History, Story, Theology and more

In doing some "light" reading for a Historiography class, I was struck by a particular journal article on the nature of postmodernism's affect on history. The author, an environmental historian, seemed to approach the postmodern way of "doing" history with caution, rather than an all out embrace, but acknowledged that it is important for historians to understand that history is a narrative within a series of narratives, and possibly (he did not use this term) a metanarrative. He made the point that history is not real to people when it is simply cold, chronological fact, but that history "works" when it is presented in story.

As I read this article, it made me appreciate my professors at Covenant Seminary because many of them emphasized that the Gospel does not simply bring us into a series of cold propositional truth, but that Truth brings us into a grand story - God's story. And in that story, there are many stories, but they are connected to an overarching story of God's action and the redemption that he has promised, both for creatures (humanity) and the creation (his real estate). The upshot of this understanding, that redemption is a story, is that is breathes life into proposition. So, we can read the words of the Apostles and see something like, "Christ died for sinners..." and it is not simple fact, but part of a narrative. The proposition is true because it is tied to a lived-out reality.

I think we can de-emphasize the fact that redemption has a story because we want some "meat" in our theology. So, when we talk about justification, we go to a text in Romans and back it up with something from Ephesians without using narratives that prove the same point, or flush it out some more. Maybe the key is to realize that our great propositions are wed to these stories. The stories are there for a purpose because we, as humanity, live our lives as a story. I am not arguing that story is more important than proposition, however, I think we need to understand that story breathes life into proposition. It is not enough for me to answer, "the stock market crashed in 1929" and leave it at that in my economic history class. That is insufficient. Although, I am giving a provable fact, I have not tied that fact to the larger picture, or story. It is fragmented. Maybe we who preach and teach God's word should think about that a little. The words in Scripture are tied to more than just their immediate context. The text is pointing us to a greater overarching, real Story, that is grander than our imagination. This is something people can latch on to. The God of the universe brings humans to be a part of his story.