The Hermeneutics of Participation

Many theological interpreters of Scripture have claimed that church practices produce well-formed readers. But which practices? Greg McKinzie argues that missional hermeneutics challenges the church to include participation in God's mission among the indispensable components of readerly formation. After a quarter century of contemporary reflection on missional theology, however, the meaning of participation in God's mission remains vague. In order to explain why it is a critical hermeneutical experience, therefore, McKinzie sets out to develop a theological account of missional participation that incorporates the concepts of theosis, embodied narrativity, and solidarity. Then, in conversation with the hermeneutical phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur, the study suggests how theologically recontextualizing a model of the movement from embodied commitments to textual interpretation in terms of participation in God's mission illuminates the epistemic reconstitution of the church's theological interpretation of Scripture. Understanding participation in God's mission as theological interpretation's proper locus theologicus should reorient the notion of readerly formation because the formation of missional readers is the process in which God opens the reading community's embodied eyes of faith through the works of faith seeking understanding.