Pentecostalism as a Christian Mystical Tradition by Castelo Daniel;Heath Elaine;

Author:Castelo, Daniel;Heath, Elaine;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eerdmans

Part of the importance of Oliverio’s study is the manner in which he expands and nuances the first type. He recognizes that Pentecostals held to the authority of Scripture in what can be deemed a “Protestant way”—that is, in considering it primarily authoritative for matters of faith and practice—yet a major feature of this approach was to see Scripture as providing “normative exemplars for Christian experience.”65 That is, Scripture can be considered a primary authority in various ways; the Pentecostal view of scriptural authority was both similar to and different from Protestants generally and evangelicals in particular. The similarities are often on display in the tendencies by early Pentecostals to believe that Scripture can be taken “at face value” and that the “plain sense” is available to those who have a proper spiritual disposition.66 In this, they sounded exceedingly close to a Baconian/common-sense paradigm, which would not necessarily be surprising, given the Christian subcultures out of which Pentecostalism emerged.67

But there are differences as well as similarities in the hermeneutics of early Pentecostals and evangelicals. Oliverio insightfully remarks that the willingness of Pentecostals to allow their theology to be interpreted by charismatic experience made for an interactive dynamic between theology and experience. This openness represents “an attempt to resolve the modern Protestant divide on the matter of theological method. The authority of the Bible (orthodoxy) is interwoven with the primacy of religious experience (both in orthopraxis and orthopathos). This is a movement, then, though not a consciously theoretical one, toward a way beyond the divide between the biblical propositionalism of conservative Protestantism and the placing of the locus of divine revelation on religious experience as in liberal Protestantism.”68 So while the views of early Pentecostals on the perspicuity of Scripture might make them sound Protestant in their orientation, the way they integrated their experience with their vision of “the apostolic faith” in order to live it out practically makes their approach unique. This orientation allows for a different kind of nuance, one that opens up mystical dimensions to the spiritual reading of Sacred Writ.

It is thus no surprise that some Pentecostal scholars have opted to emphasize hermeneutical continuity with evangelicalism, while others have stressed discontinuity. Much depends on the sources one uses. The second of Oliverio’s types, the Evangelical-Pentecostal hermeneutic, also supports those who stress continuity between the groups, for they would be inclined to see the second type as a further development of the first type. All these efforts to contextualize and describe Pentecostalism within broader traditions might help weaken the argument that the Pentecostal movement simply “fell out of the sky,” but they also have the concomitant effect of blurring the distinctive features of this unique group.

Pneumatic Interpretation

Broadly, one could say that Pentecostals read Scripture not so much to encounter the facts or truths of the Christian faith as to encounter the living God of Christian confession. That is, the Pentecostal hermeneutical orientation is relational and experiential to its core, especially when on display within the broader gamut of their practiced spirituality.

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