"The Christian Narrative" And "Resurrection & Meaning"

I am taking a class in moral theology, as you all know from some previous posts. While this round of classes was much better than the first, I still feel off about the entire endeavor. There is way, way too much talk of 'narratives' still for me, and too much mention of the 'arbitrariness' of choosing one way of life over another. The class is structured in such a way that I don't feel like I can really express critical thoughts on the tests. My tests in seminary are usually essay questions, and they usually have large word counts. This test had very small word counts and the questions were worded in such a way that all I could really do was regurgitate what I knew the professor wanted to hear me say. I hate this kind of activity, and I felt very confused and internally divided afterwards. I think this is what James calls double-mindedness.

It is ironic that in a class led by someone for whom truth claims are completely pluralized, that the main thrust of the actual ethical work is getting us to think within what he calls 'The Christian Narrative'. Influenced (too much in my opinion) by N T Wright, my teacher presents the New Testament and early Christians as having one particular over-arching narrative about the world. The world was created perfect and experienced a fall from grace. Then God initiated a series of programs to try to redeem the world. He tried first by creating Israel who failed to be what He wanted her to be. Then He came and revealed Himself on the Cross through His son. His son died and was resurrected bodily. That resurrection began a process by which God is regenerating the world, which will eventually share in that resurrection, as we all will. People will be bodily resurrected and share in the life of a regenerated world forever.

This, according to my teacher is the Christian narrative and you either give ascent to it or you don't. There are a plurality of narratives to which you can give ascent, you can choose from among narratives presented to you, but you cannot create your own (this all makes my head hurt). Now, the CHRISTIAN Narrative, if you want to choose it, is the one presented above. This is the Christian narrative, take it or leave it. Ethics is learning how to live in such a way that your life anticipates the life of bodily resurrection, looked forward to in the future.

The Bible, or at least the New Testament, according to my teacher is more or less completely internally consistent and monolithic on all these points. I know his hero N T Wright believes the same, but he problem is that this is not the scholarly, scientific consensus among Biblical scholars, literary scholars or historians. I do not find the New Testament to be as monolithic has he pretends it is, and neither by the way did my New Testament teachers at the very ministry school where he is teaching ethics. In fact, they taught me something diametrically opposed to what he is suggesting.

Any survey of the Resurrection stories in the Gospels should be enough to discredit the view that the New Testament has a singular understanding of Resurrection is, or of what Christians should be doing and how they should be acting in this world.  The Gospel of John's entire vision of what Jesus' project IS, is very different from the vision found in the other Gospels. There is no one Christian narrative, and there never has been. There are a plurality of views on what Jesus was, what His project was and what that means for our lives here and now. The bitter irony of someone who touts relativism about truth but allows for no objective plurality in how we look at the Bible as a whole leaves my stomach turning. I am sickened by the hypocrisy.

Here's a narrative I think is as consistent with the overall arch of the Bible as the one presented before. God created the world and gave it free will. It veered off course in some places, and God initiated a plan by which the world could be brought back in line with His will. He started by creating an outpost within one of those realities that had fallen off-course. This was Israel. Then He Himself came as Jesus Christ and began spreading the success He had found in Israel to the rest of the world. All fighting against evil is a continuation of that project. How is that not a Christian narrative?

Here's another: all of reality reflects the consequences of being grounded in a God that is Suffering Love. This God made Himself vulnerable to the world, and the world responded in good and bad ways. This God has revealed Himself to mankind in and through Jesus, to show us the way of Suffering Love and to help us understand our proper place in the universe. 

There are, in fact, countless ways to tell the Christian narrative. To take the one you happen to like and call it THE Christian narrative is nothing but epistemic imperialism, and requires Biblical blind spots that are so huge it boggles the mind. If you take a certain set of Biblical data and say that is the one you are using and so you come up with this or that narrative, that is right and true. Do that, be honest about the interpretive model you are using. But don't put that up as the One True Christianity based on the One True and Clear Vision of the Bible and then enshrine that as THE way to Christian ethics. That is just dishonest.

One thing the prof harped on is how necessarily bodily resurrection is if we are going to see the material world as something good and rightly created. If we think about ourselves as disembodied souls it causes us to devalue the physical world. Only be a resurrected and immortal existence can we capture the hope we need, the hope we need to know the projects in this world we encounter are MEANINGFUL. But in point of fact, this doesn't pan out as he thinks.

First of all ,the only life-projects that will find meaning are those that will make a difference when God does his thing. How many good and holy projects end in failure, or run a course to their own demise? The prof himself admits we cannot measure a good life simply by worldly results, but if it is my own personal immortal sharing in those projects that ensures their meaningfulness, then indeed only those projects that last or have an influence until the time I return will be meaningful.

Additionally, both the teacher, and N T Wright seem to fail to realize what really bothers us about death. It is not the end of my life as a whole that bothers me, nor even the end of the world as a whole. It is the end of each and every moment that bothers me. Every moment of wonder, beauty, and goodness invites me to believe in its own eternity. Yet each moment is passing the moment it is perceived. It is the perpetual dying of each and every wonderful moment, and of every second, that really makes up the tragedy of death and suffering. Is it every moment that we are promised will be resurrected? What would that even look like?

In truth, you need no bodily resurrection for all people once you have a vulnerable God. Once the Cross is revealed, the power of resurrection is already vouchsafed. For we know that every moment of joy and wonder IN THIS WORLD, as every moment of pain and suffering IN THIS WORLD, is held on to forever in the mind and life of God. God remembers and retains all value. What we do makes a difference to God, changes God's experiences, and perhaps adds to the storehouse of Heaven. Every moment is resurrected in the life of God. Since it is only in the physical world, in what we do here and now, that such effects can take place, then the physical world is made supremely important, much more important than it would be if we were all physically resurrected into it forever, for God's suffering or enjoyment, God's death or resurrection, are infinitely more important than anything that happens to me. And all of this is just a working out of what it means to say that Jesus IS God, and reveals God. This is just the way the world must work if the Incarnation is true and revelatory of all that God is all the time.

Now I believe that the disciples really encountered Jesus after His death, and that this was an act of God. I must believe this, for it is in the Resurrection that we come to know that Jesus WAS God and that Vulnerable Love is divine in scope and power. But to tightly define what the Resurrection was and what it means for our future is just wrongheaded. I believe that God is going to use Jesus Christ to reshape the world into something radically different. I also believe that the lines between death and life will eventually disappear. But what that means and what it looks like is beyond any of us to understand. And none of it, none of it, is what really matters when it comes to meaning and ethics, not as I see it. All that matters is this: God is incarnate in this world, and all you do affects God for good or ill. God has made Himself vulnerable to you and so your actions in this world have cosmic consequences, and eternal significance in the life of God. THIS is the real meaning and significance of both the cross and the resurrection. The only thing that matters to me is God and what happens to God and how I contribute to or reduce that life. Anything else is self-centered and short-sighted. That is what the Christian narrative is as I see it, and that is what it means to be an ethical Christian. That is my moral theology.