God & Story
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
A few random thoughts meshed together over the last few days:
The first came from the famous realisation by Pascal that
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not the God of the philosophers…or the men of science
Having been thinking about narratives, I wonder if we can say that the difference is story — the God of the Bible is a God with a story, who interacts with history.
Then I read this in ‘Story and Biblical Theology‘ by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen:
The primary difference between [the two main worldviews in western culture] is the location of reliable truth. The biblical story locates truth in the story of God’s deeds and words in history, centred in Jesus Christ, while the classical humanist story finds truth in timeless ideas that can be accessed by human thought.
Finally, I jotted this down in a coffee shop last week. Not sure if I 100% agree with myself, but here goes (how’s that for having your cake & eating it 
:
We always worship based on story, based on what God has done. This may be our own story and normally is for modern people. Alternatively, it is the larger story of what God is doing in the world.Probably in the end it is both — we worship based on our own story embedded in the larger story. This stops egotism — focussing on what God has done just for me — and results in a larger canvas and richer worship.
Certainly, it is true for me that getting the bigger picture of new creation, etc. expands the way I worship considerably…
Interpretation and living
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
As I said in my last post, I’ve been reading First Theology by Kevin Vanhoozer (on and off). I’ve particularly enjoy the essay ‘The World Well Staged? Theology, Culture and Hermeneutics.’ He ends this with a section on hermeneutics (i.e. interpretation of the text) as something that must be lived out. I almost want to quote the whole thing, but here are some highlights:
The community of biblical interpreters is, of course, the church. The church is a hermeneutical community, a community of interpreters constituted by the Word and enlivened by the Spirit. Indeed the Spirit is the enabling power that ministers the Word and renders it effective.
…
The most important interpretation of the Bible is the way we live our lives. We appropriate the meaning of a text when we let its world into ours, when we put its pages into our practice. We apply a text’s meaning to our lives when we perform the text. Our response to a text constitutes its “lived meaning.”
…
Ricoeur speaks of living in the “world” of the text. if we dwell in a text’s world long enough, it will begin to shape our vision and our values. This is the function of culture – the world of meaning – too. It is by faith that the community of biblical interpreters believingly enters the text; it is the Spirit who enables the Word’s world to cultivate the image of God that we bear and that we are. The church’s aim should be to render a faithful interpretation of Scripture.
I love the idea of interpretation being how we live out the text, rather than just a intellectual exercise. Of course, the idea that we should live out what we read isn’t so radical (at least in theory!), but somehow characterising it as interpretation adds depth to it, for me at least. It’s more than a few bullet points that we should abide by. Our whole lives interpret God’s word for those around.
Also, it is not just something I do as an individual — the interpretation is done as a community. It is our shared life that expresses the meaning of ‘the text’. And, hopefully, people seeing the community at-life will experience ‘the text’ directly.
Vanhoozer’s discussion makes a number of connections for me…
First, when Paul write to some of the early churches he effectively says ‘You are the message’. (I fact this is Eugene Peterson’s translation.) It seems to me that this captures the same idea.
Second, in ‘Velvet Elvis’ Rob Bell (notoriously) suggests that our doctrines are like springs on a trampoline. What I took from this (I’m not sure this is quite what he said) is that they propel us into action. Connecting this to the quotes above: perhaps we can say that doctrine is there to enable us to interpret correctly, to act in a way that presents a faithful ‘lived meaning’.
Finally, I was reminded of Tom Wright’s essay ‘How can the Bible be authoritative?‘ Wright pictures the Biblical Story as a 5-act play. We are in the fifth act and our performance must be consistent with those before, and our knowledge of the ending. Vanhoozer uses very similar imagery (possibly not coincidentally):
The community of faith continues the story, sustained by memory and hope. it lives in the second act commemorating the first, holding its breath for the last. Christian interpreters perform not gospel but apocalyptic when they contemplate that glorious Finale, when the world will indeed be well staged and all manner of things shall be well.
All-in-all a really interesting essay. One last quote to finish up with:
The community of believers represents a prophetic counterculture that challenges the gods and myths of the day with regard to which world and life view best fulfills humanity. The church’s challenge will only be as strong as its expression of the biblical world and life view. Again, this is not only a matter of correct doctrine but also a matter of faithful biblical performance. The church must be the cultural incarnation of the story of God in Christ.
Tags: culture, hermeneutics, story
Lotto as plot-twist
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
[quotes in italics from "Polaroids from the Dead", by Douglas Coupland]
…the process whereby ones loses one’s life story: “denarration”
Up until recently, no matter where or when one was born on earth, one’s culture provided one with all the components essential for forging of identity.
…with the deluge of electronic and information media into our lives, these stencils within which we trace our lives began to vanish… It became possible to be alive yet have no religion, no family connections, no ideology, no sense of class location, no politics and no sense of history. Denarrated.
Maybe we can place the enthusiasm for the National Lottery in this context. Maybe deep down there is a hope that winning the lottery is something that could bring a plot-twist to a denarrated life.
Maybe this is why people who are perfectly able to appreciate the poor odds still play. In fact, the higher the odds against the more dramatic potential there is.
Maybe this is why big winners often say they will continue to play. After all, a second win makes the story all the more interesting.
Maybe this is why the happiness rarely lasts. After a while you find that the Lotto winner story doesn’t really go anywhere after all.
Neither fame nor money add storyline to one’s life. That is the irony of human pursuit…
Tags: story
Stories that matter
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Although I don’t tend to do posts that are only links to other pages, I found an excellent interview with Daniel Taylor on stories and loved it so much I wanted to pass it on.
Some quotes…
Here is the story: it starts “In the beginning, God created”, and it runs through time and thru Biblical history and church history and now up to the present time. And now you come, too. You join the story, you be a character in the story. And that is a much more powerful invitation than “What you believe is false and what I believe is true.”
If you are an ethical storyteller you don’t waste the time of the listener. You try and tell a story that has significance.The great immorality of television is not its obscenity or violence or sex. It is that it wastes our lives. It often tells us thin unimportant stories.
Tags: story
theme & story
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
is that they love theme
more than story.’
Bart Gavigan (screenwriting teacher)
quoted in Art & Soul, by H. Brand and A. Chaplin
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...