a post- Pentecost- al hermeneutics follows the apostolic example, less in
terms of attempting to specify how they received their authoritative writ-
ings than that they sought to understand present experience in light of the
established tradition. In this specifi c case, theirs was the experience of the
divine spirit, and therefore they returned to the promise of such spirit in
the prophetic literature. 24
At a second level, a post-Pentecost-al hermeneutical paradigm interprets
scripture following the established “rules” of post-apostolic traditions, as
received generally within the broad consensus of the church ecumenical.
Here, of course, “post-Pentecost” simply is extended to include the full
scope of the Christian tradition after the apostolic generations. I include
within this scheme, surely, the modern hermeneutical traditions as devel-
oped academically and in this respect “scientifi cally,” whether those advo-
cating historical and grammatical criticism or other literary, canonical, and
related approaches developed since the early modern period. 25 Yet besides
these established hermeneutical “sciences,” we ought not to forget patris-
tic and medieval traditions foregrounding multiple levels of discerning the
divine word via spiritual, moral, allegorical, and related interpretive meth-
ods. In many respects, these earlier paradigms are more amenable to the
pneumatic dimension of scriptural reception that not only seeks to under-
stand texts in their original context but also how they might be applied
in any contemporary horizon. If some proponents of modern historical
critical methods are wary about how such so-called subjective perspectives
might undermine the quest for the putatively objective meaning of texts in
their original contexts, other more late modern and post-modern herme-
neuticians suggest that reader-response hermeneutics is unavoidable and
thus simply need to be acknowledged and disciplined. 26 At this second
level, however, what is important is to highlight how there are a vari-
ety of hermeneutical approaches developed throughout Christian history
that enable what might be understood as “living into the spirit of biblical
texts” in subsequent ages and contexts.
It is perhaps from this reader-response perspective that we ought to
specify a third level of guidelines for a post-Pentecost-al hermeneutic that
relate especially to the Asian American site where I am located. As already
indicated, if the original Pentecost account valued the particularity of each
language, then the specifi city of the Asian American witness, no matter
how generalized its designation, ought not to be minimized. While Asian
American hermeneutics is open to multiple trajectories of exploration,
more generally speaking for the moment, I suggest simply that there are
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