According to Protestantism, why is Hermeneutics necessary if we have the Holy Spirit?
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First step: listening / reading the Bible with the mind
Protestants believe in the "perspicuity" and "clarity" of Scripture, so that anyone who hears or reads the Biblical testimony about God and Jesus through His prophets, apostles, and gospel writers can understand the gospel, the message of salvation.
Second step: Holy Spirit illuminating the reader and giving grace to believe
Holy Spirit role is separate, comes under the heading of "authority" of Scripture, making the claim already understandable by the person's mind to be accepted as authoritative by the person's heart. Protestants believe this Holy Spirit's role of illumination is necessary.
Then it is ALSO the Holy Spirit that gives us the grace to believe. This grace to believe makes a person to consciously take the step of faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. This is step that demons don't take. They understand but they don't have faith (James 2:19) because they clearly don't have the Holy Spirit in them.
Third step: responding in sanctification
What's next?
Faith prompts the new believer to want to respond. Should one get baptized? What does exactly following Jesus mean? What commandments to obey? How about spiritual gifts, is it still available today? What exactly does the Lord's supper mean: is it symbolic or real presence? Which denomination is "right"?
To answer all these questions the believer needs a certain "hermeneutics" that form the principles of "exegesis" to interpret his/her reading the Bible appropriately, which in turn require some knowledge of the historical context of the Bible, the rules of interpreting the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, how to resolve apparently conflicting passages, etc. This is usually an intellectual process, something taught formally in seminary, or through Bible self-study under the direction of a Bible study textbook or led by a pastor.
In Protestantism, this third step of "response" is less critical in the larger scheme of a person's salvation compared to the second step where the Holy Spirit illumination to accept the authority of the Bible is critical to lead the believer to declare faith in Jesus which what brings the justification of the believer in the eyes of God: "justification by faith alone", the sola fide of Protestantism. In contrast, the "response" is the sanctification process which some Protestants believe in monergism where the Holy Spirit works on us without needing our "work".
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