I still remember my Bible College hermeneutics text from the 1990s: How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth—first edition! Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart. For the first time my eyes were opened to basic issues like genre analysis (you can’t read apocalyptic texts like historical narrative). That book, now in its fourth edition, grounds the reader in an evangelically slanted historical-critical method for reading the Bible.

Gordon Fee is a pentecostal scholar, ordained with the Assemblies of God. He would argue that pentecostals would do well to adopt an evangelical framework of hermeneutics rooted in authorial intent and the historical-critical method.

Kenneth J. Archer disagrees.

For Archer, reading scripture as a Pentecostal requires a different type of reading—a different hermeneutic—than standard evangelical methods. Expanding on work done by John Christopher Thomas, Archer proposes a strategy for pentecostal hermeneutics where meaning is discovered and created in a dialog between the Holy Spirit, the text, and the community.

This strategy shifts the locus of meaning from the world of the author to the text itself and from the text toward the reader. The best type of criticism to use within this three-way dialogue is narrative criticism. Other historical-critical methods, while still having a role to play, are dethroned.

A Pentecostal Hermeneutic is a well researched monograph which began as Archer’s 2001 doctoral thesis at St. Andrews University in Scotland. It should be required reading for all pentecostal teachers and pastors seeking to interpret scripture faithfully.

Archer, Kenneth J. A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture and Community. Cleveland: CPT Press, 2009.