Poisoning the Waters of Learning

I was looking up two things this week with quite similar results. First, I was looking up Narrative Theology. I really see value in narrative theology but it is a challenging topic to wrap one’s head around. It really steps back from some of the common ways of doing theology— emphasis on word etymologies, establishing taxonomies of topics, establishing propositional (or even creedal) statements. So I wanted to read a bit more on this topic… so I did a search engine on articles. The first thing that came up was an article that was put out by The Gospel Coalition. Sometimes there articles are useful. I began reading that article and it soon became clear that the article was not trying to get me to understand narrative theology. Rather, it was trying to “poison the waters”— making me see narrative theology as bad and to be avoided.

That is a pretty rotten thing to do… darkening a topic rather than shedding light on it. It don’t remember too much of the article but two things I remember were (1) many people who are really into Narrative Theology are (theologically) liberal, and (2) Narrative Theology is less focused on truth (apparently because of less focus on propositions). Yet, these could be considered strengths not weaknesses. If Narrative Theology is found useful by a wide variety of Christians from a wide variety of theological and ministerial perspectives (including the theological liberals) that should evidence its value. If Narrative Theology places less value on propositions that does not mean that it places less value on “truth.” Arguably, the presumption (faith statement) that truth can be constrained and limited to propositions and truth is always best presented that way is truly dubious.

Today, I am researching a paper on creating Biblical stories from limited Scripture passages. So for some reason I thought looking up the term “form criticism” online might be helpful. The first article I read was from “Got Questions?” and it was quite unhelpful. It did little more than try to steer readers away from the subject rather than towards it. Once again, it embraced a very narrow understanding of the topic and emphasized that “people like THEM not like US” are the people who value it. The short article emphasized non-Evangelical perspectives of Form Criticism. This is despite the fact that Evangelicals utilize Form Criticism quite often (and probably should more). Form Criticism does not in any sense require one to assume that everything in the Bible developed organically, non-supernaturally as an oral tradition and eventually got put into written form after a lot of starts and stops and edits. Again, the goal wasn’t to share truth— to enlighten— but to poison the waters.

I would like to give an alternative. Ronald Sider, in his book “Good News and Good Works,” has a bit of an excursis on the fate of the unrighteous. He wrestled with the topic. The book is not a theological work on Hell and the Damned, but did seek to look at the topic based on God’s revelation. He only expressed a lot of uncertainty because the Bible is really pretty unclear on some of the specific details. This section of his book is quite caution in making clear doctrinal statements on these topics rather than theologians who have clearly chosen a side, regardless of whether it is ECT (eternal conscious torture), Annihilation, Purging, Second Chance, or Universal salvation. The fact that these theologians come up with clear unambiguous propositional statements doesn’t mean that they hold to a higher position on truth. Arguably it is lower since they are taking a topic where God has left a lot of uncertainties and then they plugged up those holes with their own theological interpretation. That, arguably, is placing greater value on subjective (interpretative) truth than on objective. Now I might argue that Sider is simply being ambivalent and non-rigorous if he left it there with uncertainty. Sider does not do that. He goes on with something of the sort as ‘If we don’t know everything on this topic, we at least know as much as God felt that we needed to know. Based on this, what can we say, and what must be do.’ In other words, how is our story meant to change as it interacts with God’s Story?

I know it is tempting to do the same thing. I have felt it. When I dearly hold to a perspective, I am tempted to poison other topics so that they won’t investigate there. On occasion, I have given into that temptation. I am, however, doing a disservice. I am not helping people to learn but rather I am trying to stifle learning.

I don’t think God is ready at that point to say, “Well, done good and faithful servant.”