7. Handing Over: Developing Narrative Approaches to Apologetics
7.
Handing Over: Developing Narrative Approaches to Apologetics
This short book is a manifesto for narrative apologetics—for the joyful, creative, and faithful use of stories to communicate and commend the central truths of the Christian gospel. These truths are not abstract propositional ideas but the living reality of people whose lives have been enriched and redirected through the encounter with a living and loving God. They can speak of how they have truly been transformed by a graceful and gracious God, in and through Jesus Christ. The natural response to such a transformative encounter is to tell the story of what has happened and the difference that it has made. And at one level, that’s what narrative apologetics is all about.
Some readers will find the approach adopted in this book to be strange, others to be challenging. But I suspect many (especially preachers) will find that it resonates with both their deepest intuitions and their personal experience. When asked to explain what the gospel is, we tell a story. When asked to explain what difference the gospel makes to life, we tell a story. That’s not where the discussion will end, but it is where it most appropriately begins.
I often use an analogy in trying to open up the rich complexity of the Christian faith, whether this is framed in terms of its narrative elements or its core doctrinal components. Great British scientist Isaac Newton showed that a beam of sunlight, when passed through a glass prism, is broken down into a spectrum of its constituent colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Yet the prism does not create those colors; it merely allows them to be separated out from each other, so that they can be seen individually. Similarly, the individual elements of Christianity’s rich and complex metanarrative can be set out and explored individually, so that their apologetic significance and value can be assessed. The Christian “grand story” is made up of interwoven and integrated “little stories.” This book has offered some explorations of these “little stories”—but others can easily be added or developed.
Many have argued that the value of an artistic work or a worldview is measured by its capacity to engage fully and simultaneously all our mental capacities—cognitive, emotional, imaginative, and perceptual. A narrative approach to apologetics opens up these four core aspects of the Christian gospel, allowing us to engage the human imagination and feelings in a deeply satisfying way, which older rational approaches to apologetics are unable to do. By making good use of narratives, the apologist can help others grasp how the Christian faith informs and nourishes our minds, captivates our hearts and imaginations, and inspires and motivates our actions in the world.
Having set out this manifesto for narrative apologetics, I must now hand it over to my readers and invite them to take things further for themselves. I have passed on a set of tools; it is up to you to decide how you use them. Readers of my earlier work Mere Apologetics have expressed particular appreciation for the suggestions I make in that work about how they might develop their own distinctive approaches. In bringing this work to an end, I shall repeat this pattern.
Using Biblical Narratives
I have made extensive use of biblical narratives throughout this work, including the great stories of the exodus and the exile (see “The Story of the Exodus: The Hope of Deliverance” and “The Story of the Exile: Where Do We Really Belong?” in chap. 4), as well as what is perhaps the greatest story ever told—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see “The Story of Jesus Christ: Rendering the Love of God” in chap. 4). Yet there is much more that could be done with the narratives of the exodus and the exile. I have merely scratched the surface of their rich deposits of meaning and significance. Furthermore, there are many other biblical stories that are rich in apologetic potential and can easily find their place in apologetic sermons, addresses, and conversations. Narratives possess a remarkable ability to cross a generational divide and speak to both adults and children.
Might I offer an exercise to my readers? I invite you to consider, on the basis of the ideas developed in this book, what apologetic points you could make by telling and retelling the following biblical stories:
In each case the task is to tell the story in ways that capture your audience’s attention and imagination and to work the angles of the narrative to connect with the hopes and longings of your listeners.
Or you can develop this approach and use a contemporary retelling of a biblical narrative as a way of opening up the core themes of the original narrative for a contemporary audience. You might like to explore these possibilities:
This approach can be taken further. There is no shortage of works that can act as windows into the grand narrative of faith as a whole (rather than individual biblical passages). For example, Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time (1962) and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007) both open up some major apologetic themes for discussion by raising questions that invite correlation with the Christian “big picture” as a whole. The list is not difficult to extend!
Using Personal Narratives
Each of us has a story to tell. One of the reasons I love reading biographies (and sometimes writing them as well) is because it helps me to understand how the core ideas of Christianity change people, by becoming part of their lives. People are not containers filled with ideas; they are living realities whose existence is changed by the ideas they embody.
Those stories need to be told, and their significance appreciated. There is good biblical precedent for telling our stories as a way of demonstrating the ability of the gospel to change lives, thus affirming that it is life changing, not simply evidence based or reasonable. For example, consider how Paul responded to criticism he faced in Jerusalem. He offered an apologia by telling his story (Acts 22:1–21). That story is of a life-changing encounter with the risen Christ that both motivated his evangelistic ministry and undergirded his fundamental conviction of the truth of the Christian faith. Something happened to Paul that redirected the course of his life and the shape of his beliefs—and that “something” can be set out only in the form of a narrative.
By telling our stories, we bear witness to the capacity of the gospel to give us direction in life to cope with uncertainty and difficulty and to live well and meaningfully in what so often seems a confusing world. As I have suggested in this book, the personal narratives of individual Christians have enormous apologetic potential. They depend not on verbal brilliance for their appeal but on the fact that they are real-life accounts of truthful and faithful living. A personal narrative might serve as a testimony to the capacity of the gospel to change some lives and give stability and purpose to others. A personal narrative has an inner authenticity and a rhetorical power that far exceed those of a logical argument, even though they can both be linked together in a creative and persuasive whole.
The challenge that a preacher or speaker thus faces is deciding which personal narratives are best adapted to bridge the intellectual and experiential gap between the gospel and the audience. Such a decision will ultimately be based on knowing the audience to be addressed, as well as the personal narratives that are available. And since it is not entirely satisfactory to tell someone else’s story, those narratives are best told by their subjects. Seekers are looking for people whose message resonates authentically with their manner and way of life, in effect seeing someone’s quality of life as a measure of the validity of the person’s ideas. This may not make much intellectual sense to those raised within a rationalist culture—but we have to learn how others evaluate worldviews and respond appropriately. Apologists may have been late in discovering the importance of what is now known as “emotional intelligence,” but its importance for their task can hardly be overlooked.
Using Cultural Narratives
The range of narratives at our disposal is vast. In addition to the rich repository of biblical stories and the personal narratives of individual believers, the apologist can draw on cultural narratives such as literature and films. The range of literary writers engaged in this short work is somewhat limited. It is not difficult to see why I have used C. S. Lewis so often. Lewis clearly gave considerable thought to narrative approaches to apologetics and offered both important and helpful reflections on the theological foundations of these approaches and examples of how they might be developed further. Yet there are other writers who might well offer alternative approaches, capable of enriching and expanding the limited account presented in this work. I have no doubt that the literary writings of Dorothy L. Sayers and Marilynne Robinson—touched on but not fully developed in this work—offer an embarrassment of riches to the narrative apologist, and I suspect that many others might also be explored with great profit.
Yet this is simply the tip of the iceberg. Some will feel that my literary examples are sociologically limited. I will freely confess that this is indeed the case! But this range of writing can easily and productively be extended by others, sensitive to the needs and opportunities of their cultural contexts, and aware of the cultural narratives that are known to and can connect with those contexts. Readers will know their own audiences well and can easily draw selectively and appropriately on the narratives of novels and movies to open up the great questions of life and explore Christian responses.
This short book has offered an introduction—and nothing more than an introduction—to the emerging field of narrative apologetics, aiming to open up its potentially rich and fertile pastures for exploration and inhabitation. I hope that it will encourage others to explore and develop this rich resource for Christian ministry and outreach. It is a manifesto, using broad brush strokes to depict the theological foundations and apologetic possibilities of this approach.
Yet fine brushwork is clearly needed if this approach is to be developed further. It is obvious, for example, that more attention needs to be given to providing a theological explanation of the role that stories play in so many aspects of human existence. We also need a better empirical understanding of how stories work in creating receptivity to new ideas or alternative ways of understanding our world. There is also a pressing theological need for deeper reflection on how the Christian narrative functions as a medium or agent of salvation, not merely of revelation. Yet my hope is that enough has been said to allow readers to appreciate the possibilities that this approach opens up and to explore how it can be developed further. There is so much more to explore!