Narrative...

OK, go with me here.

I wrote this in an attempt to get a methodological section going the other day. The question I would like to discuss (if this makes no sense) is: "is narrative the best way to approach theology"?
Or, perhaps:

"Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth."

What I wrote:

"What we have in narrative is a binding together of word and event: the event is described and given coherence by the application of the shape and categories of narrative. Narrative applies a causal and teleological form to events as we experience them; though this is not altogether arbitrary. The sequentiality of events invites the search for causal links between them. This is something we recognize even in our own bodies: as they change over time, collecting scars and wrinkles, we experience in ourselves the results and effects of our experiences. Our memories, also, tend to make sense of our past by narrating it to us (as we have seen). This is not to say that our narrating of the events of our experience is the final truth about them; or, that every account that we give of events we have experienced is absolutely comprehensive. It is the tracing of a path through a forest as best we can: though we do no see every tree in the forest, and though at times the going is rough, and we lose our bearings, we still are able to make our way. Though there is difficulty, there is not incoherence, necessarily.

The advantage of an emphasis on narrative is the ability that narratives have to present, simply and irreducibly, a complex account of reality. This again accords to human experience and adds to the explanatory power and intrigue of narrative. Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth. Joseph Conrad’s minor narrator in Heart of Darkness says of the great story-teller Marlow: “…to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” We need not, perhaps, be as pessimistic as to speak of a “haze”; but still, this is a good description of how meaning clings to narrative and is generated by it. Readers do not read them well if they attempt to strip away the narrative husk to reveal the meaning lying dormant within."