and foreigners that appears to have initiated the prophetic utterance in
Isaiah 56 announcing their inclusion in the community of worshippers.
The challenge for Pentecostals is to discern the work of the Spirit (inside
and outside its community) that incorporates broader categories in defi n-
ing their “experience” of the Spirit, including engagement with science,
philosophy and culture. Just as Paul and Barnabas engaged the broader
philosophies of their context in Acts 14, Pentecostals have not incorpo-
rated serious engagement with external factors that infl uence their expe-
rience in our post-modern context. It is crucial that the defi nition and
role of experience within hermeneutics and theological decision-making
be properly engaged. As the examples from Isaiah 56:1–8 and the Council
of Jerusalem demonstrate, the role of experience and the new work of the
Spirit was an essential component of deliberating a theological or ethi-
cal decision. These models serve to remind the Pentecostal community
that in deliberating such matters the role of Scripture is crucial within the
decision-making process but is not the only component.
NOTES
- John Christopher Thomas, “Women, Pentecostals and the Bible: An
Experiment in Pentecostal Hermeneutics,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology
5 (1994): 41–56. - Ibid., 50.
- Ibid., 46.
- Other texts from the Old Testament (the only Scripture available to the
early Christian community) that may have been considered by the Council
of Jerusalem reading the inclusion of gentiles include Isaiah 56:1–8.
Thomas also suggests that texts such as Exodus 19:5 and Deuteronomy
7:6; 14:2; 26:18–19 may also have been other obvious options (Thomas,
“Women, Pentecostals and the Bible,” 46). - Béchard notes that outside of the two defense speeches (to Roman gover-
nors), this account in Lystra is one of only two descriptions of Paul speak-
ing to a strictly non-Jewish audience (Dean P. Béchard, “Paul Among the
Rustics: The Lystran Episode [Acts 14:8–20] and Lucan Apologetic,” The
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 63 [2001]: 86). - Ibid., 96.
- John Christopher Thomas, “What the Spirit Is Saying to the Church: The
Perspective of a Pentecostal Working in New Testament Studies,” in Spirit
&Scripture: Examining a Pneumatic Hermeneutic, ed. Kevin L. Spawn and
Archie T. Wright (London: Continuum, 2012), 117.
156 J. GREY