Harris Manchester College, Oxford.At the end of his article 'Biblical Time' Ricoeur, asserting that the strands of the OT combine to produce a very complex notion of 'time', critiques the proposal for a kind of narrative theology:
...the project of a merely narrative theology is a chimera. What it fundamentally fails to understand is first the primitive overlapping of narrative and law in the Torah, then the dialectic between the whole of tradition as prescriptive as well as narrative with prophecy and its eschatological indication. Next, a simple narrative theology misses the deepening of the transitory character of historical accomplishments through the immemorial time of wisdom, and, finally, and most important of all, the powerful recapitulation of all these figures of time in the 'today' of the hymn.'
See, the bible is not just a narrative: it's a musical. At one and the same time, you have a particular history, and a universal history of the world; you have action and commentary on that action; you have the past sung into the present, and the future promised. He's spot on, but I can't help feeling that Reformers knew this already. Certainly, my old teacher Graeme Goldsworthy has been saying this for years. Still it is nice to have someone with Ricoeur's street cred saying the same thing.
3 comments:
BTW - not a comment specifically on this post - but thanks for all the piccies of Oxford. It's a place I was deeply happy, and it's where I found God.
Well you wouldn't be alone it that, despite the presence of Richard Dawkins...
If saying and teaching things were the same as them being generally acknowledged... the world would be a startlingly different place!
And is Ricoeur himself less read than referenced?
Post a Comment