An African Pentecostal Hermeneutics: A Distinctive Contribution to Hermeneutics

Marius Nel

Dec 2018 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

About this ebook

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.

About the author

Marius Nel is Research Professor of Ecumene: Pentecostalism and Neo-Pentecostalism at the Unit for Reformational Theology and the Development of the South African Society of North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. He is the author of Pacifism and Pentecostals in South Africa (2018).