Formation is the key link between reception theory and the effects of scripture. Hans Robert Jauss, in effect the founder of modern reception theory, sees this approach as rejecting ‘a closed past’, and liberating readers from ‘prejudices, and predicaments of a lived praxis, in that it compels one to a new perception of things’.Footnote ¹ Reception history, Jauss suggests, can perform ‘a socially formative function’.Footnote ² He also urges: ‘Question and answer can provide access to the otherness of the past’.Footnote ³ His teacher Hans-Georg Gadamer commends Bildung, not as culture, but as formation, which has goals ‘outside itself’.Footnote ⁴

Scripture above all exercises formative power; it gives formation of character and action. It shapes readers by giving them a vision of what lies beyond the self. It delivers readers from narcissistic bondage to the self, from self-centred horizons, from self-affirmation and from self-love.Footnote ⁵ David Kelsey made the classic comment that the biblical text as scripture serves ‘to shape persons’ identities so decisively as to transform them’ (his emphasis).Footnote ⁶ George Lindbeck and Frances Young echo the same point.

Hans Robert Jauss: background, influence and concerns

Hans Robert Jauss (1921–97) remains the effective founder of modern reception theory. Jauss is not a theologian or biblical scholar, but specialised in medieval romance literature. He was especially influenced by Heidegger and Gadamer on historicality, art and hermeneutics. The decisive step came in 1966, with the founding of the University of Constance (or Konstanz), with its new vision for interdisciplinary research. The University appointed a research team of five professors, who included Jauss.

Jauss’ Inaugural Lecture of 1967 constituted virtually a manifesto of reception theory. He chose the title: ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’.Footnote ⁷ This sought a ‘still-unfinished meaning’ in works, following Gadamer.Footnote ⁸ Jauss focused on the historical influence of a work.Footnote ⁹ But this ‘influence’ was to be reciprocal: both how works influenced their readers; and how successive generations of readers influenced the understanding of texts and works. This is akin to Gadamer's ‘history of effects’ (Wirkungsgeschichte).

Jauss draws on Marxist theories of interpretation and on formalism, but goes beyond both. Marxism stresses the socially formative power of literature, and Jauss endorses this. Texts and works shape readers and their expectations. He draws on formalism for such devices as ‘defamiliarisation’, which is a disruptive device to make strange what is otherwise familiar. A number of the parables of Jesus anticipate this method. But Jauss rejected the complacent assumption in formalism that texts are autonomous. The process of communication involves readers.

This prompts Paul de Man to see reader-response as an American near-equivalent to Rezeptionsästhetik in Germany. Jauss certainly regards the role of the reader as ‘completing’ the meaning of the text, as Wolfgang Iser and other reader-response theorists do.Footnote ¹⁰ But the more radical reader-response theories of Stanley Fish, Norman Holland and David Bleich are more pragmatic and subjective than Jauss’ reception rheory. Jauss writes: ‘The work enters into the changing horizons-of-experience of a continuity . . . from recognized aesthetic norms to a new production that surpasses them.’Footnote ¹¹ A work, when it is read, ‘satisfies, surpasses, disappoints, or refutes the expectations of its first audience’.Footnote ¹² But Fish would have us believe that an acceptable reading to the community of readers can only mean what affirms its interests; no text can challenge readers from ‘outside’ the community. In his well-known aphorism Fish asserts: ‘The reader's response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning.’Footnote ¹³ The theoretical framework is quite different, even if its starting-point is that of Ingarden and Iser on ‘filling in blanks’.

Suggested parallels between Jauss’ seven theses and biblical formation and interpretation

In his first thesis Jauss attacks historical objectivism and the illusion of a value-neutral approach in positivism. In biblical studies this at once offers a close parallel with the rejection of all studies which purport to be value-neutral because they exclude references to God as a cause, and are supposedly purely ‘historical’. Francis Watson, among others, provides an excellent exposé of the illusion that a purely ‘secular’ approach to scripture is genuinely value-neutral.Footnote ¹⁴

Second, what constitutes a horizon of expectation derives partly from earlier texts. A later text may correct, alter or reproduce these.Footnote ¹⁵ A classic example from biblical studies concerns the Servant Songs, which have more than one level of meaning, even for Jewish interpretation, let alone for the Christian church. Another example would be the interpretation of the Book of Revelation, where much of the material reflects texts in Ezekiel and in apocalyptic Jewish literature.Footnote ¹⁶

The third thesis impinges on formation. Because all of us, including the authors of texts, live within a concrete and given historical situation, we perceive within a horizon. Horizon suggests the boundaries within which we can perceive a given viewpoint, but horizons can move and change. A moving train or car provides an excellent example. We experience a succession of new and changing horizons. Jauss speaks of ‘horizontal change’.Footnote ¹⁷ Jauss’ most familiar example comes from Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary, published in 1857. At first the novel was pilloried for appearing to commend adultery. But as the years passed, it was increasingly realised that this was not the verdict of the book, but only of Emma, one of its characters. The horizon of expectation changed.

In biblical interpretation the goal is also to move to new, formative horizons, which will correct and surpass former perceptions. In the Synoptic Gospels ‘parables of reversal’ provide a striking example. In the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matt 20:1–16) an initial reading might suggest natural human expectations of justice for ‘those who have borne the burden of the day and its scorching heat’ (v. 12). The expectation is that they will receive higher wages than those who joined the work-force at the eleventh hour (v. 8). Subsequently, however, readers might recognise that grace eclipses justice. The generosity of the employer becomes the new horizon of expectation. Other examples include the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9–14). Nowadays we might expect the Pharisee to be the less favoured character. But to the first audience the Pharisee did everything that he could to be right with God. The reversal of verdicts would come as a devastating shock to many, who would come to perceive that grace turns human values upside-down. The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–14) operates with the same dynamics. The expectation of the first hearers was that ‘Good’ and ‘Samaritan’ form a contradiction in terms. The old horizon of expectation becomes reversed by a new horizon.

The fourth thesis of Jauss relates ‘the horizon of expectation’ to ‘the logic of question and answer’, as Gadamer calls it.Footnote ¹⁸ Jauss explores the importance of the question, and he addresses ‘the successive unfolding of the potential for meaning . . . embedded in a work and actualized in the stages of its historical reception’.Footnote ¹⁹ He proposes ‘a history of the question and questioning’.Footnote ²⁰ The question reaches ‘beyond itself’ by passing ‘over the horizon of personal existence’, and with its series of answers yields up ‘the endlessness of dialogue’.Footnote ²¹ Like Waismann, he sees the question as ‘the first groping step of the mind in its journeying that leads towards new horizons’.Footnote ²² A later author may reopen a question and dialogue by recognising the distinctive horizons of his or her predecessor. Like Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling, Jauss looks for a work's becoming ‘a momentous event’; and like Mikhail Bakhtin and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, he makes room for polyphonic discourse.Footnote ²³

In biblical interpretation it is a truism to speak of scripture as a revelatory and momentous event. Karl Barth, for one, rediscovered the importance of seeing the Word of God as eventful.Footnote ²⁴ From another angle, Fuchs and Ebeling see the Word of God in scripture as occurring as a language-event (usually Sprachereignis in Fuchs, and Wortgeschehen in Ebeling).Footnote ²⁵ Biblical scholars, furthermore, are accustomed to using the methods of tradition history or redaction criticism to detect distinct layers of the text, and the questions which each layer may pose. Gerhard Ebeling has seen biblical exegesis as closely linked to the history of the church, noting how each generation corrects doctrines and movements by ‘a fresh attention to the history of hermeneutics and the exegesis of Scripture’.Footnote ²⁶ Jauss admits that the creativity of the question can be reduced when static doctrine closes the discussion prematurely. But Jauss declares, ‘Pietism sought to oppose this tendency . . . by demonstrating its “constant application” to one's life’.Footnote ²⁷

Jauss’ fourth thesis also considers the text as a potential source of meaning until the reader actualises or appropriates it, to make the potential meaning an actual, or completed, communicative act. This derives not only from the reader-response theory of Wolfgang Iser, but from a basic principle in linguistics formulated by Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure saw the ‘language-system’ (la langue) as a potential reservoir of meanings, which became actualised in acts of speech (la parole).Footnote ²⁸

This also applies to much of the claims about the Word of God in the Bible and the church. The Word of God, declares Barth, denotes ‘a promise, a judgement, a claim on man by which God binds man to himself’.Footnote ²⁹ A promise ‘promises’, as a formative act, when the addressee appropriates it. In common with John Zizioulas, Barth urges that the Word of God makes possible communion or relationship between God and humankind.Footnote ³⁰ Performative or illocutionary language facilitates the formative power of the Bible.Footnote ³¹ William Tyndale rightly argued that scripture did more than merely inform. It changed our world by using world-changing acts, i.e. by what today we call performative language. He specifies eighteen speech-acts in twelve pages. The Bible ‘makes the heart glad’, promises, names, appoints, gives, declares, condemns, wounds, blesses, kills, cures, wakes, forbids, delivers, heals and so on.Footnote ³²

Jauss’ fifth thesis argues that successive generations disclose the historically ‘new’. He is not concerned with aesthetic or literary newness, as in formalism. Jauss looks back to the phenomenon of historicality in Heidegger and Gadamer. He urges: ‘The interpreter must bring his own experience into play, since the past horizon of old and new forms . . . is only recognizable within the present horizon of the received work.’Footnote ³³

Again, this has parallels with biblical interpretation. If the interpreter ‘must bring his own experience into play’, this comes near to Rudolf Bultmann's insistence that ‘To demand that the interpreter must silence his subjectivity and extinguish his individuality . . . is therefore the most absurd one that can be imagined.’Footnote ³⁴ Writing from a different perspective from Bultmann, Bernard Lonergan insists equally,

Liberation theologians also make pre-understanding axiomatic. In MirandaFootnote ³⁶ this is indeed a ‘socially formative’ theme in the Bible.

Jauss’ sixth thesis draws on a principle which is universally recognised in linguistics. It distinguishes between a diachronic analysis of meaning (through history) and a synchronic approach to meaning (a contemporaneous view of meaning). Jauss rejects a ‘timeless’ approach, understanding a ‘true’ diachronic perspective to embrace a series of ‘synchronic cross-sections’.Footnote ³⁷ He declares, ‘The historicity of literature comes to light at the intersections of diachrony and synchrony.’

A parallel in biblical interpretation becomes more difficult to suggest, except for James Barr's work, likewise, of grounding biblical studies in established principles in linguistics.Footnote ³⁸ He distinguished between diachronic and synchronic approaches, declaring: ‘The etymology of a word is not a statement about its meaning, but about its history.’Footnote ³⁹

Jauss’ seventh thesis focuses on the ‘social formative function of literature’ (his emphasis).Footnote ⁴⁰ He also appeals to Karl Popper's notion of progress in science. Like Paul Ricoeur, he longs for that which is creative in literature and in successive readings of literature. Society may be shaped by such creative reading. Also like Ricoeur, he sees that encounter with ‘the Other’, or alterity, constitutes a fundamental factor in formation. Later, Jauss will introduce his ‘hermeneutics of the Other’.Footnote ⁴¹

Gadamer implies encounter with the Other, when he speaks of formation as having goals beyond the self.Footnote ⁴² Emilio Betti also views what is ‘not me’ as formative, involving listening, tolerance, patience and respect for the other. Ricoeur rejects the narcissistic, introspective, individualism of René Descartes. He comments, ‘Otherness . . . belongs . . . to the ontological constitution of selfhood.’Footnote ⁴³

With reference to theology, Ormond Rush declares, ‘Openness to the other’, the priority of the question and most of Jauss’ agenda imply, for Christians, the ‘theological priority of God as Other’.Footnote ⁴⁴ He continues, ‘A theological hermeneutics founded on the notion of reception . . . is a most appropriate hermeneutics for safeguarding divine alterity . . . Alterity therefore names the otherness or strangeness in the horizon of understanding God.’Footnote ⁴⁵ He makes an excellent point.

To summarise, then, Jauss (1) dismisses value-neutral objectivism; (2) stresses the readers’ horizon of expectation; (3) sees that this horizon changes and expands with formative effect; (4) stresses the value of question and answer, and appropriation, in actualising potential new horizons; (5) acknowledges the relation between interpretation and the readers’ pre-understandings; (6) takes account of the diachronic or historical and synchronic or contemporary meaning; and (7) re-emphasises formative function of texts and works, and their creative effects on life. In theology this accords with (1) a theological, not value-neutral, reading of scripture; (2) biblical intertextuality and levels of reading; (3) biblically inspired formation, as readers’ perceptions are changed; (4) scripture as eventful and polymorphous, inviting appropriation and communion with God; (5) engagement between the horizon of the biblical text and the horizon of the self; (6) interpretation of the past which facilitates address to the reader in the present; and (7) scripture speaks of God as Other, which requires listening and obedience.

Further concepts in Jauss’ programme which relate to biblical formation

Examples of reception history of the Bible and the church

I must finally try to show how reception history works in practice. Unfortunately, because of the confines of space, I can select only a small segment of examples, and leave the reader to see how these interact with the theoretical apparatus which has been set out above. The selection is limited to (1) one example from Jauss himself on Genesis; (2) one example from Brevard Childs on Exodus; (3) two examples from Ulrich Luz on Matthew; and (4) two examples from my own work, first on 1 Corinthians and second on 1 Thessalonians.

Jauss himself produces some concrete examples of reception history, but seldom on the biblical writings. One example concerns ‘Questioning Adam’ in Genesis 3:9.Footnote ⁸² The question, ‘Adam, where art thou?’, he says, is not strictly a question, for God knows where Adam is. It is ironic, but gives rise to the further question ‘Why?’ The first experience of God recounted in narrative is dialogic. As Barth sees it, ‘In Adam, all human beings are called into question’, and this provides a basis for human questions about God.Footnote ⁸³ Barth treats the question ‘applicatively’ rather than ‘reconstructively’. ‘Where?’ becomes a call for self-reflection, which implicates us all, as Wolfhart Pannenberg urges.

On the other hand, the question, Jauss comments, opens a road to emancipation. Like questions in Job, it ‘reaches beyond itself, and passes over the horizon of its personal existence’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Yet we must always ask, ‘Can this text not be understood differently?’ Many questions are ‘activated only when a later author re-opens it by recognising an earlier author as his predecessor’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Although he now moves increasingly away from Genesis 3:9, to focus on questioning as such, Jauss does give space to ‘ultimacy’ and to ‘wonder’.Footnote ⁸⁶ But once again his concern remains ‘to discover something new’, which will become ‘a momentous event’.Footnote ⁸⁷ He appeals to Mikhail Bakhtin and to Fyodor Dostoyevsky on polyphonic discourse. Jauss concludes by distinguishing between types of questions: ‘questions with provocative, open-ended answers; questions that . . . pose a counter question; questions that implicitly provide their own answers . . .; ironic questions that imply the opposite of that which is asked; absurd questions . . . to draw some meaning from their self-contradictory elements’.Footnote ⁸⁸

Jauss’ argument includes the need for some ‘constraint’ or ‘control’ on reception history. Umberto Eco, however, suggests a more substantial one.Footnote ⁸⁹ ‘Open’, ‘literary’ or ‘poetic’ texts may lend themselves to multiple treatments far more readily than ‘closed’, ‘transmissive’ or ‘informational’, or ‘engineering’ texts. Thus a huge challenge comes to biblical interpreters. The Bible contains both. Many psalms, poetic books and parts of Ezekiel and Revelation constitute ‘open’ or ‘poetic’ texts. Parts of the Synoptic Gospels and the epistles are ‘closed’, transmissive, texts. To mark the difference between these genres remains a crucial task.

Jauss also considers the Fall narrative as a whole, especially guilt and the ‘curse’ in Genesis 3:17.Footnote ⁹⁰ But his concerns now become very wide, embracing the nature of myth and literal speech, the three levels of meaning, Job and Milton's Paradise Lost. Again, the theme constantly emerges of ‘new horizons of meaning’.Footnote ⁹¹

A second example of the history of reception comes from Brevard Childs, although this lacks Jauss’ theory-laden apparatus. Jauss does not appear in Childs’ commentary. Yet Childs discusses the meaning of a passage for the rest of the Old Testament, for Judaism, for the New Testament writers, and the church fathers, the Reformers, and the post-Reformation era, and for the flowering of biblical criticism. Moreover the influence is not unidirectional but often marks a reciprocal influence between texts and interpretations.

The passage to be considered is Exodus 3:1–15.Footnote ⁹² The Old Testament context provides a ‘remarkable mixture of ordinary elements of human experience with the extraordinary. Moses is shepherding the flock . . . he notices a common desert bush on fire . . . “The angel of Yahweh appeared to him” . . . The old life of shepherding is ended; the new life of deliverer was beginning.’Footnote ⁹³ The divine seeks to transform the human. Like Jauss, Childs then considers what kind of question, if a question at all, is ‘What is his name?’ (vv. 13–15): ‘Is this a genuine question?’Footnote ⁹⁴ He notes the Hebrew, ‘I will be who I will be’, and the word-play on the name of God: ehyeh-yahweh, which is ‘paradoxically both an answer and a refusal of an answer’.Footnote ⁹⁵ He concludes that the reality of God will be seen in what Israel experiences of his purposes and future action. Today, we may see how God relates to our future experiences of life.

In the New Testament, Matthew cites Exodus 3:6 in 22:32, and Synoptic parallels Mark 12:26; and Luke 20:37. There ‘He is not God of the dead, but of the living’, which is taken to allude to resurrection. Acts 7:30 also refers to the call of Moses, when Stephen shows how often Israel rejected God's messengers. Childs compares the LXX ‘I AM’ and the Hebrew ‘I will be’ with Rev 1:8, the God ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come’ (Greek, ho ōn kai ho ēn kai ho erchomenos).Footnote ⁹⁶

Most of the major church fathers ‘left at least one treatise on the subject’. For many, Christ was ‘the angel’ (e.g. Justin, Trypho 59–60; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3:6, 4:10; Ambrose, On Faith 1:13. Augustine wrestled constantly with the passage. Aquinas and the scholastic writers saw the LXX translation as referring to God as immutable Being or Essence. Among the Reformers, Calvin sees an allusion to ‘the eternal Son of God’, and to the importance of the incarnation. Zwingli saw a connection between God's attributes and his role as Creator. Childs concludes his eight stages of interpretation: ‘Revelation is not information about God . . . but an invitation to trust’.Footnote ⁹⁷ This speaks to today's reader.

Ulrich Luz is probably the most important New Testament scholar to have practised reception history explicitly, in his three-volume commentary on Matthew (four volumes in German).Footnote ⁹⁸ I shall select only two examples. First, on Matt 1:18–25 he gives an interpretation which stresses the testimony to the Holy Spirit (v. 18); questions about the knowledge of Joseph of Mary's pregnancy, his protection of Mary from suspicion of adultery; and the angel's message to Joseph. The Spirit is the ‘sexual partner’ of Mary.Footnote ⁹⁹ The reference to forgiveness of sins is important. The conception of the Messiah as Saviour is widespread in Judaism, and the use of ‘Emmanuel’ belongs to christology. The whole birth narrative remains significant for Matthew.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Matt 1:18–25 relates to Matt 28:16–20. The virgin birth is also important as Old Testament fulfilment.

In the history of influences the quotation from Isaiah 7:14 became a central issue in Christian polemic against Judaism. But in a different situation ‘a text gains new life in a new context’.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Roman Catholic exegesis raises the question of the perpetual virginity of Mary, even after the birth of Jesus. But a passage which was primarily christological came to be overlaid with Mariological questions and interests. Luz comments, ‘Later it becomes an honorific statement not about Jesus but about Mary.’Footnote ¹⁰²

In the history of the church, this passage leads to questions about the pre-existence of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. Since the nineteenth century, however, the virgin birth has come under widespread attack. It was said that this theme was originally pagan, and was transferred to Jesus. For Matthew, however, it was a ‘conceptual basis’ for understanding Jesus as ‘Immanuel’.Footnote ¹⁰³Today, this helps us to see how Jesus is ‘God with us’ and ‘a real acting of God with Jesus in history’ (his emphasis).Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Our second example concerns the visit of the Magi in Matt 2:1–12. In his section on interpretation Luz argues that ‘for Matthew the adoration of Jesus by the Gentiles and his rejection by the Jerusalemites is in the foreground’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ It anticipates the worship of the disciples. It also stresses God's intervention and plan.

On the history of influence Luz discusses the two traditions of the origin of the Magi from Arabia, on the basis of Psalm 72:10 and Isaiah 66:6, and a theory of Persian origin, largely on the basis of art. Although Matthew seems to suggest their arrival up to two years after the birth of Christ, Augustine suggested the thirteenth day after the birth of Christ. In the medieval period the Magi came to be seen as respective representatives of Shem, Ham and Japheth. In the Middle Ages they were also seen as kings, perhaps on the basis of Isaiah 60:3 and Psalm 72:10–11. The particular names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar appeared first in the Middle Ages. Later Caspar becomes a beardless young man; Melchior is a bearded old man; Balthasar is dark, and eventually black. Later tradition recounts their return by ship. Today's readers may identify themselves with the Magi.

Elsewhere in his commentary, Luz discusses the history of influence in general. It includes ‘the history, reception, and actualizing of a text in media other than the commentary’, including sermons, canonical law, hymns, art, and the life and sufferings of the church.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Texts crucially modify church traditions. Such a history of reception is also attempted by Ulrich Wilckens in the EKK series on Romans, and in the Blackwell series of commentaries.Footnote ¹⁰⁷

A fourth example comes from my Commentary on 1 Corinthians. In The First Epistle to the Corinthians (2000), I select only one example out of many, namely chapter 1, especially 1:18–25.

First, the Apostolic fathers stress that the cross constitutes an affront to unbelievers (Ignatius, Ephesians 18:1), though Justin insists that the cross can be commended to all those who have sound reason (Justin, Apology 1:68). Second, in the era of the church fathers, Clement of Alexandria naturally, as a ‘Christian Gnostic’, emphasised the ‘higher’ wisdom of Paul.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Tertullian, the ‘twice-born’, argues that the wisdom of God stands in contrast with the wisdom of the world, and is not simply higher wisdom.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Origen, the theologian, discusses the cross as involving a full doctrine of salvation.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Cyprian, under the Decian persecution, stresses that Christ brings the ‘power of God’.Footnote ¹¹¹ Lactantius links epistemology in Socrates with the Pauline willingness to recognise one's own ignorance, and to dispel illusion.Footnote ¹¹²

After Chalcedon, Athanasius grounds the wisdom–folly contrast in christology (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 15). Ambrosiaster cites the virgin birth as an example of supposed ‘folly’ (Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul's Epistles in CSEL 81:16). Augustíne sees human blindness as a cause of regarding the cross as folly, and stresses the sovereign power and grace of God (Augustíne, The City of God 10:28).

We can readily see that each interprets features of the passage to support his own outlook. The Apologist seeks rational debate; the ‘Gnostic’ seeks a higher wisdom; the ‘twice-born’ sees discontinuity and contrast between the world and the gospel; the theologian discusses an explicit doctrine; and so on. I go on to explore the passage in the medieval era and at the Reformation. Martin Luther understandably relates glory in the cross to the Heidelberg Catechism. John Calvin, following Augustine, points to human blindness as a result of sin. Bengel shows how the message of the cross cuts across all of human achievements, even achievements of religiosity. This addresses today's readers, for whom also (in Jüngel's words) ‘God defined himself as love on the cross of Christ’.Footnote ¹¹³

I consider, finally, one example from my 1 and 2 Thessalonians through the Centuries. Footnote ¹¹⁴ In 1 Thess 5: 19 Paul exhorts the readers, ‘Do not despise prophesyings’. Today there is a widespread popular view of prophecy either as predictions of the future or, more usually, as spontaneous, staccato-like pronouncements, often by members of a church congregation. Ambrosiaster refers to interruption of worship and discussion, although he states that ‘prophecy’ could take the form of biblical exposition.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Chrysostom and Augustine also associate prophecy with expounding scripture.

Thomas Aquinas explicitly declares that prophecy is undertaken ‘by those who explain divine doctrine’. Verse 19 means, ‘Do not despise preachers’.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In the Reformation era John Calvin insists that ‘prophecies’ mean ‘the art of the interpretation of Scripture . . . the interpretation of Scripture properly applied to the people present’.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Prophecy is also a kind of preaching. Calvin makes the same point in the Institutes. Paul does not carry his readers away from the Word, i.e. scripture (Institutes 1.6.2; 1.9.3). The Roman Catholic Chancellor of Douai, Estius, similarly argues that prophecy is not ‘private revelation’, but official teaching.Footnote ¹¹⁸

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the same tradition continues. Matthew Henry argues: ‘By prophesyings, here we understand the preaching of the word, the interpreting and applying of the scriptures. We must not despise preaching . . . We must search the Scriptures.’ John Gill speaks here of the public preaching of the word. John Wesley comments: ‘Prophesyings . . . that is preaching, for the Apostle is not speaking of extraordinary gifts’ (Notes on the Whole Bible, p. 694). In the nineteenth century James Denney calls the prophet ‘a Christian Preacher’.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Reception history challenges today's readers to rethink the popular notion of what ‘prophecy’ might be.

Jauss might appeal here to a continuity of meaning in a tradition, or perhaps speak of new horizons of meaning. But with the rise of the Pentecostal movement, one can either welcome new horizons of expectations, or regret a radical departure from tradition. Before and after the first decade of the twentieth century, this phenomenon is evaluated differently. Reception history at least gives us the chance to hear all sides of the case. There are now many and varied examples of reception history.Footnote ¹²⁰ Nevertheless most demonstrate the formative effect of the Bible on readers.