principal
hermeneutical
suggestion
I wish to make in this discus- sion is that one model for
locating
truth is through the
recalling
of
memory and the
offering
of testimony. Such a model, which is presented in the Old Testament,
is useful for
addressing
the
question,
“Where do Pentecostals locate truth in their
understanding
and
interpretation
of
Scripture?”
I will propose building
on a model of truth-as-testimony articulated most
clearly by
Walter
Brueggemann
in his
recently published
Old Testament
theology.
2B Ibid., 135. Van A. Harvey has outlined a somewhat similar process of selective remember creteness and a wider meaning. The more fundamental the meaning, the more the event ing
and identity formation in his definition of myth: A paradigmatic event is one that fuses con- becomes capable of being transformed into where “myth” does not mean a false story but a
highly
selective
story
that is used to structure and myth,
convey the basic self-understanding of a or a
person community. A pattern is abstracted from the event and becomes the formalized ble that is used to
para-
The Morality
interpret larger tracts of
and
Historical
history
and Christian
experience. The Historia/1 and the Believer:
of (London: SCM Press,
257. The
Knowledge Belief
1966), distinction, it seems to me, lies in the specificity of that which is remembered as it relates to application and response. The claim of the for instance, rests on certain foundational events such as the crucifixion and resurrection gospel, and must be appropriated in indi- vidual and very
29
specific ways.
Menzies, “Jumping Off,” I17. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Disptste, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 1 l8. Ibid., 206.
255
11
Brueggemann
has suggested that the central truth-claims of Israel in the Old Testament is not a declaration of “historical
facts,” but is offered as a testi- mony by witnesses. For Brueggemann,
biblical truth is located not in the his- torical events that
may or may
not lie behind the offered
testimony,
but in the testimony itself.
Note well that in focusing on we tend to bracket out all of We are not
speech, questions
historicity. asking, “What happened?” but “What was said?” To
inquire into the historicity of the text is a but it does
I to the work of Old Testament legitimate enterprise, not,
In like
suggest, belong theology.
manner, we bracket out all questions of ontology; which ask about the “really real.,,30
For
Brueggemann,
we have access
only
to the
testimony
itself in
making theological
constructions from the Old Testament
Scriptures
and
applying them to our own contexts and situations.
What happened, so our “verdict” is, is what these witnesses said
In
hap-
complementary fashion, this means that
tion does not
pened.
behind this witness with
theological interpreta- of
wonder-
“what is real.” What is go
questions ontology,
real, so our “verdict” is, is what these wit- nesses say is real. Nothing more historical or ontological is available. But ing
this mode of “knowing” finds such a claim to be adequate.31 1
_
Accordingly,
“the
authority
of the witness is grounded in nothing more and nothing
less than the
willingness
of the text
community
to credit,
believe, trust,
and take
seriously
this testimony.”32 This
crediting process goes
on in a dialectic, set up and followed within the Old Testament, between the ortho- dox testimonies of who God is and how God
characteristically
acts and the counter-testimonies that
question
that orthodox
picture
of God.
The
primary
mode of appropriation of that truth
by the community
that reads the
Scripture
is not an ascension to the historical truthfulness of the information contained in the biblical narratives, but in the text’s
“capacity
to generate,
evoke, and articulate alternative
images
of
reality, images
that counter what
hegemonic power
and
knowledge
have declared to be
impos-
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., 68.
32 For a critique of Brueggemann’s assertion that “all we have is the testimony”, see Scott A. Ellington, Reality,
Remembrance, and Response: The Presence and Absence of God in the Psalms of Lament (Ph. D. diss., University of Sheffield, 1999), 174-178.
256
12
sible.”33
Through
the biblical
text, God creates
in our imaginations an alter- native
image
of reality, a new vision of how the world could be.
While
Brueggemann
maintains that it is impossible to “get behind” the testimony
of the biblical witness to what
“really happened,”
he does allow for a circumstance in which that
testimony
can be evaluated
by
external means
through experience.
.
In its deepest vexation, then, Israel makes a distinction between Yahweh and the reality of justice. While we might expect that Yahweh is ultimate and justice penultimate, in some of Israel’s most
matters are inverted. Justice is held as
desperate utterances,
up ultimate, and Yahweh as an agent
of justice is critiqued for failure of justice.34
.
This
“reality
of justice” is a concept mentioned in the
closing pages
of his theological study
that
Brueggemann
does not
go
on to develop, but is one that, I propose,
is a
primary
model for
locating
and
appropriating
biblical truth in the Old Testament.
I have
argued
in my doctoral thesis35 that in the context of the
psalms of lament, Israel was engaged in a process of testing and reappropriating the memories of the nation, thus
validating
and
adding
to a body of narratives that eventually came to be canonized as Scripture. It is my suggestion in this paper
that a
process
of
testing
the stories of the text
against
lived
experi- enced is essential to a Pentecostal ‘
community’s appropriation
of the truth- claims of Scripture.
A Model
of Scripture Appropriation
and a Pentecostal Hermeneutic
Joseph Byrd
has
argued
for an appropriational model of Scripture inter- pretation.
He points out
that,
“while most Pentecostals understand the Bible as
historically literal,
their
preaching generally
demonstrates that
they believe the biblical narratives have a symbolic nature as well as a historical nature.”36
Appealing
to Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical model,
Byrd
advo- cates the need for the text to be re-experienced
by the contemporary
hearers in order to
reappropriate
its
meaning. According
to
Byrd,
“The structural analysis
includes
expressing
the
interpreter’s experience
with the referents
33 Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 68.
34 Ibid., 740.
35 gllington, “Reality, Remembrance, and Response.”
36 Joseph Byrd, “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical Theory and Pentecostal Proclamation,” Pentecostal Theology 15:2 ( 1993). 210.
257
13
of the
symbols
in the text and the reflection on that
expression.”37 Appropriation
is only
possible
when an interpretation of the text’s
meaning is evaluated in light of new
experience
so that the interpreter’s
“wager”
as to the
meaning
of the text can be evaluated and confirmed
(or negated).
Chris Thomas has
suggested
a hermeneutical
approach
in which the early
church’s use of
Scripture
becomes a
guide.
In his article
“Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An
Experiment
in Pentecostal
Hermeneutics,” Thomas uses as a model for
Spirit-guided
hermeneutics the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. Discussion of a new
question
in the church,
namely,
the stipulations
to be
placed
on converted Gentiles,
begins
first of all with a focus on God’s actions and miracles in the church, then moves to a highly selective
interpretation
of an Old Testament text
(Amos 9:11-12),
while ignoring many
alternative texts that would seem to call for the exclusion of the Gentiles, and finishes with the authoritative decision of the church lead- ership.38
Thomas notes that the council showed a
preference
for the Septuagint’s rendering
of the text over that found in Hebrew versions and did not seem
overly
concerned with the original context and intent of Amos in delivering his prophecy or with a balanced
theological
examination of Old Testament
teachings
on Gentile
participation
in God’s
blessings. Thus, expe- riences of God’s
acting
in the
present
situation
dramatically
influenced the practice
of biblical hermeneutics. Thomas’s
suggested
model
challenges
a number of the bedrock
assumptions
of Evangelical
hermeneutics,
such as a careful consideration of the author’s context and intent, as well as a balanced consideration of the whole of the biblical
teaching
on a given
subject.
John
Goldingay points
out that one of the features of the scriptural story is that it is told more than once and in more than one context. “The implica- tion is that we need to understand the conversation between
story
and con- text in Scripture so as to see how story is being related to context there, and how a new context has the
capacity
to
bring
out new
significance
in events.”39
Retelling
Israel’s
story, argues Goldingay,
is
functionally
moti- vated.
In general, the biblical story is designed to enable us to discover who we are. We do that by telling our own story, but by telling it in the context
37 Ibid.
38 John Christopher Thomas, “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 ( 1994), 41-56.
39 John Goldingay, “Biblical Story and the Way it Shapes Our Story,” Journal for
the European
Pentecostal Theological Association 17 ( 1997). 7.
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14
of the Bible story. We find ourselves by setting ourselves in that other story…
In fact, we all tell our individual stories in the light of a world- view, a “grand narrative.”40
The truth-claims carried
by the biblical stories are, I want to suggest,
select- ed, shaped,
and presented in such a way as to maximize the individual’s abil- ity to appropriate
those stories into their own lives.
My
own
proposal
is that, in the context of the
psalms
of
lament,
the truth-claims of Israel’s central
story
are first tested
against experiences
of God’s
silence, hiddenness,
and abandonment and are
reappropriated
and owned afresh
by
the
praying community only
after a fresh
experience
of God allows those
praying
to affirm that “He has answered us!” I suggest a three-part
movement.
First,
the one praying offers a candid
complaint
result- ing from a new and unexpected experience
of God’s failure to act as expect- ed, according to those expectations that Israel’s stories have created.
Second, the present experience of divine absence or hiddenness is con- trasted with memories of God’s
presence
in the
past
to save from similar crises. The most
striking
feature of this second move is that it does not negate
the
preceding
lament. Affirmation of abandonment and confident expression
of trust in the memories of the community are held
up to God
in a tension with the
complaint
that
only
a fresh
response
from God can revolve.41
These remembrances are not an objective and well-balanced
presenta- tion of “what
happened,”
but are highly selective and are shaped
by the pres- ent needs of those
praying. So,
for example, the three “histories” of God’s salvation of Israel recorded in Psalms 105-107 each
emphasize
and remem- ber different
aspects
of the
grand story
in order to motivate
very
different responses.
Psalm 105 emphasizes God’s salvation in order to motivate obe- dience on the part of the
people
to the divine commands. Psalm 106 under- lines the ceaseless rebelliousness of the
people
and God’s faithfulness to forgive
in order to motivate God to forgive the
people yet again
in a fresh way.
Psalm 107 offers motivation for
public praise
of God in the
assembly
40 Ibid., 8.
41 I have argued elsewhere that, in modern studies of the question of God’s presence and absence, authors almost without exception conclude
into an assured but diffuse or a
by dissolving the any apparent contradiction
presence permanent absence on part of God. Ellington, “Reality, Remembrance, and Response,” 31-41. The one notable exception to this trend is Samuel E. Balentine, The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Balentine, like the lament psalmists, manages to maintain a tension between affirmations of God’s presence and complaints of his absence.
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15
of the people.
A third element of the
process
is often found in those
psalms
in which God
responds
with either an assurance of salvation or a saving act. A very common
response
to such a fresh
experience
of salvation is public testimo- ny before the great assembly.
The
psalmist goes
before the
community
and both affirms the truthfulness of the
community’s
memories and adds his or her own testimony to that story. Testimony, I have
argued,
is an essential
part of the
process
because it legitimates the
community’s
stories and allows for their
reappropriation.
A brief
example
of this process can be found in Psalm 22. The
psalmist claims abandonment in a time of crisis
(vv. 1-2), remembers God’s salvation of the ancestors because
they
trusted in God
(vv. 3-5),
declares his or her own trust from his or her youth,
together
with the counter-testimony of those who claim that the psalm writer does not trust in God and
is, therefore,
God- forsaken
(vv. 6-11),
and
complains
of his or her
suffering
and calls out for deliverance
(vv. 12-21 ). Upon receiving
that
deliverance,
the
psalm
writer begins
a process of public testimony that starts with the local
assembly
and eventually spreads throughout
the nations,
extending
even to future
genera- tions and
ending
with the affirmation “He has done it!”
(vv. 22-31 ).
This model for evaluating and appropriating
Scripture (albeit, Scripture in its formative
stages)
in
light
of fresh
experience
differs from current Pentecostal
practice
in at least one
prominent way.
Richard Israel has
sug- gested that,”
the text points to a world, the interpreter orients himself or her- self toward the claim of the text and that is where
appropriation
takes place.”42
But I would
suggest
that
something
more is needed for the reader to “orient himself or herself to the claim of the text.” In Pentecostal Bible reading,
serious and sustained
complaint
to God is all but absent. It is my contention that both
complaint
and
testimony
are
necessary
elements for appropriating
the truth-claims of the biblical
story
in the
community.43 When faced with an experience that
challenges
the a
priori
beliefs
arising from the community’s story, those
facing
that
experience
first articulate their experience
of God’s failure to respond as expected, then retell the
story
of God’s
past actions,
and
finally,
if a new
experience
of God is forthcoming, testify
in an act of fresh
traditioning. According
to this
model,
all three ele-
4Z Richard D. Israel, Daniel E. Albrecht, and Randal G. McNally, “Pentecostals and Hermeneutics: Texts, Rituals, Rituals and Pneuma: The Journcal
Pentecostal Theology 15:2 143.
Community,” of the Society for
(1993),
43 See Scott A. Ellington, “The Costly Loss of Testimony,” Journal of Pentecostal 16
Theology (2000), 48-59.
260
16
ments are
necessary
in order to appropnate the truth-claims ot the biblical text. This
suggests
to Pentecostal readers of the text
that, at least for the lament
psalmists, placing
the
story seriously
at risk of negation was an inte- gral part
of its reappropriation in the
community.
If the answer to prayer is never in doubt, but
always guaranteed,
then lament is
merely
a prelude to praise
and the
testimony’s
outcome is assured. As Balentine
puts
it:
To strip the lament of this element of anxiety is not only to change its
whole character, but it is also to miss out one of the
, into how the sense of the hiddenness of
significant insights God was dealt with in the Old
Testament…Without the struggle the
.
would be
questions directed toward God
meaningless, and to interpret all questions as merely prelimi-
nary to confessions of confidence is to be indifferent to the agony of the
struggle
out of which they were born.44 ,
.
Such
triumphalist
assurances of salvation that
deny
the
possibility
of hid- denness on God’s
part,
I suggest, both
deny life-experience
and weaken tes- timony,
thus
hindering
the
appropriation
of the
gospel
in the faith commu- nity.
Conchision
The
purpose
of this
paper
has been to examine the
ways
in which truth is located in a variety of Christian hermeneutical
approaches
and to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each
approach
when
speaking
of a Pentecostal reading
of Scripture. I have not sought to propose an overall hermeneutic for Pentecostals, or even to provide a standardized
pattern
for
Scripture reading from a Pentecostal
perspective,
but
simply
to offer one model for
Scripture appropriation
used
by
some biblical writers in order to draw attention to some of the issues that must be considered in order to find a way ahead in a hermeneutical
approach
that
emphasizes
both the
authority
and
inspiration of the Bible and experiences of God.
Having
made this brief
study,
it is now
possible
to make a number of observations:
I ) The
historical-critical
approach,
while
providing
an
indispensa- ble foundation for biblical
interpretation,
cannot
fully
articulate Pentecostal approaches
to hermeneutics because of its foundation in and restriction to a rationalist worldview.
2)
Postmodem hermeneutics, while
offering many
fresh
insights
44 Balentine, The Hidden God, 124.
‘
261
17
into the text that are of use to Pentecostal readers,
operates
out of a world- view in which all truth-claims are local and relative and in which the bibli- cal writers are viewed with a high
degree
of suspicion. Therefore,
postmod- ern
approaches
are also limited in their
applicability
to the
practice
of hermeneutics
by Pentecostals.
3) Understanding
the Bible as story rather than
“pure” history
frees the reader from the need to defend a model of historical truth that seems alien to the biblical writers themselves. Narrative
approaches
to
Scripture are useful in Pentecostal hermeneutics, however,
only
to the extent that
they be
grounded
in the
concern,
common to both the biblical writers and Pentecostal readers, for “what
happened.”
That
connection,
as
Stroup
has suggested,
is to be found in the text’s
ability
to provide the individual and the community with its sense of identity and to create
expectations
for future encounters with God.
4) Truth-as-testimony
offers a promising way in which to under- stand the Bible’s truth-claims.
Testimony
involves selective
remembering and includes the beliefs of the one
testifying, along
with references to the events that are believed to be true. Furthermore, it is at times
possible
to evaluate
testimony
about God
through
the
continuing process
of
bringing together
that
testimony
and fresh
experiences
of God’s
presence
and absence. The common thread that allows the
bringing together
of the world- view(s)
of the biblical writers and the worldview(s) of Pentecostals is a com- monly
held belief that God remains an active
agent (indeed,
the
primary active
agent)
in the biblical stories.
5)
One element
frequently lacking
in Pentecostal
testimony
is a serious
presentation
of complaint,
resulting
from the contradiction at times set
up
between the
testimony
of
Scripture
and the
life-experiences
of the believer. An evaluation of life-experiences that denies the possibility of put- ting
the biblical
story seriously
at risk also lacks the
power
to bring about profound reappropriation
of that
story.
6)
Future work in articulating Pentecostal hermeneutical
practices will need to explore further the
ways
in which the
experiences
of the faith community
interact with the
reading
of the text and will also need to attend to other models drawn from the biblical text that illustrate how Israel and the Christian church
appropriated
the biblical narratives. I have
suggested
that “reality testing”
of testimony in a dialectical
model,
rather than a triumphal-
262
18
istic denial of counter-testimonies that call the biblical stories into question, ! is one essential element in helping the believing
community
transform “the story”
into “our
story.”
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