Reflections on Narrative Theology

I recently taught a course called "Narrative Theology" and thought I would post a few reflections on the experience. I found it to be one of my most stimulating teaching experiences thus far. The course was challenging to prep, because there isn't an established "canon" of course material upon which one can draw. Narrative theology is not so much a "discipline," or a "field" of study as it is a convergence of theologians and writings which share similar, albeit distinct, concerns and questions. What is theology? What is the point of it? What's the relation between narrative and theology? Who, or what, determines the meaning of a text? How is a theological proposal authorized or legitimated? What's the role of one's community in interpretation and theologizing? The questions go on.

While this schematization has its problems, it is helpful to think of narrative theology in terms of two "schools," Yale and Chicago. The Yale school includes theologians such as Hans Frei, George Lindbeck, and Stanley Hauerwas. The Chicago school boasts David Tracey, Sally McFague, and Paul Ricouer. It's crude to put it this way, but you might think of the Yale school folks as emphasizing the particularity and finality of the biblical narrative as appropriated within one's interpretive, religious community, while the windy city theologians emphasize the power of biblical narrative and metaphor to open new "possible worlds" (Ricoeur) and to intersect and dialogue with equally valid disciplines of discourse across interpretive communities.

The most intriguing discussions during the course centered around questions regarding the task of theology. We can grant that the Bible contains lots of narratives (duh), but what does a theology that attends intentionally to narrative and employs it as a form of theological discourse provide? Does narrative theology actually contribute a new way of doing theology? And if it does, is it an improvement on pre-modern theologizing? (or is it just a fancy way of saying we ought to be biblical (Yale) and our theology ought to be creatively engaged with the world (Chicago)?

I offer four initial suggestions (I welcome others from readers--especially those who took the course) as to what aspects of Narrative theology seem most helpful and potentially constructive for evangelical theology and its mission. These four suggestions come by way of four representative theologians.

(1) From Hans Frei: the warning that we have "eclipsed the biblical narrative" with something else. I fear that the evangelical church has substituted the raw and affective power of the biblical narratives, with all its depth, richness, complexity and perplexity, with other things (e.g. ideologies about scripture which leave scripture itself behind, self-help material, vague generalities regarding the "meaning of life," a CEO God rather than the Trinity, etc.)

(2) From George Lindbeck (and Wittgenstein): The insight that meaning is contextual. Words do not mean things, people do. And people speak words in a context. When the crusader, lopping off his enemy's head, say's "Jesus is Lord!" what does "Jesus is Lord" mean? It doesn't mean the same thing as when the martyr says it. This point has innumerable applications for theology, church life, evangelism, witness, etc.

(3) From Paul Ricoeur: On good literature (and especially Scripture) as opening up "possible worlds." The narratives of Scripture suggest new worlds we can can live in--worlds that give us hope for a better future. Preachers ought to read Ricoeur and consider how, when preaching the text, they can invite their listeners to enter the world of the Bible and to substitute its grand, hopeful (not all of them seem so, of course) narratives for their own little ones (materialism, "success," fatalism, etc.)

(4) From Sally McFague: On parable and metaphor as illuminating the mysterious intersection of the divine and the human, the sacred and the secular. Jesus' parables, she points out, are masterpieces of parabolic theology, in which the infinite is expressed through the finite, the Kingdom of God through the reality of the human. Coins, sheep and Samaritans become vehicles through which God's redemption is made tangible and accessible. Theologians ought to work hard at seeing the presence of God in the stuff of real life.

Does God Always Get What God Wants?

The question may sound odd. Jarring, even. Our default sensibilities react sternly against the idea. Doesn't God, the all-powerful, all-knowing one deserving of all superlatives, always get his way? For many, great comfort lies in the belief that nothing happens outside God's plan. Every fallen sparrow was scripted. Thus every war, disease, (seemingly) untimely death, job loss, divorce, is part of God's intended plan. But for some, this view of God and God's "will" is less than satisfying. Does God really "want" cancer, genocide, and rape? If He does not want it, but yet it exists, it seems God does not always get what God wants. We could imagine two scenarios: (1) God won't prevent (all) evil and suffering because he can't or (2) God can't prevent (all) evil and suffering because he won't. The first option emphasizes God's limitations in the face of the complexities in the universe he decided to create. His hands are tied. Nancy Eiseland, in her beautifully challenging book, The Disabled God, argues for something like this option. She cannot relate to a God who could prevent all physical disabilities, by a wave of the magic wand, as it were, but simply chooses not to. The second option emphasizes God's unwillingness to intervene at every point, because of some greater good that he wants to ultimately actualize. In this perspective, God could prevent any evil or instantiation of suffering, by a simple exercise of divine power. Either option one chooses, it seems that God doesn't always get what God wants, in a sense, because the world is not yet what it should be.

In another sense, however, we can say that God decided to create this particular kind of world--a world in which sentient beings (demonic and human) are free--free to love or free to hate. Free to be thankful or free to be miserly. Free to rejoice with and for others, or free to plot and scheme against them. It's also a world in which the natural world is free--thus humans are not protected against tragedy, disease and trouble. God decided to create this kind of world, knowing what the consequences would be. And yet, we can say in another sense that in particular instances of evil and suffering and tragedy, God does not always get what God wants.

One day, when Christ returns, the Kingdom arrives in full, and the "new heavens and the new earth" supervene human history, we trust that God will have what God wants. But even then it's not so simple, because if a dimension of existence remains eternally in mis-relation to God (Hell), will God have what God wants? Not according to 2 Peter 3:9, which tells us that God desires no one to perish, but for all to come to eternal life.

Narrative Theology - Just do it!

The following is a write-up on a Narrative Theology course I'll be teaching this summer. I'd love for as many of you Bethel students as are interested to sign up! It should be a good time:

Narrative Theology



God. Story. Community.

Is your theology stale and propositional? Is it individualist and modernist? Then you need a narrative theology facelift. Narrative theology (also sometimes called "post-liberalism") is, in part, based on a conviction that at the heart of biblical faith are stories about God and God's relationship to his people. Rather than attempt to construct a coherent set of "timeless," eternally valid propositions, theology should be deeply attuned to the variety, the complexity and the configurations of these stories. But narrative theology isn't just the recognition that the Bible contains lots of stories. Rather, it is based on the assumption that the way we think, understand ourselves, worship, and theologize most effectively is by telling and embodying stories in communities. The "narrative turn" in theology during the last half of the 20th century is, admittedly, not as new as it seems. Numerous theologians throughout history have recognized that theology should be driven by story, that the story of the Bible is passed on to us through communities of faith, and that dynamic rationalities are storied epistemologies. This course will cover historical precursors to what is now known as the discipline of Narrative Theology through writings of St. Augustine, Karl Barth, Richard Niebuhr and Hans Frei. We will then engage the writings of more recent and current "players" in the movement, such as George Lindbeck, Paul Holmer, Stanley Hauerwas and-on the "post-conservative" side of the discussion-Kevin Vanhoozer. Attention will also be given to influence of the philosophy of language on narrative theology through the works and influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Ricoeur. Finally, the course will explore the relation between NT and current expressions of both feminist and evangelical theologies.

Don't Squeeze the Cottenelle: Or, "Would You Switch Denominations Before you Switched Toilet Paper?"

Tomorrow I'll be speaking, along with Dr. Michael Slusser, a Catholic theologian and priest, to a ministerial fellowship in Fairbault on the topic of "Ecumenism: How it Affects Our Churches and Ministries" (or something along those lines.) We'll be centering our discussions around a 2008 Pew Forum "Religious Landscape Study" which concluded that American religious life is "both very diverse and very fluid." The study surmises: “Looking only at changes from one major religious tradition to another (e.g., from Protestantism to Catholicism, or from Judaism to no religion), more than one-in-four U.S. adults (28%) have changed their religious affiliation from that in which they were raised." The numbers get even higher when the switch happens within a major religious tradition. Reinforcing the Pew study, the Ellison Research firm released findings which showed that Americans are more likely to switch their denominational affiliation than to switch their toilet paper brand. Many are less likely to go from Charmin to Cottonelle (or Crest to Colgate) than from Methodist to Catholic. There are a good many denominations to choose from, even in smaller town like Fairbault, and many folks may not know much--or care that much--about the differences (in particular the historical and theological differences) between them. George Lindbeck's famous insight that, at a sociological level, doctrines function like "language games," serving to distinguish denominations from each other while allowing ecumenical fellowship around other important points of commonality (such as ethical issues) may be reaching a breaking point. The distinctiveness of each denomination's language games may be blurring away recognizable boundaries, allowing for a free and easy switch of church membership and involvement.

The question this phenomenon raises, as Dr. Slusser puts it, is whether this is a good thing or a bad thing--and why? Does this change reflect a move in a positive direction? Does it suggest that people are willing to jump denominational ships in order to experience personal spiritual transformation? (i.e. that they are perceptive consumers of what brings them spiritual health?). Does it suggest that denominations are enough alike that such switching is relatively easy? Or, does it suggest that our churches are losing the ability to state clearly--and within historical continuity--our doctrinal and liturgical distinctives? Or, if they can state them clearly, that they are unable to convince their adherents to commit to them--at least not more so than they're committed to Crest or to Cottonelle?

What about you? Do you embrace the "fluidity" of American religious and denominational identity or do you think it is course that needs correcting?

"Do You Have a Theology for This?" (Reflections from My Time in India)

Since my return from India, several people have asked for a summary of my reflections on that visit. The two primary things that stood out to me while in India and have since my return are: (1) The abject and widespread poverty under which so much of India suffers daily, and (2) the intricate ways in which religion, ideology, society and culture intermingle.

My first trip into the city was an abrupt and startling introduction to the abject poverty of India. India is now the largest democracy in the world, but it's said that one-third of the world's poor live there. Estimates suggest that 75% of Indians live on less that $2.00 a day. Travel through the streets of Hyderabad and you'll find many people living in tents or lean-to's on little parcels of grabbed-up land on the sides of the main roads. If they're not so lucky, they sleep under the bare cover of night--with a ragged blanket--on the hard ground.

On our first trip into the city, my colleague Wilbur Stone (global and contextual studies prof), turned to me and asked: "Do you have a theology for this?" That became the burdensome question of the week for me--and still is my question. How do I as a theologian, or more to the point, as a Christian, think about the intersection of God, the Missio Dei, and God's future for the world with such widespread and deeply troubling circumstances of life. To me it's a troubling but temporary spectacle--to many Indians it's just a way of life. It should be noted that India's is one of the few national economies to actually see positive growth in the past year. Nonetheless, the increasing numbers of the poor outpace its financial and material progress.

The caste system in India which, since the establishment of the Indian constitution in 1950 is no long formally in place, secured discrimination as a (more-or-less) accepted reality. Your lot in life is determined by your family of origin, ethnicity, etc. The Dalit or the "no-caste" population were considered "untouchables." They had little-to-no rights in society. For the most part, they were supposed to simply accept their place in life as given by God. Mahatma Ghandi worked hard to elevate the social status and to improve the possibliities for upward mobility of these no-caste peoples. They were children of God too and should be viewed as equal persons.

Christianity has found its most fertile soil in India among the Dalits. My favorite experience of the week was listening to a Dalit theologian speak to our class about the importance and necessity of contextualizing Christ for and within human experience. Here was a man who came from the "no-caste" group, who had found in Jesus a friend and a liberator. Jesus was an "out-caste" who had no place to lay his head, but who came to set the captive free from oppression(Luke 4). No wonder Christ has captivated the imagination of the Dalits.

In any case, I return from India convinced more than ever that Christianity needs to be engaged in the difficult but rewarding task of thinking about the intertwining of context, ideology, society and theology. Christians also need to continue to think hard about what God wants us to be doing in the face of economic hardship around the globe and in our cities and towns. More deeply, what does the Gospel calls us as individuals and as churches to do for the world around us? And what does it call us to learn from that world? Do we have a theology for that?

Contextual Theologizing in India

I'm heading to India (Hyderabad) tonight to co-teach a Doctor of Ministry course for Bethel called "Contextual Theologizing." This is a topic I've become very interested in over the past several years, and to have students who are working and ministering in various parts of the globe converge to discuss the intersection of context, culture, language and theology in a setting like that will be stimulating. I'm also looking forward to hearing from and dialoguing with Hindu, Muslim and Christian leaders from the area. In case anyone is interested, I'll post a "report" after my return.

Oh yeah, and can you guess my favorite new movie?

The Strange Silence of the Bible

I've been doing a little research lately for a course I'm teaching next summer called "Narrative Theology." George Stroup, in The Promise of Narrative Theology, begins his text by describing the "identity crisis" of Christianity (in the early 1980's) in the face of a burgeoning religious, cultural and social pluralism. Oddly, most Christians (and most churches) proclaim their unfailing adherence to the Bible's authority, but have lost the ability and/or will to actually use the Bible as a central component of the church's liturgy and life.

This is a phenomenon I have noticed for many years. Even within my own evangelical tradition, which prizes and proclaims the Bible's authority, and upholds the doctrines of biblical inerrancy and infallibility (the Bible is completely true in everything it teaches), many churches and many Christians seem to have lost both the facility and the will to use the Bible effectively and often in worship, preaching and life. Many have just given up! I recall in the conservative Baptist seminary I attended, one chapel speaker after another waving the Bible in the air, proclaiming, with as much bravado as they could muster, the Bible's inerrancy but then completing disregarding it or atrociously misusing it in their sermons. Karl Barth once referred to the "strange new world" of the Bible; it may be that the "stranger" the biblical world sounds to our technological, modern ears, the less of a central role the biblical witness may play in the formation and transformation of the Christian life and the Church. But this would be a tragedy that could lead to the loss of the heart of the Christian faith itself. And surely it does not need to be the case. We can neither retreat from the twenty-first century nor neglect the story of God from ancient days. But herein lies the challenge.

So here are some questions: In your own life, what challenges do you face in giving the Bible a genuinely central and authoritative role? In your church experience, how is the Bible "used"? Does your church's actual use of the Bible match its proclamation of biblical authority?

Is the "Good Life" an American Entitlement?

With the price of gasoline racing toward $4.00/gallon, and recent reports of oil prices reaching $150/barrel, many Americans are panicking. But why should we not panic when our increasingly stentorian media dutifully and daily stokes the fire of our impending economic doom? In the face of this increasing threat to our personal independence, some take the drastic measure of parking their cars and riding bicycles; others trade their Hummers for Rav-4s, or swap their Pathfinders for Priuses. For many Americans, our paradigm of entitlement is changing. It has to. Perhaps our perceived God-given, divinely sanctioned right to guzzle gasoline (and other resources) to our hearts content is not etched in eternal stone after all?

Theologian Jon Sobrino, in his prophetically powerful and incisive book Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity and Hope argues that residents of the First World can no longer operate under the assumption that "the good life" is their divinely sanctioned, eternally elected lot in life--their "manifest destiny." This assumption, he writes, has served to justify and sustain the remarkable disparity between those who have and those who don't along ethnic, national, social and geographical lines. The "blessing of God" stamp has been used by many in the West to set themselves over those existing, or rather subsisting, on the margins and in the periphery. The profits and comforts of the rich (first world) have come in part through the taxation of the poor (third world).

In this time of economic gloom and doom, it's wise for those of us residents of the Empire (read: United States) to re-examine our perceived sense of entitlement for "the good life." Perhaps we will have to give up our SUV's, pay a little more for bananas, and generally cut short our habitual profligacy. But maybe it won't be so bad to bridge the divide between the haves and the have-nots, even if just for a season. In any case, it might give us a better sense of what heaven will be like.

I don't mean to minimize the struggle these difficult days mean for those living in the United States (or elsewhere in the West) who cannot pay their mortgage, cannot feed their children, and cannot fill their gas tanks to get to their jobs--or to find one.

But I don't think Sobrino's lesson is for them. It's for those of us who may have to loosen our grip a little on the American dream, in which reality is catching up to the fiction that life is meant to be easy and that no object of desire lies outside our reach. But reality can be hard for all of us to accept--especially for me. I like my Pathfinder.

Was God Mad at Jesus? On Moltmann, Feminist and Evangelical Christology

In my Christology class last week we discussed the theory of the atonement (in short: the meaning of the death of Jesus and its connection to our salvation). It has become rather popular in contemporary contextual theologies (e.g. some Feminist theologies) to dismiss any essential relation between God and the death of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross. Some have characterized atonement theories that incorporate God's intentionality in Golgotha and the crucifixion as "divine child abuse." It is inconceivable, some argue, that the God of love would subject God's own child to suffering and death to fulfill some higher purpose (e.g. to satisfy God's justice and procure salvation for humanity). If God is a non-violent God, then surely redemption would not be based on a violent act.

Jurgen Moltmann offers a hopeful alternative to the feminist critique of classical theism, without surrendering the traditional intuition that the death of Jesus was no surprise to God. In so doing, he upholds the mysterious, baffling, and inherently paradoxical nature of the Golgotha narrative. There are no easy answers here. God's hands do not appear sparkling clean. Neither, though, are there hints of the distant, immutable, impassible, heartless, disciplinarian Father God to which Feminist Christology rightly objects. Rather, God the Father suffers in and with the suffering of the Son. He suffers as the Father to the Son who hangs stretched in pain on the cross. He grieves as the Father of Israel for whom the Messiah dies, innocently but ignobly. There is nothing but paradox and agony here, and the only thing that holds the life of God together through the death of Christ is the empowering, enduring love of God in the Spirit.

As Moltman puts it:

"When Christian theologians do not accept what Jesus suffered from God, they are like Job's friends, not like Job himself. The contradiction between the Sonship of God and the forsakenness by God is a contradiction that cannot be resolved, either by reducing the divine Sonship or by failing to take the forsakenness seriously." (The Way of Jesus Christ).

Evangelicals would do well to unite aspects of Moltmann's trinitarian, narrative theology with the satisfaction atonement theories they hold so convictionally and, at some core level, rightly. It would allow the shape of the atonement presentation to listen and heed (to a degree) the critiques of feminist christologies without relinquishing the important insight that God's whole reality and life is implicated by the historical, universal and eschatological moment of the cross and resurrection.

How is the Gospel "good news" to the poor?

Food for thought, served up by Jurgen Moltmann:

•"What does the gospel bring the poor? And when they are called blessed, as God’s fellow citizens, what does this offer them? Certainly not the end of hunger, and the wealth of a richly blessed life. But it does bring them a new dignity. The poor, the slaves, and the prostitutes are no longer the passive objects of oppression and humiliation; they are now their own conscious subjects, with all the dignity of God’s first children.”

(from The Way of Jesus Christ)

Recovering Divine Mystery through the Feminine Metaphor?

"Feminist critique of patriarchal discourse is surfacing the false assumptions that underlie insistence on exclusively male symbols and thereby propelling new discovery of holy mystery which we call God."

Elizabeth Johnson, in her book, She Who Is, argues that the best spirit of classical theology, which had always prized the essential incomprehensibility (and illimitability--great word!) of God as divine mystery, can be recovered by attending to feminine metaphors and aspects of the divine reality. This requires, of course, that the experiences of women and their theological explorations be taken seriously. The recovery of the divine mystery and ultimately incomprehensibility of God will have several positive consequences: (1) a reminder that finite words, titles and pronouns can never refer, without remainder or approximation, to God and (2) the significance of the male experience will be equalized with and unified with that of women, thus effecting what Paul seems to have in mind with the "new creation" (neither male nor female, but all are one in Christ Jesus and (3) the legitimation of the female experience and the rightful humanization of woman as equal in God's creation and Kingdom.

Any thoughts?