Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Hermeneutics as Meta-Narrative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hermeneutics as Meta-Narrative. Show all posts

Monday, August 6, 2012

The Narrative Story of God, Creation and Mankind from an Evolutionary Perspective of Love Wins

An interesting post by one of my favorite theologians whose guest writer pretty much says what we've been saying during this past year's investigation into Science and Evolution, Human Origins, the Universe, even Narrative Theology and Emergent Christianity's focus on "Love Wins"! Each are major sidebars in this blogsite which I will reference throughout Bev Mitchell's guest article on the story of mankind, the story of God, His divine acts and almighty purposes! Amen and Amen!

R.E. Slater (res)
August 6, 2012

red highlights = links to other articles in this blogsite


* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


A guest post (the biblical story of God and us that includes evolution) from a frequent visitor here
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/08/a-guest-post-the-biblical-story-of-god-and-us-that-includes-evolution-from-a-frequent-visitor-here/

by Roger Olson
August 5, 2012
Comments

Homo Sapiens (Naturalis) and The Creator-servant’s Universe-The Revelation:
The Biblical Story of God and Us in Brief
By Bev Mitchell

Homo Sapiens (Naturalis)

Homo Sapiens, the ones who know, the conscious ones, the self-conscious ones. We sense that we are on a journey, that we have a story and are in a story, that we are part of that story [e.g., cf. "Narrative Theology" - res]. We know in our conscious selves that we have come from somewhere and are going somewhere. We resist the thought that our conscious self will one day end. We refuse to really believe this. Self consciousness, self awareness act like powerful lenses that focus us on …. well, ourselves. We are not only self conscious, we are naturally, unavoidably, self-centered. This is perfectly natural, even essential in a material setting.

We, the conscious ones, are aware of life. An amazing thing, life. Think about it. Consider the energy required to make life possible – start with the energy of the sun. Those energized packets (photons) arriving in waves from the sun, specifically those in a narrow energy band called visible light, making life possible. Photosynthesis organizes carbon, present in the air as carbon dioxide, into carbon-based life. All life, as we know it, is carbon based. Consider the word ‘organize’. The only way to organize anything is to put in energy, continuously. It is fundamentally a battle against entropy (disorder), relentless entropy. To win against entropy requires a continuous flow of energy and efficient management of that energy. As far as we know, this battle has been going on from the time something was first organized – from the first moment that chaos was challenged, and it will continue as long as entropy makes disorder a possibility.

Our consciousness also makes us aware of the other-others like us, others not like us, others not at all like us. Beings. Living things, with an existence, beneficiaries of those sunny photons and photosynthesis and efficient energy management, but apparently not self-conscious. At least not in a way that allows the kind of communication we would like to have. But part of the family of living things nevertheless. It’s really quite amazing when you stop to think about it. [sic, cf. "Eusociality," - res]

Our awareness of a journey, of a story there somewhere, also moves our minds beyond life, to before life, to afterlife. A bit of a scary thought that second one. But just try not thinking about it for very long, I dare you. While we are naturally self-centered, we have a strong sense that …………… I won’t presume to say what your strong sense is, but I am prepared to bet that you have one.

So, here we sit, conscious, amazed, self-centered, unsatisfied. Maybe if we just get busy we can ignore that last bit. After all, there is so much to do, so much to learn. It’s even a full-time job just keeping entropy at bay in our own little corner. What keeps us very busy should satisfy us, right? And then there is this self-centeredness, kind of cozy really, maybe it’s even all about me. That would be satisfying, wouldn’t it? If only I could get everyone, everything, else to agree. Damn!

Meanwhile, the universe continues to spin, to evolve. Much stays the same, but, if we pay attention, much is changing. We can’t conclude or pretend, like our recent ancestors did, that things are essentially wrapped up. The story is moving. We are conscious of this movement, we are conscious of the passage of time, we are conscious of a direction in the movement, we want to know what the movement is about, what is behind it, what is its purpose, where are we going? Enter religious thoughts, theories, speculations, disagreements, battles……..

Religious awareness first comes from our self-centeredness, and may never move beyond ourselves, may remain entirely on the human plane, and may be thought of in material or spiritual terms, or both. This kind of religious thought and activity is essentially like all other complex thinking and activity, it’s entirely self-centered. It’s probably even adaptive, in the Darwinian sense. Such is the state of Homo Sapiens before some revelation from God. Some revelation from the One who makes all this highly organized universe possible, a reality, brings it into existence and sustains it. [cf, Tim Keller's quote of the Christian philosopher Peter van Inwagen's statement for God's inclusion of mankind's religious belief into the human genetic structure from early on. - res] 

To continue with the story, some revelation from God is absolutely essential.

The Creator/Servant’s Universe -The Revelation

This universe came into existence in the face of a spiritual rebellion against God’s will. Our creator is waging a cosmic battle against rebellion, chaos, disorder and confusion – a physicist would say, a battle against entropy. Maximum entropy equals maximum disorder. There is a spiritual battle, a rebellion against God, that comes from a great deceiver who wants only chaos and darkness (Rev 12:7-9). In the first verses of the Bible we see God’s response to chaos, darkness and emptiness – he simply and powerfully says “Let there be light.” This is the first bit of evidence that our Creator, through divine love, will win because he is the one God, YHWH, and in response to his first command we are told “there was light.” This work will be completed as our Creator’s perfect masterpiece when rebellion is no more and the Son of God, the resurrected Man-God, reigns supreme in perfect love. [cf. "The Origin of Sin, Hell, and Universalism," - res] 

Our Creator is neither a God of the gaps nor a God of the zaps nor the grand tweaker. The vast majority of the gaps left by current scientific work will be filled in, so these are ultimately embarrassing places to shelter our understanding of God’s mighty acts. As for imagining a God who ‘zaps’ things into existence (or out of existence) this only reveals our sad desire for magic. At least, we should expect our Creator to behave in a more interesting manner. More recent proposals that God deems evolution a reasonable way to get to our present world, but reserves the right to tweak things along the way, don’t really capture the big picture of an immensely great God either.

According to the growing mountain of scientific evidence, God does indeed work in far more interesting ways. The observable universe studied by physicists and cosmologists is unfolding, and has been unfolding for 13.7 billion years. The living world that biologists explore is constantly changing, and it has been changing for more than 3.5 billion years, with no end in sight. Furthermore, all living things are related; none have been found that don’t belong to the same big family. Now that is the work of a very interesting Creator. No zaps, no gaps, except those due to our lack of knowledge, and tweeks unnecessary.

The evolving cosmos and the evolving bios to which we belong are clearly works in progress; not independently either, but part of a huge, long-term, unfolding masterpiece. And amazingly, all of the participants are part of the process. All are unfolding in relation to everything else in an unimaginable, magnificent symphony. If, on our own, we tried to imagine how a Creator might operate, we would never come up with this – it’s way beyond us. We would probably imagine something more like a grand zapper who controls everything. It’s a good thing we weren’t asked for advice on the method to use! We were just given the opportunity to participate and ended up with the blessed ability to appreciate the results, the ongoing results.

It turns out that our Creator doesn’t stop creating. It’s also obvious that he is not in a hurry. At 13.7 billion and counting, we probably have a while to go. Diversity and change also seem to be high on the Creator’s list of good things. It seems, as well, that our Creator is more than a little interested in us. We can’t reach him, but he reaches us in self-revelation. His works in the natural world certainly get our attention, but he actually comes to us, first through Israel, the chosen nation, then in person, the new Adam. The creator actually becomes a creature.

We have noticed, all of us, that we have serious problems with what Scriptures call the ‘knowledge of good and evil’. Having this knowledge, like Israel having the law, makes us acutely aware that knowing the difference between good and evil but is of little help in actually doing good. We are born failures at doing good, far too often. We expect points for trying, but basically we lack something fundamental when it comes to being good the way we know we should – in ways that will please a holy God.

Enter the Creator become Creature. Since he is making everything in perfect love, he knows a thing or two about always doing the right thing. The Creator’s physical presence among us, is a unique, once-in-a-creation event – what scientists refer to as a singularity. In fact, from a Christian perspective, the singularity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man, the God-man, is the very heart of creation as well as the essential beginning of the Gospel. He is the apex of creation while also being the one through whom creation flows. This Creator we worship is truly interesting beyond our imagining!

Then, because of our inborn inability to deal with the temptation to not do the right thing, and the resulting dysfunction and horror this brings to our world, our Creator as Servant voluntarily suffers with us. In fact, suffers maximally and ultimately, participating even in death for us. But our Creator/Servant did nothing that should lead to death, he accepted it on our behalf – a willing sacrifice. Then, our Creator/Servant, in a glorious continuance of his very interesting creative work, rose from the dead in a glorified body – a victorious King. Scriptures call him the ‘first-born’ from among the dead because he is indeed a new creation – the Creator/Servant/Perfect Sacrifice/King, our Lord.

This resurrected Lord now takes up residence with the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and looses the Spirit, the very Spirit of Creation, upon the earth for our edification, guidance and empowerment. As we have been through all of time, we are called to continue with our own role in creation, now under the guidance of this Spirit of Creation. The Creator is not done yet. He keeps making moves that are more and more interesting. Now we are called to get on with the good over evil thing, but with the Spirit of Creation within us, because, in Christ, we too are new creations. Not completed yet, but, as with all of creation, works in progress.

This great, ongoing and ever more interesting creation story needs to be told. The Spirit of Creation within us moves us to tell the story, with boldness. The treasure we have within is a treasure to tell people about. It’s all connected. It has been going on for 13.7 billion years. We are a part of it simply by being born, and as Christian believers we are a part of it with a wonderful new re-birth and a new role. We have been given Good News to tell to the whole world. The Creator, Immanuel, has come to us. The Creator, Jesus the Saviour, has redeemed humanity. By repenting from our self-centeredness and acknowledging the work and centrality of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we can live and grow in him as he lives and grows in us. Ultimately, we shall behold him and we shall be like him. We will then know him as he is. His love will have won! [yes, "Love Wins." - res]

Bev Mitchell, Doaktown, NB, Oaxaca, MX The Creator/Servant’s Universe April 19, 2012 modified May 2 and 9, 2012 Homo sapiens (naturalis) added May 11, 2012





For further discussion on Human Origins & Evolution see -

How God Created by Evolution:
A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/01/resolving-genesis-story-between.html







Tuesday, July 24, 2012

An Unnecessary Division between Narrative and Literary Theology




The word theology comes from two Greek words: “theos”, meaning “God”, and “logos”, meaning “word”. So theology is "Words about God." When we put to words what we believe about God, we discover that God has been writing a story of hope and redemption for all the world. This story is a movement from creation to new creation, and God has given us a role to play in that story, in the restoration of our relationships with God, each other, ourselves, and creation. Since story is central to our belief about God, our words about God—our theology—exists in the form of a narrative.
- Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, http://marshill.org/believe/


The Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, is running an article on Narrative Theology as an Evangelical response against its popular usage when retelling the stories of the Bible from an emergent, contemporary theology focused on telling God's story, and the story of man, in as clear a manner as possible. When compared to the plethora of divisive systematic doctrines held by any number of Christian traditions, churches, denominations and associations, each fearing loss of their distinctive brand of dogmas, one cannot help but wonder why this synthesization of Christianity and the usage of narrative theology wasn't employed many years earlier.

Upon review I found CT's article unnecessarily nit-picky but in all fairness wanted to include it into our blog so that we might have an appreciation for some of the criticisms Narrative Theology bears by those unfavorably set against it. The main thrust of the article is to recast Narrative Theology as a sub-category of a larger categorical description called Literary Theology. But when done simply dodges the central point by purposely misunderstanding the category of Narrative Theology itself as Field's immediately did in her pithy observation:

"God gave us stories indeed, but he also gave us proverbs, poetry, law,
exhortation, prophesy, lament, riddle, letters, visions, genealogies, and prayers."

Now this is all well-and-good as a safe evangelical statement but a narrative theologian will include these genre classifications as part of the description of Narrative Theology. Meaning, that narratives are more than just stories, but stories that will include all forms of communication between people and events in the Bible (as noted above) just as they do today. So to not observe those distinctions is not the intent of Narrative Theology but rather to include these genres as an overall part of narrative story telling. Hence, I find Leslie Field's observations unfairly critical to her imposed imagination and fears of Narrative Theology.


In fact, the art of speech itself must use all of the above qualities and even more, should it desire to communicate the various ideas and expressions humans wish to present to one another. We are not machines speaking in binary code to one another, but emotional human beings using the full range of ourselves to express ideas to one another whether it is through music, poetry, silence, physical motion, the arts, and so forth. Narrative Theology taps into the polyphonic uniqueness of diverse and multicultural societies to derive meaning from literary ambiguity and metaphorical expressions to create clearer (amazingly!) communication and understanding between such diverse populations regionally, nationally and globally. This is Narrative Theology's strength. It is not intended as a mathematical expression of language and ideological restatement between communities and people, as was predominantly expressed in the later 19th and 20th Enlightened and Modernistic societies of Western Civilization. But nor does Narrative Theology ignore the many genres of mankind. Rather it utilizes it to the full and insists upon its recognition and employment. Which is why I find Field's observation to be unfairly critical and simply an expression of Evangelical theology's religious concerns and fears.

Consequently, I do not see the need to re-specify an inclusive narrative story into its literary parts (much like a grammarian would unnecessarily parse a sentence into grammatical diagrams when speaking conversationally). No, there is a time and place for this sort of narrative de-construction. However, generally a narrative theologian will include all parts of that story's genre when wishing to avoid de-limiting the biblical story unnecessarily by under-describing it. In other instances that theologian may forego those efforts by incorporating all literary elements into the narrative storyline without distinction. It depends upon the focus and the intent of discussion. For myself, I've seen it used both ways, and by the same person (the infamous Rob Bell), and done successfully. For example, if we're reading through the Psalms of David it is not uncommon to hear exhortation in one set of stanzas, prayers in another section, and perhaps a quotation of the law or a proverb in yet a third. Is it necessary for the theologian to stop to describe each classification of genre or may s/he bind all together into a story form that can speak of each and still carry the larger meaning forward? I think we can.

Which then gets around Leslie Field's complaints about Narrative Theology and more about her refusal to adopt the Emergent Christian practice of postmodernistic communication in contemporary theology than it does about the usage of narrative itself. A criticism which we've noted time-and-again by Evangelical Theology as a major sub-branch of Christianity wishing to exclude any other competing theological schools-of-thought from questioning its ascendancy and dominant brand of biblical interpretation. However, those "other" non-evangelic schools of thought are beginning to compete quite effectively with that of Evangelicalism's more traditional schools of dogma as Leslie Fields has noted in her many references. Which is not something an evangelic would like to admit to, and yet, if they are honest, would find these newer fields of study and interpretation helpful and revolutionary to Evangelical doctrine as it sits right now. Especially if it would help the Christian message be better heard and understood.

Consequently, I noted criticism thrown at Rob Bell and Brian McLaren along with a few other Emergents so that Narrative Theology is placed into a negative light rather than the helpful light that it presents itself as to those of us searching for a biblical wholism unreduced by the statism of revered systematic doctrines of yesteryear. The Christian message has become lost in a wilderness of its own making that many postmodern, narrative theologians now seek to reclaim by narrating the major themes of the Bible for general public consumption. Rather than quoting chapter-and-verse in modernistic reductionisms the Emergent Christian movement focuses on describing God's revelation to the world through the telling of stories using main character development, plot lines, protagonists, conflict, and resolution. As such, many of the older dogmatic views of the church become lost by this methodology to the irritation of the old-guard. But, I think, if done well, actually will present a much broader, more interesting response to God's revelation that has conversely become lost in the many conflicting words and dogmatic statements being preached from today's Evangelical pulpits.

And so, please read Leslie's well-written article below. But bear in mind that she has an end purpose in view. And that purpose seems to me to hold on to the past and not releasing us unto the future beauty-and-promise of today's postmodernistic, Emergent theologies. Theologies which seek to earnestly reach out to today's societies searching for God but having become too easily entangled in the dogmatic and doctrinal baggage of the past imperiling the message of the Gospel for today's audiences. Emergents, however, are learning to speak this message better (and I submit, more biblically!) by re-reading the Scripture's tone and import. Something Jesus did quite well in His day. And something that caused the religious theologians of His day consternation and anxiety to the point of cruelly misjudging the early Christians as godless unbelievers because they followed Jesus' teachings and not their own private misinterpretations. Let us not repeat their grievous mistake. Let us be better hearers of the Word, and better followers of God, by joining together in a unified front allowing for the rapidly expanding multipluralism within the Church, and the conscious latency of multivocality found within the many passages of the Bible's narratives.

Truly, Narrative Theology does then indeed represent the "plurivocal, polyphonic, multilinear anthologies of so magnificent and irreducible a book" we call the Bible. A book that wishes to reveal God and His gracious revelation to mankind. And it is with solidarity that all narrative theologians would stand with Leslie Field in her apprisal that we no less diminish the Word of God by speaking of it simplistically when saying to her that we no longer wish to restrict it either by reducing it into systematized statements (described below as "the traditional formulations of the Christian faith: apologetics, doctrine, systematic theology, propositional truths.")  But together encourage the utilization of Narrative Theology along with Biblical Theology in its many forms to effectively create a balanced apology for the dissemination of the fullness of God's revelation coursing through the fluidity of humanity's grander story. This is the hope of a true, Emergent, postmodernistic, Christianity.

R.E. Slater
July 24, 2012


The Gospel Is More Than a Story: Rethinking Narrative and Testimony

The Gospel Is More Than a Story: Rethinking Narrative and Testimony


Story is all the rage. Everyone pants to tell their personal narrative
or to give the Bible a simpler and more relevant plot.
Maybe all this isn't such a good idea.

Leslie Leyland Fields
posted 7/16/2012 12:00AM

I am halfway through a new version of the Bible, a much-hyped story version that's streamlined to highlight the overall plot: God's story of redemption. I'm so busy trying to follow the narrative, I hardly miss the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and all the non-narrative books that have been largely excised.

But as a university teacher of narrative, I find the plot too slow and convoluted.

I'm disappointed until I remember: Oh yes! There are already novelized versions! Many of their narratives are better!

Just 18 years ago, Robert Weathers noted that most evangelicals were "baffled" by the growing literary interest in the Bible. The bafflement is over. Journals are abuzz with narrative theology. Church mission statements are increasingly presented as "narratives."

In the past ten years, especially in the past five, dozens of authors have called for readers to see the Scriptures as narrative and particularly to read the Bible as a single story. Their books include The Story, The Heart of the Story, The Bible in Brief: The Story from Adam to Armageddon, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative, and many others. A growing number of pastors and theologians attack doctrinal and propositional readings of Scripture. Derek Flood, in his 2011 Huffington Post article "Why Faith Is a Story, Not Doctrine," sums up for many the new slant on Christianity: "Christian faith is not primarily about arguing over right beliefs and doctrines, it is about letting the story of God's grace become our story and shape our lives."

How have we traveled so far and so fast into narrative, from bafflement to bestsellers, to urgent call, and to replacing doctrine? What's behind the sudden and unprecedented swoon into narrative? And, most important: Will the church survive it?

A Baptized Imagination

I will not retract my enthusiasm for narrative entirely. It is about time that Christians value "Once upon a time …." For generations, many Christians viewed story and its various forms—fairy tale, novel, myth, legend—as contrivance at best, products of the fallen imagination at worst. In our recent past, Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton among others have rescued the church from its suspicion of "pagan" stories. They have dissolved the great divide between sacred and secular narratives. All our human stories of heroes, monsters, journeys, and sacrifice give voice to our universal quest for identity, purpose, and deliverance. Instead of competing with God's story, these stories gesture toward it. Writer Frederick Buechner presents the gospel story itself as fairy tale, comedy, tragedy, as "a tale that is too good not to be true." Or, in Lewis's words, "In the story of Christ … all the other stories have somehow come true."

We are story creatures who live in a God-made "story-shaped world" that itself began with the words, "In the beginning." Thus, writing narrative—and reading it—is an act of faith that places us in time and space, locating us in a chronology that suggests by its very order both the cause and meaning of our lives. Narrative affirms that the felt randomness of our lives is not the final word. Instead, beneath and among it all is a coherence, a unity, a "mattering."

I've watched people write stories from their lives where they discover patterns and designs and meanings they had not seen in living them. "Like so many characters, we are lost in a dark wood, a labyrinth, a swamp, and we need a trail of stories to show us the way back to our true home," writes Scott Russell Sanders in his essay "The Most Human Art." We in the church have done this for generations: We stand and give our testimonies, narratives of God's presence in our lives. And in the telling, we are safely placed within God's and our own story.

But the evangelical church's discovery of narrative has a more direct and immediate source: our narrative age. Our culture is saturated with "the power of story." The phrase and approach have penetrated nearly every discipline and discourse, from architecture to zoology. In the book The Triumph of Narrative, journalist Robert Fulford says storytelling stands at the very heart of civilized life. Narrative, he says, is how we explain, teach, and entertain ourselves (and often how we do all three at once). Story has unquestionably become the dominant means of understanding our world, ourselves, and each other. When neighbors and strangers meet today, they often ask not, "What do you do?" but "What is your story?"

And why not? In the broadest terms, narrative—specifically personal narrative, "this-is-my-story" that is its prime expression—restores the value of the personal in the face of impersonal science and technology, as well as the gods of our age, which privilege reason and fact over the personal and experiential. Narrative is quintessentially democratic. It insists that everyone has a story and that all are valued.

Who will Narrate the World?

Yet the rise of narrative in our culture and our churches, for all its good, has a dark understory.

At the risk of oversimplifying what is both familiar and hopelessly complex, here's a thumbnail: Our culture's love affair with story corresponds to its dismissal of the One Story. Western society has rejected both the God of the Scriptures and his master narrative. In the absence of a universal storyline, we must make one up. No, we must make many up, because no single story can contain all that is real and true for all people, or so it's believed. Language and narrative now are used not to discover meaning imbedded in creation by an omnipotent Creator. Instead, they are used to create personal and subjective meanings in the face of non-meaning.

The church, then, is faced with a plethora of narratives that oppose and compete with God's story. Which story or stories will believers choose and follow? Too many believers are choosing the wrong one, say theologians Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Goheen, and Edith Humphrey, among others. Christians are increasingly accommodating the culture's counterstories, its plots of consumerism, idolatry, and self-fulfillment. And they're doing it largely because they don't know God's master story.

Hauerwas recalls asking a classroom of theology students, most of whom had grown up in the church, "What is the story of the Bible?" He was met by blank stares. Goheen, professor of religious studies at Trinity Western University, found his students could neither relate the story of the Bible nor explain why it was important. Goheen has become one of the most vocal and urgent advocates of "reading the Bible as One Story." Robert Webber, a pioneer in narrative, continued his wake-up call to the church with the book Who Gets to Narrate the World?: Contending for the Christian Story in a Age of Rivals.

Apologists have issued the same warning. Lesslie Newbigin, one of the most prominent missiologists of the 20th century, argued that Christians cannot effectively speak the gospel to our culture without "a sense of the Scriptures as a canonical whole, as the story which provides the true context for our understanding of the meaning of our lives."

These are serious charges, yet they ring true. How have believers failed to grasp and articulate the overarching story of Scripture, God's redemptive plan from Eden to the New Jerusalem? Some throw stones at the Sunday school movement, which teaches kids the Bible piecemeal, rarely attempting to contextualize baby Moses in the Nile, brave Daniel in the lions' den, and the annual parade of other fragmented and fatigued Bible characters into the whole gospel story. Others blame a catechetical and moralistic approach, which turns real characters and stories into abstract, lifeless doctrine or ethical "lessons."

These practices are part of a deeper tension identified in Hans Frei's groundbreaking book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in 18th and 19th Century Hermeneutics (1980), generally considered to signal the narrative turn in theology. Frei argues that our willingness to read texts out of context goes back to the Enlightenment and Newtonian science, which sought knowledge by breaking everything into its smallest pieces. The historical-critical method, the grammatical method, higher criticism, and systematic theology became the dominant means of interpreting Scripture. All of these methods intellectualized and subdivided the texts, and located their meaning outside the text. Frei contends that any interpretation of the Scriptures that discounts the realistic, historical narrative will result in distortion.

Since Frei's book, others, such as literary scholars Leland Ryken and Robert Alter, have awakened us to the significance and artistry of the biblical narratives as well as the other genres present. One of the exciting gains of narrative theology is its potential to heal the divide between doctrine and application—how we actually live our lives. Critics of the doctrinal approach to Christianity charge it with cultural irrelevance and a disembodied intellectualism, and embrace the return to biblical narratives of flawed blood-and-flesh men and women like us. As we identify with their stories, reading them holistically with our minds, hearts, and spirits, we are encouraged to live out God's story in our own.

Many theologians have celebrated this turn. The Promise of Narrative Theology was not only a book but also a phrase spoken by many. Its influence upon the church can hardly be overstated. But narrative—even a larger literary approach—cannot right all ills. It's past time to identify what narrative cannot and should not do. This enterprise, still new, is already in danger. The camel that will carry us across the desert is overloaded and stumbling.

Losing the Story in Narrative

Back to my own Bible reading: I never made it through that one-story version of the Bible, despite the removal and/or abridgment of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and all those other non-story parts, such as the lists of genealogies and laws. I confess to impatience—whether with God or the editors, I am not sure. If this is Story, why is it so long and convoluted? Why is the plot so twisted?

Others, apparently, have had the same response. The two editors of this version created their own spinoffs (both using the word story in the title). Both paperbacks condense the Scripture's story yet further and rely on the authors' own stories to illustrate the Bible's stories.

I went on to read the 100 Minute Bible, written for "people who want an easy access into the central Christian story." (Shockingly, Joseph's portion, a page and a half, omits the theme of forgiveness and God's sovereignty.) I tried a novelized form of the Bible and a few other books named earlier. Some enterprising people have even condensed the Bible's story into a three-minute video. Astoundingly, in all but the most cryptic and badly written versions, I am still moved by God's audacious love for humankind. But I do not mistake much of this storytelling for God's words.

It's depressingly ironic. Though the larger narrative theology movement revives a deep respect for the Bible's language and literature, many of the commercial products show little respect for Story. Story, as all high-school English students know, relies not simply on what happened but also on the language and literary devices used to tell it: metaphor, description, analogy, repetition, parable, image. Nor does this larger narrative movement pay heed to the other literary genres God chose to speak his words through—poetry, lament, epistle, proclamation, prophecy.

Writing a 'Better Story'

Despite what I hope are good intentions, some of the one-story Bibles are in danger of committing the same reductionistic error mentioned above. Using Peter Leithart's metaphor, many of these story versions treat the language of Scripture as simply a "husk" that can be disposed of to access the "kernel" of meaning. Whether the kernel is a point of theology, a poetic image of God, or an event that does indeed advance the narrative, the language and figures of speech God inspired appear to be dispensable. In his brilliant book Deep Exegesis, Leithart warns that "Scripture once transformed the world precisely because Bible students clung to the letter. Once the letter is reduced to a malleable vehicle, Scripture loses its potency."

Somehow, in pursuit of the larger story, we've empowered ourselves to reorganize, distill, edit, and rewrite the actual Scriptures. We have failed to recognize that each of these activities not only interprets but also reduces Scripture.

In pursuit of Story, we've abridged the Bible. We've edited out the non-narrative parts. We've reworded the text. We in the church have been committing such acts of revision comfortably for some time. And for postmodern churches and pastors who are calling for a "new kind of Christianity," this is not enough. Some high-profile pastors are forming a Christianity defined purely by Story. "Story" is a near-exclusive category that rejects traditional formulations of the Christian faith: apologetics, doctrine, systematic theology, propositional truths. The Christian faith is first, last, and always a story. And we've not been telling the story right, say Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and other leaders in the emergent church. All are looking to tell a "better story" than the one they accuse evangelicals of telling.

"[T]elling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn't do, or say, or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn't a very good story," Bell complains in Love Wins. Bell defines even hell in terms of story: "Hell is our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story." McLaren calls the church's message "the six-line Greco-Roman narrative (Eden, Fall, condemnation, salvation, heaven, hell)," which is rooted in Plato and Aristotle rather than Jesus, he claims. Reading McLaren's three-book fable series fleshing out his new vision of the Christian life, many complain that original sin, creation-fall-redemption, the deity of Christ, God's holiness, God's sovereignty, the offense of the Cross, worship, justification, and divine inspiration of the Bible—among other elements—are nowhere to be found. The worst enemy in these stories, as in every creative writing class, is dogma, moralizing, and certainty.

McLaren's and Bell's stories end appealingly without wrath, judgment, or any unpleasant inequality, with "everyone enjoying God's good world together with no disgrace or shame, justice being served, and all the wrongs being made right." This is "a better story," says Bell, not because it is more biblically accurate, but because it is "bigger, more loving, more expansive, more extraordinary, beautiful, and inspiring than any other story about the ultimate course history takes."

And why wouldn't we choose the better story? In the postmodern view, stories are not fixed or absolute. They are fluid, changing shape and form with each teller, shifting in the mind of each listener. Pagitt, pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, writes, "What we [Christians] believe is not 'timeless.'" Theology will be "ever-changing," thus "complex understandings meant for all people, in all places, for all times, are simply not possible."

Fascinated with Ourselves

Even among evangelicals, unfortunately, we find unsettling parallels in our embrace of Story. The emphasis on understanding God's meta-narrative and placing our story within God's story has so affirmed our own stories, we've begun to displace the scriptural narratives with our own "better stories." Christianity has always had a taste for sensational testimonies. But a recent string of books from Christian publishers, all best-selling—Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back; 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life; 23 Minutes in Hell; and, a more recent addition to the new genre of children-going-to-heaven stories, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven—should give us pause. The heaven books, two of which sold more than 1.5 million in less than a year, have launched ministries and speaking careers in conservative, Bible-proclaiming churches where the authors share their "testimonies." Yet each book makes claims that conflict, often significantly, with the Bible's account of death, judgment, heaven, and hell. [Here previously reviewed - Piper's "90 Minutes in Heaven?" or Wiese's "23 Minutes in Hell?" True or Not? - res]

Nor do we require stories about God and the afterlife to be true. The Shack, which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time, is a fictional narrative that doesn't claim experiential truth—"this happened to me"—but does claim to teach truth about God and the Christian life. Numerous churches and Christians have embraced William Paul Young's portrait of God as a chuckling African American woman and Jesus as a perky, flannel-clad carpenter. One Christian television interviewer gushed to the author, "God has used you to shatter the preconceptions a lot of us have about God." [The Shack is a personal favorite of mine! - res]

Many of our "preconceptions," of course, are formed by God's Word itself. When pastor Todd Putney convened an enthusiastic community discussion of The Shack, it didn't go as he had hoped. "I thought that book would be a bridge to the God of the Scriptures, but it wasn't. No one wanted to go there. They preferred the story and the god of The Shack over the God of the Scriptures."

The group, A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future, wisely recognized in its fifth tenet that "spirituality, made independent from God's story, is often characterized by … an overly therapeutic culture … and a narcissistic preoccupation with one's own experience." As Eugene Peterson has observed, "the 'text' that seems to be most in favor on the American landscape today is the sovereign self."

As a writer and creative-writing teacher, I see a parallel movement in the halls of memoir, a genre plagued by scandals. As writers recount events from their lives, they hear the siren call to craft a "better story" than the one actually lived. Many answer the call. Some of the most egregious deceptions (he wasn't a Native American orphan but a middle-aged white guy; she wasn't raised by a gang in L.A., and so forth) are explained by a thirst for fame and fortune. But some are undoubtedly the consequence of the postmodern shrug toward truth. The text, and truth itself, is forever malleable by the supreme authorial self. Narcissism and solipsism abound in our literature. Patricia Hampl, one of the seminal contemporary writers and critics of memoir, advises writers to overcome their egocentrism. The purpose of memoir, she reminds us, is not "the fulfillment of the self, or its aggrandizing, but the deft insertion of the self into an over-whelming design." But in a time when the possibility of objective truth is a fiction, the writer-storyteller sees the self as the overwhelming design. We don't submit to a larger story because we are the larger story.

Literary Theology

Before we knew the terms "narrative theology" or "emergent church" or "postmodernism," we knew the stories and events: "In the beginning was the Word …"; "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah …"; "A farmer went out in his field …"; "The rich man died and was there in Abraham's bosom …"; "There was a man who had two sons …"; "So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross …"; "And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth …."

We must return to these stories and events to remember not just the Bible stories, but the story that contains them all—the One Story of God's incomprehensible, outrageous acts of redemption, the stories of a God gathering a people for his name. Here in its pages appear fierce and unlikely heroes, terrifying battles, pilloried prophets, resistant saints, miraculous healings, a foot-washing King, a bloodied God on a cross, a hollow tomb, the final wrath and glory judgment, and a denouement that ends more miraculously than anything we could imagine: the coming of a new city with open gates and a purified people now called sons and daughters who, needing no other light, will enter and walk by the light of the Lamb.

Not everyone will be there. It is not a safe or simple story. Yet the story is for all of us to hear and to heed. We are invited into these pages, not as editors with red pens in hand, but as supplicants seeking understanding and truth. We are invited to live into this narrative, but not to rewrite it, either to gut it of its offense or to reshape it for short attention spans and better sales.

When we read the Bible through the lens of any single genre, agenda, or need, distortion will result. It is critical to grasp the Scriptures' narrative unity to resist our culture's counterstories, but we need not reduce the Scriptures to a single genre to grasp its One Story. God gave us stories indeed, but he also gave us proverbs, poetry, law, exhortation, prophesy, lament, riddle, letters, visions, genealogies, and prayers. Man lives by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. All Scripture makes us wise unto salvation. We need to say, with the apostle Paul, that "we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word" (2 Cor. 4:2, ESV).

For reasons we will likely never know, God, who could have placed in our hands any kind of book he wanted, chose to give us a plurivocal, polyphonic, multilinear anthology, a magnificently irreducible book that contains as many rhetorical forms and voices as we have temperaments and experience. God knew—of course!—that we need them all. It's time, then, to replace the term "narrative theology" with "literary theology" to include all the literary genres God chose to speak through.

Clearly, God's truths are both propositional and incarnational, both theological and experiential. Each is necessary to the other. Each interprets the other. In Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Mark Noll reminds us that doctrinal creeds are needed now more than ever because they "concentrate with fearsome energy on the themes that define the heart of Christianity." Doctrine can do what Bible stories alone cannot: take us beyond the time-and-place limits of human events to encompass the full scope of God's magnificent redemption.

Finally, following the concern of Edith Humphrey, professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary: All of us must examine ourselves, that our human love for God's story does not obscure the God of the Story, that our love for the written word does not displace our love for the Word of God himself. We can be so distracted and dazzled by narrative theology that we neglect the living, indwelling presence within and beyond the story. "We don't participate in a story," she writes, "we participate in him."

It is not the story but the living Christ who saves us.


Leslie Leyland Fields has taught creative nonfiction in Seattle Pacific University's Master of Fine Arts Program, and she'll be returning to Covenant College this fall as writer-in-residence. Her memoir is titled Surviving the Island of Grace: Life on the Wild Edge of America.

Go to ChristianBibleStudies.com for "The Gospel Is More Than a Story," a Bible study based on this article.



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Saturday, February 25, 2012

What Is Narrative Theology? It is the "Grander Story of God and Creation"


The Grander Story of God and Creation

In today's contemporary theology a new term has arisen called "Narrative Theology" that is sidling alongside the older term of "Biblical Theology" to give it a fuller expression to our dynamic understanding between God and man that we've been calling Relational Theism in an everyday expression of interaction, community, and relationship between the Godhead and Creation. Whereas the older idea of revelatory communication showed us what God was doing in specific covenantal areas of the Old and New Testaments, narrative theology takes this idea and couples it with another older German theological idea of heilsgeschichte (salvation history; a term used by Oscar Cullman to describe an interpretation of history emphasizing God's saving acts and viewing Jesus Christ as the central theme of redemption). That is, as God reveals Himself to mankind He is also remaking the idea of Himself to mankind into a truer, fuller, expression of Himself as He teaches us of Himself through salvific events of covenant, sin, redemption, etc. Which events continue to evolve our relationship to Himself and to Creation. It is God's narrative of himself, his divine story to us. As much as it is our own narrative. Our story of us, back to God. It is then, the story of God and us. God and me. God and Creation, as we commune each with the other, era after era, age after age, through His image relationally, in love, in truth, in passion, in anger, in all that makes us "us". It is our t-o-g-e-t-h-e-r story of the divine/human cooperative amidst the larger story of Creation.

God and Creation
envisaged
To this concept I might further add the important idea of eschatological escalationwhich gives meaning to the idea that within each era's narrative story between God and man is the further idea that this narrative story continues to expand, to eschalate, upwards into a fuller story of redemption and salvation. That is, there is a future hope, or promise, within Christianity that has a time element to it that works itself progressively forward within time-and-space (e.g. within the history of mankind) which lends itself to the fuller expression of the idea of a future Kingdom of God. A Kingdom that encapsulates all of Creation's past into all of its future. That, as much as Israel moved forward in its storied history towards its ultimate expression in Jesus, their Messiah, which then gave birth to the Church. So too is the Church moving forwards towards that time when Jesus is manifested again in some future time period we call God's Kingdom. But as a returning King and not as a crucified Saviour. One who comes to Rule what He has Redeemed.

Interlocking Shalom
through Redemption
Hence, God's story of Himself is also the story of man whom God incorporates into His story - not simply by telling us of Himself - of who He is - but of telling us of who we are, and how we fit importantly into His plans in a glorious era to come that we call the New Heavens and New Earth. That we have hope and that our hope is not hopeless when we see so much death and destruction, injustice and impoverishment around us. That He is redeeming all of mankind and not only some of mankind. That He is configuring us to be a significant part of this story of redemption, of redeeming mankind. That while He tarries we are to work towards the coming Kingdom Rule of Jesus through love and good works (we call this concept the Ethics of the Kingdom of God). And that we have as much a future in eternity's history NOW, as we will LATER, as God Himself does who indwells all of eternity's history of past, present and future. That both the Creator and the Created are bound together as One in a steady evolution of recapture, re-incorporation, re-assimilation, re-adoption, reconciliation, and redemption (the adjectives to describe this are endless!).

Further, the Christian story is not one merely of redemptive revelation (biblical covenants), historical progress (heilsgeschichte or salvation history), and forward movement unto a completed Hope (we call this Christianity's teleology, it's eschatological hope). But that all of these movements show a helical structure to themselves that seem oddly familiar to us - though dissimilar as well - in that we seem to be repeating God's redemptive purposes again, and again, and again, in a circular paradigm of historical import. Only that this paradigm is stretched out in an upward fashion teleologically so that we have a helical structure of history progressing forwards, or eschalating upwards, into the fuller story of God Himself. We are thus being inextricably drawn forwards - and upwards at the same time - into repetitive, circular expressions of God's story of our redemption from sin; of stories of healing and health; and unto culminating, continuing, stories of eternal completeness. This then is the Christian story. It's narrative. It is one of culminating, eternal, completeness.

Picture a 2d helix set along the lines of time and motion (= event). The
Christian story is one of Salvific escalation showing an historical repetition
 and forward movement in time sequences that are similar but dissimilar
as God recreates the cosmos through redemption's cycle of renewal.

In terms of biblical events God's movement through time
and history would show a progression from one covenantal
era to another as creation becomes aligned with its Creator
in redemptive renewal. This also means that God will do
newer redemptive things in successively evolving eras. In
a sense God is changing in relation to His own creation.

 
From this idea of storied theology come the new idea of Narrative Theology long lost over the past 500 years of Reformational teachings emphasizing systematic doctrine in place of the biblical practice of storied narrative that once incorporated doctrinal ideas into the biblical story being told amongst ancient peoples. Thus today's contemporary theologies are adjusting from past Reformational practices of scientific statement about God which gave impetus to dearly held Christian heritages, dogmas, liturgies, and practices, and allowing the larger narrative of God to arise over popularly held biblical ideas and expressions. Curiously, today's postmodernistic cultures have rapidly accepted this style of teaching making it a very popular form of talking about God and God's revelation to man.

But not to the exclusion of systematic study and biblical apologetic discussion of the Scriptures. But in the sense of "uplifting" those ideas and doctrines into the newer areas of storied theology which in its own way is recreating God's story to us from the ancient settings of past biblical events into relevant ideas available for public reception, discussion, and incorporation. This is an important development and one that needs to be used deftly, honestly, and graciously without reducing biblical teaching to the pandering philosophies of humanism's overly therapeutic cultures and narcissistic preoccupation with one's own experience. That said, Narrative Theology is a powerful tool in re-imagining God's Word to both Christian and non-Christian audiences alike thought lost so long ago to the Bedouin experiences of very ancient cultures and ideologies.

Consequently - (and I'm speaking to my past evangelical heritage now) - one such adjustment that must be made is the evangelic belief that "systematic theology" (or, reductionistic biblical re-statement) is the fuller expression of God.... But in actuality has done just the opposite by reducing God into our own privately held ideas of Himself and His Story through our own logical, analytical expressions of formulaic theological creeds, church covenants, and dogmas. By saying that (i) God is thus-and thus, and consequently (ii) we are thus-and-thus, then (iii) we must do such-and-such. These reductionisms, though at times helpful to our feeble intelligences, do greater harm to the larger story of God and Creation. A story that is larger than our own interpretation of it....

Hence, we must always give precedence to biblical/narrative theology over that of any systematizing theology, dogmatic expressions, creedal confessions and ecclesiastical statements. Not only do we look to the text of Scripture for this help through a hermeneutic of biblical/narrative theology, but we look first and foremost to the God of Scripture Himself (relational theism) to drive our expectations, our theologies, our ethics, in the story of us as seen through God's completing glories.

Our stories must then be God's stories of ourselves. And our stories must also be of God's own story of His divine majesty. It is not only a story of the Triunity of the Godhead but of the completing unity of Creation to this Godhead that gives all majesty. However you wish to word it, God created Creation to be part of Himself, and He in it, in a process of completing harmony, resolution, and order. This then is the real biblical narrative of redemption and salvation.

R.E. Slater
February 24, 2012


The Evolving Narrative of God's Redemption


Addendum

The following articles by JR Daniel Kirk will address the change in relationship between three theological disciplines: biblical, systematic and narrative theology. In the older idea good biblical theology led to good systematic/analytic statements about God, us and the world. In the newer idea, systematic theology is abandoned (in a sense) and is replaced with a narrative theology that enhances biblical theology.

If systematic statements are now made of God they must be couched within the greater stories (and mysteries or enigmas!) of biblical/narrative theology. Hence, we may say that "God is good," but must realize that this statement will have multiple meanings depending upon its listeners social, cultural, and temporal milieus (that is, it is dependent upon the cultural era, type of society, and generational characteristics prevalent within that historical era).

Consequently, systematic theology has become un-systematized due to narrative (and postmodern) influences necessitating theologians to talk of God within a given socio-cultural context that would allow for cultural elasticity and flow. As well as for the broad human dynamics of linguistic communication that can be both plain and ambiguous to the same listeners on the same subject. God created man in His image. That image is infinitely complex and eternal. We are God's image bearers and should expect nothing less than to be amazed at the capacities God has given to us in bearing His image.

Thus, God cannot be systematised. And should not be. He is a living Being as we are living beings. Nor should the Bible be systematised. It is God's living Word which thus makes the Bible an open document without a culminating interpretation so that it can dynamically speak to every age, era, culture, and community of humanity. It opens God up to us without providing systematised, formulaic, expressions of definitive statement about God and ourselves. It can do this because we are open beings who live in open socio-cultural contexts and use an open language that is symbolic and can be as ambiguous as it is plain. All of which then allows for fluidity (that is, elasticity and flow) within our communication with God and with each other.

Humanity changes with time and circumstance. This is what is meant when Classic Theism meets Process Theology - one is old timey, the other postmodern. Somewhere in between is its synthetic alternative I prefer to call Relational Theism. An alternative that I think better retains the past to the relationship of the future (e.g., postmodernism) without throwing out God's steady redemptive narrative that has been evolving since He spoke the worlds into being. And will not stop evolving until all worlds have come under submission to His will and Word.

A submission that will allow for the greatest amount of freedom without the terror of sin, death and destruction behind it all because of Jesus' work of redemption. Because all things have come under God's redemption - and will come under God's redemption - both now and forevermore. God's Word is as living and true now as it was a hundred years ago, a millenia ago, or even eons ago. And it is spoken from the very God who "Is" (Yhwh = I Am), and is evolving with us, even as we are evolving with Him, in an open theology of time and import.

R.E. Slater
April 16, 2012 


Part 1
Narrative Theology and Biblical Theology

by JRD Kirk
February 24, 2012

Having just read Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?, a reader emailed to ask what, exactly, this narrative theology is that I’m on about in the book. Is there a go-to definition or description? The book embodies it, but what is this “it” we are beholding?

In short, narrative or storied theology is a way to talk about God and proceeds on the premise that the Story is the thing.

Learning the story of God as a story, articulating the various aspects as parts of a dynamic movement that not only passes through time but genuinely develops and changes as it does so, narrative theology never seeks to leave the story behind to get on to the real business of theology or ethics. The church’s theology is the narrative, and its ethics is the telling of that story in the words and deeds of Christian communities.

"Narrative theology recognizes changes in people’s expectations
and even in the nature of the fulfillment of God’s promises."

Narrative Theology is (un)Like Biblical Theology that Preceded It.

Like the biblical theology movement that finds description in the likes of Geerhardus Vos and Reformed theology more generally, it strives to do justice to the interconnections between what we are told about God, God’s promises, and God’s people in the OT, and what we are told about them in the New.

However, unlike the work of some of the older Reformed Biblical theologians, narrative theology reads the story as a history of God’s action, not merely a history of revelation. In the latter, as it is defined within this world, there is a truth about God that is progressively revealed through time–much as though it existed in a heavenly cache, only to be distributed a bit at a time over the course of history.

Narrative theology, instead, recognizes changes in the people’s expectations and even in the nature of the fulfillment of God’s promises. We cannot read the Bible from Genesis through Malachi and be prepared for the surprises of Matthew through Revelation.

Narrative theology is more dynamic, allowing room for dead-ends to certain OT roads, and a radical revision of our understanding of God and salvation in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus–even within the same story that is the story of Israel.

Such a move toward seeing surprise is not absent in the Reformed Tradition, and is captured quite well at several moments in Herman Ridderbos’ Paul. But in general, I see it as a movement beyond Vos, and ultimately untenable metaphors such as the idea that the story develops “from acorn to oak tree.”

Going back further, Narrative Theology also stands over against the notion of biblical theology enshrined in Gabler‘s famous “On the Correct Distinction Between Dogmatic and Biblical Theology and the Right Definition of Their Goals.”

Gabler suggested that the job of biblical studies was to distill the truths from the Bible, to be handed over to the systematicians for proper and logical ordering. Such a vision holds onto what Narrative Theology will always deem a mistake: thinking that “systematic theology” is the real thing, whereas biblical theology is a road on the way to theology’s completion.

Narrative theology grows from the soil prepared by biblical theology, or perhaps it is a branch off the same tree, but it embodies a commitment to the narrative that older concerns with the enduring primacy of systematic (or, if you prefer, analytic) theology in the life of the church did not allow.

In future posts I’ll talk about narrative theology in relationship to systematic theology and to ethics.




Part 2
Narrative Theology and Biblical Theology
February 25, 2012


In practicing a narrative theology, the overarching conviction is that the revelation of God is a story: the story of the creator God, at work in Israel, to redeem and reconcile the world through the story of Jesus.

Part of what this means for me is the possibility of transformation, reconfiguration, and even leaving behind of earlier moments in the story as later scenes show us the way forward and, ultimately, the climactic saving sequence.

This is one point at which I differ from N. T. Wright.

Regularly in Wright’s writing we will find statements such as, “This is what God was up to all along.” I don’t disagree here. But what often goes unspoken, and where I think we need to be more clear, is that one only knows “this is what God was up to all along” once one is already convinced that “this new thing is actually what God is up to.”

The work of Jesus is not merely a saving act. For a people who are convinced that the saving work of Jesus is what was “pre-promised in the scriptures” (Rom 1), the Christ event becomes a hermeneutic. It becomes a lens by which we re-read the Old Testament and discover what can only be seen by the eyes of faith.

In light of the climax of the story, we re-read the earlier moments and discover things that would not have been visible to the original audience. We boldly read those as indications of God’s work in Christ, nonetheless, because we believe that the same God is at work in the same story to bring it to its culmination in him. 

 Image courtesy of The Open Fiction Project tofp.org

This brings me to a point at which my version of narrative theology differs from the work of some practitioners of what is sometimes called “theological interpretation of scripture.” Here the specific example who comes to mind is Kevin Vanhoozer.

Confronted with the incongruity between “behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son” as it is used in Isaiah and in Matthew, Vanhoozer appeals to authorial intention to say that the Matthew meaning was, in a sense, the meaning intended for Isaiah as well. Of course, by “authorial intention,” Vanhoozer means God as author.

Matthew's meaning = Isaiah's meaning
(using authorial intent where God is the Author)

This, it seems to me, is cheating.

Instead, I propose a multiple-reading strategy: Allow the text to mean what it meant in its first context, as much as we can determine this. Do the historical critical work that sheds light on why, for example, an eighth century BC audience would formulate matters just soand then recognize the freedom of later readers to re-read those texts differently in light of later events.

Reading Vahoozer or Dan Treier, I sometimes fear that theological readings become a way to circumvent critical issues. But even if the demands of the church push us toward a final, post-critical reading, where we reincorporate the difficult message of an earlier day into the story of the church by a dramatic rereading of the text, I want to contend that we must still be first critical in order to be post-critical.

To my mind, narrative theology allows for such transformations. We are part of a story. Later moments take up, fulfill, recapitulate, and transform earlier. We can say both, “Isaiah 7 has nothing to do with a person born hundreds of years later to someone who has not had sex,” and, “the virgin birth of Jesus fulfills Isaiah 7.”

Reading a book on theological interpretation by a scholar across the pond, I was struck by a claim that we are to read the Bible as a book addressed to us–that the ideal audience are those who proclaim and profess to follow Jesus Christ as Lord.

This, it seemed, to me, was half right.

Yes, we are like the first and ideal audience: those expected to respond in faithful following of Jesus.

But we are also not like them: we are not first-century Romans; we are not first-century Jews; we are not fifth century Jews in Babylon. There is a specificity to the particular audience that sets us apart from them. To the writer, there would have been a hope that first-century Galatians would respond by “kicking out the slave woman and her son,” even as Abraham did. That word is not directly addressed to us in the same way.

What I propose for reading the Bible itself also pertains to reading it for our communities. We are part of a long story. This means that the retellings will involve some measure of transformation. And this is, itself, faithful and living renarration of the story of God.