Jason Coleman

So what is the relationship between studying the Bible, Systematic Theology, and Narrative Theology?

Gabler suggested that the job of biblical studies was to distill the truths from the Bible, to be handed over to the systematicians for proper and logical ordering. Such a vision holds onto what Narrative Theology will always deem a mistake: thinking that “systematic theology” is the real thing, whereas biblical theology is a road on the way to [the real thing].

via What is Narrative Theology? Pt. 1: Narrative Theology and Biblical Theology | Storied Theology.

Earlier in the same article, Kirk gives this description of Narrative Theology:

Learning the story of God as a story, articulating the various aspects as parts of a dynamic movement that not only passes through time but genuinely develops and changes as it does so, narrative theology never seeks to leave the story behind to get on to the real business of theology or ethics. The church’s theology is the narrative, and its ethics is the telling of that story in the words and deeds of Christian communities.

I like it. It allows for the development of ideas over time, and even the development of what makes for a proper understanding of God over the millenia.

Daniel Kirk discusses the synoptic problem: trying to harmonize the differences between the four gospels to figure out what “really happened”. But each author wrote his own voice in order to highlight the differences, not to have us smoosh them all back together into one undifferentiated meaning.

Once upon a time, I thought that listening to multiple voices was a way of telling us what the “one meaning” really was.

You know what happens when you do this?

…Luke’s “blessed are you who are hungry” is muted by Matthew’s “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

You see what happens if we don’t allow the multiplicity of Biblical voices to speak? The concern for worldly poverty and starving kids in my city gets “spiritualized”–and the next thing you know, the church begins to think that having a quiet time is more important than feeding our starving neighbors.

Of course, we must not allow Luke to mute Matthew, either. Hungering and thirsting for righteousness are states of the blessed citizens of the Kingdom.

But we can only allow both voices to speak if we are willing to allow the Bible to be what it actually is. We can only listen to both Matthew and Luke if we are open to see that they shaped their messages in accordance with robust theological agendas that situate Jesus within the world and the story of Israel in unique ways.

via NT Scholarship and the Starving Poor | Storied Theology.

Emphasis mine.

Peter Enns again, this time cautioning us about being too quick to “know for sure” what topics the Apostle Paul meant to settle for us definitively by what he wrote. Theology, certainly; but questions of science? Perhaps we too casually assume that this ancient man was addressing our modern concerns.

Paul’s view on Adam is perhaps the central issue in this debate among Evangelicals. But the entire question turns on whether Paul’s comments on Adam are prepared to settle what can and cannot be concluded about human origin on the basis of scientific investigation.

Citing a few verses as transparent prooftexts does not relieve us of the necessary hermeneutical work of what to do with Paul’s words. Paul’s view of Adam does not end the discussion, as DeYoung thinks; it begins it.

via Thoughts on Kevin DeYoung’s Restless Comments on the Historical Adam | Peter Enns.

Pete Enns discusses Kevin DeYoung’s defense of the historicity of Genesis 1-3. Both men claim that the Genesis creation account is meant to supplant the mythical creation accounts of Israel’s neighboring cultures. However, Enns disagrees with DeYoung about why the Hebrew stories were better.

Israel’s stories do not supplant the other stories by being somehow “historical” by contrast–to show those Babylonians “what really happened.” Israel’s stories offer an alternate theological account of their God by employing mythic themes and imagery of other cultures–even if those themes and images are reframed and re-presented by the biblical writers, which they certainly were.

The polemic of Israel’s creation stories works because they share the same conceptual world of their neighbors. DeYoung seems to think the polemic works because it abandons that conceptual world.

via Thoughts on Kevin DeYoung’s Restless Comments on the Historical Adam | Peter Enns.

I think I should like to use this prayer.

Since today is the feast day of St. Brigid, let me commend a prayer of hers that might be said before the meal at the People’s Prayer Breakfast:

I should welcome the poor to my feast,

For they are God’s children.

I should welcome the sick to my feast,

For they are God’s joy.

Let the poor sit with Jesus at the highest place,

And the sick dance with the angels.

God bless the poor,

God bless the sick,

And bless our human race.

God bless our food,

God bless our drink,

All homes, O God embrace.

via slacktivist » Occupy the National Prayer Breakfast.

I know many Christians who understand the scientific issues and are convinced that evolution explains human origins. They are looking for ways to read the Adam story differently. Many more—at least this is my experience—are open to the discussion, but are not ready simply to pull the trigger on evolution. They first need to see for themselves that the Adam story can be read with respect and reverence but without needing to read it as a literal account of human origins. Both groups are thinking hermeneutically, though they approach the issue from different sides.

via Behind the Book: Peter Enns’s The Evolution of Adam.

Here am I.

Larry Tanner responds to a kitschy graphic being passed around on Facebook depicting a beautiful cherub of a girl praying for a solution to such little-girl concerns as high gas prices, low employment, and separation of church and state.

Then let me be serious and straightforward: go away with your fake prayers and your god-bothering. You want America’s problems to disappear magically. You want it all fixed, but without any cost to you or your friends. Most of all, you want to appear pious and stoic.

via Textuality: Inspiration? No, Thanks..

It is somewhat ironic that some adult, pondering this array of real world grown-up concerns, didn’t put any effort into working for a read solution but instead created a graphic of a child asking someone else to do any real work that might be necessary.

Pete Enns writes that the Genesis creation account wasn’t written at the creation of the world, but during the creation of the Israelite people. It’s purpose therefore wasn’t to break scientific ground on the question, “How did people get here,” but instead on the social, cultural and political question, “How did we get here as a people?”:

Ancient peoples assumed that somewhere in the distant past, near the beginning of time, the gods made the first humans from scratch — an understandable conclusion to draw. They wrote stories about “the beginning,” however, not to lecture their people on the abstract question “Where do humans come from?” They were storytellers, drawing on cultural traditions, writing about the religious — and often political — beliefs of the people of their own time.

Their creation stories were more like a warm-up to get to the main event: them. Their stories were all about who they were, where they came from, what their gods thought of them and, therefore, what made them better than other peoples.

Likewise, Israel’s story was written to say something about their place in the world and the God they worshiped.

via Pete Enns: Once More, With Feeling: Adam, Evolution and Evangelicals.

Natalie on the troubles of biblical inerrancy, quoting from Christian Smith’s book “The Bible Made Impossible”:

Genesis 1-2 is an excellent example.  What was the intended effect of the written words of these chapters?  Was it to convey to the reader that the Yahweh God created a good world with his power?  Or was it to communicate a literal scientific account about the precise method and time period of the creation of the world?  Was it to banish rival pagan narratives of the earth’s origins?  Or, anachronistically, was it to motivate followers of the Yahweh God to mobilize against teaching evolution in schools?

To impose our categories of literalism and factual accuracy onto a rich, ancient text disrespects the intended effect of Scripture’s written words.  Inerrancy forces the Bible to look like a collection of “error-free propositions with which to construct indubitably true systematic theologies[.]”  But the living God of the Bible “actively promises, confronts, beckons, comforts, invites, commands, explains, encourages,” and more.  

Emphasis in original.

via Inerrancy is weak – Natalie’s Narrative.

Richard Beck has a wonderful meditation about the cross of Jesus and how we should keep it from becoming merely an ornament to adorn our churches and necklaces. He recalls other means of execution where humanity brings down its curses upon the weak, specifically the death of Matthew Shepard tied to a fence in Wyoming and black men lynched in the Jim Crow south. I can’t do it justice in summary; it’s very moving.

Experimental Theology: The Fence of Matthew Shepard.