Narrative Theology

By John Bowden 

Recognition of the many problems arising from a view which sees divine revelation conveyed by prepositional statements, in the form of uniquely authoritative scrip­ture, creeds or dogmas, together with an appreciation of the insights into human nature to be found in classical literature up to and including the modern novel have caused increasing importance to be attached to the contribution made to theological re­flection and understanding by narrative or story. Narrative theology, still inevitably an imprecise discipline, is concerned to relate the impressions made by narratives and the insights arising out of them to theological questions, and in particular to give sub­stance to these insights and to suggest crite­ria by which they, and the stories which prompt them, may be judged to be true or false.

Because the Bible contains a good deal of narrative of one kind or another, narrative theology is not least concerned with a new evaluation of the biblical stories. For a long period, from the seventeenth century on­wards, attention was concentrated on whether or not the Bible was histori­cally accurate and the question asked was whether or not narratives were 'historical' (see also Historical Criticism). In the context of narrative theology it is now thought more appropriate to say that the biblical story is 'history-like' (Hans Frei), i.e. that 'it is not a simple reportage of history, but it is also not a fictional story having no contact with his­tory' (James Barr).

This approach leads to other possibilities of assessing the 'truth' of a story than argu­ing that it is true as a record of historical events. It may also, or indeed instead, be 'true to life', i.e. because it awakens in the reader or hearer a response rising out of a perception that authentic human experience has been deepened by the story. Or the story may contain teaching about life or a vision of the future which inspires a particular reaction or life-style in the present as well as communicating information about the past. Thus an interpretation of the Bible in terms of narrative theology would be concerned with its truth in all these dimensions rather than just in terms of 'Did it really happen?'

Of course narrative theology is not focussed only on biblical narrative; its raw material includes the stories told in other religions and works of secular literature. Not that a dividing line between the two can be drawn all that clearly once it is accepted, as has been the case at least since the nine­teenth century, that the Bible is a book which can be read like any other book. And Erich Auerbach and Northrop Frye have both shown the extent to which Western literature has been influenced by the Bible, so that there is a reciprocal relationship involved.

Much literature is, of course, irrelevant to narrative theology. What is of special inter­est to it is the examination of certain texts, events, images, myths, rituals, symbols (and here it is evident how loose a term 'narrative' can be) which are generally recognized to be 'classic', in which 'we recognize nothing less than the disclosure of a reality we cannot but name truth' (Tracy).

The relationship of narrative theology to other forms of theology has yet to be defined clearly. On the one hand there are those, more conservative in approach, who would see narrative theology as being a useful tool of modern apologetic and an enrichment in the interpretation of a tradition which is not in need of radical reconstruction. A more radical view would see narrative theology as a departure in the direction of a completely new way of doing theology, leading to a relativizing of religious traditions (see also Cultural Relativism) and a privatizing of re­ligious claims, in the context of which many of the dogmatic statements advanced in the past by Christians (including, for example, the doctrine of the incarnation) are no longer defensible in any strict form.

For any form of narrative theology, how­ever, the crucial issue is that of criteria for the truth of the stories and interpretations of them which it commends. Because the criterion most often used in theology gen­erally is that of scripture, it would seem very difficult indeed to avoid an almost im­possibly circular argument, since it is pre­cisely the authority and self-sufficiency of scripture and the way in which it is the foundation for theology that is being put in question. And why should one 'classic' be preferred to another; is not judgment in this sphere simply a matter of taste?

These are important and problematical questions, but the difficulty in answering them should not detract from the import­ance of the contribution made by narrative theology, particularly against the back­ground of a modern pluralistic world society.

Bibliography. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis, et 1953; Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 1957; A. E. Harvey (ed), God Incarnate: Story and Belief, 1981; Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy, 1979; Sallie McFague, Meta­phorical Theology, 1983; Gerd Theissen, On Having a Critical Faith, 1979; David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, 1981.

Source: Richardson/Bowden, A New Dictionary of Christian Theology.