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

hermeneutics McClendon’s Doctrine begins with a question that defines the course for the whole volume — ‘what must the church teach to be a church now?’ What sets the direction and defines the shape of the (ethical) life of the church? McClendon says, ‘Christian ethics grasps the live flesh of Christian existence; Christian doctrine traces its living skeleton, the bones within that flesh that give stability and coherence to its life. Without Christian life, the doctrine is dead; without Christian doctrine the life is formless.”? Since the church is teaching by what it does, as well as what it says, it is important to speak about the practice of doctrine. However, because every social practice possesses positive as well as destructive potential, there should be another practice, ‘that resist perversion’ of the potentially dangerous practice of doctrine.* McClendon argues that this is a practice of Bible reading. The Bible may hold different positions in the church, it may be read 3 McClendon, Doctrine, p7. “ Ibid., pp 21, 29, 28-34. 190 carefully, seeking the explanation of every word, it may be placed on the book-shelf and forgotten, it might be praised and worshipped, used as a textbook by everyone or read only by the priest/pastor — whatever its role is, it impacts church communities. What makes the understanding of this practice important is that though it is ‘vulnerable to perversion... [it] contains its own corrective.” This self-corrective potential of the practice will be addressed in this section — how does the church read the Book, which holds both instructions for its life, and serves as a guardian against potential abuses caused by other practices? In Russia there is a saying, ‘Chitai kak napisano,’ which means ‘read as it is written.’ This phrase implies that reading and understanding (of the Bible or any other book) is not something to make a fuss about. In other words, it is assumed that all one needs to understand the Book is to have eyes and be literate.° This view is shared by many lay members and ordained ministers in Russian Baptist churches (although apart from literacy, they might emphasise another important quality — the need for a person to belong to a church and have personal relationships with Jesus, as a necessary requirement for successful biblical interpretation’). Most likely, Russians are far from being unique in such an approach to the Scripture.® Discussing the subject of baptistic hermeneutics, Hatchett referred to this literalism, still present in baptistic communities all over the world, Baptists have not produced many theologians... They addressed pastoral problems in the contexts of believing churches who sought concrete ° Ibid., p 35. ® Traditional Russian Baptist biblical interpretation, that has developed during the Soviet period, is based on two types of meaning of the text — literal and spiritual (which in turn is subdivided into two categori