Searching for the Self: Classic Stories, Christian Scripture, and the Quest for Personal Identity

by Adrian T. Smith

Loss of the American Dream

And who can blame them for rejecting the reductionist consumer version on offer?190

Loss of Family Narratives

Traditionally, families passed down rich, inherited narratives. Andy’s parents are a wisdom vacuum. Clair’s family members merely dispense shallow sound bites.

Loss of a Sense of History

With the supposedly irresistible global triumph of Western-style liberal-capitalist democracy, what grand social epics remained?195

Loss of the Myth of Progress

I get a pervasive sense that Coupland’s protagonists are disconnected from the Western myth of progress—the belief that science a...

Loss of Judeo-Christian Traditions

6 Sleeping Beauty Awakes The Apostles’ Creed

The primitive church confessed its faith as narrative. Witness the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, John, and Luke-Acts (originally a single work in two volumes).

Even letters like Hebrews, when you dig down to their deep struct...

The Apostles’ Creed is a plotline summary.

What Put the Christian Story to Sleep?

Some would even trace the problem back to the first centuries of the church, when adaptations to the Greco-Roman world began to sever the Jewish roots of Christianity. (The Hebrew...

However, I believe we can fast-forward to around five hundred years ago, the period known as the Renaissance and Reformation—which academ...

Poetry, symbol, imagination—out. Logic, statistics, math—in. The triumph of the left half of the brain, the suppression of half of our humanity.

How Did Sleeping Beauty Re-Awake?

In the 1800s, the romantic poets and writers reclaimed story, myth, symbol, intuition, emotion—claiming these accessed deeper truths than those available to logic and science.

Nineteenth-century biblical scholars realized that the Bible didn’t drop from the sky, whole and entire, but built up over centuries, as part of a slowly unfolding plotline, an organic growth from seed to tree.

Twentieth-century movements like surrealism, and depth psychology, explored the intersection of mythic narrative structures and t...

In the 1960s, feminism challenged the stereotypically male ways of knowledge, based on the rational conquest of nature. Also, into the mainstream came the African-American tradition of oral culture, of dramatized narrative preaching, of fusing communal history with biblical stories like the Exodus.

In my own field of New Testament studies, scholars began taking really (really) seriously that fact that Jesus taught in parables.

With broad brushstrokes, we have sketched the backstory of the emergence of the “narrative theology” movement in the 1970s and beyond.

After much reading and reflection in the standard texts of narrative theology, I’ve concluded that the movement has not yet realized its full potential.

Architects of the New Jerusalem

The Apostles’ Creed is a serviceable summary of the Christian story. Like any good plot (on Aristotle’s definition), it has a beginning, middle, and end.

(This is not the place to explore further, but simply note the parallels between Genesis 1:2 and Jesus’ baptism [Mark 1:9–11]. In Genesis, the Spirit of God hovers [like a bird] over the primordial waters. At Jesus’ baptism in the waters of the River Jordan, the Spirit descends—in the form of a dove. This is perhaps also an echo of the dove motif in the “new creation” story of Noah and the Flood [Gen 8:8–12].)

Part 2 Stories Are . . . and Stories Do . . .

7 Somebody Wanted Because But So

Here, then, is my five-dimensional map for exploring narrative: Setting Time, place, circumstances; the “givens” (immutable dimensions) of the story-world Character Especially the protagonist, with whom most readers identify Plot Arc of tension, completed by crisis leading to resolution of initial problem Point of View Authorial evaluation of plot/character/setting (expressing the ideology (world and life view) of the author) Medium Material form of the story (oral, written, film,

theater, etc.); style/texture of presentation

But before we get into plot, let’s pause and consider how the other elements of story might factor into the construction of your own personal narrative. The following list of questions is suggestive rather than exhaustive . . . Story Elements Autobiographical Questions Setting How does your “world” constrain your possibilities, by operating “to allow certain kinds of experience and to prohibit others”?* Is your world a safe and hopeful place, a dangerous and hopeless place, or somewhere in between? How do social and cultural “backstories” (from previous generations) impact your role in the world? Character Do you see yourself as the main character in a story? Who are your antagonists and allies? Do you see yourself in terms of a “collective” character, i.e., a member of a group that has a distinctive role in the world? Does your personality have any fixed traits that shape your role in the world? Do you hold to any fixed values that shape your role in the world? Point of View When you tell anecdotes from your life, what is your stance or tone as a narrator? Self-aggrandizing? Self-effacing? Self-justifying? Ironic? Satirical? Wistful? Thankful? Resentful? (Etc.) Medium What are the advantages and disadvantages of writing your life-experiences (say, in a journal)? Does writing lead to clarity or discovery? What are the advantages and disadvantages of conversing about your life-experiences? Does feedback from listeners make you modify your personal narrative? * Tilley, Intro...

Many literary critics adopt Aristotle’s three-act model of plot (act one = complication, act two = crisis, act three = denouement).

My advice: work with whatever model helps you better appreciate the dynamics of plot. In particular, choose the model that secures the tightest link between literature and your own life story.

Now that we have discussed plot structure, let us turn our focus to plot genres.

The World is Full of Stories—But How Many?

I well remember two animated films from my childhood: 101 Dalmatians, and The Aristocats. My friend Paul liked the first, but not the second. “Why?” I asked. “It’s just like the first, except with cats instead of dogs.” Perhaps a bit unfair, although both stories do feature an evil huma...

Do the commonalities of stories cluster into big masterplots? If so, how many? Going all the way back to Aristotle, literary critics have wrestled with the question, how many “big umbrella” plots do you need to cover all narratives? Will three or four suffice? Or maybe seven? Fourteen? Thirty-six? All these have been proposed by one critic or an...

My first thinker is Northrop Frye.

Season Plot Genre summer romance (epic; adventure) autumn (fall) tragedy spring comedy winter irony/satire

Epic, tragedy, comedy . . . not so different from the three classical Greek genres.227

My second thinker is Norman Friedman.228

Looking back over your own life, have the biggest changes been in your circumstances, your behavior, or your beliefs? With your answer in mind, do any of Friedman’s fourteen plots ring any bells in your own life?

The Monomyth

This plot has four distinct phases. 1) The hero undertakes a journey (quest). The goal may be positive (wisdom; immortality; the divine; the transcendent; etc.), or negative (the destruction of evil).231 2) The hero undergoes a death experience of some kind. 3) The hero receives enlightenment, or attains to a union with the “divine” (ultimate reality). 4) The hero returns to impart wisdom to the rest of humanity.

One of the world’s oldest stories follows this template perfectly. The Epic of Gilgamesh dates back to the third millennium BC. This pessimistic quest for wisdom is known as the “Sumerian Ecclesiastes” (for its parallels to the Old Testament book). Here are the epic’s four phases according to the monomyth template: 1. Gilgamesh undertakes a journey to find the secret of immortality. 2. Gilgamesh crosses the “waters of death.”232 3. Gilgamesh learns the “mystery of the gods”233—a plant, with power to grant the restoration of youth. ...

If the monomyth is a template for successful screenwriting, could it also be a template for a truly meaningful life? Think of the story of Saul of Tarsus (Acts 9). His narrative embodies the four-phase scheme rather well: 1. Zeal to destroy evil (as he perceived it) impels Saul on a journey to Damascus. 2. His encounter with the Christ results in Saul’s “death” experience (blindness). 3. Saul receives enlightenment (sight + commission). 4. Saul returns to impart his new wisdom (that the Christ is Jesus of Nazareth).

8 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom Thirty-Four Years of Searching

In my long search for masterplots, I am most indebted to Christopher Booker’s work, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Booker’s work emerged from thirty-four years of inductive study of plays, novels, and films. (His wife must have loved him.)