A Brief Analysis of Narrative Theology

It is no secret that as you look at my theological history, I am a bit of a mutt.  I grew up Southern Baptist and when I moved north to Michigan, ended up moving around to several different churches until having a charismatic experience and ending up in an Assemblies of God church.  After being asked to leave (essentially) because of my reformed leanings, I ended up churchless for almost three years until I moved to Ashland, Ohio to attend seminary and began working with an Evangelical Free Church Plant.  The seminary that I graduated from is from a Brethren tradition and is an approved seminary for the United Methodist Church.  Indeed, my influences are very diverse.  I have found that this can be both a weakness for me and a strength.  As a weakness, it makes my theology look too ecumenical and flighty, but as a strength, it helps me appreciate the different contributions that theologians have made to the study of God despite my disagreement with them.

            I recently ran across some writings of Scot McKnight, a theologian who has influenced my thinking as I have read some of his writings on his blog.  I have a deep respect for him after hearing him speak at my seminary last fall on the importance of the resurrection and how it needs to be included in presentations of the gospel.  Despite my misgivings about some of his issues on Marian theology (but in all fairness, I have not read the book, just reviews of the book), I am very impressed by his grasp of the whole of the Bible, meaning that he understands that the Bible is telling a story.  This view is called “narrative theology.”  I label this cautiously because I know that some may have a knee-jerk reaction to that label because this type of theology is embraced by emergent church leaders such as Rob Bell.

            I once told a co-worker, who was also a believer, that I liked some of Rob Bell’s stuff.  He said, “Are you serious?”  I said, “Yeah.  I don’t agree with everything [I haven’t ever found a theologian I 100% agree with], but some of his stuff is good.”

“Seriously?” He asked again.  Apparently, he was having a hard time understanding how any good “evangelical” wanna-be pastor could ever embrace anything Rob Bell has written.  A few days later, he gave me a sheet of paper with notes on it, mostly with regard to how to interpret Scripture.  It must have also escaped him that I was very familiar with hermeneutical methods, probably even more familiar that he was, but nevertheless, I accepted the paper and promised to look it over.  I kept my promise, but it was primarily information about a very literal method that I was very already quite familiar with.  As I told him, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”  It always astounds me when people who have very little or no formal theological education want to take on people who have doctorates and are very well-versed in their beliefs and the arguments for them.  I had a professor that I took for the book of Acts that I highly disagreed with who ascribed to some form of modified liberation theology, but he had done his homework and earned his degree and I wasn’t about to disagree with him openly in class.  Ask questions, yes.  Openly debate him…no.  But I digress.

            I think the issue with narrative theology is that while their method is good *as an overall hermeneutic*, they throw the baby out with the bathwater.  It is like a wide-angle camera lens versus a telescopic lens.  Narrative theology and its approach to hermeneutics helps us see the big picture, that God does indeed have a story of redemption that He wants to tell us, the wide-angle lens if you will, but it makes for a very poor telescopic lens.  If you look at every passage closely in the context of narrative theology, you will fail to see that you can systematically see some doctrines in Scripture. You will inevitably get a blurry picture. 

With all due respect to Rob Bell and others, just because the Bible is telling a story does not mean that we cannot learn something concrete in the telling of that story.   I ran across an interesting site that says this very well:

Narrative theology has also been misused when people determine that the narrative does not have an underlying systematic theology, or that its underlying theology cannot be known. In such cases, it is implied that the lessons of narratives can be understood apart from the worldviews of the original writers or           authors of the text itself. Basically, this results in false teaching with some proponents of narrative theology moving straight from story to application and doing away with more reasoned analysis of the Scriptures. But in reality, this can’t be done. Perhaps the most obvious influence of narrative theology is found in the emerging church with its distrust and relatively low regard for systematic theology.

Another point that this article makes (and I am paraphrasing) is that even though loyal followers to systematic theology may cringe at the application of narrative theology, if they do not employ it at some level, they move away from a “more reasoned analysis of the Scriptures.”  Narrative theology has as one of its strengths the belief that there is a unity in the sixty-six books of the Bible and if systematic theologians choose to trumpet a skewed view of one theology presented in a particular area of Scripture at the expense of another passage that might balance that view, they are doing a great disservice.

            In summary, do not throw the baby of the unity of Scripture out with the dirty bathwater of bad hermeneutics.  Use narrative theology, but keep it in its place at a wide angle and do not use the apparent mysteries of some areas of Scriptures as an excuse to not draw a line where Scripture clearly draws a line.

Stop Calling Terry Jones an Evangelical!

The recent controversy regarding the Florida pastor, Terry Jones who wants to burn the Koran has got me thinking about how important it is for us to define our theological terms. The media likes to lump all Christians who believe in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as “evangelical.” The problem with this is that it is not theologically or culturally accurate.


Theologically speaking, fundamentalism began in the late 19th century as a reaction to Protestant Liberalism which upheld Darwinian Evolution and generally denied any supernatural element to Christianity, in particular to the life and ministry of Christ. It placed an emphasis on the teachings of Jesus rather than the relationship that we can have with Christ through belief if His atoning work on the cross. You can find a very good explanation of liberalism here. Fundamentalism was a good and necessary reaction against this that defined true Christianity as adhering to a set of “fundamentals,” hence the name “fundamentalism.” It was also primarily characterized by a separation from culture, particularly elements of the culture deemed evil or sinful. It resulted in the creation of separate colleges and universities such as the infamous Bob Jones University founded in 1927. The result was that Christianity, particularly its American form, was not very influential on the culture in general throughout the beginning of the 20th century.

Decades later, in the mid-20th century, a renewed theological effort was made to re-engage culture. This movement is generally called “evangelicalism.” The defining moment for this shift was the founding of Fuller Theological Seminary in 1947. (On a coincidental note, my father was born the same year that Bob Jones was founded and my mother was born the same year that Fuller was founded). This represented a rejection of the separation of culture and an attempt to re-engage the culture.

In the last half of the 20th century, both movements grew and had divisions in each one, so much so that it is often hard to tell one from another. Primarily, modern-day fundamentalist Christians, while still embracing the belief in the atoning work of Christ, are primarily known for being dispensational, pre-millennial, and separatistic. Evangelicals, on the other hand, are primarily known for their emphasis on the relationship that we can have with Christ through His atoning death, burial and resurrection. Where it becomes hard to tell the difference is that there are many evangelicals who are dispensational, pre-millennial, but not separatistic (Examples of these would be Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the Left Behind series) and there are those that seem to have lived in both worlds. For example, what do you with the late Jerry Falwell? He was indeed a man who seemed to exist in both worlds and at different times throughout his life, he was villianized by both sides.

Although it is often difficult to define exactly where the line is explicitly drawn, generally speaking, the line has been drawn with the belief in separatism. Generally, fundamentalists believe in separation from culture; evangelicals believe in engagement, and, in some cases, acceptance of the culture. Even with this definition, it is still sometimes very hard to tell the difference. Within fundamentalism, there are “open fundamentalists,” those that are a bit more open to culture but still cautiously separatistic (this is the camp that Falwell usually falls in) and “closed fundamentalists” such as those represented by the leadership of Bob Jones University (It is tempting to put Fred Phelps in this category, but with all due respect to fundamentalism, he seems to be a breed all of his own).

This past week, I was able to get on the Dove World Outreach Center’s website, but today, probably because of the international outcry all over the world, I am not able to access that site. However, even without access to the website, it is safe to say that Terry Jones is not an evangelical. Evangelicals have accepted the fact (whether we like it or not) that Islam is becoming part of the American culture. Evangelicals do not agree with Islamic theology, but they understand that deliberately antagonizing Muslims is certainly not the way to argue for a religion that should be known primarily by love. Since Jones rejects this belief (obviously), it is safe to say that he is not an evangelical. I know quite a few of open fundamentalists and I have not heard one of them support this action, so it is quite safe to say that he is not an open fundamentalist. He has completely rejected culture, so much so that he refuses to not do something that is so antagonistic to the religion of Islam and, it seems, to the whole world. Since this is even a bold step for closed fundamentalists, I have placed him in the camp of what I call “hyper-fundamentalism,” an extreme form of closed fundamentalism that, fortunately, does not usually have such a world-wide stage.

With all of that being said, Jones is not an evangelical and I urge all of you to call people out, including the media, who say that he is. He does not represent me or my beliefs. As I said on my Facebook page, he is a “right-wing hyper-fundamentalist.” I doubt he will read this page before Saturday, but I am appealing to him not to burn those Korans. This will incite hatred toward Christianity in general, further hatred of Americans, and unfortunately, as so many world leaders have already said, will probably be answered with violence.

I also urge evangelical Christians who believe in the radical love of God, as I do, to use this as an opportunity to explain to our friends and family who are not believers the difference between the love of God and the hate of Terry Jones. Use this as an opportunity to not just jump on the bandwagon condemning this action, but to explain what you believe and why you believe it. Let’s help the world see the difference between the love of Christ and the hate of Muslims.