Last year, when Philip Ritchie and I were debating the extent to which there is a metanarrative in the Bible, I wrote a post saying it may be that a new descriptor is needed for the kind of narrative we find in scripture.
I was hesitant about calling the narrative of scripture a meta-narrative because it is threaded through the fragments which form the whole canon of scripture rather than over-arching them. At the same time it is clearly not a micro-narrative because its full telling is not contained by any one of the books forming the whole canon of scripture.
A recent post by Peter Rollins seems to give me the phrase I was searching for. A meganarrative, he suggests, being that term which refers to the story that one lives while a metanarrative refers to the story that intellectually justifies and makes sense of our existence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Waits - Down in the Hole.
5 comments:
re. music choice today!....used Tom Waits' 'Down in the Hole' as opener/theme music for my stageplay of 'Tattoo', based on Flannery O'Connor's 'Parker's Back'....great track!
On balance I think I prefer the Blind Boys of Alabama version. Did you know that each season of The Wire uses a different version of the song as its theme tune?
Regarding the distinction between metanarrative and meganarrative: I want to challenge the way Rollins defines a metanarrative - I had always understood it to be a story one lives and not just the story one intellectually assents to. My definition of faith would be living as if the story is true.
Good to continue the conversation on scripture.
I think Rollins anticipates your comment to some extent in his post, Philip, when he writes: "There are of course many who believe that Christianity offers a way of interpreting the world (that the scriptures give us a particular cosmology and anthropology) while also living their faith in terms of showing love to ones enemies and standing up for the oppressed. Thus affirming Christianity as a metanarrative while also living it as a meganarrative."
I think I've always though of metanarratives as being stories that attempt to explain the meaning of life. If you accept a metanarrative as valid then would then clearly affect the way that you lived your life but a story doesn't have to attempt to explain the meaning of life in order that one chooses to live by or in it. I think this is the distinction that Rollins is getting at. The idea that Christianity doesn't explain or answer everything but doesn't need to in order to be the story within which I or anyone else might want to live.
When that is the case, he seems to be saying that Christianity is operating as a meganarrative rather than a metanarrative. What do you think?
Hi Jonathan, how come you have changed your name to C4M it's a bit confusing.
Anyway, thought you might be interested in this post by Chris Tilling our new New Testament lecturer at St Mellitus College which ties in with our discussions
http://www.christilling.de/blog/2009/04/negotiating-tensions-in-bible.html
There is a typo as I'm sure he meant to say 'truth is a multifaceted complex beast, NOT to be domesticated, tamed or boxed.'
I'd be interested in your thoughts.
My identity got changed when I started the commission4mission blog but I think I've rectified that now.
I think Chris' paper is a very balanced and thorough introduction to the issues.
I was interested to see his reference to the idea that 'There is a kind of truth which, when it is said, becomes untrue', as this is pretty much a foundational insight of apophatic theology (although he doesn't make the link in his paper) and to the kind of theologising undertaken by Peter Rollins which is also based heavily on apophatic insights.
My particular take on this area is, as you know, to argue that we pay insufficient attention to the form of scripture. Chris' paper seems to refer obliquely to this aspect of the issue at times but doesn't clearly deal with it.
The Bible's diversity of genres and multiple layers of metaphor/meaning, combined with its self-referencing, self-interpreting and reinterpreting of the canon means, I think, that it can only be approached and understood dialectically.
Post a Comment