© The Author(s) 2016 67
K.J. Archer, L.W. Oliverio, Jr. (eds.), Constructive
Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58561-5_5
CHAPTER 5
There Is Nothing Outside the Intention:
Addressing “Meaning” in Pentecostal
Hermeneutics
John C. Poirier
J. C. Poirier ( )
Kingswell Theological Seminary , Middletown , OH , USA
There is little agreement among hermeneutic theorists about what “mean-
ing” is. Is it the author’s intention? Is it the message encoded within the
text? Is it something produced during the reading event? Or is it a com-
bination of these? The debate over what “meaning” is has gone on for so
long, with little headway one way or another, that some have pronounced
the problem intractable. 1
Some ground (but only a little) is gained by noting that the debate is
really about ownership of the word “meaning.” This suggests that the argu-
ments for privileging one understanding of “meaning” over another are
misconceived if they think they can make their case on analytical grounds:
there is nothing in the nature of the problem as such to suggest we are
dealing with anything more than competing uses of the word “meaning.”
The author’s intention has traditionally been called “meaning,” but the
word is also regularly used with reference to something purportedly latent
within texts (sometimes called “textual meaning”), and also with refer-
ence to readerly effects. To say that only one of these should really be
