Narrative Preaching: Promise and Pitfalls

Narrative theology, the brainchild of the late Hans Frei (d. 1988) eventually gave birth to narrative preaching which has seemingly found a permanent and, at the moment, an exalted place among options available to 21rst century preachers to postmodern parishioners. Arguably, the trajectory of narrative thought traces back to canon criticism and figures like Brevard Childs. Childs represented a generation of post-liberal thinkers who had grown dissatisfied and exhausted with the fragmentation of the Old and New Testaments inflicted by older higher-critical hermeneutics that captivated the previous generation (most notably source, form, and redaction criticism). Once the canon critics had put Humpty Dumpty back together as best they could, a new (or old depending upon one’s historical memory) analysis and enjoyment of a received text became possible. In stepped the narrative theologians exclaiming “Aha! Most of this cotton–pickin’ book is a bunch of stories!” Thus narrative theology was born and narrative preaching was conceived and its gestation period commenced.

That narrative theology and narrative preaching represent something of a recovery of biblical faithfulness seems clear. The eventual exposure of the barrenness of the Bultmannian program of form criticism and demythologizing after such a pretentious beginning cried out for replacement. Child’s canonical approach and Frei’s narrative insights effected something of a recovery of the “whole Bible,” useable by the church, from the shambles in which it had been left by the higher critics. Indeed, a great portion of both Testaments were narratives, and recognition of that fact marks a step out of the malaise into which higher critics had plunged the average preacher whose Bible had been confiscated by the university pre-Madonnas.

Having developed and tasted a measure of success, narrative preachers accused traditional expositors and preachers of the Bible with distorting the text. These three point proposition pushers, so it seemed, had ignored the narrative genre with which they had to do, stripping stories of their natural meaning and impact by forcing them into an alien Enlightenment predilection for tables and charts and lists and outlines with multiple sub-points and most of all, propositions. The narratives have a point here. Some preaching and systematic theologizing does seem a little impatient with the Bible in its native state. All the poetry and story and song seem to rankle a bit when we are trying to help folks with from three to five helpful truths or admonitions that might offer concrete guidance for their lives in the coming week. It’s a wonder God didn’t see this coming! Why didn’t He go ahead and just give us a Bible full of propositions or sermons or something more obviously and quickly useful than the mish mash of material we call the Holy Scriptures! He must think He’s God!

Apparently God meant to give us stories and whoever thinks that reductive construal of them into neat sets of propositions improves on the texts themselves is operating, unwittingly or not, with a strange notion of the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Bible. Evangelical preaching, of whatever style, must bow before the text itself, its literary genre intact, for judgment of its own faithfulness. Approaching Bible passages as though they were some scrambled propositional truth puzzle for the preacher to peruse and put right is wrong and does seem to be happening in not a few pulpits.

But not so fast. Narrative theology and preaching has gotten cocky in some quarters and has settled for “making an impression,” on listeners while drawing back from “making a point” or shall we say, from making a propositional truth point. Here is an example of a propositional truth point some narrative enamored preachers eschew—“the God who inspired the Old and New Testaments, because he is all wise and all loving, condemns homosexual behavior.”

But must serious, sermon-style-shaping adjustment to the various literary genres encountered in the Bible (many of which are NOT narrative by the way) pit appreciation for the community creating, emotion tapping power of story against the acknowledgement and celebration of propositional truth, whether explicitly stated or implicitly embedded within biblical texts? I doubt it. Indeed, the greatest preachers from Chrysostom (c.347-407) to Spurgeon (1834-1892) to Truett (1867-1944) to Criswell (1909-2002) have long combined powerful use of story with unashamed truth telling (propositions and all) not only without imagining that the two were really somehow enemies but recognizing that they are the best of friends.

Three-point proposition pushers who dare to insist that the Scriptures demand a particular sermon style for all ages or any age for that matter are going beyond what the Bible teaches. Narrative proponents who deny or otherwise side-step the propositional truth palpably present throughout the Bible fall short of what the Scriptures make clear.