I have discussed that a missional hermeneutic is a valid framework for reading the Bible, and also the Fourth Gospel is worthy of being read with a missional hermeneutic. In this section, I will discuss a missional hermeneutic particularly for reading the Fourth Gospel. I have introduced the four ‘streams’ of a missional hermeneutic identified by Hunsberger (see 2.2.3). I agree with Dean Flemming (2011, 6) that ‘[a]lthough all four of these ‘streams’ are relevant to missional interpretation, the first two seem to be foundational’. Hunsberger (2016, 66) points out that the first two are ‘more located in the text’, while the other two are ‘more located in the readers’. The first two are 1) the missional direction of the story and 2) the missional purpose of the writings. Flemming observes that the former ‘reads Scripture as a witness to the gracious mission of the triune God’ (2016, 213), which ‘relates to what Scripture is about’ (2011, 6), while the latter ‘asks how the biblical writings function to equip and energize God’s people to participate in the missio Dei’ (2016, 213), which ‘concerns what Scripture does’ (2011, 6). Joel Green, who reads James missionally, points out as follows:
From this perspective, we are encouraged to read James within the context of the Christian Scriptures, guided by a different set of questions – especially these two: How does the letter of James locate its readers within the scriptural narrative of God’s mission? How might James’s letter shape its readers in their formation as participants in God’s mission?
In this study, I will consider Hunsberger’s first two ‘streams’ of a missional hermeneutic as foundational viewpoints for reading the Gospel. One is reading the Gospel in the context of the grand narrative of the Bible, and the other is reading it with an equipping aspect in mind. The questions or themes raised from my missional journey were relationship, missional identity and self-initiative. According to the Hunsburger’s categorization, those themes constitute my ‘locatedness’ for reading the given text. Rather than establishing a third viewpoint with those themes, however, I will include them in the two perspectives already mentioned. Before each viewpoint is discussed, I highlight two prerequisites to the viewpoints.
First, Jesus should be an interpretive lens in this reading of the Gospel since the Gospel always has Jesus as the focus of its discourse. For instance, Flemming (2011, 15) explores how Paul’s letter to the Philippians shapes and equips ‘its readers for their missional calling in the world’. That is what Scripture does in his explanation above, which relates to the missional purpose of the writings. However, the Gospels – the Fourth Gospel for this study – account for the life and public ministry of Jesus on earth including his interaction with his disciples. It means that studying how Jesus shapes and equips his discipleship community has to precede searching how the Gospel does the same for its readers. The latter can be an application or implication of the former.
The Gospel could be seen as an interpretation of the grand narrative of the Hebrew Bible (a witness of God’s mission) and of the newly formed community (equipping them for God’s mission) as viewed through a lens the Evangelist acquired from Jesus Christ, or more precisely, using Jesus himself as the lens. Schneiders (1999, 35) uses John 5:399 for her insistence that ‘Jesus is the hermeneutical key to their
[Jewish Scriptures] meaning’. The contemporary Jews of Jesus’ day, including the Jewish disciples, interpreted the grand narrative without Christ. In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus pointed out the problem of the Jews regarding the reading of the Scripture in that way, saying, ‘You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me’ (5:39). Those who read Scripture without Christ had a problem not in what they were reading but how they were reading. It was a matter of their lens and their interpretation. Barrett (1978, 268) supports the idea of Jesus as the lens for the reading, saying, ‘[t]he fact is that Jesus illuminates the Old Testament more than the Old Testament illuminates him’. In a sense, Jesus is not only the lens through which Scripture is to be read but also an interpreter himself. This Christ-centred and Christotelic (Kelly, 2010, 62) reading of what was already known in the grand narrative and in the new community enabled the Evangelist to write with new understanding. Kelly (2010, 76) emphasizes this aspect, saying, ‘Missional hermeneutics aids biblical theology from falling into a merely descriptive undertaking, reminding those engaging in biblical theology of the necessity of other perspectives and other voices in seeing how Jesus functions as the center of the Scripture’. In a missional reading of the Fourth Gospel, the recognition of Jesus as the interpretive lens is key to understanding both Jesus’ revealing of the will of the Father and his encounters with the Jews, individuals and his discipleship community.
9 ‘You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are
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Secondly, the two viewpoints of a missional hermeneutic, a grand narrative view and an equipping view, should be guiding questions rather than fixed frameworks for reading the text. The ‘proof-text’ way of reading is just one step away from a missional reading. The moment a person merely uses those two viewpoints (or any others) as a solid framework and then searches only to see how the themes in the given text fit the framework, that person has surrendered to a ‘proof-text’ methodology in another sense. The perspectives or viewpoints are intended for readers to keep in mind in the process of reading the given text rather than providing blinders. Gorman (2009a, 156) suggests five key questions that ‘readers operating with a missional hermeneutic will want to ask of the biblical text and themselves’ as follows:
What does this text say, implicitly or explicitly, about the missio Dei and the missional character of God?
What does this text reveal about humanity and the world?
What does this text say about the nature and mission of God’s people in the world, that is, about the church understood as an agent of divine mission rather than as an institution, civic organization, or guardian of Christendom?
How does this text relate to the larger scriptural witness, in both testaments, to the
missio Dei and the mission of God’s people?
In what concrete ways might we deliberately read this text as God’s call to us as the people of God to participate in the missio Dei to which it bears witness?
In short, a missional hermeneutic of this study attempts to read the Fourth Gospel with viewpoints of a grand narrative and an equipping of the discipleship community through Jesus as an interpretive lens. In next two sections, I will examine those two viewpoints of a missional reading.