Journal of Pentecostal Theology

Journal of Pentecostal Theology
http://jpt.sagepub.com Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics: Acritique of Three Conceits

John C. Poirier and B. Scott Lewis Journal of Pentecostal Theology 2006; 15; 3 DOI: 10.1177/0966736906069254 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jpt.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/3
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Journal of Pentecostal Theology 2006 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi http://JPT.sagepub.com Vol 15(1) 3-21 DOI: 10.1177/0966736906069254
PENTECOSTAL AND POSTMODERNIST HERMENEUTICS: A CRITIQUE OF THREE CONCEITS John C. Poirier*

Kingswell Theological Seminary, 6800 School Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45244 email: jcpoiri@kingswellseminary.org
B. Scott Lewis**
Kingswell Theological Seminary, 6800 School Rd., Cincinnati, OH 45244 email: bslewis@kingswellseminary.org
ABSTRACT
A great number of Pentecostal academics have embraced a postmodernist paradigm for reading the Bible. This article reveals fatal aws in three prominent arguments favoring a postmodernist hermeneutic: (1) that the postmodernist worldview is supported by quantum physics, (2) that the authors intention (for various reasons) is irrelevant, and (3) that the concept of truth and the unattainability of a purely objective viewpoint are obstacles for the historical-critical project. These arguments are examined as they appear within Pentecostal writings.
Ancient historians often tell of a citys inhabitants streaming out of the gates to greet a liberating conqueror or visiting dignitary. No image better ts the reception that Pentecostal scholars and theologians have given to postmodernism. In the short time that serious Pentecostal academic journals have been published, numerous articles promoting a postmodernist biblical hermeneutic have appeared, while little in the way of a direct
* John C. Poirier (DHL, Jewish Theological Seminary of America) recently earned a doctoral degree in Ancient Judaism. Poirier is chair of biblical studies at Kingswell Theological Seminary. ** B. Scott Lewis (PhD student, Regent University) is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Renewal Theology, with a concentration in Scripture.
Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)
challenge to that hermeneutic has appeared. Many of these articles speak of postmodernism as an opportunity for a truly Pentecostal reading of the Bible to ourish.1 The writers of the present article disagree wholeheartedly with the direction of these articles and are not content merely to stay out of the wheel ruts of the postmodernist bandwagon:2 we intend to do our part to slow the bandwagon, as we think that its tune is a poor choice for Christian theology in general and for Pentecostal theology in particular. The openness of Pentecostal scholars and theologians to postmodernist ways of reading clashes with both the referential nature of the New Testament kerygma and Pentecostalisms primitivist commitment to restore the theology and affections of the New Testament community. A full critique of the postmodernist paradigm would require a much longer article. In lieu of that, we will critique three prominent conceits found within recent Pentecostal writings: (1) the postmodernist worldview is open to the miraculous and enjoys scientic support (especially from the eld of quantum physics), (2) an authors intention is irrelevant for understanding the biblical text, and (3) our notions of truth and objectivity should be such that the goal of objectivity will be considered illegitimate.3 As we argue below, all three of these conceits stand in serious need of correction. Part of the reason that postmodernism has had it so easy is that it regularly dresses up in a rhetoric of warm experientialism and pious affection. Consider, for example, Jackie David Johns characterization of the classical scientic worldview of historical criticism versus the systemic
1. For example, Robert O. Baker writes, In the present intellectual climate of postmodernism and deconstructionit would seem that the biblical studies guild is now more open to the holistic readings that Pentecostal scholars can bring to the eld (R.O. Baker, Pentecostal Bible Reading: Toward a Model of Reading for the Formation of Christian Affections, JPT 7 [1995], pp. 34-48 [35]). 2. Bandwagon is Robert M. Menziess tting term for the Pentecostal reception of postmodernism (R.M. Menzies, Jumping off the Postmodern Bandwagon, Pneuma 16.1 [1994], pp. 115-20 [118]). 3. More generally, see Veli-Matti Krkkinen and Amos Yong, Toward a Pneumatological Theology: Pentecostal and Ecumenical Perspectives on Ecclesiology, Soteriology, and Theology of Mission (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002), esp. the chapter on Hermeneutics: From Fundamentalism to Postmodernism, pp. 3-21. Krkkinen explores the promises and problems of the emerging postmodernist paradigm within Pentecostal hermeneutics. See Sam Hey, Changing Roles of Pentecostal Hermeneutics, Evangelical Review of Theology 25.3 (2001), pp. 210-18, for a survey of the changes that Pentecostal hermeneutics has undergone, esp. toward postmodernism. See also Yongnan Jeon Ahn, Various Debates in Contemporary Pentecostal Hermeneutics, Spirit and Church 2.1 (2000), pp. 19-52.
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics
worldview of postmodernist hermeneutics. Johns (following Timothy Lines) describes the former by eight key terms: it is mechanistic, reductionistic, disciplinary, deterministic, static, entropic, dualistic, and positivistic. Now we ask: Why would anyone want to work within a paradigm described by such negative terms? The systemic worldview, on the other hand, is organismic, relational, pluralistic, stochastic, dynamic, negentropic, holistic, and cybernetic, all of which carry a clear positive valence.4 Obviously, an argument in favor of the latter worldview will already be persuasive if the reader will only buy into the valence of the terms.5 That, of course, is just the type of non-argument that we hope to avoid here. If the arguments in favor of a postmodernist hermeneutic have not always been as substantive as they should be, that is no excuse for ghting back on a merely rhetorical battleeld. We do not pretend to be above rhetoric, but we hope that the reader will try to follow our argument on a substantive level, because it is only there that the pitfalls of a postmodernist hermeneutic become plain. When ecumenical, pastoral, and revivalist concerns seek to be recognized, questions about what the author intended in a given passage are vulnerable to the rhetoric that comes naturally to those concerns, and postmodernist strategies are there to give a sense of legitimacy to the turning of a deaf ear. Before going any further, we should address what the term postmodernism includes. As the (purported) displacement of modernism, does postmodernism mean to place a question mark over the Enlightenment
4. Jackie David Johns, Pentecostalism and the Postmodern Worldview, JPT 7 (1995), pp. 73-96 (80, 82). Our point is that one could easily nd a positively valenced term to replace each negatively valenced one that Johns provides (and vice versa e.g.steadfast for static, shifting like sand for dynamic, etc.), and that this simple exercise reveals the paucity of substance behind this way of arguing. In fairness, we should note that Johnss loading of terms is tame compared to that of Paul W. Lewis, Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology: The Role of Experience in Pentecostal Hermeneutics, Spirit and Church 2.1 (2000), pp. 95-125 (121). 5. Those who employ such loaded terms are just as much the victims of this rhetoric as they are the culprits: the scholarly subculture has been so imbued with this rhetoric that it takes some effort just to see things in a fair light. Terms like Enlightenment-thinking and positivist have become so negatively charged that they can scare the reader into a particular intellectual commitment even before he or she thinks to ask whether the terms are being used fairly. As John H. Zammito notes, the term positivism has come to be used pejoratively to signify whatever is distasteful about an opponents position (J.H. Zammito, A Nice Derangement of Epistemes: Postpositivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004], p. 6).
project, or is it something narrower, intending to respond only to the New Criticism of the mid-twentieth century? The term is visibly overworked: while one interpreter might tie the term primarily to radical American pragmatism, another might include under its umbrella a method as modern and objectivist as critical realism. (Sometimes the range of the terms meanings can be stretched within a single writers argument: Timothy Cargal spends most of an article entitled Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy arguing for a radical and intensely anti-intentionalist hermeneutic, but he ends his article offering a postmodernist interpretation that is not in the least anti-intentionalist, and which no one else would dream of calling postmodernist.)6 For purposes of the present article, we will use a broad denition: postmodernist herein stands for any approach opposed to the use or privileging of the historical method. What follows is a brief critique of the Pentecostal acceptance of methodologies and paradigms that spurn the apprehension and very notion of objective, historical truth. Postmodernism, the Miraculous, and Quantum Physics One set of arguments for the postmodernist worldview is especially interesting because it appeals to the Pentecostals openness to miracles. Cargal begins his Pneuma article by presenting postmodernism as the carving out of a conceptual space for the miraculous.7 A moments reection already reveals a bit of a problem with this, as the very notion of miraculousness threatens to wither when exposed to a purely non-mechanistic understanding of reality. But we can set this aside as a minor issue so that we can concentrate on a deeper problem. When this line of appeal is sustained for any length of time, it usually opens to a ground shared with non-Pentecostal postmodernists: the supposed agreement between the postmodernist worldview and the insights of quantum physics. For postmodernists, the beauty of this observation is that it makes the proponents of historical criticism and other modernist approaches into followers of the old Newtonian physics, and puts postmodernists on the side of the Einsteinian scientic revolution. According to Cargal,
6. Timothy B. Cargal, Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy: Pentecostals and Hermeneutics in a Postmodern Age, Pneuma 15.2 (1993), pp. 163-87. Cargal ends his article by suggesting that the meaning of Mt. 27.24 does not depend on its historicity, which is something that virtually any historical critic would admit. 7. Cargal, Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, p. 163.

The bellwether of this paradigm shift [against objective truth] was Albert Einsteins publication of the Special Theory of Relativity which demonstrated that the objective reality of time itself was dependent upon the circumstances of the observing subject. Further developments within the socalled hard sciencesthat great bastion of the positivistic worldviewin the areas of quantum mechanics (e.g. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle) and theoretical mathematics (e.g. Gdels principles of incompleteness and inconsistency) continued the devastating attacks on the worldview of modernism, and were soon picked up within such human sciences as sociology (e.g. Berger and Luckmanns social construction of reality theories) and literary criticism (e.g. reader-response theory and deconstructionism).8
If one went by what Cargal writes, one might suppose not only that Einstein supported a non-deterministic understanding of truth (which is not the case), but also that Einstein and Heisenberg were in broad agreement about something (which also is not the case). This profound misunderstanding of Einstein and other physicists of the past century appears to be especially widespread among Pentecostals. Johns, for example, appeals to Einsteins thoughts on relativity as a support for an Open Systems paradigm,9 and Howard M. Ervin combines the Pentecostal openness to the miraculous with the obsolescence of an earlier physics model:
The cogency of argument for demythologizing may appeal to the modern mind because it ts readily into the frame of reference of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century scientic world view. But such a scientic world view is neither self-evident nor self-authenticating today With the advent of nuclear physics, science has made a quantum leap forward and the older scientic materialism is obsolete.10
8. Cargal, Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, pp. 171-72. 9. Johns, Pentecostalism and the Postmodern Worldview, p. 96. See Mathew S. Clark, Pentecostal Hermeneutics: The Challenge of Relating to (Post)-Modern Literary Theory, Spirit and Church 2.1 (2000), pp. 67-93 (76). 10. Howard M. Ervin, Hermeneutics: A Pentecostal Option, Pneuma 3.2 (1981), pp. 11-25 (19). For non-Pentecostal examples of biblical-hermeneutical and theological appropriations of quantum physics, see (respectively) Werner H. Kelber, Gospel Narrative and Critical Theory, BTB 18.4 (1988), pp. 130-36 (132); Helmut Thielicke, Modern Faith and Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 282-83. Postmodernizing literary theorists have also been quick to cite quantum theory: John Harwood refers to the routine appeals to relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, endlessly invoked by literary theorists to claim scientific status for the truism that literary works are susceptible to more than one interpretation (J. Harwood, Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation [New York: St Martins, 1995], p. 157).
The Pentecostal penchant for this appeal to the physical sciences might be due to the physics-miracle connection mentioned above. Yet, as we are about to explain, the idea that the physical sciences support a postmodernist view of the world is not one that Pentecostals should take seriously. As often happens when one eld appropriates anothers body of wisdom, proponents of postmodernist hermeneutics typically exaggerate the degree to which the Copenhagen interpretation still holds the day. Many (perhaps most) philosophers and physicists who have taken a close look at Heisenbergs argument disagree with his understanding of the role of the observer.11 Yet postmodernists write as if Heisenbergs views12 are accepted as a matter of course by those who know quantum theory best. Notwithstanding the curiosities that are found in quantum physics, the postmodernist appeal to that eld is unjustied. The subjectivist moments
11. As Don Howard writes, Friends of the Copenhagen interpretation [are] fewer in number than critics (D. Howard, Who Invented the Copenhagen Interpretation? A Study in Mythology, Philosophy of Science 71.4 [2004], pp. 669-82 [669]). In detailing the turn of the tide against the Copenhagen view, Mario Bunge argued that the subjectivist interpretation that (he claims) held the day in the 1920s (which had reduced the physical object to little more than the grin of the Cheshire cat), was being widely abandoned by philosophers by the 1960s, and was at that time being abandoned by physicists as well (M. Bunge, The Turn of the Tide, in idem [ed.], Quantum Theory and Reality [Studies in the Foundations, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, 2; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1967], pp. 1-6 [3-4]). 12. In speaking of Copenhagen, we must focus on the inuence of Werner Heisenberg (whose byline was not Copenhagen) rather than Nils Bohr, a task that makes things messy because many of the valid complaints against Copenhagen list Bohr as their target. Although Bohr did ascribe an epistemological role to the act of measurement (see esp. N. Bohr, The Quantum Postulate and the Recent Development of Atomic Theory, Nature [suppl.] 121 [1928], pp. 580-90), the idea that the act of observing is a constitutive part of quantum events really goes back to Heisenberg rather than Bohr. Howard has shown that Bohr never cast his epistemological gesture in ontological terms, and that the subjectivizing of Bohrs epistemological formulation was carried out by others apart from Bohrs blessing (Howard, Who Invented the Copenhagen Interpretation?, pp. 669-82). It was Heisenberg who rst spoke of the reduction of wave-packets (W. Heisenberg, The Development of the Interpretation of the Quantum Theory, in Wolfgang Pauli [ed.], Niels Bohr and the Development of Physics [London: Pergamon, 1955], pp. 12-29 [27]), and it was he who labeled this operationalist version of the effect of measurement the Copenhagen interpretation. Howard is very clear on Bohrs innocence of much that passes for Copenhagen: Bohrs complementarity interpretation makes no mention of wave packet collapse or any of the other silliness that follows therefrom, such as a privileged role for the subjective consciousness of the observer (Howard, Who Invented the Copenhagen Interpretation?, p. 669).
that some nd there turn out only to have been buried there by others, and Paul Feyerabend was right to complain about quantum theory being surrounded by a philosophical fog.13 What exactly did Heisenberg say, and why are his claims so widely challenged by philosophers and theorists? He basically claimed that certain phenomena behave differently when they are observeddifferently, that is, from how they behave when they are unobserved. This formulation led Karl Popper to complain that Heisenberg led a generation of physicists to accept the absurd view that one can learn from quantum mechanics that objective reality has evaporated.14 The crux of the matter has to do with how Heisenberg and his supporters think of probabilitythat is, with whether probability is a subjectivist moment. The contention that the act of observing changes a quantum event turns on a bizarre interpretation of probability, according to which the probability of a die roll is said to depend upon whether the roll has already happened or is still in the future (so that there is a sort of value change when the roll takes place!).15 An
13. Panel discussion, in S. Krner (ed.), Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics: With Special Reference to Quantum Mechanics: Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium of the Colston Research Society Held in the University of Bristol, April 1st-April 4th 1957 (New York: Dover, 1962), passim (p. 49). 14. Karl R. Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littleeld, 2nd edn, 1982), p. 9; cf. Werner Heisenberg, The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics, Daedalus 87.3 (1958), pp. 95-108 (p. 100). 15. Most people would say that the probability of a die roll resulting in a four is one in six, and would not revise their answer if they were told that the roll occurred in the past. But according to the subjectivist notion of probability of the Copenhagen interpretation, the probability of rolling a four depends on whether the die has already been rolled. If one is yet to roll the die, the odds are one in six, but if it has already been rolled, the subjectivist interpretation claims, the odds are either one in one or zero in one, depending on whether a four was rolled! [I]t is just this conclusion, Henry Margenau and Leon Cohen write, which springs from the most radical subjectivism in the logic of probability, that has left an imprint on the philosophy of quantum mechanics (H. Margenau and L. Cohen, Probabilities in Quantum Mechanics, in M. Bunge [ed.], Quantum Theory and Reality, pp. 71-89 [77]). Popper satirizes this ontologizing of probability: Assume that we have tossed [a] penny, and that we are shortsighted and have to bend down before we can observe which side is upmost. The probability formalism tells us then that each of the possible states has a probability of 1/2. So we can say that the penny is half in one state, and half in the other. And when we bend down to observe it, the Copenhagen spirit will inspire the penny to make a quantum jump into one of its two Eigen-states. For nowadays a quantum jump is said by Heisenberg to be the same as a reduction of the wave packet. And by observing the penny, we induce exactly what in Copenhagen is called a reduction of the wave packet (K.R. Popper, The Propensity Interpretation of the Calculus of Probability,
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unmeasured particles position and momentum is necessarily given in terms of a wave dispersion, but once it is measured it is assigned a denite position or momentum, which, on the terms of this subjectivist understanding of probability, represents a change in value. Clothing this so-called value change in ontological terms completes the characterization of observation as somehow contributing to the quantum event. The claim, of course, is spurious: it would be like attributing an ontological change to the effect that a strobe light has on the rotating blades of a fan.16 This intrusion of subjectivism into physics, Popper explains, eventually led to a view of quantum physics as objectively indeterministic, but he suggests that the subjectivist dogma was too deeply entrenched within the ruling interpretation of quantum mechanics for this newfound objectication of quantum physics to shake its way to the foundation. The result was an amalgam of subjectivist and objectivist moments within a single, purportedly complete view of quantum physics. The above account will hopefully be warning enough for Pentecostal interpreters: Heisenbergs interpretation has received more attention than it
and the Quantum Theory, in S. Krner [ed.], Observation and Interpretation in the Philosophy of Physics, pp. 65-70 [69]; see idem, The Propensity Theory of Probability, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 [1959], pp. 25-42; idem, Quantum Mechanics without The Observer, in M. Bunge [ed.], Quantum Theory and Reality, pp. 7-44). As Leslie E. Ballentine explains, this subjectivist understanding of probability trades on the almost literal identication of the particle with the wave packet (or what amounts to the same thing, the assumption that the wave function provides an exhaustive description of the properties of the particle) (L.E. Ballentine, The Statistical Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Reviews of Modern Physics 42.4 [1970], pp. 358-81 [365]). 16. Popper traces this introduction of subjectivism into quantum physics to several great mistakes (Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, p. 2). He laments in particular the long held belief that we may start from a subjectively interpreted system of probabilistic premises and then derive from these subjectivist premises statistical conclusions (Quantum Mechanics without The Observer, p. 29 [italics original]). This grave logical blunder goes back to some of the great founders of probability theory: Richard von Mises [and I] showed that at some stage or other in the derivation, the non-statistical meaning of the symbols is dropped and tacitly replaced by a statistical one. This is usually done by interpreting a probability approaching 1 as almost certain in the sense of almost always to happen, instead of almost certain in the sense of very strongly believed in or perhaps almost known. Sometimes the mistake consists in replacing almost certainly known by known almost certainly to occur (pp. 29-30 [italics original]; see K.R. Popper, Probability Magic or Knowledge out of Ignorance, Dialectica 11.3-4 [1957], pp. 354-74). Thus we appear to be dealing with a form of the epistemology/alethiology double switch (see n. 39 below).
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 11 is due.17 We should not look in the direction of supposed scientic insights unless we are willing to look beneath the surface of a given claim.18 Whatever supports postmodernism might have, quantum physics is not one of them. Is Authorial Intention Irrelevant? Arguments against an intentionalist hermeneutic are found in just about every book or article advancing a postmodernist understanding of meaning. Works by Pentecostals are no exception, and a brief review of the reasoning behind this conceit is in order. As the intentionalist hermeneutic has been challenged on several different grounds, we will deal with three subconceits of the turn against the author: (1) the claim that pre-Enlightenment biblical hermeneutics was not concerned with what the author intended, (2) the claim that the canonical shape of the Christian Bible challenges the appropriateness of the authors intention for interpreting the text, and (3) the claim that hermeneutics should take its cue from recent models for understanding how meaning is constructed (which have little use for the author). What about the claim that the intentionalist hermeneutic is a late development? Enlightenment-bashing depends on a number of junk histories, one of which credits the Enlightenment with inventing intentionalism. One often reads that intentionalism is a reection of Enlightenment thinking and that, as such, it does not belong to a proper Christian approach to the Bible. One Pentecostal who has embraced this view is Richard D. Israel:
17. Peter E. Hodgson writes, It is useful to recall that the history of the interpretations of quantum mechanics could well have been very different [T]he Copenhagen interpretation was generally accepted and is now found in most textbooks and in the popular literatureand as a result it has been uncritically accepted by most physicists. It has however been strongly criticized by philosophers of science, and many books have been devoted to alternative deterministic interpretations ([viz. by Bohm, de Broglie, Belinfante, Bell, Holland]). One of these could well have been accepted long ago, and then no one would have claimed that quantum mechanics provides evidence for radical indeterminacy of the world (P.E. Hodgson, Gods Action in the World: The Relevance of Quantum Mechanics, Zygon 35.3 [2000], pp. 505-16 [506]). Howard argues that the image of a unitary Copenhagen interpretation is a postwar myth[which] took hold as other authors put it to use in the furtherance of their own agendas (Who Invented the Copenhagen Interpretation? p. 675). 18. For an excoriating review of some postmodernist misappropriations of science, see Alan Sokol and Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science (Picador: St. Martins, 1998).
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following a line from Paul Ricoeur, he credits Schleiermacher with developing a psychological hermeneutic that makes [t]he question of understanding texts in Romantic hermeneuticsthe question of understanding an individual author.19 The problem with this is that it mistakes renement and reection for novelty and development.20 Following Ricoeurs and Hans Freis crass mirror-readings of the Enlightenment, many postmodernists routinely tie the intentionalist hermeneutic to the Enlightenment.21 Yet even the thinnest sketch of pre-Enlightenment hermeneutics nds no shortage of interpreters (at virtually every point leading back to the earliest Church) who suppose their task to be that of reconstructing the biblical authors intention.22 The claim that biblical hermeneutics once had little to do with what the author intended cannot be substantiated by a direct reading of the sources.
19. Richard D. Israel, Daniel E. Albrecht, and Randal G. McNally, Pentecostals and Hermeneutics: Texts, Rituals and Community, Pneuma 15.2 (1993), pp. 137-61 (139) (Israels section). 20. It also dates the renement and reection about 150 years too late: Schleiermachers psychologism was anticipated in detail, already in 1670, by Baruch Spinozas references to the authors psychological background (see B. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [trans. Samuel Shirley; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1989], pp. 142-43). It is unclear why this well-known predecessor is so often ignored in accounts of Schleiermachers supposed innovation. 21. For example, see Stephen Prickett, Words and the Word: Language, Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 22 (claiming that intentionalist hermeneutics began in the early-nineteenth century with Friedrich Ast and F.A. Wolf); Nancey Murphy, Textual Relativism, Philosophy of Language, and the Baptist Vision, in Stanley Hauerwas, Nancey Murphy, and Mark Nation (eds.), Theology without Foundations: Religious Practice and the Future of Theological Truth (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), pp. 245-70 (p. 256); A.K.M. Adam, Author, in idem (ed.), Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000), pp. 8-13 (9); Steve Moyise, Does the Author of Revelation Misappropriate the Scriptures? AUSS 40.1 (2002), pp. 3-21 (21). 22. For example, one could scarcely nd a book that has impacted the Churchs hermeneutic of Scripture more than Augustines De Doctrina Christiana, where we are told in no uncertain terms of the intentionalist basis of biblical hermeneutics (2.5.6; 2.13.19; 3.27.38). (Prickett compounds his error of tracing intentionalism to the Enlightenment by contrasting intentionalism with Augustines hermeneutic [Words and the Word, pp. 22-23].) The fact of the matter is that the idealization of the authors intention was never less pronounced within hermeneutical guides than it is today. For a discussion of intentionalist hermeneutics in Aristotle, Augustine, John Chrysostom, et al., see John C. Poirier, Authorial Intention as Old as the Hills, Stone-Campbell Journal 7.1 (2004), pp. 59-72.
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 13 A second argument for the authors demise cites a supposed implication of the canonical shape of the Bible. This is the so-called canonical approach, a postliberal hermeneutic associated with Brevard Childs and argued within Pentecostal circles by Robert Wall and the late Gerald Sheppard.23 The rhetoric of this movement matches other branches of postliberalism, which means that one encounters in it a lot of mistaken references to old conceits as new developments, and to new developments as old conceits.24 According to Sheppard, for example, the idea that the authors or redactors original intent is normative is a common modern view (implying that it was not equally normative for premodern readers),25 a view that we have already shown to be fallacious. Sheppard achieves a locally dazzling effect by combining the charge of modernism with the common strategy of presenting postliberalism as the only logical alternative to the extremes of fundamentalism and liberalism (as if postliberal theology were identical or consubstantial with classical theology):26
Fundamentalists argued that [a] referential reading of the text conrmed the historicity of the scriptural presentation of the authors intents; Liberals found that the same referential reading usually disclosed sharp conicts between biblical authors, if not contradictions between their presentations and what actually happened in history (using a peculiarly modern construct they shared with conservatives). Liberals and Fundamentalists,
23. See Robert W. Wall, A Response to Thomas/Alexander, And the Signs are Following (Mark 16.9-20), JPT 11.2 (2003), pp. 171-83; Gerald T. Sheppard, Biblical Interpretation after Gadamer, Pneuma 16.1 (1994), pp. 121-41. 24. Postliberalism represents a major chapter in the application of postmodernist conceits, as it is largely a sustained attempt to use postmodernist ideas to promote the twentieth-century turn to theologies of revelation. David Tracy refers to George Lindbecks The Nature of Doctrine as a methodologically sophisticated version of Barthian confessionalism: The hands may be the hands of Wittgenstein and Geertz but the voice is the voice of Karl Barth (D. Tracy, Lindbecks New Program for Theology: A Reection, The Thomist 49.3 [1985], pp. 460-72 [465]). Ralph Del Colle similarly writes, Postliberal theology highlights the Wittgensteinian turn, with a bit of Karl Barth and Paul Ricouer [sic] thrown in (R. Del Colle, Postmodernism and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Experience, JPT 17 [2000], pp. 97-116 [101]). 25. Sheppard, Biblical Interpretation after Gadamer, p. 125. 26. For example, Del Colle recommends narrative theology for Pentecostal theologians looking for alternatives to fundamentalism and evangelical theology (Del Colle, Postmodernism and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Experience, p. 101). Richard A. Muller exposes a version of this typological error in histories of theology that equat[e] Barths theology with confessionalism or traditional orthodoxy (R.A. Muller, Karl Barth and the Path of Theology into the Twentieth Century: Historical Observations, WTJ 51.1 [1989], pp. 25-50 [31]).
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because they both laid claim to the same historicism and theory of intentionality, represent, in my view, left and right wing modernists Along these same lines, many standard modern interpretations of the history of biblical interpretation have been seriously awed by perpetuating the same modern fallacy. The Cambridge History of the Bible, for example, errs in repeatedly evaluating earlier interpreters according to their ability to anticipate modern historical-critical insights into the biblical authors intent.27
If any of this were true, then the canonical approach might have a case. Referring to intentionalism as a modern fallacy would imply that historical criticisms emphasis on the author is an innovation of sorts, but supporters of the canonical approach have not backed this claim with any evidence. The main argument for the canonical approach consists of little more than unpacking a loaded denition of the concept canonical, in which the canonical shape of the Bible is taken as the primary semantic context for the individual biblical writings. The problem with that denition, of course, is that it has virtually nothing in common with what the authors or the original canonizers of the New Testament believed about the meaning of the Bible, and there is nothing about the drawing of writings into an authoritative canon that, by itself, can overthrow the referential and intentionalist hermeneutic that inhered in the New Testament writings when they functioned as direct letters and gospels. The canonical approach is really little more than a recently hatched corollary of biblical Christianitys slow metamorphosis into a book religion.28 It is incompatible with an avowedly primitivist movement like Pentecostalism.
27. Sheppard, Biblical Interpretation after Gadamer, p. 126. 28. As Adolf Harnack correctly noted, Christianitynever was and never came to be the religion of a book in the strict sense of the term (not until a much later period, that of rigid Calvinism, did the consequences of its formation as the religion of a book become really dangerous, and even then the rule of faith remained at the helm) (A. Harnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries [Theological Translation Library, 19; 2 vols.; New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1904-05], I, p. 353). See also Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 1; James Barr, The Scope and Authority of the Bible (Explorations in Theology, 7; London: SCM Press, 1980), pp. 116-17; idem, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), p. 19; E.P. Sanders, Taking It All for Gospel, Times Literary Supplement (13 Dec. 1985), p. 1431; Guy G. Stroumsa, Early Christianitya Religion of the Book?, in Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds.), Homer, the Bible, and Beyond: Literary and Religious Canons in the Ancient World (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, 2; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003), pp. 153-73. See also the more general discussion in Bernhard Lang, Buchreligion, in Hubert Cancik, Burkhard Gladigow, and Matthias Laubscher
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 15 A third anti-intentionalist subconceit observes that the author often does not gure within recent models for constructing textual meaning. One can nd this in the aforementioned argument by Israel: In [the Ricoeurian and Gadamerian] model of hermeneutics[t]he focus of the hermeneutical task is not to delve into the subjectivity of the author, but to explain the structural relations and sets of meanings contained in the language of a text and understand the claims which the text is making about the world.29 It is somewhat strange that an anti-intentionalist model should be so readily adopted as some sort of authoritative description of what goes on, as these models are usually stated only in terms of a thinly argued at (e.g. hermeneutics is about) or of a conceptual option offered as an alternative to some other model. (Israel holds to the rst of these: he insists that restricting the meaning of a text to what its author intended is shown as too narrow.)30 Certainly, the fact that one can (loosely speaking) read a text without considering the authors intention is not an argument that one should do so. The psychodynamics of the reading process really have no bearing on what semantic theory a given religious tradition might advise. To suppose otherwise is to commit the category mistake of trying to squeeze alethiological juice from an epistemological fruit (a very common error in postmodernist reasoning [see below]). If we identify ourselves in continuity with the New Testament community (as Pentecostals have always sought to do), then what matters when we read the New Testament is how its authors wanted their writings to be read. Terminological Double Switches and Arguments from Non-nal Objectivity These days reaching for a time beyond ones own historical consciousness, or even for an intentionality beyond ones own mind, is often regarded as a hopeless cause, or, for some, complete naivet in hermeneutical sense. Cargal claims that readers cannot know historical facts because their readings are historically-bound conceptions that supply meaningful facts to a text.31 In other words, because an interpreter can
(eds.), Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe (5 vols.; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 19882002), II, pp. 143-65. 29. Israel, Albrecht, and McNally, Pentecostals and Hermeneutics, p. 138 (Israels section). 30. Israel, Albrecht, and McNally, Pentecostals and Hermeneutics, p. 145 (Israels section [emphasis added]). 31. Cargal, Beyond the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy, p. 182.
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never be completely objective, historical methodologies are inappropriate or illegitimate for determining meaning. This is one of the main planks of postmodernist hermeneutics: since all knowledge is perspectival, the reader should not strive for objectivity. Postmodernists like to point out that (epistemological) objectivity is not possible because social-linguistic frameworks determine how we view the world. According to this line of thought, the ideals of truth, facts, and determinative meaning do not correspond to reality, but are reduced to linguistic semiotics that humans use within their interpretive communities. According to Hans-Georg Gadamer, all understanding is nite and timebound, and all understanding is conditioned by a history of effect or historically-effected consciousness, which is the effect of experiences that shape how and what we understand to be meaningful.32 Research inquiries are therefore determined by our history, or, as Stanley Fish would put it, they are a product of our interpretive communities.33 This idea that meaning is derivative of cultural-linguistically embedded communities differs fundamentally from the modernist perception that meaning is conveyed by signiers and propositions in the text.34 French L. Arrington uses a form of this argument: he questions the hard-line use of historical methods by Pentecostals, not only because he nds it affectionless, but also because it is unable to obtain certainties regarding the meaning of a text.35 He seems to think that if we cannot attain total objectivity, then there is something wrong with having that as our goal. The logic of this argument awards the ideal of hermeneutic (viz. epistemic) closure preemptory rights within hermeneutical debates: the best
32. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 2nd edn., 2003), p. 300. 33. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 14. 34. Gadamer is not as radical as the postmodernists. Nevertheless, he proposes a middle ground between what the reader, in her effectively-conscious horizon, understands of the other (the text) through a fusion of horizons. The other stands outside as something standing over against me [which] asserts its own rights and requires absolute recognition; and in that very process is understood (Truth and Method, p. xxxv). Whereas Rorty, Fish, Derrida, et al. give priority to the reader in determining meaning, Gadamer proposes that, through the use of dialogue and questioning, being will reveal itself to a reader. 35. French L. Arrington, The Use of the Bible by Pentecostals, Pneuma 16.1 (1994), pp. 101-108 (101-102). The pursuit of objective historical study is thus dismissed by pointing out the methods inability to apprehend the meaning of texts with 100% certainty. To Arringtons credit, he admits that the historical-critical approach provides a base from which to create a common context for understanding (p. 102).
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 17 hermeneutic (according to this reasoning) leads to hermeneutic closure, and if arbitrarily reconceptualizing meaning or language as an intersubjective commodity can bring that about, then so much the worse for what logical necessity or the authors intention might suggest. Since hermeneutic closure cannot be had on the terms of the objectivists pipedream, we must swap the objectivist paradigm for one that not only affords but guarantees the possibility of hermeneutic closure, viz. the open embrace of readerly interference and epistemological blindspots as constitutive elements of meaning.36 But on what logical grounds can the failure of total hermeneutic closure lead to a switching of paradigms? That absolute objectivity is unattainable is old news, but what does it imply? Those who claim that it spells the end for an objectivist hermeneutic fail to explain how it does so. How does the unattainability of total and nal objectivity censure the goal of objectivity? Closure failure is a natural part of existence in all areas of life, but scarcely ever does it lead to a rethinking of ontic relations. Mathematicians can never know the precise value of p, but they do not, in response to this obstacle, throw out the concept of p. Statistics theorists can never produce a purely random number, but they do not throw out the concept of statistical prediction on those grounds. The pursuit of these concepts in real world terms leads to a failure of closure that is immaterial for the legitimacy or usefulness of the concept. So why does the argument from closure failure win approval from postmodernists? To say that one should not seek an objective view simply because pure objectivity is impossible is like saying that one should not use motor oil because a 100% frictionless automobile engine is impossible.37 While postmodernists are right in claiming that total objectivity is impossible, they exaggerate both the philosophical implications of this claim and the degree to which historians overlook their epistemological limitations.38 Part of the confusion surrounding the implications of this
36. For a fuller discussion of this argument, see John C. Poirier, Some Detracting Considerations for Reader-Response Theory, CBQ 62.2 (2000), pp. 250-63. 37. We lifted this analogy from Poirier, Some Detracting Considerations for ReaderResponse Theory, p. 255. Clifford Geertz uses a similar analogy: I have never been impressed by the argument that as complete objectivity is impossible (as, of course, it is), one might as well let ones sentiments run loose. [T]hat is like saying that as a perfectly aseptic environment is impossible, one might as well conduct surgery in a sewer (C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures [New York: Basic Books, 1973], p. 30). 38. Richard J. Evans writes, the language of historical documents is never transparent, and historians have always been aware that they cannot simply gaze through it
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claim stems from a failure to differentiate knowledge from truth: postmodernists routinely confuse how knowledge is ascertained (epistemology) with the nature of truth (alethiology).39 Truth is an account of the way things are, irrespective of how poorly or how well one can know the way things are. The subjectivity of our senses and the distorting effect of our instruments do not impinge upon it. Knowledge, on the other hand, is not (directly) an account of how things are, but rather a necessarily subjective conviction that things are one way and not another. Knowledge is always in some way partial and imperfect, because it is always trying to catch up to the truth.40 Unfortunately, arguments about the nature of truth sometimes erase the line separating truth from knowledge, often in a way that makes truth look like a subjectivist moment.41 This is a fallacy that theology must avoid at all costs, but unfortunately it is one that characterizes a great many recent theological projectsperhaps too many to count.
to the historical reality behind. Historians know, historians have always known, that we can see the past only through a glass, darkly. It did not take the advent of postmodernism to point this out. But what postmodernists have done is to push such familiar arguments out to a set of binary opposites and polarized extremes (R.J. Evans, In Defense of History [New York: Norton, 1999], p. 90). See Martin Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity (London: SCM Press, 1979), pp. 52-58. 39. See Daniel D. Williams, Truth in the Theological Perspective, Journal of Religion 28.4 (1948), pp. 242-54; John C. Poirier, The Epistemology/Alethiology Double Switch in Antifoundationalist Hermeneutics, Stone-Campbell Journal 9.1 (2006), pp. 19-28. Harald Atmanspacher points out that the error of replying to an epistemic question with an ontic answer is frequently committed in many elds of research when addressing subjects where the distinction between ontological and epistemological arguments is important (H. Atmanspacher, Determinism is Ontic, Determinability is Epistemic, in idem and Robert Bishop [eds.], Between Chance and Choice: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Determinism [Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2002], pp. 49-74 [50]). 40. Of course, with respect to simple propositions (The window is open), there is nothing remarkable about our knowledge being perfectly aligned with the truth. 41. Scott A. Ellingtons argument that Truth-as-history does not adequately articulate a Pentecostal understanding of biblical truth (S.A. Ellington, History, Story, and Testimony: Locating Truth in a Pentecostal Hermeneutic, Pneuma 23.2 [2001], pp. 245-64) is facilitated by a related terminological double switch involving the term history, in which the vericational limitations of history are used as a warrant for denying the historical-referential nature of Scriptures understanding of truth, as if the absence of a vericational apparatus somehow problematizes the concept or success of historical reference.
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 19
The Nature of New Testament Theology Jesus resurrection and exaltation is the most featured object of Christian devotion within the New Testament, and, for those familiar with Pauls argument in 1 Corinthians 15, it scarcely needs to be said that the soteriological scheme of the apostolic kerygma turns on the spacetime (rather than storytime) actuality of Jesus life, death, and resurrection.42 Faith in Jesus post-Easter presence also presupposed a belief in Jesus historic ministry. Devotion to the resurrected Jesus, whose kingly presence the early Church claimed to be real, was not divorced from his life, teaching, and ministry, which were witnessed by the apostles and preserved by them for the purpose of remembrance. The New Testament is an extension of the apostolic task of providing a trustworthy testimony.43 Unfortunately, the Protestant emphasis on the inspiration of the Scriptures has taken priority over the historical witness of the apostles. This is especially the case within the Evangelical segment of the Church with which many Pentecostals align themselves.44 When we make inspiration the ground on which the New Testaments authority is based and the principle whereby Scripture is organized, we miss the importance of the apostolic witness and misconstrue the nature of the New Testament. Was it not the apostles who were entrusted with the kerygma of Jesus death and resurrection, and empowered by Jesus to witness to the Christ event? The main reason for entrustment was so others may learn and give assent to
42. David M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 in Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1973); Donald Juel, Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988); and Larry Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), pp. 11-15. 43. See John C. Poirier, The Canonical Approach and the Idea of Scripture, ExpT 116.10 (2005), pp. 366-70. 44. As Walter J. Hollenweger writes, The rst Pentecostals did not have a doctrine of inspiration. Jonathan Paul, the leader and founder of German Pentecostalism, called the doctrine of inerrancy an unchristian doctrine. They did not have a doctrine of biblical inspiration but they believed in the reliability of Scripture (W.J. Hollenweger, The Contribution of Critical Exegesis to Pentecostal Hermeneutics, Spirit and Church 2.1 [2000], pp. 7-18 [10]). Paul Lewis rightly refers to an Evangelical (i.e. National Association of Evangelicals) instigated revision of the doctrine of Scripture among Pentecostals (Towards a Pentecostal Epistemology, p. 119). This calls into question Ellingtons claim that Commitment to the Bible as the inspired Word of God is axiomatic in Pentecostal hermeneutics (History, Story, and Testimony, p. 245 [emphasis added]).
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the accounts of Jesus death and resurrection.45 When any organizing principle (e.g. inspiration, inerrancy, canonical reading) sidesteps the function of the apostolic witness, our understanding of the New Testaments role in theology is hampered by a bibliolatry of sorts, focusing on the immediacy of the text rather than its object. The early Churchs hermeneutic resided in the authority of the New Testament as referential and intentionalist. It follows from this that historical methodologies are better suited to the nature and character of the New Testaments witness. Since the early Church rooted its spirituality and devotion in the referential-historical language of the apostolic testimony, should we not do the same? 46 And if the New Testaments authority is but a refraction of the apostles authority (in that it retains a trustworthy account of our Lords redemptive act), should that not dictate how we read the New Testament? In light of these considerations, and in light of the restorationist ethos of their historic movement, Pentecostals are best served by a primitivist hermeneutic that looks back to the earliest apostolic witness as its criterion for theology, practice, and affections.47 Conclusion Wider scholarship within the historical and biblical guilds has gone to great lengths to undermine traditional methodologies, and Pentecostals have not been slow in following. As a result, many Pentecostal scholars have shied away from the restorationist identity of their movement, siding instead with a more ahistorical hermeneutic of Scripture. The main reason that Pentecostals should not give in to the postmodernist temptation,
45. Hengel says that the character of the New Testament texts is that of witness. He notes, The earliest Christian narrators sought to describe Gods acts in a particular realm of the past in such a way that they became the testimony of faith for the present (Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity, p. 57). 46. To show just how far present-day (esp. postliberal) theology has wandered from the founding purpose of the New Testament, cf. Northrop Fryes claim: if anything historically true is in the Bible, it is there not because it is historically true but for different reasons (N. Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature [London: Routledge, 1982], p. 40). Although Fryes claim is typical for much Anglo-American theology today, it goes without saying (we hope) that the apostles would have found it monstrous. 47. See Steven J. Lands discussion of Pentecostal restorationists as they sought to recover the eschatological vision of the early Church (S.J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom [JPTSup, 1; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1993], p. 60).
POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 21 however, comes not from the dictates of Pentecostal tradition, but rather from the New Testament kerygma. Pentecostals need to get back to the understanding of truth that underpins New Testament theology, an understanding that turns on the spacetime actuality of the events narrated in the apostolic kerygma. If the Enlightenment were an age of hermeneutical innovations and of a settling upon philosophies of truth alien to the Bible, then there might be justication for the Enlightenment-bashing that has become so widespread in North American seminaries. But the facts of the matter will not satisfy that if quite as summarily as scholars and theologians have assumed. The hermeneutical and alethiological gestures of the Enlightenment stand in a much more positive relationship to the presuppositions and investments of the Bible than postmodernists would have us believe. Pentecostals should reject the uncritical Enlightenment-bashing of todays biblical-critical and theological guilds in favor of a more sensitive and informed treatment of how the Bibles commitments intersect with those of todays world.

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http://jpt.sagepub.com Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics: Acritique of Three Conceits

PENTECOSTAL AND POSTMODERNIST HERMENEUTICS: A CRITIQUE OF THREE CONCEITS John C. Poirier*

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

POIRIER/LEWIS Pentecostal and Postmodernist Hermeneutics 19

Journal of Pentecostal Theology 15.1 (2006)

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