# Narrative Theology?



## The Author of my Faith (Apr 27, 2010)

What is Narrative Theology? Is it orthodox? From what I see it seems to be very "Emergent" but I don't want to throw out the whole thing if there are some good aspects to it.

There is a chuch in NYC that a friend used to go to but left and is now in a solid church that adheres to Reformed Theology. I checked out the church's website and found it to be void of the words Sin or any type of doctrinal statement. Only 

http://www.forefrontchurch.com/assets/1123/narrative_theology.pdf

They are part of the "new thing network" https://www.newthing.org/

They seem to promote christianity as a "Journey" and we are all on this journey together. I browsed the sites and the affilate churches and one thing seems to be missing.

Jesus. The Cross, the Blood, the Gospel, Repentance, Sin, God's Wrath, Etc. 

Is this simply Emergent, borderline emergent, misguided sincere, or heretical?


How would you describe this kind of ministry philosophy?


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## CharlieJ (Apr 27, 2010)

Narrative theology focuses on assumed trajectories in Scripture. It sees a progress of development, especially in Scripture's ethics. The goal is to carry out to the fulfillment those trajectories of development. 

An example might be gender roles: in the pre-Mosaic times, you have polygamy and rape and prostitution and all that sort of stuff in the Bible, and it doesn't all get a whole lot of negative attention (as much as we would like to see). Then, with Moses, you have a lot of legal protections for women, and even Levirate marriage polygamy is functioning with the intention of protecting the woman's economic status. The daughters of Zelophehad are allowed to inherit land. On the other hand, there is still very evident patriarchy. Women aren't allowed to do many of the things that men do; they are pretty much totally dependent on male kinsmen or charitable neighbors. Then, in the New Testament, we see Jesus going out of his way to treat women with respect and dignity. He overrules the Mosaic divorce laws for a more just one. Baptism is for men and women alike. Paul consorts with businesswomen like Lydia and says that in Christ "There is no male and female."

So the conclusion would be that in order to follow the biblical trajectory, we need to continue the process of equalizing women, even when that would include doing things that the biblical writers would not have imagined in their context or may have been against.


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## The Author of my Faith (Apr 27, 2010)

CharlieJ said:


> Narrative theology focuses on assumed trajectories in Scripture. It sees a progress of development, especially in Scripture's ethics. The goal is to carry out to the fulfillment those trajectories of development.
> 
> An example might be gender roles: in the pre-Mosaic times, you have polygamy and rape and prostitution and all that sort of stuff in the Bible, and it doesn't all get a whole lot of negative attention (as much as we would like to see). Then, with Moses, you have a lot of legal protections for women, and even Levirate marriage polygamy is functioning with the intention of protecting the woman's economic status. The daughters of Zelophehad are allowed to inherit land. On the other hand, there is still very evident patriarchy. Women aren't allowed to do many of the things that men do; they are pretty much totally dependent on male kinsmen or charitable neighbors. Then, in the New Testament, we see Jesus going out of his way to treat women with respect and dignity. He overrules the Mosaic divorce laws for a more just one. Baptism is for men and women alike. Paul consorts with businesswomen like Lydia and says that in Christ "There is no male and female."
> 
> So the conclusion would be that in order to follow the biblical trajectory, we need to continue the process of equalizing women, even when that would include doing things that the biblical writers would not have imagined in their context or may have been against.


 

So basically it is Emergent Theology. Isn't that what Brueggeman teaches? So what was prohibited back then is now permissable. It think I read something on Brueggeman where he siad God is a God in recovery? Something crazy like that. He was killing people in the OT but now is all loving and accepting in the NT. So homosexuality and other practices that were forbidden are now permissable. Crazy!!!

I thought this was the case with Narrative Theology but just wanted to be sure not to throw out the baby with the bathwater but in this case there is Way too much bathwater to deal with so I guess there goes the baby!! 

Thanks!


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## Jimmy the Greek (Apr 27, 2010)

From what I understand, it is a postliberal theology associated with the works of Hans Frei and Stanley Hauerwas. It has influenced and contributed to the Emerging Church movement. It undermines the idea that Scripture gives us propositional truths.


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## Herald (Apr 27, 2010)

It's emergent. A few years back one of our elders preached a message on how the bible is a narrative and how we need to follow it's natural progression even in our time. A few weeks later this elder resigned because he no longer held to inerrancy. Today he has, sadly, left the faith. Narrative theology is like any other theology that bends scripture to meet it's desired end.


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## jwithnell (Apr 27, 2010)

Sadly, there's nothing new under the sun. A couple of decades ago, when I was in college, we were assigned to keep a "faith journal" of our developing experiences during a philosophy of religion class. Much further back, Schleiermacher saw a god that can only be known by manifestations in human consciousness. Add to that an arrogance that surely we know more than anyone at any previous time, it's not a stretch to come up with an evolution of thought and ethics.


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## jwright82 (Apr 27, 2010)

Heres the definition from the Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms published by IVP, 1999.



> *narrative, narrative theology.* Since the 1970's, a theological approach that utilizes the concept of story and the human person as storyteller (e.g., Gabriel Fackre, Hans Frei, Stanley Hauerwas, George Stroup) to provide the central motif for theological reflection. Narrative theologians claim that we construct our personal identity as our individual stories are joined with the transcendent story of the religious community and ultimately with the overarching narrative of salvation history.



This movement definantly contributed to the emergent church movement, I wittnessed this first hand when a attended an emergent church a couple of years ago. They highly emphasized the Bible as a story. Look at Rob Bell's church Mars Hill, under the "what we believe section" they write it out as a story. Narrative theology is somewhat within postmodernism, although any postmodern thinker would be critical of the whole "overarching narrative" which sounds an awful lot like a metanarrative (an overarching narrative or story into which all other particular narratives fit). Thats a fancy way of saying a kind of true theory to explain everything in reality. The postmodernist would say that christians and muslims have two different narratives to explain reality but neither one is above or better than the other, or anymore truthful than the other. 

It is associated with the postliberal school of thought, especially with Goerge Lindbeck. He defined doctrine as the ground rules of a particular community. So our reformed doctrines do not represent the true set of Biblical doctrines only what one must believe to be in the Reformed community. So there is a Lutheran narrative, Baptist narrative, Roman Catholic narrative, etc..., all can be included in the broad Christian narrative so that the movement is pretty eucumenical.


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