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There are many biblical episodes in which people are compelled by an explicit or implicit threat of force, which is one definition of coercion, yet the issue of coercion has not yet been systematically explored for Hebrew Bible narrative. Examining the phenomenon of coercion across biblical narrative, this study asks how coercion is viewed and valued in the Hebrew Bible, what determines whether coercion is punished or rewarded, and what the theological significance is of this judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postliberal theology is an overarching, but not monolithic, narrative-focused theological sensibility that moves beyond the conservative/liberal divide. Not to be confused with political ‘postliberalism’ – a response to liberal, market-driven economics – postliberal theology is a distinctive theological sensibility. It affirms tradition, experience, and propositions when doing theology, and emphasizes context and community more than historical-critical, empirical, or rationalistic epistemological theological concerns. This article will provide an overview of postliberal theology by focusing on its background (including its identification with the ‘Yale School’), key figures, major themes, concerns, tendencies, and theological agendas. It will begin by addressing key themes found in postliberal theology that include its non-foundational and non-apologetic character, intratextuality, community-shaped grammar, ecumenical openness, and its focus on the narrative of God’s people in scripture in the story of Israel and the Christian faith community. It will then provide a brief profile of key philosophical and sociological scholars who are influencers of postliberal sensibilities in theology. These include Ludwig Wittgenstein, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, Alasdair MacIntyre, Clifford Geertz, Peter Berger, and Thomas Luckmann. This will be followed by considering several key theologians who are proponents of postliberal theology, including Karl Barth, Hans Frei, Paul Holmer, David Kelsey, George Lindbeck, and Stanley Hauerwas, among others. The article will then consider some critical engagements and appropriations of postliberal theology as seen in the work of Kevin J. Vanhoozer, James K. A. Smith, John Milbank, and David Burrell. In conclusion, consideration will be given to implications and potential applications of postliberal theology for the contemporary Christian church.

When undertaking the writing of Manuscript A, in obedience to Mother Agnes of Jesus --her sister Pauline-- Thèrése of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face will endeavor to tell the story of the path of love in her life, though it is not so much --or principally-- the path of love which she has travelled, but the path that love has travelled in her. Perhaps it was not her initial intention, but the grace received on the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity in 1895 --that is, the certainty of how much Jesus desires to be loved-- reorients her work as a writer in a liturgical as well as a historical context, in which the offering of oneself to divine justice is prevalent. At that moment, Thérèse decides to offer herself to love so as to "please Jesus", in response to the mercy that he has poured out by being present in every moment of her life. Her autobiography, in the light of her lived experience and the Offering to Merciful Love which she made, transmits to the reader three essential dimensions of the path that love has taken in the life of Thérèse of Lisieux: the priestly dimension, the subversive dimension and the narrative dimension. She will culminate her journey by embracing in the night the Paschal Mystery, which is the gift of salvation and life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between writing the "Short" and the "Long" versions of the Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich might have read Piers Plowman. This article argues that Julian learned from Langland something about how to use narrative as part of her exploration and reformulation of the complex and seemingly contradictory theology of the Fall and redemption, focusing on the remarkably similar ways in which Langland and Julian narrate the Fall in, respectively, the tree of charite sequence and the lord and servant example. In each case, a narrative of eager, loving desire leads seemingly accidentally, and yet apparently inevitably, to a disastrous "fall." Julian may have discovered in Piers Plowman a method of engaging with the conceptual challenges posed by the problematic relationship between the human will and recuperative divine love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative is a way to understand human affairs. Among these is the understanding of man himself. Human experiences need a mediator called narrative to be understood. It provides a possibility for self-expression, known as engaged self. This engaged self in the religious lived world is affected by the narratives that shape experiences. A movement in Christian theology called Narrative Theology attempted to show that the religious man’s understanding of himself in the modern world is formed through biblical stories. Addressing the problem of human requirements in the modern world, narrative theology designed a system of thought based on narrative. This article aims to show the meaning of engaged self-based on narrative, and then, with a brief presentation of Yale school’s narrative theology, it will describe the basis of the narrative concept. Finally, it will present criticisms based on the narrative concept by evaluating the mentioned theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a geographical and spatial analysis of the figure of Jesus, an outline of narrative theology and geographical spirituality: from the first stages of his life and message to the last moments of his existence on this world, from Nazareth to Golgotha. Particular attention will be given to the beginning of Jesus’s public life, as well as to some moments during his final days. It is hoped that the reader will gain a feel for the spiritual dimension of space, and of the connections between external geography and human interiority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cinema is one of the great media of storytelling that, with its images and sounds, draws viewers into a different world and addresses their bodies, minds, and hearts. In this contribution, I will develop an argument for African cinema as a source of narrative theology that is contextual and liberative in its critical and constructive functions. In conversation with African women's and queer theologies, I will then reconstruct the narrative theologies emerging from films produced in Africa that address women's issues and diverse sexualities. I argue that they develop, through images of the pain of sexism and homophobia, a theology of hope of flourishing life. Thus, they contribute to the life of a church that is able to overcome prejudice, recognizes the gifts of its diverse communities, and is a space for all to flourish in love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theology as a story of doubt and imagination is to be understood against the background of interdisciplinary social science and in contrast to the traditional paradigm of theology as a system of propositional certainty. The concepts of doubt and imagination are part and parcel of narrative research and can also be linked to postfoundational philosophy. The relevancy of this theological paradigm will be discussed on the basis of the following: (1) It is in touch with its own doubt, (2) It is in touch with its own story (tradition), (3) It can therefore interact with other stories, stories of hope and despair, stories of suffering, stories of power and of marginalisation, (4) It can also imagine alternative stories. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interaction with 'other stories', which is one of the important outcomes of this postfoundational approach, makes it possible for theology to be a humble but important participant at the interdisciplinary conversational table. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theology as a story of doubt and imagination is to be understood against the background of interdisciplinary social science and in contrast to the traditional paradigm of theology as a system of propositional certainty. The concepts of doubt and imagination are part and parcel of narrative research and can also be linked to postfoundational philosophy. The relevancy of this theological paradigm will be discussed on the basis of the following: (1) It is in touch with its own doubt, (2) It is in touch with its own story (tradition), (3) It can therefore interact with other stories, stories of hope and despair, stories of suffering, stories of power and of marginalisation, (4) It can also imagine alternative stories. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The interaction with ‘other stories’, which is one of the important outcomes of this postfoundational approach, makes it possible for theology to be a humble but important participant at the interdisciplinary conversational table.

This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads to unnecessary suffering. The initial foundation examines the process of growth and the role that the imagination plays in the construction of narrative identity—an important part of human development. Literal idolatry interrupts this original process through the creation of a social imaginary that corrupts natural measures for self-correction. At the same time, a creative faith contains the capacity to dislodge the rigid boundaries of literal idolatry. A creative faith narrative identities in ways that open beyond simple coherence and completeness. It can also revitalize social institutions and public spaces. The argument concludes by arguing fictional narratives augment the work of theology in grounding and inspiring creative faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the capacity for narrating the name of God as a way to liberate the suffering of the world. The first section of this article offers a brief overview of Walter Benjamin's linguistic theory as it relates to the issue of literal idolatry. In the second section, the content of exploring Ricoeur's movement toward a poetic faith creates a formal anomaly in which his "byway" is something that may be crucial for readers or may be unnecessary: it speaks to the discontinuity and rupture enabled by incorporating silence into speech. The third section flows from the first and third, discussing the difficulty and importance of naming God as an embodied speech act. This looks at the particular situation of parables, including perspectives from Thomas Altizer and J. Hillis Miller. The fourth section focuses on the psychodynamic work of Jessica Benjamin as it models a way of bringing an embodied witness to the world in a performance of divine love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of hope relative to the unexplored potential of narrative theology as a particular mode of thinking. The first section provides a brief introduction. The second section begins by discussing the world of experience as postulated by Alfred North Whitehead: I argue that literal idolatry forms as a specific technology based around the use of symbols. The third section explores the resources of narrative as a centrifugal model of metaphor that serves as a robust alternative literal idolatry: I argue that narratives develop the intellect through pattern recognition and the imagination through empathetic recognition, and then describe how narrative theory's emphasis on focalized perspectives opens hopeful expectations of the future. The fourth section explores Ricoeur's work in narrative theology, defining it as a "field" whose dynamic emphasis on tension provides an alternative to the static, "closed circuit" of religious symbols. The final section looks at Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist as a contemporary novel that seems to fit with Ricoeur's stipulations for what generates a field of narrative theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Narrative Theology" has often been construed in contrast to broader humanistic discourse. Protestant and particularly Reformed Christianity has often set the "Old, Old Story" apart from humanism and the humanities. This chapter explores the juxtaposition of humanism and reformed thinking in Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur's hermeneutics is compared with the Reformed "covenant theology" of 17th Century Puritanism. Covenant theology balanced the belief that God exceeds our powers of knowing and language and the conviction that God consents to be known within the limits of human understanding, as developed through the liberal arts. Similarly, Ricoeur sees God as limiting and disrupting human language, but while, for Ricoeur, encounter with God may begin as impossible dialogue, it develops by dispersing the names and signs of the divine throughout the tropes and genres of human discourse, narrative chief among them. Ricoeur's thought is interpreted as a Christian humanism in which religious inquiry and secular humanistic thought coexist and mutually enhance one another. Ricoeur's humanism will be preferred over approaches to narrative that set the Christian story and its hearers apart from the broader conversation of culture; a solipsism of faith is inadequate to the challenges of a modern pluralist culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jim Harvey was the artist who created the Brillo box that Andy Warhol copied and made famous. Warhol's Brillo Boxes changed the course of art history and the entire field of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Meanwhile, Jim Harvey died a failed second-generation Abstract Expressionist. To his death, Harvey refused to accept that his Brillo box was a work of art. However, the theory—the story—that was woven about Warhol's Brillo Boxes transformed them from commonplace objects into multimillion-dollar masterpieces. As a counterbalance, this article appeals to narrative theology as a way to tell Jim Harvey's story. Appealing to narrative theologian James McClendon's notion that a biography can reveal an image—a metaphor—that serves as a prism through which that individual's life can be seen and understood, this article suggests that the defining metaphor of Jim's life was "artists are prophets". Importantly, this essay is not an attempt to redeem Harvey's artistry, although it may provoke a reconsideration of his work. Rather, it is an exploration of the tragic and luminous life of a beautiful failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article frames the question of Baptist identity as a narratively formed construct. It qualifies this description and then tests the qualified identity framework by exploring the stories of the Baptists in Great Britain and North India, asking how we might understand these different versions as part of the same story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines narrative theology, which began to develop in the 1970s in the United States, and is now widely practiced in theological discourses, including in Indonesia. This theology, sometimes called postliberal theology, uses the postmodern interpretation paradigm, which seeks the meaning “in front of” the text (readers-oriented). The intended readers are the community, who have the same language, culture, and traditions. It turns out that narrative theology, which initially served as a theological reflection on Christianity’s claims to the biblical texts, has shifted into a hermeneutical lens in reading the biblical texts. Using analytical studies of library research and systematic review, the author discusses the contours of narrative theology starting from the thoughts of its pioneers (such as Hans W. Frei, George A. Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, and Sally McFague), describing its characteristics, and evaluating them. The analysis results are presented in two points. The first is an appreciation of the contributions of narrative theology, i.e., simple-practical, confessional-dogmatic, relational, and inductive. The second is an evaluation of some reductive aspects of narrative theology, i.e., postmodern hermeneutics; a disregard of historicity and genre diversity; traditional-dogmatic fideism; sectarianism; and pragmatism.

This article contributes to the ongoing discussion of the story of Cain by exploring the speeches within Genesis 4 as speech acts. The investigation will focus on two narrative levels of analysis, the story level (the viewpoint of the characters) and the storyteller level (the presentation of the narrative to the audience). The speech acts in this story display a clash of imaginations, with Eve and Yhwh on one side and Cain and Lamech on the other. On the story level, Eve and Yhwh imagine the world in ways that resist human sin and violence and that celebrate God's relationship with humanity. Cain and Lamech reject this notion and choose to focus only on themselves. On the storyteller level, the speech acts of Genesis 4 invite the audience to adopt and celebrate the imaginations of Eve and Yhwh and to reject the imaginations of Cain and Lamech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is Part I of a triptych. It addresses the latent potential of the imagination in constructing a sense of identity. Included is the role of faith in overcoming the obstacles presented by a social imaginary dominated by literal idolatry that leads to unnecessary suffering. The initial foundation examines the process of growth and the role that the imagination plays in the construction of narrative identity—an important part of human development. Literal idolatry interrupts this original process through the creation of a social imaginary that corrupts natural measures for self-correction. At the same time, a creative faith contains the capacity to dislodge the rigid boundaries of literal idolatry. A creative faith narrative identities in ways that open beyond simple coherence and completeness. It can also revitalize social institutions and public spaces. The argument concludes by arguing fictional narratives augment the work of theology in grounding and inspiring creative faith.

These thoroughly engaged and engaging essays invite reflection on Bishop Wright's practice and principles as an interpreter of Scripture and of the Christian faith in today's context. Wright wants to reground theology in a biblical narrative and considers that systematic theology has been impoverished by forgetfulness of its roots in the story of God's Covenant with humanity. This story contains in concrete form all the truths that later theology painfully spelled out in categories that were not always appropriate. Systematic theologians might reply that doctrine, whether of the Fathers or of the Reformers, has allowed a penetrating interpretation of Scripture, which otherwise could lack its full existential and spiritual impact. Wright's over‐arching biblical story tends to become drab and to generate biblicism rather than a repristinated biblical theology. His recommendation that we solve problems of modern life by recalling our roots in the biblical story may be a simplistic nostrum. Wright's theology is thoroughly incarnational. Salvation is the emergence of God's Kingdom on this earth. He claims to be a creational monotheist, not a Platonic dualist. He stresses the collective dimensions of salvation, sometimes sounding like a liberation theologian. While his sense for sacred times and sacred places is an incarnational emphasis, his focus on the sacral theme of the Temple in John and throughout the New Testament might be an idealizing construction that takes away from his effort to understand Jesus in his historical world. His hermeneutics could be more flexible and effective if he opened up more to the pluralistic open‐endedness of the biblical texts (not just the eschatological openness at the end of the story), or if he were more ready to delight in the literary qualities of Scripture for their own sake. While he skillfully skewers some trendy movements in Jesus research and Pauline studies, his skepticism about Q and ascription of the hymns in Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians to the pen of the Apostle exemplify a literary conservatism that may generate a monochrome reading. In Christology, his repeated declaration that Jesus 'embodied Israel's God' hovers between a 'high' and a 'low' interpretation, indicating that his 'early High Christology' is not a stable and monolithic formation. Wright, an outstanding pastor and apologist, finally may lay claim to the watchword of 'missional hermeneutics' such as Paul practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the capacity for narrating the name of God as a way to liberate the suffering of the world. The first section of this article offers a brief overview of Walter Benjamin’s linguistic theory as it relates to the issue of literal idolatry. In the second section, the content of exploring Ricoeur’s movement toward a poetic faith creates a formal anomaly in which his “byway” is something that may be crucial for readers or may be unnecessary: it speaks to the discontinuity and rupture enabled by incorporating silence into speech. The third section flows from the first and third, discussing the difficulty and importance of naming God as an embodied speech act. This looks at the particular situation of parables, including perspectives from Thomas Altizer and J. Hillis Miller. The fourth section focuses on the psychodynamic work of Jessica Benjamin as it models a way of bringing an embodied witness to the world in a performance of divine love.

This article examines the role of hope relative to the unexplored potential of narrative theology as a particular mode of thinking. The first section provides a brief introduction. The second section begins by discussing the world of experience as postulated by Alfred North Whitehead: I argue that literal idolatry forms as a specific technology based around the use of symbols. The third section explores the resources of narrative as a centrifugal model of metaphor that serves as a robust alternative literal idolatry: I argue that narratives develop the intellect through pattern recognition and the imagination through empathetic recognition, and then describe how narrative theory’s emphasis on focalized perspectives opens hopeful expectations of the future. The fourth section explores Ricoeur’s work in narrative theology, defining it as a “field” whose dynamic emphasis on tension provides an alternative to the static, “closed circuit” of religious symbols. The final section looks at Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist as a contemporary novel that seems to fit with Ricoeur’s stipulations for what generates a field of narrative theology.

“Narrative Theology” has often been construed in contrast to broader humanistic discourse. Protestant and particularly Reformed Christianity has often set the “Old, Old Story” apart from humanism and the humanities. This chapter explores the juxtaposition of humanism and reformed thinking in Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is compared with the Reformed “covenant theology” of 17th Century Puritanism. Covenant theology balanced the belief that God exceeds our powers of knowing and language and the conviction that God consents to be known within the limits of human understanding, as developed through the liberal arts. Similarly, Ricoeur sees God as limiting and disrupting human language, but while, for Ricoeur, encounter with God may begin as impossible dialogue, it develops by dispersing the names and signs of the divine throughout the tropes and genres of human discourse, narrative chief among them. Ricoeur’s thought is interpreted as a Christian humanism in which religious inquiry and secular humanistic thought coexist and mutually enhance one another. Ricoeur’s humanism will be preferred over approaches to narrative that set the Christian story and its hearers apart from the broader conversation of culture; a solipsism of faith is inadequate to the challenges of a modern pluralist culture.

New theological schools try to overcome the theological concerns of the postmodern approach by presenting methods that are different from those of former approaches. Some of these theological concerns have arisen under the influence of the challenges of pluralism and profound diversity in theology, as well as the conflicts between science and religion. The present study explains and examines one of the new approaches of religious philosophy to theology and understanding of religion, namely the intra-textual approach. The intra-textual approach, developed in the mid-twentieth century under the influence of late Wittgenstein’s ideas as well as narrative theology, holds that religious knowledge should not rely on external factors and matters outside the religious texts. Rather, the text itself must be understood in terms of language and its internal rules because any intervention of external factors causes deviation from the truth of religion and faith. The intra-textual approach, with a non-realistic attitude, even believes that we should not consider real referents for religion and religious texts and should not understand them in association with external realities. That is, religious faith and understanding are nothing but a direct presence in touch with the text. This approach is not able to solve the conflict between science and religion, and suffers from fundamental challenges due to its fideistic attitude and also its functional and unrealistic attitude towards religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problematic assumption that biblical purity thematically represents life and death is commonly held within modern biblical studies. Building upon this assumption, many scholars have attempted to explain the treatment of the ṣāraʿat patient in Leviticus 13:1‐46 as a symbolic banishment of death. However, the current paper attempts to move beyond this reading towards a method of reconstructing the evolution of biblical rituals and practices. Through the utilisation of René Girard's four scapegoat stereotypes, the current paper identifies the scapegoat mechanism in Leviticus 13:1‐46, and reconstructs a proposed evolution of this ritual. This paper suggests that the ritual presented in Leviticus 13:1‐46 may have evolved from an earlier tradition, in which ṣāraʿat patients were executed to halt a mimetic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the work of G.K. Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, in relation to narrative theology. It discusses the apparent contradiction between Aidan Nichols' judgement that this book develops a 'Christocentric theology of history' and Chesterton's own assertion that its approach is 'historical rather than theological'. It argues that Chesterton employs both natural and narrative theology in The Everlasting Man, and these two forms of theology frame a reading of the book which resolves the seeming contradiction between Nichols' and Chesterton's views, while also challenging the conventional chronology used in discussions of narrative theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The television series Man in the High Castle is set in an alternate United States of America reality where Nazi Germany and Japan won World War II. This paper explores the saga's themes narratively, scripturally, and missionally, engaging with various cultural, religious, and mission studies. The resistance theme of The Man in the High Castle in particular provides a useful parallel to Christian mission that is surprisingly resonant both with scripture and with Benjamin Simon's three pillars of mission. The oppressive values of the conquering empires lead to an awareness that there is a problem with the world, which encourages Christians toward mission and the series' Americans toward resistance. Finally, the success in The Man in the High Castle of sharing stories of "another world" as a scheme of resistance provides a useful strategy for Christians today. Mission, with a Man in the High Castle flavour, becomes an act of resistance to oppressive evil through the sharing of stories of the coming kingdom of God. Simon's three pillars of mission can all be seen in the approaches to mission seen from the series. Because the world is filled with oppressive values and needs Christian resistance, the pillar of transformation is required. The idea of sharing stories of an alternate world, the kingdom of God, is also an example of both gospel transmission and gospel translation into a fresh context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a disabled person, Psalm 139:13–14 has long presented as theologically problematic for me. How could "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well" fall as praise from my lips when as young as six years old I realized I was differently abled; and that with all of the shameful, negative connotations assumed with being so. The theological narrative about disability centered on sins of the mother, shame of the family, pity of the public, and sympathetically low expectations for achieving, excelling, and fitting into mainstream ableism. This article weaves biographical vignettes and theological reflections to develop a liberation hermeneutic for creating a narrative theology of disability in the church; challenges commonly held perceptions about disabled personhood; examines familiar efforts to enhance the worship experience for disabled persons; admonishes practices which inconvenience or otherwise undermine a disabled parishioner; and examines the efficacy of ministry accommodations to equip disabled persons to worship, serve, and lead in the church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews five recent contributions to the field of New Testament theology. More accurately, three NT theologies will be examined alongside two biblical theologies, given that some regard NT theology as inherently deficient apart from OT theology. These five works are notable not only for their diversity of methodology but also their diversity of cultural perspective—one book by a Finn (Timo Eskola’s A Narrative Theology of the New Testament), one by two Germans (Reinhard Feldmeier’s and Hermann Spieckermann’s God of the Living: A Biblical Theology), one by a Canadian (Thomas R. Hatina’s New Testament Theology and its Quest for Relevance: Ancient Texts and Modern Readers), one by an American (Craig L. Blomberg’s A New Testament Theology), and one by a native Briton (John Goldingay’s Biblical Theology). Along the way, this review article will consider how these works navigate the tricky and contested terrain of NT (or biblical) theology, particularly vis-à-vis matters of history, canon, synthesis and diversity, and contemporary relevance.

Recent studies of the relationship between science and religion yield a growing scholarly consensus over the compatibility of each category's truth claims, but there is continued dissonance in the relationship between the truth claims of cosmology and eschatology. On the one hand, cosmologists claim that the world ends in catastrophe; on the other hand, theologians working on eschatology claim that it is moving towards renewal and new creation. Recent scholarship responds to this dissonance by emphasising the bodily resurrection of Jesus. There is, however, another possible resolution to this dissonance that also provides an interpretive lens for understanding cosmology: using the Christian doctrine of soteriology as an analogy for eschatological claims. Through a comparative analysis of its own narrative with the narrative of cosmology, the Christian doctrine of soteriology lends a new perspective to the cosmological-eschatological dissonance while also providing a larger interpretive lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]