The conflict as to the place of
the miraculous in the contemporary church stems from the problem of
deciphering programmatic approaches in amongst the singular events
found in the Lucan narrative in lull of didactic statements relating
to their continuation. The Pentecostal may be tempted to base their
entire ministry approach on the first century church, but before
proceeding they must seriously consider the repeatability of certain
events. John Stott questions the possibility of modern relevance for
holding church elections by drawing lots (Act 1:23-26), selling all
our goods and treating our resources as common property (2:44-45) and
conversions being accompanied by bright lights and an audible voice
(Acts 9:3). Stott believes that the narrative is largely impotent
unless accompanied by the didactic (Stott 1990, 8), hence the
narrative needs the didactic before being appropriate for doctrine.
Doctrine cannot be rooted in the narrative alone, for the narrative
is too slippery, too elastic, too imprecise (Menzies 2000, 39). It
may seem obvious that not all elements of the narratives are to be
repeated but upon which principle do we reject some and endorse
others? If a Pentecostal is to reject certain practices endorsed by
the narrative, but reject others, it is not unreasonable to ask for
an objective standard to decipher which earns imitation and which is
relegated to a singular instance. Stott's standard provides a
concrete foundation for the subjective narrative to stand upon. But
in doing so, Stott demotes the narrative's genre to undependable. If
the narrative needs the didactic but the didactic does not need
narrative then the narrative by itself is not able to teach us
anything. This means that the narrative genre is only capable of
complimenting the didactic, but not capable of independent
instruction. A position such as this is entirely untenable for any
theologian, as the narrative genre comprises 40% of the Old Testament
and 60% of the New (Stein 1994, 151). Fee notes that the principle
of the Pentecostal is to fashion their church entirely after the book
of Acts. Yet they routinely reject practices such as church enforced
communism and snake handling, thus violating their own hermeneutical
principle. One camp cannot dismiss massive portions of scriptures as
secondary only to the didactic, whereas the other cannot claim to
abide by all, whilst rejecting those practices sound sense deems as
absurd.
Stott succeeds in the creation
of an objective hermeneutical principle, but the principle fails to
treat the narrative as a genre in its own right. In doing so, Stott,
and theologians like himself reject the explicitly didactic principle
of finding teaching in all genres (2 Tim 3:16). Yet this theology
has become increasingly untenable. Thus in Klein, Bloomberg, and
Hubbard's 1993 work on hermeneutics they “rejected” the maxim of
those who believe narratives without commandments are not normative
(Klein 1993, 349 – 350). Yet in their 2004 edition of the same
work they note that those same theologians “correctly” suffix
their previous dictum that narratives without didactics may be
normative if it can be proven the author intended it to be read as
such (Klein 2004, 424). This transitional suffix has shown that even
those who birthed this hermeneutic of didactic primacy have seen the
error of their approach, but they are silent on how to decipher
whether or not the author intended the narrative to be normative.
Over these years a paradigm shift has occurred that has given new
life to the New Testament narratives (Menzies 2000, 42). Yet while
the outright rejection of the commandless narrative seems
unjustified, those doing so are searching for an objective standard
by which to interpret the living narrative. Pentecostals, such as
Menzies and Stronstad, provide critics of the issues associated with
demoting the narrative and provide evidence of Luke's aptness as a
theologian. But they do not provide principles that allow us to
extract the normative from the unique. This approach creates a neat
and simple hermeneutic philosophy, but rejects the obvious
theological intent of the narrative author. Thus, when interpreting
the Lucan narrative in relation to the miraculous, we cannot merely
reject Luke's theological teaching because they are without didactic,
but must discover which principles allow us to extract the doctrines
Luke intended to be normative to the Christian experience.
God Love You -- Rev. Sheen
Part 3 - Typology
Bibliography
Stott, John R. W., The Spirit, The Church, and the World. The Message of Acts, Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 1990.
Menzies, William W., Robert P. Menzies, Spirit and Power Foundations of Pentecostal Experience, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, MI, 2000.
Stein, Robert H., Playing By the Rules, A Basic Guide to Interpreting the Bible, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1994.
Klein, William W., Craig L. Blomberg, Robert L. Hubbard, Jr., Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville, TN, 1993.
Klein, William W., Craig L. Blomberg, Robert L. Hubbard, Jr., Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville, TN, 2004.
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