An African Pentecostal Hermeneutics


Book Description

The face of African Christianity is becoming Pentecostal. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement, but its collective interest in baptism in the Spirit and the result of Pentecost in daily living binds it together. Pentecostals read the Bible with the expectation that the Spirit who inspired the authors will again inspire them to hear it as God's word. They emphasize the experiential, at times at the cost of proper doctrine and practice. This book sketches an African hermeneutic that provides guidance to a diverse movement with many faces, and serves as corrective for doctrine and practice in the face of some excesses and abuses (especially in some parts of the neo-Pentecostal movement). African Pentecostalism's contribution to the hermeneutical debate is described before three points are discussed that define it: the centrality of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible, the eschatological lens that Pentecostals use when they read the Bible, and the faith community as normative for the interpretation of the Bible.




Pentecostal Hermeneutics


Book Description

In Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Reader Lee Roy Martin brings together fourteen significant publications on biblical interpretation, along with a new introduction to Pentecostal hermeneutics and an extensive up-to-date bibliography on the topic. Organized chronologically, these essays trace the development of Pentecostal hermeneutics as an academic discipline. The concerns of modern historical criticism have often stood at odds with Pentecostalism’s use of Scripture. Therefore, over the last three decades, Pentecostal scholars have attempted to identify the unique characteristics and interpretive practices of their tradition and to offer constructive proposals for a Pentecostal hermeneutic that would be critically valid and, at the same time, be consistent with the Pentecostal ethos and conducive for the continued development of the global Pentecostal movement. Contributors include: Rickie D. Moore, John Christopher Thomas, Jackie David Johns, Cheryl Bridges Johns, John W. McKay, Robert O. Baker, Scott A. Ellington, Kenneth J. Archer, Robby Waddell, Andrew Davies, Clark H. Pinnock, and Lee Roy Martin.







An African Pentecostal Hermeneutics


Book Description

The face of African Christianity is becoming Pentecostal. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement, but its collective interest in baptism in the Spirit and the result of Pentecost in daily living binds it together. Pentecostals read the Bible with the expectation that the Spirit who inspired the authors will again inspire them to hear it as God’s word. They emphasize the experiential, at times at the cost of proper doctrine and practice. This book sketches an African hermeneutic that provides guidance to a diverse movement with many faces, and serves as corrective for doctrine and practice in the face of some excesses and abuses (especially in some parts of the neo-Pentecostal movement). African Pentecostalism’s contribution to the hermeneutical debate is described before three points are discussed that define it: the centrality of the Holy Spirit in reading the Bible, the eschatological lens that Pentecostals use when they read the Bible, and the faith community as normative for the interpretation of the Bible.




The Prosperity Gospel in Africa


Book Description

Africans’ prevailing interest in the prosperity gospel is not only connected to the influence of American prosperity teachers reaching a worldwide audience through their imaginative use of the media, but is also related to the African worldview and African traditional religion, and its lasting influence on contemporary Africans and the way they think about prosperity, as well as their interest in prosperity in post-colonial Africa. The research from a classical Pentecostal perspective about the impact of the prosperity message on Africa is necessary, timely, and relevant because of its influence in the African Pentecostal movement and its potential to harm the faith of believers, leading to the potential disillusionment of Christian believers who put their trust (and money) in formulas and recipes that seemingly only work for others, especially the prosperity leaders who lead by example with incredulous riches and wealth.




African Pentecostalism and Eschatological Expectations


Book Description

The Pentecostalisation of African Christianity has been called the “African Reformation” of the past thirty years. African Pentecostalism is a diverse movement characterised by its emphases on Spirit baptism, divine healing, charismatic worship and eschatological expectations. This work investigates its eschatological systems in terms of its unrealised expectation of the second coming of Christ, and suggestions are presented for the movement to keep its eschatology at the heart of its impetus. This is accomplished through a hermeneutical awareness of the distinctiveness of Pentecostalism as a restorationist movement. Written for pastors, church leaders and believers, this book discusses the literalistic way of reading the Bible in most of the classical Pentecostal components of African Pentecostalism, supporting their premillennialist and even dispensational eschatological views. It suggests a new Pentecostal hermeneutics developed by scholarship in the past forty years, in line with significant elements of the way in which early Pentecostals read the Bible. This new hermeneutical awareness implies new and exciting ways of thinking about eschatology that will enrich and enlighten African Pentecostalism in its hope for the second coming of Christ.




Christian hermeneutics in South Africa


Book Description

Hermeneutics remains a divisive and polarizing topic within scholarly and ecclesiastical communities in South Africa. These tensions are not limited to theoretical differences but often crystallize on a grassroots level when local churches and church assemblies have to make important decisions on controversial ethical topics such as ordaining women in church offices, assessing the ethics of gay marriages, and taking a stance on the land debate in South Africa. This book makes a unique contribution in two ways: firstly, it focuses on the uniquely South African hermeneutical landscape; secondly, it relates theories to practical ethical application. The unique scholarly contribution of this consists in it relating hermeneutics to ethics within the South African landscape. A diverse group of scholars have been invited to partake in the project and the views expressed are often quite diverse. This allows readers to develop an understanding and sensitivity of the various angles employed and the interests at stake in addressing difficult societal problems.




A Distinct Twenty-First Century Pentecostal Hermeneutic


Book Description

Why another book about biblical interpretation (hermeneutics)? First, this is not just another book about hermeneutics. It deals specifically with hermeneutics as practiced y Pentecostals; rather, more accurately, as hermeneutics should be practiced by Pentecostals. The book presents a distinct Pentecostal hermeneutic that moves away from exclusive use of historical-grammatical methodology. The hermeneutic presented here employs an eclectic methodology and a quadratic strategy. Scripture, Spirit, trained leader, and community, in the proposed hermeneutic, are shown to work together to produce an interpretation that engages both creative imagination and authorial intent. The text offers pastors, professors, and laity alike a method and approach that will allow them to interpret Scripture from a clearly Pentecostal perspective. An important addition to the book is an outline for an undergraduate course instructing students in this distinct Pentecostal hermeneutic.




Pentecostalism and charismatic worship from an african perspective


Book Description

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Theology - Systematic Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Religion philosophy and classics), course: Masters, language: English, abstract: Scholarship on Pentecostalism and charismatic forms of worship has described Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in African as part of “a rapidly growing form of African Christianity;” that as a movement, “it is fast becoming one of the most significant expressions of Christianity on the continent...”( Anderson, 2001:167). This growth can be identified with many factors. Among these, is the issue of biblical interpretation, which compared to the mainline churches follows, distinct approaches. Despite this growth, the way in which most Pentecostal interpretations extract meanings from the text also points to certain hermeneutical challenges. Some of these challenges have been expressed in Herholdt (1998) model of Biblical hermeneutics. This work attempts to discuss two of Herholdt facets model of hermeneutics. It points out how hermeneutics has come to be singled out as one of challenges faced by these churches. An attention has been put on how these models may have contributed to the rapid growth of Pentecostalism and how still they can pose a challenge to sustain the currently experienced growth.




A Pentecostal Hermeneutic for the Twenty First Century


Book Description

The purpose of this book is to present a critically informed contemporary Pentecostal hermeneutic rooted in Pentecostal identity, in its stories, beliefs and practices. As Pentecostals began entering academic communities of higher learning, their interpretive methods became both mainstream and modernistic as they adapted the historical critical methods, or the so-called scientific hermeneutic. The proposed hermeneutic contained in this book desires to move beyond the impasse created by Modernity, instead pushing Pentecostals into the contemporary context by critically re-appropriating early Pentecostal ethos and interpretive practices for a contemporary Pentecostal community. The Pentecostal hermeneutic is a three-way interaction for theological meaning between the Holy Spirit, the Pentecostal community and sacred Scripture.