If the Petrine explanation of this event via the Joel text situated this
divine arrival “in the last days” (Acts 2:17a), then this provides a bridge
to consider how the many tongues of the Spirit in Luke’s Acts parallel
with or connect to the eschatological “sighs” and “groans” of the Spirit in
Paul’s Romans. In the latter, Paul writes about how believers “who have
the fi rst fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption,
the redemption of our bodies,” and also about how “the Spirit helps us in
our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very
Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Rom. 8:23, 26). 30 Here
we are considering the role of affectivity at least at two levels: that of what
the texts point to in human experience, and that of how human perception
and feeling can provide perspective on the text.
The point is that the post-Pentecost-al “this-is-that” approach not
only invites but even insists that understanding the Bible is facilitated by
engagement with its pathos: the emotions, feelings, sentiments, and pas-
sions embedded in the scriptural message. 31 If homo sapiens are not only
thinking but feeling animals, and even more so, are thinking creatures pre-
cisely because they are sensing and perceiving—loving, desiring, and hop-
ing—creatures, then there is no right thinking (orthodoxy) about biblical
or theological interpretation without also right feeling (orthopathos). 32
And from this perspective, global Pentecostal sensibilities are much more
conducive, it seems, to developing this orthopathic dimension in trans-
cultural ways particularly since majority world cultures are much more oral
and embodied, and thereby also more affectively attuned in their overall
orientation, than literary cultures. 33
So if a post-Pentecost-al hermeneutics is also embodied, then such
interpretive sensibilities are nurtured not only in the classroom but also
in the sanctuary, not only through study but also through singing and
worship, not only cognitively but also affectively. Thus, Pentecostal liturgy
and worship become incubators that precipitate life in the Spirit, and this
in turn nurtures hermeneutical instincts and dispositions. 34 How we read
scripture and discern what the Spirit might have said formerly through
these sacred texts is informed by how we have been touched by the Spirit
in the present, so that “this-helps-interpret-that.” This is not only about
discerning the nature of the signs and groans explicit in the Bible but
also about feeling the passions embedded in the scriptural narrative from
beginning to end.
From an East Asian cultural perspective that oftentimes minimizes
the expression of emotion, we might wonder how affectivity might be
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