Amos Yong is one of the most prolific pentecostal scholars writing today. In addition to his many books, he has contributed chapters and articles to various compilations and journals. The Hermeneutical Spirit is a collection of articles written between 2009 and 2017 that explore various hermeneutical themes from a pentecostal perspective.

The article themes are no surprise if you’ve read Yong—pentecostal readings of global Christianity, science, the body and dis/ability, and liberation for the poor. There’s a clear pattern in these articles. Yong reads in an academic field, recognizes that little work has done from a pentecostal perspective, then offers some ‘preliminary’ thoughts on the issue. In this way, Yong is a trailblazer, pushing academic pentecostalism into areas never before explored in the light of Pentecost.

The Hermeneutical Spirit is only one part of a trilogy of essay collections. The other two volumes are The Dialogical Spirit and The Kerygmatic Spirit (which happens to be edited by my colleague, Josh P. S. Samuel). Not unlike short-story collections, these collections of articles and sermons are bite-sized windows into the mind of one of pentecostalism’s leading scholars.

Yong, Amos. The Hermeneutical Spirit: Theological Interpretation and Scriptural Imagination for the 21st Century. Cascade Books, 2017.