This article explores the concept of story for biblical theology, particularly from the perspective of evangelical scholarship. It is suggested that story offers a framework for biblical theology that avoids undue emphasis on propositional theology and maintains biblical tensions within a plot-focused approach. Additionally, a storied approach to biblical theology resonates with the narrative quality of the biblical text and of human experience and is best pursued via a dynamic hermeneutic. The essay concludes by addressing some weaknesses of the category of story for biblical theology, including its use to avoid historical difficulties, the scholarly tendency toward theological abstraction, and the ethical question of the claim to have sketched the biblical story. In response, dialogue across boundaries, including those of ethnicity, nationality, denomination, and religion, can be a valuable practice to evangelicals and others who see story as a promising category for the future of biblical theology.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
John Goldingay, “Biblical Narrative and Systematic Theology,” in Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology (ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 123-142, here 138.
James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 2.
Joel B. Green, Practicing Theological Interpretation: Engaging Biblical Texts for Faith and Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 42. Another preliminary issue is the proposed audience of biblical theology. It has alternately been argued that its audience is the academy or the church. It seems to me that both need to be in view for a series of checks and balances to be functioning and effective.
Andy Johnson, “Theological Interpretation of the Gospels,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 2d ed. (ed. Joel B. Green, Nicholas Perrin, Jeannine K. Brown; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 963.
Craig Bartholomew, “Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation: Introduction,” in Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series 5, ed. C. Bartholomew, M. Healy, K. Möller, R. Parry; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 15.
George Lindbeck, “The Story-Shaped Church: Critical Exegesis and Theological Interpretation,” in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings (ed. Stephen E. Fowl; (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1997), 42.
John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), 37.
Christopher J. H. Wright, “Mission as a Matrix for Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology,” in Out of Egypt: Biblical Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Scripture and Hermeneutics Series 5, ed. C. Bartholomew, M. Healy, K. Möller, R. Parry; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), 138-39.
Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence: Toward a New Biblical Theology (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 34. This is Terrien’s critique of much nineteenth century biblical theology that systematized the biblical material in line with “Platonic conceptual thinking and Aristotelian logic” (34).
Wright, New Testament, 132. He goes on to say that this story offers four worldview questions: (1) Who are we? (2) Where are we? (3) What is wrong? (4) What is the solution? (132-33). For another brief summary of the canonical story, Bryan offers the following: “Our forebears believed . . . that the biblical narrative spoke of God in a special way. They saw it as witnessing to God’s continuing work and grace in the world and among God’s people: a story of creation and fall, of the call of Abraham, of Exodus, Sinai, settlement, exile, and return; and among Christians, a subsequent story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us and for our salvation, of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the foundation of the church, and of the still future, final presence of Christ as savior and judge of the world.” Christopher Bryan, Listening to the Bible: The Art of Faithful Biblical Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 67.
Gabriel Fackre, “Narrative Theology from an Evangelical Perspective,” in Faith and Narrative, ed. Keith E. Yandell (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 188-201, here 199.
Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel, 40-41. Here, Goldingay is focusing specifically on the use of ot narrative for doing theology.
Richard Bauckham, “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story,” in The Art of Reading Scripture (ed. Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 38-53. Though he qualifies that “the unity of the story cannot be a simple one handed to us on a canonical plate” (42).
Jeannine K. Brown, “Narrative Criticism,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, 623.
Jonathan M. Adler, “Sitting at the Nexus of Epistemological Traditions: Narrative Psychological Perspectives on Self-Knowledge,” in Handbook of Self-Knowledge (ed. Simine Vazire and Timothy D. Wilson; New York: The Guilford Press, 2012), 327-42, here 329. Research on narrative psychology is discussed and is available on the Northwestern University’s Foley Center website at http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/.
Adler, “Narrative,” 330, citing M. Freeman, “Even amidst: Rethinking Narrative Coherence,” in Beyond Narrative Coherence (ed. M Hyvärinen, L. C. Hydén, M. Saarenheimo, M. Tamboukou; Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2010), 168.
Richard Bauckham, “Egalitarianism and Hierarchy in the Bible,” in God and the Crisis of Freedom: Biblical and Contemporary Perspectives (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 116-127.
Ibid., 118, 122, 125.
Ibid., 126.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), particularly 243-64.
Jackson Wu, “Biblical Theology from a Chinese Perspective: Interpreting Scripture through the Lens of Honor and Shame,” Global Missiology 4.10 (July, 2013), 1-31. Accessed at www.GlobalMissiology.org, May 21, 2014.
For example, Hayden White, “Introduction: Historical Fiction, Fictional History, and Historical Reality,” Rethinking History 9 (June 2005), 147-157.
Joel B. Green, Practicing Theological Interpretation: Engaging Biblical Texts for Faith and Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 56 (my emphasis).
Hays, “Narrative Criticism,” 199. To represent more fully his insightful discussion, it would be important to note that Hays suggests that a certain practice of narrative criticism, one that doesn’t “divorce biblical narrative from the reality to which it bears witness,” can help to discern and pursue a biblical unity (200).
Reno, “Biblical Theology,” 389. He goes on to explain: “Modern theological readers drift toward abstraction, and their exegesis inscribes an eccentric trajectory away from the biblical text because they (we) cannot sustain a belief that human history, especially the history of the people of Israel and the Christian church . . . is so ordered that a deeper and more accurate understanding of that history will lead us toward a deeper knowledge and love of God” (401).
E. E. Johnson, “A Biblical Theology of God’s Glory,” Bibliotheca Sacra 169 (2012), 402-411, here 403.
Ibid., 403 and 411, respectively.
David R. Schmitt, “Telling God’s Story,” Concordia Journal 40 (March 1, 2014), 101-112, here 109. Schmitt defines “telescoping” as a narrowing of [its] narrative horizons (108) and encourages his reader to avoid this more myopic reading of the text. Yet in his essay he does not address the law/gospel lens of his own theological location or allow that it might require modification by the biblical meta-narrative itself.
Ibid., 12.
Ibid., 31, 36-40.
Ibid., 40.
Ibid., 41.
Ibid., 380.
Amy Jill Levine, “Discharging Responsibility: Matthean Jesus, Biblical Law, and the Hemorrhaging Woman,” in Treasures New and Old: Recent Contributions to Matthean Studies, David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell, eds. (Atlanta, ga: Scholars Press, 1996), 379-97, here 380.
Ibid., 386.
Ibid., 380.
Amy-Jill Levine, “Jesus in Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” in Soundings in the Religion of Jesus: Perspectives and Methods in Jewish and Christian Scholarship (ed. B. Chilton, A. Le Donne, and J. Neusner; Minneapolis: Fortress 2012), 184. Other important voices in this conversation include Daniel Boyarin and Paula Fredriksen.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 494 | 73 | 6 |
Full Text Views | 229 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 101 | 7 | 0 |
This article explores the concept of story for biblical theology, particularly from the perspective of evangelical scholarship. It is suggested that story offers a framework for biblical theology that avoids undue emphasis on propositional theology and maintains biblical tensions within a plot-focused approach. Additionally, a storied approach to biblical theology resonates with the narrative quality of the biblical text and of human experience and is best pursued via a dynamic hermeneutic. The essay concludes by addressing some weaknesses of the category of story for biblical theology, including its use to avoid historical difficulties, the scholarly tendency toward theological abstraction, and the ethical question of the claim to have sketched the biblical story. In response, dialogue across boundaries, including those of ethnicity, nationality, denomination, and religion, can be a valuable practice to evangelicals and others who see story as a promising category for the future of biblical theology.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 494 | 73 | 6 |
Full Text Views | 229 | 3 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 101 | 7 | 0 |