Two Types of Narrative Theology

[Slopeshoulder]

I thought you folks might enjoy this article. It summarizes some movements and tensions within and between Protestant and Catholic, Yale and Chicago, post-liberal, postmodern theology.

BTW, Frei and Kelsey were profs of mine. I'm a fan of Tracy. He came from Chicago to Yale for a semester just after I left and moved to Chicago. That was tough to take at the time.
Good article, many household names. A good read. Enjoy.

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/ ... 7.full.pdf

Are you a post-liberal? What kind?

In what way does narrative theology offer a middle way between modern fundamentalism and modern liberalism?

[johnmarc]

Since this turned up first on a post addressed to me, I thought that at least I might explain why this it difficult for me to respond. You might instead be addressing others with the theological background to decipher all of this in which case, my apologies for interrupting.

I am not a theologian nor do I read the works of theologians---although I did make it through a thick volume by Hans Kung once. I think that it was something or other about God. I read the works of those who popularize theology because they use words that I can understand Spong, Borg, NT Wright, Timothy Luke Johnson and such.

Your link requires a membership to participate and I wasn’t willing to part with the money to read something that was no doubt completely over my head. As a matter of fact, the Wiki article completely lost me. The only name that I recognized was Karl Barth and he and I don’t see eye to eye on much. Suffice it to say that everything above the following in the Wiki article was Greek.

From this point on, at least, I felt that I could probably make some (mistaken) sense of this.

Scriptural interpretation remains fundamental for postliberal theology. There are at least four key exegetical differences that lie between liberal and postliberal theology.

OK, I’m listening---slow down and shorter sentences.

First, liberal interpretation of Scripture is done with a preoccupation with the historical context, whereas postliberal interpretation is "an act of imagination," interpreting the text with the needs of the reading sub-community in the forefront. Liberal theology deals with aiming to understand the text as it would have applied to the past. Using a non-foundationalist approach, postliberal interpretation aims to interpret the text as it should be applied now and in the future.

I am in the Jesus Seminar, Borg, Spong, and Crossan camp and I assume that makes me liberal and not post-liberal. But the confusion for me is that the liberal theology that I have been following sounds more like post-liberal as defined by these four points. Spong would never attempt to understand the text as it would have applied to the past. It makes no sense in Spong’s attempts to release the text from the past in order to apply it to modern world applications. We release the text from the chains which hold it to the past and free it to do meaningful work here in the present. (Is that the gist of post-liberal? It just sounds like Spong to me.

Second, liberal theologians depend on unbiased reason to ensure finding the objective meaning of the text. Postliberal theologians, however, recognize the impossibility of reading without imposing interpretation of the text by the reader, where such a notion of objective reading disintegrates.

The Jesus seminar has discussed this at length. They make the attempt to be as objective as possible, but realizing that complete objectivity is a myth, at least travel the short road to disclose the bias that each researcher has so that the reader can, at least, take the bias into account as it applies to the research. They further acknowledge that the recognition of bias goes a long way towards eliminating some of the most potentially harmful bias. (those that claim no bias are inevitably the most biased of all)

Third, "we read texts as bodied interpreters fully situated in some body politic." That is, each and every reader and reading is relative to a degree.

Absolutely. Recognizing, of course, that fundamentalists who claim that there is no relativity to a literal Bible are the most ‘relative’ of any group. Somehow, cherry-picking through the Bible is ‘the solid rock of Jesus’. I hear Spong applauding.

Finally, because reading is always done with a concern for the sub-community, postliberal interpretation always has a functional pressing element. Liberal interpretation, on the other hand, is after time- and situation-independent truth that do not necessary press the reader to act.[3] More typical of postliberal theologies today, however, is a return to patristic and medieval hermeneutical models for reading scripture theologically, uniting literal-historical and spiritual-figural-allegorical senses into a coherent understanding of scripture.

The Jesus Seminar probably is not into ‘pressing the reader to act because…..oh, wait, I get it. The Jesus Seminar does fit neatly into the descriptions of liberal theology given here, but their focus is historical, factual, research and is not hermeneutical at all. But the thrust of Crossan, Spong, Borg and others is to release the text from its early context in order to apply it to its new context, which is to perform God’s work here on earth. (The Kingdom is within you---sweep it up a bit---make it presentable)

The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible is one good example of postliberal scriptural interpretation at work.

No clue.

I am a Spong Christian. He has never, to my knowledge, used the word post-liberal, but If I am understand this correctly (which I am probably not) he might more readily fit into a post-liberal mentality?

To my way of thinking, these folks are just mixing up exegesis and hermeneutics. One of these is contextually dependent and the other is not.

P.S. What comes after post-liberal---the Parousia?