Although none of our ecclesial bodies are generic churches, but arise and
participate within particular traditions, we nonetheless confess that the
church is one and catholic. If we accept this statement, then we might also
explore its corollary, namely, that some readings of Scripture championed
as Spirit-guided readings have been and ought to be excluded on the basis
of their lack of conformity to the church’s historic faith. 14
My fi rst concern, then, has to do with the faithful reading of Scripture
as this faithfulness might be measured in relation to the ecumenical
creeds of the church. My second centers on the importance of forma-
tion. Theological interpretation in general, and Pentecostal hermeneutics
of Scripture in particular, recognizes the importance of what we bring
to our active engagement with Scripture. Hearers and readers of God’s
word are not stick fi gures but fully embodied participants in the biblical
drama that continues in the present and into the eschaton. Accordingly,
we recognize that the hermeneutical process concerns not only the words
written on the page but also our formation as readers of Scripture. And
this highlights the signifi cance of reading Scripture as a “practice,” since
“practice” assumes circularity: Ever formed by our reading of Scripture,
we become ever-better readers of Scripture. This is important, since there
is no necessary, straight line from reading the biblical materials to reading
them Christianly.
Let me given an example. When Jesus criticizes two disciples on the
Emmaus Road for their failure to believe what the prophets had spoken,
the problem was not their inability to hear the prophets or take them seri-
ously. Jesus asked, “Wasn’t it necessary for the Christ to suffer these things
and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:27, CEB). We might answer
Jesus’s question in the affi rmative, but still puzzle over which prophets
actually document this necessity. After all, the most obvious choice, Isaiah
53, never actually mentions the Messiah, and Jesus’s contemporaries are
not known for thinking of Isaiah’s Servant as a suffering Messiah. The
problem faced by Jesus’ disciples was their lack of the cognitive categories
required for making sense of the Scriptures in this way. They needed more
than a commonsense reading of a biblical text. That Isaiah spoke of Jesus
was something they had to learn. Accordingly, Luke records: “Then he
interpreted for them the things written about himself in all the scrip-
tures...” (Luke 24:27, CEB).
This example suggests the integrated nature of Christian practices,
and especially how those practices shape us as readers of Scripture. Just
as theological formation shapes our reading of Scripture, so Christian for-
168 J.B. GREEN