Narrative Theology

This blog post is recommended for mature audiences. It contains theological content, ideas, and may alter the way you think about theology.

This is my expansion of notes from a lecture given by Wynand de Kock as part of the MACP program. The ideas are not originally my own, although they are certainly ideas that are resonating with where I’m at. Because it’s an adaptation of notes from a lecture, it will be a little disjointed and may lack my regular flow. It will also take for granted that you’re comfortable with some theological terms. I’m sure you’ll cope, but you have been warned.

We live in a church culture that has theology “figured out”. We have specific statements of belief, creeds, doctrinal statements that define exactly what we believe to be in or out. We believe that we have “statements of truth”. They fit nicely into our modernist, measurable, objective mindset.

Statements of truth exist, but they are rarely complete. We live in a time of knowing truth, but only getting a tiny slice of the picture. We live with unreasonable certainty. Our faith gets packaged up into specific propositions. Things we know. There is very little room to admit that you might be wrong, or even that you might not have the whole picture. Propositions as a starting point flow against the approach of the bible, and specifically the teaching style of Jesus, and shown in the Gospels. The bible doesn’t read as a set of propositional truths. It reads as an extended narrative, with intermittent meta-narratives. The concept therefore, is to try developing our propositions as a “distillation of the wider narrative”.

So creating a narrative-based theology means that you garner any truths as you reflect on the narrative of what God is doing in the world. Theology is “reflection and construction arising out of and giving guidance to a community of faith in the praxis of its mission, leading to ongoing modification and development in the ways in which the church shapes its life to be in partnership with God.” Theology is a dynamic thing. We don’t ever just “get it”. God is at work in the world, and because the subject of our reflection is on a mission, theology must be a dynamic thing. God is involved in the here and now in ways that weren’t necessarily required 500 years ago. It is the same God, but he is doing different things. We are reflecting on a moving target.

As we reflect on what God is doing in the world, we begin to tell stories. Before we can get propostions, it is natural to start telling stories. Any encounter with God brings a story. These stories begin to modify and develop the ways in which we live. If we only have propositional theology, we miss out on the narrative theology. However, when our theology encompasses a narrative structure, we are able to incorporate both the propositional and experiential aspects to our beliefs.

As we tell the story, we rediscover the message in our context. Proposition is only useful when it comes out of a distillation of the narrative. Without the process of mulling over the story, we don’t have any experiential aspect to our beliefs. We know because we have been told, we don’t know because we have experienced. You cannot short-circuit the value of experience.

This means our theology must happen “on the run”. Theology occurs in participation with an active God who is at work in the world. We form theology as we join in the narrative of God. When we are in the experience of participating with God: feeding the poor, planting a church, participating in activism, we are making meaning of this at the same time. As we tell stories, the parts we tell are our own ways of finding meaning from our experiences. We make sense of what God is doing, through the relaying, and the understanding of the stories.

Now, I know that’s a long post, and it is a bit disjointed, but I wonder what people (or anyone who managed to get through it all) might be thinking. Does a narrative structure put forward a concept of truth that can too easily take a “whatever works for you” type approach? Do we lose the heart of sound doctrine. Is sound doctrine (as propostitional truths) really all its cracked up to be?

These are at very least interesting questions.