Arguably, one of the most infl uential writings on Pentecostal
Hermeneutics is the 1994 article entitled “Women, Pentecostals and the
Bible: An Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics” by John Christopher
Thomas. 1 In this article, Thomas presents a paradigm for Pentecostal
hermeneutics based on the deliberations of the Jerusalem Council in Acts
15:1–29. He highlights not only the process by which the Council of
Jerusalem determined whether gentiles could be included, but also the
components considered in the decision-making process. It should be
noted from the outset that the Council of Jerusalem were not develop-
ing a hermeneutical method per se, but deliberating a theological deci-
sion. Yet in this process of deliberation, the Acts community utilized and
interpreted Scripture. It is this element of the deliberations that is of most
interest in the current context: how did the New Testament community
select and read Scripture?
As outlined by Thomas, the components in the process of deliberation
included the three elements of Spirit (noting the actions of God in the giv-
ing of the Spirit to both Jew and gentile), experience (based on the report
of Paul and Barnabas of the conversion of the gentiles), and text (one
that supports or is in agreement with the work of the Spirit and experi-
ence of the group). 2 This triad provided the essential components for the
construction of a hermeneutic utilized by the early Church as described in
Acts. The order of these components is signifi cant as it refl ects the order
in which the Council of Jerusalem appealed to each component in the
text: fi rst, the activity of the Spirit; second, the report of the experience;
and then, fi nally, the appeal to Scripture. As Thomas notes, the particular
Scripture (Amos 9:11–12) to which the Council of Jerusalem appealed
seems to have been selected because it agreed with or somehow refl ected
their experience. 3 Of all the texts in all of the Old Testament, they chose
Amos 9:11–12. It was not an obvious choice. There were a plethora of
texts to which the Council could have appealed: 4 some that would support
the inclusion of the gentiles and some that would exclude them (this is not
to mention the tradition of exclusion of gentiles in the ministry of Jesus
expressed in Mark 7). Yet, despite this, a text was selected by the Council
of Jerusalem that supported the inclusion of gentiles, albeit obscurely. This
clearly identifi es the Spirit as the dominant component in their theological
process; the testimony of the activity of the Spirit directed the selection
of the text to support their experience. Essentially, in this narrative, tradi-
tion and text were “trumped” by the new work of the Spirit. That is, the
144 J. GREY