Social Location and Its Impact on Hermeneutics

Abstract

Acts 3 and 4 tell a story of Peter and John healing a man who had been crippled from birth. The Sanhedrin threatened them and forbade them to talk about Jesus, “but they let them go because they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God” (4:21, 22 NLT). A few years later while Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra they met another man, who also had been crippled from birth (Acts 14:8). When the power of Jesus healed him the people of Lystra believed that the gods Zeus and Hermes had come to visit them. They quickly gathered wreaths of flowers and prepared to offer a bull as a sacrifice to the men. These two very similar situations are interpreted in very different ways. It is obvious there was a huge difference between the background of the Jewish people in Jerusalem and the people in Lystra. One group praised God for the healing, the other group believed that two gods of mythology had come to earth and healed the man. Most people would agree that a group’s cultural background and experiences shape their view of reality. We expect different interpretations between a Jewish and pagan worldview. However, what is troubling is that the events of the past five years have shown that Seventh-day Adventists, who supposedly share foundational principles of hermeneutics, could come to such different conclusions concerning the role of women in ministry. I believe that methodology and assumptions that guide the hermeneutical process are vitally important. Richard Davidson has championed the grammatico-historical approach to hermeneutics in contrast to the historical-critical method (2003:9-13). Jiři Moskala in his article “Toward Consistent Adventist Hermeneutics,” lists important principles like seeking to understand the historical background of the text by asking who, when, where, to whom, why, and what? He stresses the importance of