mation more generally helps us to read the Scriptures Christianly. It is
worth refl ecting, therefore, on the difference it makes to our reading of
Scripture that we regularly recite the Apostles’ Creed, that we meet each
other repeatedly at the Lord’s Table, that we speak often with people who
do not share our faith, and that we who share a common faith in Christ
eat together regularly. (And what difference does it make to our reading of
Scripture when we do not engage in such practices as these?)
My second concern can be formulated as a question: What practices
does a Pentecostal hermeneutics of Scripture identify as formative of
Pentecostal hermeneuts? Perhaps more to the point, what practices might
a Pentecostal hermeneutics identify that form congregations open to and
adept in discernment of the Spirit’s work in and through Scripture, the
church, and the world?
My third concern centers on the need for Pentecostal hermeneutics
to attend more pointedly to the telos of biblical interpretation. In this
respect, one of the most instructive comments Wesley made about the
Bible appears in the opening to his “Sermons on Several Occasions”:
I want to know one thing, the way to heaven—how to land safe on that
happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very
end he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. O give me that
book! At any price give me the Book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge
enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri [a person of one book]. Here
then I am, far from the busy ways of others. I sit down alone: only God is
here. In his presence I open, I read his Book—for this end, to fi nd the way
to heaven.
Wesley thus urges in no uncertain terms that the aim of Scripture is to
lead us to and in “the way to heaven.” We might take exception to the
way Wesley has thus described biblical interpretation as something he does
“alone,” or wonder how someone who wrote so many books might aim
to be “a person of one book.” One does not read far in Wesley’s oeu-
vre, however, before learning that, when Wesley interpreted the Bible,
he was surrounded by other interpreters, contemporary and past, and
that he drew on a wide range of learning—commentaries and devotional
works, as well as philosophers, early church writers, and the latest science
of his day—even as he aimed to prioritize Scripture. These potential criti-
cisms aside, we should not miss Wesley’s central point: for Wesley, reading
Scripture is tied to the journey of salvation. The Bible teaches “the way
PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS: A WESLEYAN PERSPECTIVE 169
