bridges for connecting contemporary Pentecostal testimony in its many
modes with Asian (and Asian American, by extension) storied approaches
to the hermeneutical and theological task. 27 Asian (and Asian American)
story theology in this case connects to the narratives embedded in the Asian
cultural, religious, and philosophical imagination and brings them to bear
on the scriptural traditions as mediated by the contemporary experience
of the Holy Spirit. 28 The point here is not to elide the differences between
such disparate “spaces” of ecclesial and cultural inhabitation but to seek
common categorical ground, with trans-cultural potency, from which to
engage the “this-is- that” instincts of post-Pentecost-al interpretation.
My claim here is that a post-Pentecost-al hermeneutical paradigm
ought to embrace three levels of interpretive guidelines: that following the
apostolic reception of scripture, that related to the methods of receiving
scripture as the living word of God manifests across the Christian tradi-
tion, and that emergent from out of multiple inter-cultural spaces and that
draws upon the resources in such domains for the task of glocal biblical
reading and living. Yet to stay only at this realm of rules—“scientifi cally”
generated, it might be claimed, in parts of this conversation—is to remain
at a conjectural and speculative level. But what if intellectual decisions
are rooted more deeply in the affective dimension than we might care to
admit?
The Sighs of Interpretation: A Modern Pentecostal Assist
I therefore want to expand on our post-Pentecost-al hermeneutical model
by shifting from the intellective to affective sphere. 29 The Day of Pentecost
narrative suggests that comprehension of the Spirit’s presence and activity
is not just an intellectual task but is a perceptual one as well, one mediated
through the full range of human senses. To be sure, there is the speaking
in “other languages” (Acts 2:4) and the hearing, “each of us, in our own
native language” (2:8). But even before this level of cognition, there is
“a sound like the rush of a violent wind ... [and] ... Divided tongues,
as of fi re, [that] appeared among them” (2:2a, 3a). These highlight the
manifestation of divine pneuma as fi rst heard and seen, long before such
is cerebrally explicated, and even more so, felt : “a tongue rested on each of
them ” (2:3b, emphasis added). The point is that the work of the Spirit is
embodied, and the divine is not only read textually, but also encountered
affectively and experienced perceptually.
186 A. YONG