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

pture, which contains raw and uninterpreted material, instead of just reading scholarly commentaries, produced by experts who practiced the same methodology, but with greater rigour. And finally, this approach can be used as a powerful tool for the ideological support of hierarchical structures... for absolutising their views on certain theological or practical issues.”° Instead of the above mentioned “scientific” approach to biblical interpretation, Puzynin develops a paradigm of differential-integral hermeneutics in his call to reconstruct traditional, context-based practices of biblical interpretation, which he sees as a requirement for future existence and development of the Evangelical Christians. He starts with A. K. M. Adam, who offers a thorough critique of hermeneutical methods that insist on existence of a single meaning of biblical text. Adam argued that instead of searching the meaning in the text, one has to turn to the readers, since meaning emerges as they work towards shared understanding.*’ Based on his claim that prior to the emergence of critical scholarship there existed plurality in interpretation, which nonetheless did not result in interpretive chaos, Adam notes that ‘critical scholarship did 22 Thus, interpretive not usher in the era of stable, scientifically certain interpretation. focus shifts ‘from the discovery of the one and only correct meaning that subsists in a text to the interpreting human subjects and communities.’*° Despite the value of Adam’s approach particularly in emphasising the value of an interpretative community, there are several deficiencies in his approach, which are highlighted by Kevin Vanhoozer, ?° Buzynin, “The Tradition of the Gospel Christians...,” pp 40-41. 21 A. K. M. Adam, Faithful Interpretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern Word (Minneapolis, Minn., Fortress, 2006), p 5. 2 Ihid., p 52. ?3 Duzynin, “The Tradition of the Gospel Christians...,” p 42. 195 The core of Adam’s argument is his apology of a prochoice hermeneutics and the concomitant proliferation of interpretation. What keeps proliferating hermeneutics from becoming profligate? The problem is not sheer plurality of interpretations — plurality is a sign of abundance — but the possibility of interpretations that misrepresent Jesus and, we might add, the possibility of interpretations that misrepresent God and the gospel.“ The key problem, which Adam’s approach does not resolve is the necessity of safeguarding against intentional misinterpretation of the biblical narrative, as done by various sects. The second problem follows, which is an insistence on extreme subjectivity of interpretation, and its reliance on social structures, Interpretation is a necessarily subjective, value-laden activity. The text, while possibly existing as an objective set of data, cannot function in interpretation to authorise or rule out given readings apart from the set of inte