of restoration, and hear its challenge to serve God’s good news as human
beings fully alive. Theological interpreters want to hear in the words of
Scripture the word of God speaking in the present tense.
Although others have explored the question of how the Holy Spirit
is speaking to the church in and through its Scriptures, 6 the Pentecostal
tradition stands out for the way it has laid its theological cards plainly on
the table in this respect. Arguably, this is a matter of timing, since scholars
nurtured in the Pentecostal tradition have come to the table of biblical
studies rather late in the modern era, just as the rules of the game govern-
ing critical scholarship were being loosened so as to allow for (or even
foster) critical refl ection on the Enlightenment project. Casting aside even
the pretense of coming to Scripture neutrally, Pentecostal scholars have
sought to identify both how they are infl uenced and how they ought to be
infl uenced by their theological commitments and communal experiences
in their reading of Scripture. 7
Two examples may suffi ce. The fi rst is a New Testament scholar, John
Christopher Thomas, who has worked to foreground the role of the Holy
Spirit in scriptural engagement. “For Pentecostals,” he writes, “it is indeed
one of the oddities of modern theological scholarship that across the theo-
logical spectrum approaches to Scripture have little or no appreciation
for the work of the Holy Spirit in interpretation.” By contrast, he urges,
“such a hermeneutical component is of no little interest to Pentecostals.” 8
Thomas develops his understanding of the role of the Spirit in biblical
interpretation by means of a close reading of Acts 15. He notes how, once
everyone is gathered in Jerusalem in Acts 15, the experience of the mis-
sionary church occupies center stage. Appeals to Scripture, at least explicit
ones, come only after hearing testimonies to God’s activity in accepting
Gentiles apart from circumcision. When James quotes Amos 9 in support
of his decision, his doing so makes sense in light of Luke’s already well-
established interest in demonstrating from the Scriptures that God had
fulfi lled his promises to David in Jesus and, therefore, that those promises
concerned the nature of the church. From his work with Acts 15, then,
Thomas identifi es an interpretive agenda with three primary components:
Scripture, the interpretive community, and the Holy Spirit who prepares
the community to read its Scriptures. These are not discrete parts, but
operate in concert. The community is the place of the Spirit’s activity,
the place where testimony to the Spirit’s activity is given and received,
and the place for serious discussion and discernment regarding the Spirit’s
work and the meaning of Scripture. Moreover, Scripture is not static in
164 J.B. GREEN