Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity

(Barry) #1
memory, positing fours ways of interpreting early Pentecostal interracial

exchanges in order to spotlight the hermeneutical issues. The key herme-

neutical text is The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre by

Tzvetan Todorov, Todorov’s hermeneutic of the uncanny, fantastic, and

marvelous. A fourth hermeneutic is offered in Bonnie Honig’s Emergency

Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy , where she offers a hermeneutic of the

miraculous. Todorov and Honig will be read with broad strokes in order

to make distinctions between their respective hermeneutical maneuvers.

These four hermeneutics will be employed to interpret early interracial

Pentecostalism with the uncanny proposing lunacy, the fantastic liminality,

the marvelous subversion, and the miraculous transcendence. The inter-

pretation suggested by each of these four hermeneutics will also propose

particular theological images and historical tropes. 1

Todorov and Honig aid us in refocusing our theologizing on and his-

toricizing of early Pentecostalism in regards to two persistent questions

which nag at Pentecostal scholarship. How did Pentecostalism go from

Fig. 13.1 D.J. Young, C.H. Mason, R.R. Booker, E.M. Page, W.B. Holt,
William Roberts, J.E. Bowe, S.T. Samuel, R.H.I. Clark, E.R. Driver, Charles
Pleas, J.H. Boon, R.E. Hart. “Let the Elders that rule well be counted worthy of
double honour, especially they who labour in the Word and Doctrine.” 1 Timothy
5:17


212 D.D DANIELS III

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