The Liturgy of the Gospel

""Framed by a fresh introduction and conclusion, Vondey includes essays published over twenty-five years, exploring aspects of Pentecostal theological hermeneutics related to embodying the full gospel. He demonstrates that the nature of Pentecostal hermeneutics functions as a liturgy of the full gospel. He does this by examining the dynamic and playful liturgical hermeneutic interaction of fusion and fission within interpretive horizons, with the altar metaphor serving as a key site for the merging and dividing of hermeneutical horizons. I strongly recommend this ecumenically engaging, intellectually stimulating, and spiritually nourishing collection of essays as a significant contribution to Pentecostal theological hermeneutics."" --Kenneth J. Archer, Professor of Theology and Pentecostal Studies, Trinity Bible College and Graduate School, North Dakota ""Wolfgang Vondey is one of the most accomplished doctrinal theologians to have emerged from the Pentecostal movement. The essays collected here demonstrate the development of his systematic thinking over the course of two decades, particularly as working out his theology of the full gospel. The new introductory and concluding bookends to the volume recast Vondey's liturgical imagination in dialogue with Gadamer's general hermeneutics and suggest instead a 'this-is-and-is-not-that' both fusion and fission of horizons generated playfully, unpredictably, and non-conformationally from altar encounters with the divine Spirit. The result is a transformation-of-life interpretive posture that not only names what happens through Pentecost events but also deserves broader methodological and hermeneutical consideration befitting Vondey's stature as an internationally renowned ecumenical theologian."" --Amos Yong, Professor of Theology and Mission, Fuller Seminary ""Wolfgang Vondey is one of those rare thinkers that scholars go to when they want to engage Pentecostal theology at its most astute theoretical dimension, mine it at its systematic theology motherlode, and participate in the effects of its most siring hermeneutics. Vondey in this text does not disappoint his most brilliant and discerning readers. This book--in a robust display of careful reasoning and nuanced familiarity with Pentecostal sensibility--masterfully argues that liturgy, not language, is the medium of Pentecostal hermeneutics."" --Nimi Wariboko, Walter G. Muelder Professor of Social Ethics, Boston University ""Few have been more helpful than Wolfgang Vondey in framing how to think through the vast and diffuse tradition that constitutes contemporary Pentecostalism. This collection of Vondey's writings is a rich source for (re)considering the way Pentecostalism interprets life from one of the leading Pentecostal theologians in the world. It also provides an education in the important subject of theological hermeneutics. This volume is immediately a leading work in theological hermeneutics and Pentecostal theology."" --L. William Oliverio Jr., Editor-in-Chief, Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies