Towards Understanding of the Practice of Proclamation: The Core Element of Russian Baptist Worship, Timofey Cheprasov, 2015

f the baptistic vision, understood as a hermeneutical principle, which defines Baptists’ attitudes to the Bible as a book written for them, thus emphasising the significance of the biblical story as normative for the life of every Christian.’ In the following pages, | will further explore the communal element of the process of biblical interpretation. | will argue that since Baptists address the Bible as authoritative Scripture for their lives, and not a mere piece of antique material for textual interpretation, their reading strategies may differ from those employed in academia. First of all, the Church reads biblical text seeking its literal and spiritual senses, using such approach as typological reading of the text. The existing safeguarding strategy against potential misinterpretations is reading the Scripture in a community of saints, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.” The results of their interpretive activities must be projected onto their moral living, which provides necessary validation of the meaning of the text. In order to make such Scriptural reading possible, the church has to be a community of interpreters, allowing * McClendon, Ethics, p 29. ? On baptistic understanding of sainthood, see McClendon, Appendix: “Christian Worship and the Saints,” in Biography As Theology, pp 172-184; and his “Do We Need Saints Today?” in Ryan Andrew Newson and Andrew C. Wright, eds., The Collected Works of James Wm. McClendon Jr., vol. 2 (Waco, Tx., Baylor University Press, 2014), pp. 285-294. 189 space for people with different levels of theological and biblical literacy to be involved at various levels of interpretation. Thus, it is necessary to identify a set of practices for reading the Bible, which serve as a platform of such communal interpretation. Addressing a complicated and sometimes controversial question of biblical interpretation, | need to set some limits to this reflection on baptistic hermeneutics. | do recognise the existing diversity of convictions in various Baptist congregations in Russia (and around the world) regarding the Bible (including various views of inspiration), the role of the Holy Spirit in the process of interpretation, and authority in interpreting the sacred text that individual people within these churches may hold. However, | deliberately chose to ignore those differences. In addition, this chapter must not be seen as a prescriptive set of interpretive rules that should be imposed in Baptist churches. | am in no way implying that. In short, this chapter attempts to make a case for communal hermeneutics. | aim at offering a theological justification for my claim that reading the Bible in a community of faith (which includes the practice of preaching, existing within a wider cluster of practices of reading the Bible) serves as an important safeguarding strategy against destructive potential of the powerful practice of preaching. 8.1 The question of communal