Pentecostal Epistemology, the Problem of Incommensurability, and Creational Hermeneutic
[Article]
Yoon Shin
Leiden
Brill
This article expounds James K.A. Smith's pentecostal epistemology, analyzing its characteristics as affective, pretheoretical knowledge and its ambiguous relationship to cognitive, theoretical knowledge, and then correlating this relationship to Smith's exposition of the problem of incommensurability between pretheoretical transcendence and theoretical immanence. I argue that Smith's epistemology is partly rooted in Heidegger's notion of Dasein as being-in-the-world in order to clarify the relationship between the affects and cognition. I then address the problem of incommensurability and argue that Smith's creational hermeneutic eliminates the problem altogether, healing the ambiguous relationship between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge that affects his pentecostal epistemology. This article expounds James K.A. Smith's pentecostal epistemology, analyzing its characteristics as affective, pretheoretical knowledge and its ambiguous relationship to cognitive, theoretical knowledge, and then correlating this relationship to Smith's exposition of the problem of incommensurability between pretheoretical transcendence and theoretical immanence. I argue that Smith's epistemology is partly rooted in Heidegger's notion of Dasein as being-in-the-world in order to clarify the relationship between the affects and cognition. I then address the problem of incommensurability and argue that Smith's creational hermeneutic eliminates the problem altogether, healing the ambiguous relationship between affective, pretheoretical knowledge and cognitive, theoretical knowledge that affects his pentecostal epistemology.