Jeremy L. Berg

What does a narrative approach to Scripture say about the authority of Scripture?

5. Narrative Understanding of Scriptural Authority. Most foundationally, we must treat Scripture as more than a static repository of abstract truths that reveal true propositions about God, history and the human condition (though these too are important, have their special place and can be gleaned from the text).

Instead, we must again see the Scriptures as our cherished family story, wherein we are reminded of God’s faithfulness to our ancestors in the past and wherein we are given renewed hope that God continues to act here and now in our midst to carry forward his beautiful story to the next pivotal point.

The story is “alive and active,” as Scripture says, and we are to actively seek ways of faithfully carrying the story forward by our own courage and faithfulness to the Spirit’s leading. We do not strive to repeat earlier Acts, nor do we recklessly force the plot to go places the Spirit does not lead. N. T. Wright, using a musical metaphor, speaks in terms of “improvising” as Christians live out the next Act of God’s story under the authority of Scripture:

“As all musicians know, improvisation does not at all mean a free-for-all where “anything goes,” but precisely a disciplined and careful listening to all the other voices around us, and a constant attention to the themes, rhythms and harmonies of the complete performance so far, the performance which we are now called to continue. At the same time, of course, it invites us, while being fully obedient to the music so far, and fully attentive to the voices around us, to explore fresh expressions, provided they will eventually lead to that ultimate resolution which appears in the New Testament as the goal, the full and complete new creation which was gloriously anticipated in Jesus’s resurrection. The music so far, the voices around us, and the ultimate multi-part harmony of God’s new world: these, taken together, form the parameters for appropriate improvisation in the reading of scripture and the announcement and living out of the gospel it contains. All Christians, all churches, are free to improvise their own variations designed to take the music forward. No Christian, no church, is free to play out of tune” (Wright, 126).

When Christian faith begins take on this narrative quality, our trust in God moves from being merely a simple “personal salvation package” necessary for the next life, and instead we find ourselves here and now enveloped in the exhilarating movement of God’s Spirit, actively working through his community of renewed human beings (i.e., the church), as God’s entire project of cosmic renewal and human redemption (i.e., God’s Kingdom) moves forward in a world crying out for hope and restoration.

When Jesus was raising up a movement of followers to carry his unique, counter-cultural Kingdom forward, he knew that complete dependence upon God’s provisions was necessary, and so he taught: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other (Matt 6:24). I believe, at an even deeper level, this teaching applies to the primary allegiance Christians must give to God and the Story He is telling. The challenge faced by postmoderns today (as always) is whether or not they will serve two Authors — God and ourselves — giving God control over our eternal plots while remaining the authors of our lives here and now.

Let me close with a loosely paraphrased version of a much beloved verse—-here viewed in narrative perspective:

Do not conform your personal life story any longer to the godless, empty, dead-end narratives this world offers up , but let your own story be transformed as the Spirit renews your mind. Then you will be able to live your story within the good, pleasing and perfect story of God (Romans 12:2).

See N. T. Wright, The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God – Getting Beyond the Bible Wars (HarperCollins: New York, 2005) for a more indepth treatment of this topic.