“What Does This Mean?” (Acts 2:12):
A Canonical Reading of Pentecost as the Inauguration of an Intercultural Community.
i. Introduction
“What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12) is the central question of this paper. This question, posed by confused onlookers at Pentecost, invites sustained hermeneutical reflection on perhaps one of the most significant moments in the New Testament story and the emergence of a living community of faith seeking identity against the backdrop of Roman-occupied Judea and a first-century Judaism still waiting for Messiah. Pentecost marks the beginning of the church’s work and mission as the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh, fulfilling the prophecy of Joel and the promise of Jesus in the gospels. The disciples, having waited expectantly for the coming of the Holy Spirit, received through the Spirit’s activity the gift of tongues, enabling them to speak in other languages; an event that amazed, perplexed, and divided those who witnessed it.
This paper will argue that a canonical reading of Acts 2:1–12, whilst remaining attentive to its historical and theological dimensions, reveals Pentecost as the Spirit-enabled inauguration of a new intercultural community. This community embodies unity-in-diversity rather than enforced uniformity, redeems rather than simply reverses the fragmentation found in the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1–9, and anticipates Revelation’s eschatological vision of multinational worship. The Pentecost event and the emergence of the church is not a temporary status until everyone speaks the same tongue again; it is the permanent shape of a Spirit-filled community, in which linguistic and cultural diversity is a gift rather than a problem.
To make this argument, the paper will first explain and evaluate canonical interpretation as a method before offering a canonical reading of the passage and assessing what this approach offers for ministry.
ii. Canonical Interpretation:
Childs (1992) argues that when we interpret the Bible, we do so not simply by using the historical context of the original writings, but within the Canon of Scripture in which the believing communities — both the people of Israel and the emerging church — received and preserved it as sacred scripture. (Childs 1992, p70) The final form of the text as we have it now, within the Canon of Scripture and despite its variations across traditions and denominations, is where theological meaning is most fully understood and worked out. (Walton 2022, p3–4)
Childs did not deny the value of historical-critical approaches to biblical scholarship, but he argued that whilst such methods give detailed information about the formation of the text and the historical context, but it does not respond to the question of what that text meant theologically for the Israelite in the Old Testament or for the church and the community of believers. (Childs 1992, p103) Childs argues that the process by which texts were collected, arranged, and eventually received into the Canon of Scripture as authoritative was itself a careful and deliberate act — the creation of the Canon was a theologically significant event. (Childs 1992, p70) Those who shaped the Canon were making interpretive decisions, and reading the biblical texts within their canonical context takes seriously the method by which books were gathered and placed in relation to one another. Historical-critical approaches are not dismissed, but they must be used in service of understanding the final form of the text rather than as a means of getting behind it. The final form is the proper object of interpretation.
To take any biblical text seriously, therefore, it must be read within the context of the whole Canon. The Old and New Testaments need to be read together, since neither is fully intelligible without the other. This does not mean that the Old Testament is simply a historical prelude to the New Testament; it retains its own theological integrity. But for the church, it is read in the light of the coming of the Messiah.
For this paper, Childs’s argument is important because it provides the methodological basis for reading Acts 2, the Pentecost narrative, in relation to the broader biblical narrative — specifically Genesis 11 and the hope expressed in Revelation 7 and 21. A canonical approach to scripture invites and sustains precisely this kind of reading. The Babel story, the Pentecost narrative, and the vision of an intercultural community of worship are placed within the canonical shape of scripture in a relationship which tells the same story. This community of worship, glimpsed eschatologically in Revelation, is seen as a foretaste lived out today in Christian communities across the world. Childs would argue that such a reading is not incidental — this is where theological meaning begins and ends (Childs 1992, p71).
‘In sum, the crucial distinction between reading the text as witness rather than just a source does not call into question the important diachronic dimension of Israel’s history with God. Rather, the hermeneutical issue turns on the nature of the trajectory within the privileged status of Israels unique testimony to the ways of God with his people.’ (Childs 1992, p105) For Childs, the Bible is not merely a collection of ancient texts to be dissected; these are living testimonies of faith, bearing witness to God’s interaction with his people across generations of women and men who want to tell their story, God’s story. A canonical approach to scripture gives full voice to this emerging witness, and it is within that voice that theological meaning is brought to life.
This paper will argue that Pentecost redeems rather than simply reverses Babel, and this fits within Childs’s canonical approach. The scattering motif in Genesis 11 is not an act of judgement or curse but carries a redemptive quality — an argument made by both Wright (2004, p216–217) and Brueggemann (1982, p98).
iii. Evaluating Canonical Interpretation: Strengths and Weaknesses
A historical-critical approach takes seriously the authorial intention of the text, the context in which it was written, and the way in which the text would have been understood by those who first heard and read it. However, the Canon of Scripture, emerging as it did from the early life of the church, has something important to say about how texts were read, understood, interpreted, and applied by a community of believers. A canonical interpretation therefore makes the assumption that there is no such thing as pure exegesis — some form of interpretation is always taking place. Every hermeneut, from the scholar to the lay person in the pew, brings their own story and their own biases to the text. It is important that the interpreter is aware of this, but a canonical approach allows such reading to take place precisely because it locates interpretation within the wider narrative of God’s activity throughout the Bible.
There is, of course, a danger in moving too far from historical-critical concerns. A reader who ignores the historical context altogether risks making assumptions about the meaning and application of a text that go well beyond what can reasonably be attributed to the original author’s intention.
Childs’s approach has been heavily critiqued by Barr, who argues that a canonical reading can only make sense when read alongside a historical-critical approach — that the canonical reading is in fact built upon historical-critical foundations whilst simultaneously dismissing them (Barr 1980, p.23). Barr further argues that Childs reads his own hermeneutical interests into the minds of those responsible for the development and adoption of texts as canon, imposing his own interpretive assumptions as a baseline where the evidence does not clearly support them (Barr 1980, p.17). This suggests that a historical-critical approach provides a necessary level of accountability, preventing the hermeneut from straying too far from what the text is saying. Since there is no such thing as pure exegesis, awareness of the hermeneuts own interpretive assumptions is itself a discipline — and it is precisely this awareness that a canonical approach, used responsibly alongside historical-critical tools, can sustain rather than undermine
A further complexity rarely addressed in Childs’s canonical approach concerns the question of which canon constitutes the authoritative final form. The canon of scripture is not identical across all Christian traditions: the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches include deuterocanonical texts not found in Protestant Bibles, and the Ethiopian Orthodox canon extends considerably further still. Childs tends to write as though the final form is a stable and agreed entity, but this assumption is misplaced. Whilst these variations may not fundamentally disrupt the broad canonical thread this paper seeks to trace — the Babel, Pentecost, and Revelation texts are common to all major Christian canons — the question of canonical boundaries cannot be entirely set aside without weakening the methodological foundations on which Childs builds. A canonical reading must at least acknowledge that the community which receives and interprets scripture also, to some degree, shapes it; and that different church communities have different conclusions about where such boundaries lie.
However, Barr himself concedes that Childs is correct in the need to give serious attention to the final form of the canonical text (Barr 1980, p.23). A canonical reading of Pentecost does not require absolute certainty about whether Luke had Joel or Babel consciously in mind when writing his account — but it is equally not unreasonable to suggest that these texts form a coherent and purposeful thread throughout the Bible. A canonical approach simply asks that we engage with the texts in their canonical form as a collective witness. As Childs himself argues, the fundamental hermeneutical question cannot be rooted in a historical-critical approach alone but must turn on the story of God’s interaction with the people of Israel as that testimony is borne witness to throughout the whole of scripture (Childs 1992, p.105).
iv. A Canonical Reading of Acts 2:1–12: From Babel to Revelation
Introduction to Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles is widely accepted as the second volume of a two-volume work, the first being Luke’s Gospel (Childs 1992, p.28). Read canonically, Luke-Acts functions as a single narrative in which the promises of Jesus in the Gospel find their fulfilment in the life of the emerging church. Luke deliberately wrote in a style that sought to continue the themes found in the Old Testament, placing the story of the church within the ongoing story of God’s purposes for Israel and for the world. As Jennings observes, ‘the book of Acts is like the book of Genesis — it announces a beginning’ (2017, p.2), and it is this sense of a new beginning, continuous with everything that has gone before, that a canonical reading takes seriously. Tannehill argues that Luke-Acts forms a narrative unity in which recurring themes and promises to bind the two volumes together as a coherent whole (Tannehill 1986, p.1), and it is within this narrative unity that the Pentecost account finds its fullest meaning.
The festival of Pentecost itself carries deep canonical significance. Celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover (Leviticus 23:15–16) and known in Hebrew as Shavu’ot — the Festival of Weeks (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10) — Pentecost had developed an association with covenant renewal and the giving of the Law on Sinai (Walton 2024, p.174). Read canonically, this is profoundly significant: the Spirit descends at the very festival which commemorated God’s covenant with his people at Sinai, suggesting that Pentecost inaugurates a new covenant moment in which the Law written on stone tablets (Exodus 19:1) is replaced by the Spirit written on human hearts, as Ezekiel had promised (Ezekiel 36:26–27) and Joel had anticipated (Joel 2:28–29).
The gathering of nations in Jerusalem for the festival is equally significant canonically. Pentecost was one of three Jewish pilgrimage feasts (Bock 2007, p.171), which explains the extraordinary diversity of those present. The list of nations in verses 9–11 reflects the hybrid ethnic identity of diaspora Jews (Walton 2024, p.181) — people who were Jewish but also carried other ethnic and cultural identities, living at the intersection of multiple worlds. Crucially, Walton notes that nations such as Achaia and Macedonia are absent from the list, and these became central to Paul’s later mission in Acts 16–19 (Walton 2024, p.181), indicating that Pentecost launched the mission of God as a global and ongoing reality rather than a single contained event.
a. The Setting and Theophany: Wind, Fire, and Spirit (vv. 1–4)
The day is Pentecost from the Greek word for fiftieth (Bruce 1988, p.50), celebrated in the contemporary church as the fiftieth day after Easter. The physical setting is Jerusalem, the house in verse 2 could refer to the Upper Room, where the Last Supper took place (Acts 1:13). The activity of the Holy Spirit can be traced throughout the Old Testament from creation (Genesis 1:2) and particular with reference to Pentecost: Joel 2:28–29, Ezekiel 36:26–27, Numbers 11:29, and Isaiah 61:1. The Greek word for sound (v2) is also used in Hebrews 12:19 describing the trumpet sound at Sinai, the text reminding the reader of the Baptism of Jesus (Luke 3: 21–22) and the interaction of the Father and the Holy Spirit pointing to the presence of Jesus now in heaven (Acts 1:10–11) and it is who enables the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost (Walton 2024, p174; Bock 2007, p81). With sound, comes flames or tongues of fire, fire being a frequent picture of divine involvement which we see at Mount Sinai. The wind had clear reference to the Holy Spirit.
b. The Crowd’s Amazement: Hearing in Our Own Languages (vv. 5–8)
‘What does this mean?’ remains the overarching question for this paper, and lends it itself to a canonical interpretative tool, it allows us to take seriously the context and Luke role as both a historian and theologian, but also points us quite deliberately to the emergence of the early church, Pauls missionary journeys ensuring that everyone is able to hear the gospel. The crowd heard their own languages being spoken the streets of Jerusalem, the birth of the church began with the gospel being heard by Jews and Proselytes from around the Mediterranean. Luke’s use of the Greek word ‘dialektos’ implies that this is not just a miracle by which many languages are spoken, but also local dialects (Bruce 1988, p.52) God is meeting in person in their own cultural context, making this a personal encounter for each individual. With this in mind, it is possible to critique to the action of missionaries in the past who sought to impose western culture on nations where the gospel was proclaimed, which seem to fly in the face of purpose of Pentecost, though there is not the scope to unpack such a critique in this paper. However, Luke seeks to ensure that the reader understands that God’s purposes are for all people, languages and dialects are not a barrier to be overcome but the very means through which God chooses to make himself known.
c. The Nations Gathered and the Content of Speech (vv. 9–11)
Walton questions whether the list of nations in Acts 2:9–11 constitutes sufficient evidence for an echo of Genesis 10; he notes both the apparent lack of structure found in other examples nation tables (such as Josephus) and arguing that the ‘part for whole’ reading is ‘insufficient evidence.’ (Walton 2024, p.181). This is important as he is asserting exactly the sort of eisegesis that Barr is concerned about with reference to Childs. As this paper is exploring the text from a canonical perspective, the intention of the author is not a significant concern. A canonical reading does not require Luke to have consciously complied his list as a table of nations; bearing in mind Luke’s own concern for a reliable account of events, he may simply have written what he heard from eyewitnesses, what matters is how these texts illuminate one another within the final form of scripture. Genesis 10’s creational diversity, Genesis 11’s fragmentation, and Acts 2’s gathering of the nations are read canonically as a coherent and purposeful narrative, regardless of whether a precise echo was intended. Indeed, the absence of structural correspondence may actually strengthen rather than undermine the canonical argument: Pentecost is not a mechanical restoration of the Genesis 10 Table of Nations, but something altogether more remarkable. Whilst Bruce (also Barrett 2002, p.110) argues that this ‘event was nothing less than a reversal of the curse of Babel’ (1988, p.59), it could be argued that the Holy Spirit does not simply reconstitute what was scattered at Babel; rather, the Spirit gathers a new community of diversity, united not by ethnicity or geography but by the common experience of hearing God speak in their own tongue. This is not a reversal of Babel but its redemption.
d. Divided Responses: Interpretation and Dismissal (vv. 12–13)
‘They are filled with new wine’ (Acts 2:13) was the conclusion drawn by some of those present — a reminder of Paul’s later warning that the use of glossolalia in a public gathering may be misunderstood by those unfamiliar with it (1 Corinthians 14:23). Some dismissed the event entirely, alleging that the disciples were drunk (Bruce 1988, p.59; Walton 2024, p.183, Barrett 2002, p.111). Walton further suggests that the reference to new wine carried an additional insult, implying cheap or inferior wine, and that the sneering was therefore intended not merely to explain away the phenomenon but to question the decency and integrity of those speaking in tongues, undermining their credibility as witnesses (Walton 2024, p.183).
Read canonically, this divided response is itself significant. The gospel is received with both acceptance and rejection from the very moment of its proclamation, and Walton observes that this theme runs as a consistent thread throughout Acts — played out repeatedly in 3:1–10; 3:11–26; 4:1–4; 5:17–41; 6:8–7:60, and again in chapters 13, 14, and 17 (Walton 2024, p.183). The question ‘what does this mean?’ (Acts 2:12) and the dismissal ‘they are filled with new wine’ (Acts 2:13) represent two fundamental responses to the activity of God which the canonical narrative traces from Pentecost to the ends of the earth.
e. Babel Revisited: From Confusion to Understanding (Genesis 11)
‘The book of Acts is like the book of Genesis. It announces a beginning but without the language of beginning.’ (Jennings 2017, p.1)
A canonical reading of Acts 2 reveals that Pentecost does not undo the diversity of Babel but redeems it. The Spirit’s activity at Pentecost does not restore a single universal language, a new ‘one lip,’ but instead equips the disciples to speak in the languages of those gathered (Acts 2:4). The gospel is not proclaimed in one sacred tongue which all must learn; rather, each person hears the good news in their own language (Acts 2:6–7). Diversity is not the problem to be solved; it is the gift through which God chooses to speak.
This is significant canonically. In Genesis 11, the builders of Babel feared scattering and sought unity through their own achievement — to ‘make a name for ourselves’ (Genesis 11:4). Brueggemann identifies two kinds of unity in the narrative: a covenant unity which allows scattering without fear, and a prideful unity which fears scattering and seeks security in human accomplishment (Brueggemann 1982, p.98). Pentecost inaugurates the former. The nations gathered in Jerusalem — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia and beyond (Acts 2:9–11) — are not absorbed into a single culture or language but are gathered as themselves, each hearing God speak in their own tongue. Wright argues that the scattering at Babel was not retribution but prevention, a gracious act of God to restrain the concentration of human evil (Wright 2004, pp.216–217). Pentecost can be read as the fulfilment of that redemptive intention — the scattered nations are now gathered by the Spirit, not into uniformity, but into a community of diversity united in worship.
The early church’s sharing of possessions (Acts 2:44–45) further underlines this contrast with Babel. Where Babel’s builders sought greatness for themselves, the Pentecost community turns outward in solidarity and generosity. This is a community grounded not in human ambition but in the Messiahship of Jesus, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 52 and 53.
This canonical thread reaches its fulfilment in Revelation’s vision of a redeemed humanity drawn from every nation, tribe, people, and language standing together in worship (Revelation 7:9). God’s dwelling with humanity in the new creation (Revelation 21:3) completes what was broken at Babel and what was begun at Pentecost. Read canonically, the thread running from Genesis 10’s creational diversity through Genesis 11’s fragmentation, through Pentecost’s gathering, to Revelation’s eschatological community tells a single coherent story: that human diversity is not the consequence of judgement but the shape of God’s sovereign, redemptive purposes for all creation, for eternity.
f. Joel’s Prophecy Fulfilled: The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh
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Joel is a significant canonical bridge when discerning the activity of God through his Spirit throughout the narrative of the Bible. The dating of Joel is disputed among scholars, some arguing for a pre-exilic date of around 900 BC, whilst most accept a later post-exilic date of 400–350 BC (Rogers 2022, p.96). However, Childs (1992, p9) would argue that what matters is how Joel, and in particular the prophecy in Joel 2:28–32 quoted by Peter in Acts 2:17–21, functions within the wider canon of scripture. The Spirit’s activity can be traced throughout the Old Testament from the hovering over the waters at creation (Genesis 1:2), through the empowering of leaders and prophets (Numbers 11:25; 1 Samuel 16:13; Isaiah 61:1), to the promises of restoration in the prophets (Ezekiel 36:26–27; Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:3). Joel stands within the canon as its most explicit anticipation of a universal outpouring. Peter’s sermon is the ‘first public proclamation of the gospel’ (Barrett 2002, p.113) in Acts following Pentecost. Speaking in tongues is not the product of cheap wine but an act of the Spirit, as Joel had anticipated centuries before.
The critical canonical phrase is ‘all flesh.’ It is important to note that Peter was speaking to a community in a state of crisis — the crucifixion of Jesus, the rumours of resurrection, and the claims that this Jesus was the promised Messiah had created profound uncertainty and anticipation in equal measure. Pentecost is an extraordinary moment in the life of the people of God. In the past, the Spirit’s activity had been limited to prophets, judges, kings, and craftsmen, but now the Spirit’s presence is available to anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21). The universalising of the Spirit’s activity — poured out on sons and daughters, old and young, male and female, slave and free (Joel 2:28–29) — is the canonical fulfilment of Moses’s longing that all God’s people would receive the Spirit and prophesy (Numbers 11:29). The promise of a new covenant in which God’s law would be written on human hearts (Jeremiah 31:31–34) and his Spirit placed within his people (Ezekiel 36:26–27) finds its fulfilment at Pentecost. This is not an aberration in the story of God’s dealings with humanity; it is the fulfilment of a promise written into the canonical shape of scripture from the very beginning.
g. Anticipating the New Creation: ‘a multitude from every nation.’ Revelation 7:9
This paper has argued that Pentecost was the inauguration of a community of God’s people defined not by ethnicity but by relationship with Jesus — and Revelation confirms that this intercultural community is not a temporary phenomenon but the permanent shape of the new creation. The vision of a great multitude from every nation, tribe, language, and people standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9) stands as the canonical endpoint of the thread this paper has been tracing throughout scripture. What exploded into life at Pentecost is not reversed or dissolved in eternity — it is fulfilled and completed.
This is not accidental. Read canonically, it reveals God’s sovereign purposes stretching from the very beginning — from the command to fill the earth in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:28) through the creational diversity of Genesis 10 which implies that all nations are be blessed by God (Bauckham 2003, p.55) through the fragmentation of Babel in Genesis 11, the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 which (Bauckham 2003, p.28) argues through Abraham God is calling all the nations of the earth to himself and begins his missional intent to reach out to all people which finds fulfilment at the gathering of the nations at Pentecost in Acts 2, to the eschatological community redeemed in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 5:9). Bauckham has argued that the vision of a great multitude from every nation, tribe, people and language in Revelation 7:9 is a deliberate canonical echo of the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, representing the eschatological ingathering of all the peoples of the earth (Bauckham, 1993, p.346). Jesus also said, quoting Isaiah 56:7, said My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations (Mark 11:17, also Matthew 21 and Luke 19) indicating further that as Israel’s Messiah he is Lord of the whole earth.
The God who commanded humanity to fill the earth, who redeemed the scattering of Babel through the gift of the Spirit, is the same God who will dwell with humanity in the new creation — with every tear wiped away and all things made new (Revelation 21:3–5). The intercultural community inaugurated at Pentecost is therefore not a pastoral aspiration or a sociological accident; it is a theological necessity, written into the canonical shape of scripture from creation to new creation where ‘the nations bring their glory and honour to the new Jerusalem….’ (Bauckham 2003, p.110).
vi. Theological Reflection: The New Intercultural Community
This paper was written to explore the ecclesiology of living in and with an intercultural parish — a congregation which is slowly beginning to reflect the ethnic diversity of its context. Against the backdrop of a rise in right-wing populism across the western hemisphere, the idea of an intercultural church living as a ‘colony of heaven’ (Hauerwas and Willimon 1989, p.12), simultaneously countercultural and a foretaste of what a new heaven and a new earth might look like, carries considerable theological and pastoral significance. A canonical hermeneutic is enriching as an approach precisely because it traces the thread of God’s sovereign purposes reaching beyond the confines of the religion of Israel, crossing and indeed ignoring national boundaries in order to gather all of humanity to himself.
Pentecost introduces us to a God who offers divine hospitality, revealing the Messiah promised to the people of Israel as the true and only Lord of the whole world: ‘His dominion shall be from one sea to the other, from the River to the ends of the earth’ (Psalm 72:8). (Wright 2007, p.255) This echoes God’s promise to Abraham that all families of the earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3) and connects to the Great Commission in which the risen Jesus sends his disciples to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Read canonically, these texts form a single thread of universal purpose running through the whole of scripture, and Joel serves as a prophetic canonical bridge in the Old Testament which promised the gift of the Spirit upon a community waiting for Messiah to come.
In the first twelve chapters of Acts, we see the consequences of such claims: if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not. The radical nature of this gospel that Jesus, who was crucified and rose again, is Lord, and that the whole world is called to acknowledge him as such is what the disciples proclaim (Bosch 1991, p.40). They do not simply say ‘believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven.’ Whilst the assurance of eternal life is important, the gospel proclaimed at Pentecost is far more revolutionary than that. The words of Mary now sung daily in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) — that proud are scattered, the mighty brought low, and the humble lifted up — come to life in these crucial early chapters of Acts, which set an example for the church throughout the ages. That example remains as potent today as it was in around 30 AD when the tongues of fire rested on the heads of the disciples gathered in the upper room in Roman occupied Jerusalem.
vii. Canonical Interpretation and Ministry: An Assessment
The context in which this paper seeks to make a contribution is an urban parish close to London in which sixty-five percent of the congregation identifies as UK Minority Ethnic, and the surrounding neighbourhood encompasses approximately one hundred languages and over fifty percent of residents from other faith traditions. Such a parish is not simply a pastoral challenge to be managed. Read canonically, and in particular through the lens of the Pentecost narrative, it is a theological sign to be inhabited and celebrated. A canonical reading of Pentecost offers the pastor and preacher a hermeneutical framework that enables them to draw on the entirety of scripture in order to bring alive the complex social, cultural, and spiritual realities within which the congregation lives. In this context, the question ‘what does this mean?’ is not merely an ancient one found in the narrative of Acts 2; it is a question that the priest and pastor must ask every Sunday.
A canonical approach to preaching in such a context is enriching precisely because it refuses to treat diversity as an obstacle to unity. Where a purely historical-critical approach might illuminate the first-century significance of the Pentecost narrative whilst leaving the congregation uncertain of its contemporary relevance, a canonical reading traces the thread of God’s sovereign, intercultural purposes from Genesis to Revelation and places the congregation within that same story. The preacher who reads Acts 2 canonically can invite members of that congregation, from Ghana, India, Iran, Nigeria, Jamaica, Pakistan and from families who have worshipped in the same English parish for generations to hear themselves together in the nations gathered in Jerusalem. This is not merely an illustration; it is a genuine theological claim about who they are and what they represent.
This has immediate pastoral implications for a congregation that is becoming more ethnically diverse. The temptation, sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate, is to absorb new members into the existing cultural idiom of the parish: its music, its liturgy, its social patterns, and its unspoken assumptions about what church looks and sounds like. A canonical reading of Pentecost resists this tendency directly. The Spirit of God at Pentecost did not require the gathered nations to learn a single sacred language; each heard the gospel in their own tongue (Acts 2:6). Cultural uniformity, however comfortable to some, is not the shape of the Spirit-filled community inaugurated at Pentecost. It is, canonically speaking, closer to Babel than to Pentecost — a unity achieved through human effort and the suppression of difference, rather than the covenant unity which, in Brueggemann’s terms, allows scattering without fear (Brueggemann 1982, p.98).
The political and prophetic dimensions of this canonical reading are equally urgent. Across the western hemisphere, a resurgent right-wing populism has sought to weaponise Christian identity, reclaiming the cross as an emblem of ethnic and cultural homogeneity and deploying it in the service of nationalist and anti-immigrant politics. The canonical vision of Pentecost stands as a direct theological counter-witness to such a narrative. The church is, by the very nature of its founding, a community explicitly defined by the gathering of many nations, tribes, languages, and peoples. Any ecclesiology which seeks to sanctify ethnic or national uniformity has fundamentally misread both the Pentecost narrative and the canonical shape of Christian identity as it runs from Genesis to Revelation. The urban, multi-ethnic parish does not need to apologise for what it is or what it is becoming; it needs to understand, more deeply than ever, that it bears prophetic witness to a watching world.
A canonical interpretation of scripture allows the preacher and pastor to weave the story of God found throughout the whole Bible into the life of the church and to live it out through the community of God’s people. A historical-critical approach can lead towards consistently arguing the validity or authenticity of individual texts — and whilst such concerns are not unimportant, when pursued in isolation they risk undermining the canon as an instrument of cohesion in faith and as a means of shaping the identity of a worshipping community. A canonical approach allows the pastor to show how God’s purposes — from creation, through the call of the patriarchs, through Moses and the prophets who wait in eager expectation for the Messiah, to the coming of Jesus and the pouring out of the Spirit — must shape the church today as she seeks to be salt and light in a fractured world.
Hauerwas and Willimon’s image of the church as a ‘colony of heaven’ (1989, p.12) is instructive for a congregation seeking to be genuinely intercultural. Such a community is not simply one which reflects the demographics of its surrounding neighbourhood; it is a community that embodies an alternative politics — one shaped not by the logic of nation, race, cultural affinity, or language, but by the logic of the kingdom of God. When the pastor can show that the same God who redeemed the scattering of Babel in gracious providence, who poured out the Spirit on all flesh at Pentecost, and who will gather every nation before the throne in the new creation, is the God present in their shared worship today, the congregation is given a theological identity robust enough to sustain the demanding, joyful, and sometimes uncomfortable work of becoming a genuinely intercultural community of faith (Philippians 3:20).
viii. Conclusion: Speaking God’s Deeds of Power in Every Language
‘What does this mean?’ remains the central question this paper has sought to explore. It was asked by bewildered onlookers on the streets of Roman-occupied Jerusalem around 30 AD, and as this paper has argued, a canonical reading of scripture keeps this question constantly and urgently alive. The Pentecost story cannot simply be consigned to the past as a foundational episode in the history of the early church; even as we receive it as a historical event, it is something that permeates the life of the church in every generation. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the gift of tongues, and the gathering of the nations continues to demand an answer and most urgently, it demands an answer from the congregation that meets week by week in twenty-first century Slough.
This paper has argued that a canonical reading of Acts 2:1–12 reveals Pentecost as the Spirit-enabled inauguration of a new intercultural community. God’s intentions, disclosed throughout the entire narrative of scripture and anticipated with increasing urgency in the Old Testament, are to draw to himself a family from every nation. This new community does not undo the diversity of Babel, nor does it seek to restore some kind of linguistic uniformity; rather, it redeems the fragmentation of Genesis 11 into something altogether more remarkable. The church is called to be a covenant community of many tongues, many languages, and many dialects, united not by ethnicity, race, or geography, but by the shared experience of hearing God speak in our own language and by the confession that Jesus — crucified, risen, and reigning — is Lord of the whole world.
Read canonically, the Pentecost narrative is not simply one episode in the New Testament. It is the fulfilment of a promise woven through the entire fabric of scripture: from creation, through the Table of Nations, through the scattering of Babel, through the call of Abraham, through the longing of the prophets, to the eschatological hope of Revelation’s great multitude drawn from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 7:9). The intercultural community is not a problem to be managed or an aspiration to be gradually achieved; it is the church’s identity, given by the Holy Spirit and written into the canonical shape of scripture from the very beginning. The calling of every generation is to understand why the church so often does not look like what the Spirit began at Pentecost, and to live more fully into what the Spirit has made it.
This matters profoundly at the present moment. The politics of fear and division, the rhetoric of exclusion, and the hijacking of the cross in the service of nationalist agendas that would have been wholly unrecognisable to the disciples gathered in that upper room, all these demand a prophetic response. The Pentecost community bears witness to a different and more ancient story: the story of a God who scattered Babel not in judgement but in grace, who poured out his Spirit on all flesh without distinction of nation, language, or status, and who will one day welcome the nations as ‘they bring their glory and honour into the new Jerusalem’ Revelation 21:24–26, offering to God all that they are and all that they have (Bauckham 2003, p.111). The church does not need to become intercultural: it already is. The calling in every generation is simply to go on speaking God’s deeds of power in every language, to the ends of the earth.
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