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Theology of Narrative or Narrative Theology?
A Response to Why Narrative?
By George Stroup
THE JULY, 1975 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY contained "A Symposium on Story and Narrative Theology."1 The articles in that symposium made different proposals concerning what is meant by story or narrative (the terms were used synonymously) and what role narrative should play in theological reflection and construction. A reader who wanted nothing more than a clear, succinct understanding of narrative theology was left in the difficult position of choosing one of several different proposals or of searching for some common theme or hidden unity, other than the occurrence of the word 66narrative," among the various participants in the symposium.
In the fifteen years since the publication of that issue of THEOLOGY TODAY, a large library of literature has appeared that makes use of the category of narrative. Two things are significant about this large but diverse literature. First, narrative is a theme that emerges not just in a few theological communities but crosses most denominational boundaries. One might have expected narrative to be an attractive category to those Protestant communities that traditionally understand themselves to be a "people of the book" or to those Christians who emphasize the importance of personal and communal experience as a source, if not the norm, for theological reflection. But in the literature on narrative theology one finds not only Protestant theologians but Roman Catholics and Jewish theologians as well.
Second, perhaps more so than any other category in nineteenth and twentieth-century theology, narrative has been appropriated by many different theological disciplines. The reader of contemporary theology now regularly encounters discussions of narrative theology, narrative hermeneutics, literary-critical readings of the Bible, narrative ethics, narrative preaching, and pastoral counseling in which counselor and client are "living human documents."2 And the list goes on indefinitely.
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George Stroup is professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary, having previously taught at Princeton Theological Seminary, Austin Theological Seminary, and the University of the South at Sewanee. He is the author of Jesus Christ for Today (1982) and The Promise of Narrative Theology (1981). His article, "A Bibliographical Critique," which assessed the literature on narrative theology, appeared in the July, 1975 issue of THEOLOGY TODAY.
1 THEOLOGY TODAY, Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (July, 1975),133-173.
2 The literaturehas become too vast to list. For an introduction to narrative theology see Michael Goldberg, Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction (Nashville: ABINGDON, 1982). In the enormous literature on biblical narrative, one interesting example is Meir Sternberg's The Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). A classic in that field is Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981). The major text in the use of narrative in ethics is Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). See also Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character (Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) and James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon, 1986). In Christian education, see Thomas H. Groome, Christian Religious Education: Shaping Our Story and Vision (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980). In pastoral counseling see Charles V. Gerkin, The Living Human Document (Nashville: Abingdon, 1984). Also important is the use of narrative to study the life and identity of congregations. See James F. Hopewell, Congregation: Stories and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).
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Practically every theological discipline has seen some proposal for the use of narrative as a means for rethinking the nature, method, and tasks of that discipline.
And yet, after fifteen years, none of the dust that was stirred in discussion of narrative back in 1975 seems to have settled. There is still no agreement as to the meaning of narrative-precisely to what does the term refer?-and as to its role in theology. One reason for the bewildering variety in the literature may be that there is no obvious philosophical resource for narrative theology. Narrative theology does not necessarily need a philosophical "foundation," but it does need help thinking critically about questions of methodology and epistemology. While process theology has a philosophical conversation partner in Whitehead and Hartshorne and theological existentialism can appeal to Heidegger, narrative theology has no obvious conversation partner in philosophy that can provide it with an epistemology and a methodology. The result has been that the literature on narrative theology continues to grow by leaps and bounds but without direction, or, more precisely, in every conceivable direction.
Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones recently edited an anthology on narrative theology: Why Narrative?Readings in Narrative Theology.3 This volume consists of seventeen essays, many of which have been important contributions to the development of narrative theology. The anthology makes a major contribution by making two important essays, previously available only in a journal, available to a larger audience. Stephen Crites' ground-breaking article, "The Narrative Quality of Experience," has not previously been available to readers who do not have access to the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which first published the article. And the same journal published Julian Hartt's "Theological Investments in Story: Some Comments on Recent Developments and Some Proposals," with responses by Crites and Hauerwas and then Hartt's response to his critics. Hartt's essay raises important questions about the metaphysical status of many of the claims made by narrative theologians. Access to the articles by Crites and Hartt is worth the price of the book. The volume also contains additional important pieces by H. Richard
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3 Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones, editors, "Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1989).
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Niebuhr, Hans Frei, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Nicholas Lash. But while the book assembles an interesting collection of essays, it also leaves much unsaid, and what Why Narrative?leaves unsaid and unaddressed is perhaps as important as what it does say.
Why Narrative?reflects one unfortunate feature of the recent discussion of narrative theology and hermeneutics. For several years, "Narrative Theology and Hermeneutics" has been one of the workgroups at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. Over the years, that seminar has often degenerated into a public spat between the "schools" of theology associated with Yale University and the University of Chicago. At times, the seminar turned into a debate between the colleagues and graduate students of Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, on the one hand, and the associates of Paul Ricoeur and David Tracy, on the other. That debate, although far from resolved, has been important and the issues well worth discussing, but unfortunately, for some of the participants, the critical issues often seemed to take a back seat to school loyalty.
At least Hauerwas and Jones have the good sense to acknowledge that it is "a mistake to assume that Frei and Ricoeur represent the two fundamental options" in narrative theology, but their decision not to include anything by Ricoeur because "no one essay seemed appropriate" is less than convincing and may give some readers the impression that Hauerwas and Jones are only prolonging an unnecessary situation that obfuscates issues that deserve a discussion unsullied by school loyalty.4 At least eleven of the seventeen essays in Why Narrative?are written by people who taught or studied at Yale.
A second problem in "y Narrative? also has to do with what is not included. On the basis of the essays in this anthology, a reader new to narrative theology might well not realize that one of the most important developments in the discussion has been the conversation between theologians and biblical scholars. Many theologians interested in narrative have found it necessary to listen to what their colleagues in biblical studies have had to say about the nature of narrative and its various functions in the biblical canon. Indeed, some theologians have even found themselves returning to the biblical text in order to rethink the interpretation of Christian doctrine. Nor has the conversation been entirely one-sided. Some biblical scholars have benefited from the study of metaphor and parable by theologians such as Eberhard Ringel and Edward Schillebeeckx and philosophers such as Paul Ricoeur.5 A case might be made that, prior to the emergence of
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4 Particularly important is Ricoeur's recent work. See his essay. "The Narrative Function" in Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, edited by John B. Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 274-296. See also his three volume work, Time and Narrative, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1988).
5 For example, see Eberhard Ringel, God as the Mystery of the World, translated by Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) and his Theological Essays, edited by J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989); Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, translated by Hubery Hoskins (New York: Seabury, 1979); and Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, translated by Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello, S. J. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
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narrative, serious conversation between theologians and biblical scholars was at best infrequent and among those theologians not involved in the discussion of narrative almost non-existent. The decision of Hauerwas and Jones not to acknowledge the important contributions of biblical scholars to the literature on narrative does little to encourage future conversations.
Literary critics also have become important conversation partners for many theologians and biblical scholars. One of the most important early examples of that development was the influence of Eric Auerbach's work upon Hans Frei. If Stephen Crites' essay on the narrative structure of experience was a pivotal moment in the development of narrative theology, so too was the discovery by theologians and biblical scholars of Auerbach's Mimesis. An excerpt from Auerbach's interpretation of Genesis 22 or Mark 14 should have been included in "Why Narrative?6
In the last two decades, many theologians have discovered resources in recent literary theory, especially in structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, and reader-response theory7 Ricoeur, Tracy, Mark C. Taylor and others have recognized the significance of these movements and entered into conversation with them. One cannot help but wonder whether their absence from Why Narrative?is less a critical judgment on the part of the editors and more a school-tie commitment.
II
"Why Narrative?has the subtitle "readings in narrative theology." But depending on how one understands theology and what one thinks narrative theology is, the reader will find little theology in this volume. Hauerwas and Jones tell us in their introduction that narrative is "a crucial conceptual category for such matters as understanding issues of epistemology and methods of argument, depicting personal identity, and displaying the content of Christian convictions." These "matters" are a part of the agenda for many of the articles in this anthology. It is one thing, however, to understand narrative to be a category that can be used "to display the content of Christian convictions," and something else altogether to reinterpret and reconstruct Christian doctrine by means of narrative. The former may yield some interesting and novel ways to approach the study of theology but it is more a theology of narrative than it is a narrative theology. Only if narrative is
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6 Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), especially the first two chapters.
7 Two helpful surveys of the literature, both by Edgar V. McKnight, are The Bible and the Reader. An Introduction to Literary Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), and Post-Modern Use of the Bible: The Emergence of Reader-Oriented Criticism, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1988). See also Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, translated by Christine van Boheernen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985).
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part and parcel of the reconstruction of theology can we speak of a narrative theology. If the role of narrative is merely to display the content of Christian convictions, then the content of those convictions is already fixed and settled, and it is only in the loosest sense of the word that we can speak of this activity of displacement as a "narrative theology." One might expect narrative theology, like process theology or liberation theology, to serve not only as an introduction to the content of Christian faith, but to offer a reinterpretation of that faith on the basis of some understanding of the content of Christian narrative. The reader of Why Narrative?may not know that there are some theological proposals already on the public table which move in the direction of the stronger sense of "narrative theology."
Part III of Why Narrative?is entitled "Narrative's Theological Significance." Of the eight essays in Part III, the three which come the closest to rethinking Christian theology by means of narrative are Michael Root's essay on soteriology, a selection from Ronald Thiemann's Revelation and Theology, and Michael Goldberg's response to Thiemann, which challenges his reading of the Gospel of Matthew and his assumption of continuity and coherence between Jesus' story and Israel's.
Root argues that narrative "is not merely ornamental in soteriology, but constitutive." Soteriology, as Root describes it, should not be separated from "narrative redescription or argumentation," because soteriology involves the "recasting" of the Christian story. Root recognizes that soteriology may lead to a new reading or "recasting" of the narrative(s), but he does not seem to recognize that closer attention to the biblical text may also result in a reinterpretation of soteriology.
Similarly, Thiemann attempts "a literary and theological analysis of the book of Matthew which seeks a uniquely identifying description of God." Thiemann's project is a continuation of Hans Frei's arguments concerning the relation between biblical narrative and the identity of Jesus Christ. Thiemann's contribution to Frei's position is the claim that Matthew's Gospel not only identifies Jesus as Son of God, but "God is definitively identified as his Father." Furthermore, Matthew's Gospel shows us that God is "alone the gracious initiator, actor, and fulfiller of his own promises," that the God of promise is a prevenient God. In other words, Matthew's Gospel provides us information about God-that God is a God of promise and prevenience-but Thieman was literary and theological analysis does not lead him to rethink the reality of God. In the concluding paragraphs, Thiemann suggests that "Matthew's description of God, and the belief in prevenience it implies, receive their most precise theological redescription in certain Trinitarian categories." But Thiemann does not flesh out that proposal except in traditional trinitarian categories. One is left with the impression that the result of Thiemann's narrative reading of Matthew is that we know more about Jesus of Nazareth and the One who raised
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him from the dead, but that our understanding of Jesus and the One he called "Father" is not significantly different from that of classical theology.
Hauerwas and Jones could have included material from other theologians that would have suggested a bolder, more ambitious program for narrative theology. One of the figures who hovers in the background of many of the pages of "Why Narrative?is Hans Frei. The editors include a chapter from Frei's The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative in which he traces the loss of the narrative reading of the Bible in theology. Curiously, though, they chose to include nothing from Frei's earliest published attempt at narrative theology, The Identity of Jesus Christ. Frei's "experiment" in that book is a bold attempt to reconstruct christology and the doctrine of God, not in terms of the classical categories of nature, substance, and being, but in terms of the categories of intention and action. For Frei, Jesus "becomes who he is in the story by consenting to God's intention and by enacting that intention in the midst of the circumstances that devolve around him as the fulfillment of God's purpose."8 That is an exciting proposal. It suggests that a new reading of the Gospels might provide not only new information about Jesus and the One he calls "Father," but a new construal of the reality of both.
In addition to the work of Frei, it would not have been too difficult for the editors to have found other proposals that suggest that narrative might be used to construct a theology that not only displays the content of Christian doctrine but also rethinks and reinterprets it. For example, the final section of Eingel's God as the Mystery of the World makes a compelling case that the reality of God must be understood in terms of narrative because, "If thinking wants to think God, then it must endeavor to tell stories."9
During the last twenty years there have been several attempts, in addition to Frei's, to do christology not in terms of the classical categories of nature, substance, and "person," but in categories derived from those biblical narratives which give Jesus his identity as the Christ. A popular refrain in "narrative christology" is that, according to the Gospel narratives, not only does Jesus proclaim God's kingdom by means of parables, but the Gospels show Jesus to be "the parable of God."10 And if the power of parables is the power of metaphor, then the claim in the Gospels that Jesus is the Christ cannot be adequately understood by means of the logic of "two natures," but
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8 Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 107.
9 Jòngel, God as the Mystery, p. 303.
10 Numerous theologians have been attracted to this idiom for christology. See Ringel, God as the Mystery, Schillebeeckx, Jesus, and Sallie McFague, Speaking in Parables (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975). A helpful and provocative discussion of narrative christology is Robert A. Krieg, Story Shaped Christology: The Roles of Narratives in Identifying Jesus Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1988).
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only in terms of that mystery that comes to sudden and surprising expression in the Jesus story.
Hauerwas and Jones recognize that narrative theology is not simply a matter of telling stories, and they seem to recognize that there is a close relation between narrative and Christian conviction. What is not clear in their anthology is whether they understand that in some quarters narrative theology entails the attempt to rethink the meaning, content, and structure of Christian doctrine.
To their credit, hatter was and Jones do not argue that their anthology will bring order and direction out of chaos. They readily admit that the essays they have selected "do not form any single coherent perspective, nor do the authors all share similar religious convictions." It would be futile to look for some silver thread which runs through the diverse literature on narrative theology. What Hauerwas and Jones believe their book demonstrates is not that these diverse appeals to narrative can be reconciled in some grand, Hegelian synthesis, but instead it shows "the importance of narrative for theology while also displaying the rich results of disagreements about that importance."
III
The importance of Why Narrative?is that it makes available some of the significant literature on narrative theology. Why Narrative?might have done more, however, than simply document the diversity in the literature and some of its major themes. Hauerwas and Jones might have asked what it is about Western culture in the latter half of the twentieth century that evokes a widespread interest in narrative. It is surprising they do not address that obvious question in their introduction-why Why Narrative?has appeared. Nor is there much attention given to that question in the essays in the book, except for Alasdair MacIntyre's "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and the Philosophy of Science," in which he attempts to track "a number of conceptual connections that link such notions as those of an epistemological crisis, a narrative, a tradition, natural science, skepticism, and madness." In this nexus of concepts, the relation between narrative and tradition is particularly interesting. Traditions embody narratives, and traditions live only in so far as they are "recovered by an argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other argumentative retellings."
The relation between epistemology and personal and communal identity is a complex matter, but it may be that the popularity of narrative in North American communities and churches has something to do with the collapse of what were at one time familiar narratives and living traditions.11 As those traditions fell into disuse, the narratives
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11 For a much-discussed interpretation of the role of narrative in American culture see Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, Harper & Row, 1985).
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they embodied died with them, and individuals and communities who once engaged in the ongoing process of argumentative appropriation no longer did so. Soon, they no longer knew who they were, to whom they belonged, and what they were to be about in the world.
In mainline Protestantism, there does seem to be some connection between the much decried reality of biblical illiteracy, the loss of theological tradition, and the widespread confusion about what it means to be not only Methodist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian, but what it means to be Christian in North American culture. That is not to suggest that Presbyterians would suddenly rediscover the importance of the Bible if they once again forced their children to memorize the Westminster Shorter catechism, although it might be an interesting experiment. One might ask, though, whether ignorance about the Bible among Presbyterians has anything to do with the fact that their children (not to mention their parents) do not know any catechism, any coherent statement of Christian faith.
The identities of the children of Christian parents are shaped far more decisively by the narratives of television superheroes than by the stories about King David and the Apostle Paul. Our children are far more likely to whistle television commercials than hymns.
In North American culture, most forms of tradition and the narratives they embody are in disarray. There is a deep and profound confusion concerning not only what it means to be Christian, but also what it means to be male or female, husband or wife, father or mother. In the midst of this massive confusion about identity and the absence of what were at one time compelling narratives and living traditions, it is hardly surprising that there is both a fascination with and a longing for narratives that recreate an ordered world and provide meaning and direction to personal and communal existence. The interest in narrative across the spectrum of theological disciplines is not because theologians have run out of topics to debate and discuss; rather, the theme of narrative touches an exposed, raw nerve in the life of Christian communities and in the life of the larger culture.
Not only do traditions and the narratives they embody provide a sense of personal and communal identity, but it is also true that we remember by means of stories. And when we are no longer a part of a community that is struggling to appropriate its stories and traditions we run the risk of losing that memory that binds us to others, both in the present and in previous generations. Those people who do not understand themselves to be a part of a larger narrative have neither anything to remember nor the means by which to remember. The fascination with narrative in North American culture suggests a crisis of memory in the social fabric.
And just as one cannot remember without stories, so too the exercise of memory requires the use of the imagination. We remember in part in order to appropriate those narratives which tell us who we are. The collapse of narrative traditions in our culture suggests not only the
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prospect of collective, communal amnesia, but also a communal failure of the imagination. The imagination enables memory to reappropriate argumentative narratives, but the imagination also depends on biblical narrative for its life and sustenance. It is those narratives that stir the imagination and invite the creation of new readings and new paradigms.12 When biblical narrative falls silent, the people of God have nothing to remember, and with nothing to remember they soon forget who they are. Their untutored imaginations turn to other narratives and other gods. It is a familiar story.
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12 Two important books on the theological significance of the imagination are Garrett Green, Imagining God: Theology & Religious Imagination (San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1989), and David J. Bryant, Faith and the Play of Imagination (Macon, Georgia, Mercer University Press, 1989).
