within the emergent conversation (or the bits i have been exposed to) “meta-narrative” seems to be a negative thing while a “narrative view of scripture” seems to be a positive one. as a storyteller, i am interested in understanding the use of this literary term (narrative) in the context of theology. i have certainly heard these terms used and have contextual inklings as to what a “meta-narrative” is (overarching story i would assume?) but i dont understand it in the context of modern vs postmodern thought, or the evangelical movement vs the emergent one.
just figured id ask.
Meta-narratives and narrative theology
A meta-narrative is a top-level explanatory story that is definitive, normative, more or less unquestioned, for an individual’s or a culture’s worldview. It is the controlling status of meta-narratives that upsets postmoderns. A narrative theology doesn’t necessarily make that presumption, though clearly the biblical worldview has its own meta-narrative about creation, the relationship of Israel to the creator God, the final destiny of humanity, and so on. A narrative theology has the option of treating the biblical narrative as simply one expression of historical faith among many others.
Briefly, the challenge faced by the emerging or postmodern church is not simply to relativize the meta-narrative, though that is what it is often accused of doing. It is, in the first place, to make sure we have understood it properly - or at least to understand how we have misunderstood it. Secondly, I think, it is to understand how the biblical narrative relates to the given of the world. This is where N.T. Wright’s critical realism comes in. The question we are wrestling with is not how does the biblical (meta-)narrative determine truth? but how does it speak about, redescribe, respond to, the given reality of human history and experience?
I would also suggest that we should learn to accept the tribal character of the people of God: we are a people amongs many other peoples. We tell our story, but it is simply our story. We do not have to make the big, modern, rationalizing, absolute claims about universal truth.
in layman's terms
so a person of christian faith with a meta-narrative would believe that absolute truth for life and afterlife comes from within the pages of the canonized scripture and the accepted theology of either the catholic or protestant catechism? and someone with a narrative view of scripture would consider the teachings of scripture and other texts and the people of the time to gain an overall understanding of the story of god and man?
i find it interesting that the dictionary definition of “narrative” is: “a story or an account of a sequence of events in the order in which they happened” and the defnition of “the process of narrating” is: “the art or process of telling a story or giving an account of something.” both narrative and meta-narrative seem to have similar aspirations - i hear you saying the difference is that the meta group wants one story for all?
is “meta-narrative” a anthropolgy term?
The fountain of knowledge
Whenever I’m in doubt I find Wikipedia a great place to start!
” n critical theory, and particularly postmodernism, a metanarrative (sometimes master- or grand narrative) “is a global or totalizing cultural narrative schemaknowledge and experience”.[1] The prefix meta which orders and explains means “beyond” and is here used to mean “about”, and a narrative is a story. Therefore, a metanarrative is a story about a story”
So I guess that makes a meta-narrative a big idea in modernity, that there is some sort of global and factual narritive or story which is applicable to every person who has, does or will exist. Idea’s such as judgement, creation, or the involvement of God with people as understood only through one specific text or paradigm (science, the bible, other religious texts). Right?
a pretty new term then
it sounds as if (i went and poked around wikipedia a bit - good idea!) this is a realtively new term to explain what postmodern is not. i always find that facinating, definition by anit-defining. but it is also in line with any new thing that is emerging. when i birthed my first child, one of the most amazing things at the moment of birth was holding her and defining her as “not me.”
New term, old idea
“Metanarrative” is the new term for “worldview.” In keeping with the narrative paradigm, one’s metanarrative is the narrative that explains the other, lesser narratives. So people might be aware of the events (“narrative”) of the conflict(s) in the Middle East; but one could have a Western or Islamic or Christian or Feminine metanarrative which colors that narrative and in a sense interprets it. Theologically, one might have a naturalistic, Biblical, or modernist metanarrative.
Overarching vs. Individual
The way I understand the idea of a Metanarrative and a narrative is that one who believes in a Metanarrative believes in one overarching story for all mankind. This obviously lends itself to the modern worldview. Postmodernists are inclined to the Multiple Narrative stance. Every person has their own story. Their story leads to their understanding of the world. Therefore, with six billion people in the world, there are six billion narratives. Postmodernism does not allow for one group or thinkers to place a gigantic umbrella over all stories and proclaim a universal experience.
This does not outlaw absolute truth however. The fact that, “God is love,” can be understood in many different narratives. A peasant woman in China does not have the same story as I do in Indianapolis, but we can both experience God’s love.
The Metanarrative has a tendency to limit God. It holds the modernistic pride in proclaiming singular understanding of God. The multiple narratives allow the Christian community to come together, share their stories, and understand God fully.
question
jkbrkr, you say: “The multiple narratives allow the Christian community to come together, share their stories, and understand God fully.” got that. i have long been frustrated with the schism between protestant and catholic.
but you also said “A peasant woman in China does not have the same story as I do in Indianapolis, but we can both experience God’s love.” is this woman in china a “christian?” if not, does the lack of a meta-narrative imply that there is more than one way to god? i often wonder this. but if not, then wouldn’t there be some form of meta-narrative that even postmodern jesus followers subscribe to?
the story
Fascinating questions and really worth pondering tho whether answers will be had is itself a part of the question!
There has to be a “the story” and that is in God. But that story probably is as uncomprehensible to us as God Himself. Both our minds and our language are simply not up to that task. Paul promises that some day we will know but that is not today and it’s not now.
God gives each of us a story, His story. We have it in the bible and we have it in His personal self-revelation. That’s His promise in John 1:9, John 12:32.
To apply logic to my surmise, if God illumines each and every person, then each one can respond positively by believing the light and by moving from loving darkness to loving light.
I also think that it’s wise to differentiate between the story that we are living and the story that we think/believe/tell. The latter could be utter nonsense and not affect materially our real story (stories?).
Live to serve : Serve to live
Metanarrative
Suspicion of metanarratives is one of the obsessions of postmodernism - since the great metanarratives of the past seem to have failed us: capitalism, communism, Freudian psychology - all have their controlling stories, worldviews, which attempt to explain everything in one grand synthesis.
Christianity also has a metanarrative. It wasn’t Modernism which invented this - it’s the controlling narrative of the biblical story - from Genesis to Revelation. So how is Christianity to fare in a world which doesn’t want a grand explanation?
Perhaps first by seeing that Christianity has attempted to tackle Modernism on its own terms - and forcing its own metanarrative into an absolutist mould, providing objective proof for everything, when objective proof was never what the metanarrative was all about.
But postmodernism has its own metanarrative - which, somewhat contradictorily, is the metanarrative of the ‘small story’. Well fine; truth can be both of the grand overarching variety and the inner, authentically experienced variety. Let the focus be on the latter, not the former. Christians have a story to tell - it’s their own story.
That’s assuming they have allowed the metanarrative of creation - fall - Israel - Jesus - church (using N.T.Wright’s five act drama model in which Jesus is the central character), to impact their lives on a personal, level, so that they do in fact have a story to tell.
re/de/e-mergings?
I guess one of the real dangers of small, personally meaningful narratives is the necessary acceptance of all ‘small’ narratives as somewhat equal.
There may even be a tendency to emerge so far that all connections are effectively severed. So far, some sort of self-regulation seems to have ameliorated this tendency but then most of the emergers were rooted in their traditions before starting to come away from them.
The next generation may not feel either the juxtaposition or the tenuous connection at all. So, at some point in the not too distant future, regardless of our fears, we will have to sort out how all the small stories are in fact a part of a bigger story even if the bigger story is not completely delineated as a metanarrative.
I am sure that if we are conscious of our limitations, and prayerfully allow the Spirit to lead us, the process of rediscovering how we are a part of the bigger story will be an exciting journey of discovery. The journey on may even help us to build some bridges with that very past that forced us to move forward in the first place.
Live to serve : Serve to live
why i write fiction
i think of a pendulum swing or of the youth pulling far away to establish his own ground. at some point the child and the pendulum come swinging back. the child at least swings back different than he left. an adult now, he offers his own story to the tale of the family and all are impacted; we never move and live in isolation.
each story in the “community” must be heard, for it is largely how we define ourselves and the world around us, but ultimately it is the shared stories that make our lives richer and the points of similarities that make our eyes light up with knowing, that make us bond.
i believe we can eventually grow to have a shared story through the telling of our individual stories. this is what i hope for in the church. this is why i write fiction.
just read again
i just re-read this thread again and i really appreciate this from peter:
“Christianity has attempted to tackle Modernism on its own terms - and forcing its own metanarrative into an absolutist mould, providing objective proof for everything, when objective proof was never what the metanarrative was all about.”
i had an experience last weekend that softened me toward the church greatly. i realized that much of my frustration and opposing thought was directed not at christianity but at modernism. it was nice to realize i was resisting the modern approach to god rather than god himself or his people. then i had to laugh because certainly there will be a generation to come who will resist and oppose postmodern thought! arent we funny?
Met a narrative?
As I was climbing up the stairs
I met a man who wasn’t there;
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish he’d go away.
A.A. Milne
Could this be an adequate summary of the postmodern Christian’s suspicion of metanarratives?
ha!
i love aa milne!
i too am suspicious of a “controlling narrative,” but i am more suspicious of the way metanarratives have been abused than that they should never be used. i find myself delightfully less certain of many things as i leave the grip of my evangelical upbringing, but i dont know that this means i want to give up the possibility of ever being certain about anything. same could be said for metanarratives perhaps?
is metanarrative a “christian” word? is it a word used by postmoderns or simply by postmodern christians?
multinarratives
Casting your gaze across seemingly endless shelves of novels in a bookstore you recognize the impossibility of a fictional metanarrative. But open up any one of those novels and start reading, and soon you find yourself immersed in a self-contained world. From outside there are no metanarratives; from inside every narrative is a metanarrative.
This, I believe, is Heidegger’s point. For us humans, being always means being-in. There is no transcendence; no one can stand above and outside the world and declare the meaning of it all. We’re left with the angst of our limitations without the ability to overcome them.
Christianity has historically claimed to be a metanarrative of the transcendent variety, built on a “god’s-eye view” of the roil of this world. Modernity inherited its transcendent metanarrative approach from Christianity, variously enshrining philosophy, science, history, economics, even art as the overarching source of meaning. A postmodern Christianity without metanarrative might say something like this: from the outside, Christianity is just one more religion on the shelf; from inside, Christianity defines the meaning of everything.
Even within Christianity there are countless systematic theologies, each claiming to be the explanatory framework of everything — the totalizing discourse. Many theologies are internally consistent, self-contained worlds. You can live inside one or another of these theological and experience a sense of transcendence. The difficulty comes in trying to reconcile differences between theologies.
Is postmodern Christianity prepared to abandon its “modernistic” attempts at establishing the definitive, transcendent, totalizing discourse? Are Christians prepared to live inside their own diverse and separate theologies, discussing fine points with one another while disregarding those outside the camp?
Not sure where you are going
John - I wasn’t sure where you were going in your final paragraph. Is it commendable or condemnable that postmodern Christians sit discussing finer points of theology whilst ignoring those ‘outside the camp’? Yet this seems to be the alternative you pose to the world of modernistic metanarratives.
A Christian has a story to tell if they have something worthwhile to say about their experience of the faith. Our stories needn’t be theological in a purely cerebral sense. It seems to me that this is increasingly the emphasis that is needed within postmodern culture and spirituality - ‘truth’ which has the ring of authenticity and integrity, as opposed to ‘truth’ which sets about demolishing every other point of view.
However, I think it is difficult to avoid the position that the coming of Christ brought a coherent narrative perspective to the OT literature which is clearly visible in the NT writings, and chimes with the experience of our own lives today. Metanarrative there is, whether we like it or not.
against metanarrative or metatheology?
john - loved your articulation - again. ive noticed this in a few threads. i liked your title, “multinarratives,” too.
anyway, as a fiction writer i appreciate your bookshelf analogy. however i also hear peter in his final line about there being some sort of metanarrative to contend with.
which is why i return to my question of this word. is metanarrative really what we rail against? i agree whole-heartedly with not smashing everyone into a single story, but even by saying we dont believe in a single story arent we asking to “smash” people into that “right” belief? then have we created a metaphilosophy?
as a fiction writer, i would also say that there are not that many stories to tell. some would even argue that there is essentially one or at least a very few. it is the way they are told, the particulars of the setting and characters and the perspective that account for the abundance of books.
i then pause to wonder, if we really considered and told a STORY about a god who created and redeemed and blessed all people, would we stiffen at the controlling nature of that? i doubt it. stories make our understanding broader, more complex, less compartmentalized. it is the dissection to understand with finite minds, to control the story, parrot back the “information” included, that is what we rail against in the “metanarrative.” i am not so sure it is the story itself.
i propose that what we dislike is not an overarching story, but an overarching theology. and perhaps this is a “no-duh” in the postmodern world of church - if so i appologize for my ignorance. but words are important to me and i question the meaning and use of this one. narrative means story.
story is a word i love, but all writing and talking do not fall into the category of story - i see this mistake even at disney where i write scripts. just because you want it to be a story, does not make it so.
Incredulity toward metanarratives
Stacy, I hope you’re not telling us that Disney just keeps recycling the same story over and over. Anyhow, thanks for your good words — now I’ll try to dispel my newfound reputation for clarity by offering a long version of the postmodern metanarrative debate as I understand it.
“I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives,” Lyotard famously declared in 1979. Here’s the beginning of his next sentence: “This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences.” Science is a methodology and a body of knowledge, but it’s also a metanarrative, a grand story that goes something like this: Humanity, equipped with the empirical scientific method, approaches closer and closer to Truth. Modern scientific truth claims rely on generally-accepted techniques for evaluating external evidence in order to prove one’s case (or to disprove the alternatives).
In contrast, the Judeo-Christian metanarrative goes something like this: God’s people, through revelation, redemption and regeneration, approach closer and closer to Truth. Traditional narrative truth claims like Christianity pivot on the reliability of the narrators (i.e., that they accurately retell the stories they heard) and the consensual opinion of the culture about what the narrators mean. Modern science believes that narrative truth is primitive, obsolete, premodern – and so it should be absorbed into science.
Lyotard explicitly rejects this aggressive “totalizing” ambition of science vis-Ã -vis narrative, arguing that two irreducibly different kinds of truth are in play. He proposes a division of the intellectual territory: science is good at accumulating declarative and empirical knowledge; narrative is good at establishing cultural norms and transmitting history and “know-how.” All the big empirical underpinnings of the Christian faith depend on past historical events that can’t be independently verified or falsified; all the Christian truth claims rest either on the narrative tradition or on consensus or on unverifiable claims to personal inspiration. Christianity should therefore abandon its aspirations to establish its story empirically, focusing instead on things like meaning and purpose, morality and salvation – topics for which the narrative tradition and consensus perhaps have more to offer than science does.
There are problems at the borders, of course, the most contentious example being Biblical creation-as-narrative vs. creation-as-science. I suspect that most serious people recognize that science has the upper epistemological hand in this dispute. Increasingly the “post-evangelicals” are prepared to cede this territory to the scientists, reading the creation story as allegory/saga/poem/polemic rather than as science.
However, even within its acknowledged aegis the Judeo-Christian narrative runs into trouble when it comes to interpreting the narratives. When Jesus talked about heaven and hell was he talking about life after death or about the first-century judgment of Israel? Did Jesus claim to be God co-eternal with the Father, or was that kind of thinking anathema in a Jewish context? When Paul made pronouncements about women and homosexuals and slaves was he speaking eternal truths or cultural biases? Do we try to grasp what the narrator said or what he/she intended to say? Should consensual opinion of the first-century church override contemporary consensus or lack thereof? If empirical justifications can’t be invoked on validating the Christian narrative, what authority does even the broadest internal Christian consensus exert over those outside the gates?
So even if there is a Christian metanarrative, a way of telling the story from God’s perspective, how would we recognize it if we heard it? Do we abandon that grandiose project as modernistic and live with, or even celebrate, the postmodern diversity of interpretations?
Peter suggests that, instead of trying to create the metanarrative, Christians share their personal narratives of what God is doing in their lives. Perhaps that’s the best plan. I suppose the question is how we interpret our personal experiences, how we frame our own mini-narratives. Do we know anything in particular about the God who works in our lives? We tend to tell stories about our own subjective spiritual experiences from a broader cultural perspective; e.g., this is the voice of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity; God is convicting me of sin and is offering me salvation through the atoning sacrifice of His Son; God is telling me to vote Democratic this election; etc. A purely individual subjective experience isn’t important to the culture, or to Lyotard, unless it becomes the subject of narrative transmission in the collective – which it almost always does.
Andrew suggested that the Judeo-Christian narrative not speak about truth but about interpreting interpreting history and experience. Again, I think that doesn’t get us out of the woods: interpreting history and experience is the main authoritative claim the Judeo-Christian narrative has to offer, but there is no generally accepted procedure for arriving at the right interpretation. If the story is a tribal one, relative only to those inside the tribe, then the modern metanarrative problem is replaced by the postmodern problem of radical relativism.
Where do I stand? It’s a hard problem, I think.
very helpful
very helpful. some of this is well established in my experiences and conversations, while other parts are quite new. i continue to be delighted by the fact that on this site i hear words and ideas that i previously thought were only inside my head.
also, as i seek to understand this issue on some sort of spiritual plane, and attempt to grasp the ramification of the larger conversation, i tend to have a much smaller, simpler perspective. and i keep coming back to the meaning of story in my life as an artist. i was a performer and director for 20 years and have been a writer for a dozen and there is something universal about all stories that feels like blurry key in this debate, or at least this metaphor.
“So even if there is a Christian metanarrative, a way of telling the story from God’s perspective, how would we recognize it if we heard it? Do we abandon that grandiose project as modernistic and live with, or even celebrate, the postmodern diversity of interpretations?”
one of my growing frustrations over the past few years (and one of those things i thought i was alone in until finding OST a month or so ago) has been the insanity of assuming that my (to use a horribly evangelical term) “daily walk” would look anything like a woman in china or uganda or iraq. it was this thinking that led me to question and actually toss most of the previous practices of my faith - they seemed man-made, unecessary and irrelvant.
lastly (and then i must get back to the script i have to complete today) i find similarities in the being(s) many religions worship, but am also qute taken by the fact that there are staggering OT stories where other nations recognzed israel’s god as “the god most high” - this leaves me still curious as to whether there is in fact one god, and other false gods, or simply many mini-narratives to understanding one being - one god.
i appreciate your willingness to help me understand the conversation here. while i doubt i will ever become a pillar of emergent theology, i am an artist and we are often on the city wall, hollering about what we see. grin.
and ps - i AM telling you that disney, and every other movie studio, book publisher etc… only recycles story - the deep part of the tale. not the characters or the settings perhaps (although that too) but the conflict/choice/change that makes a thing a story.
A leotard for Lyotard?
Very interesting, John. According to your understanding, which I have no reason to doubt, Lyotard is repackaging a rather modernistic division of ‘scientific’ and ‘faith’ approaches to knowledge of the universe and reality (except that the ‘faith’ version is bundled together with ‘narrative’ versions in his interpretation).
Isn’t this recycling a prevalent myth - that science deals with objective truth (things as they really are), while religion deals with subjective truth (the untrustworthy and irrational realm of faith, the supernatural, imagination etc). Yet a more up-to-date understanding of science (Eg W.S. Polanski) is that it rests just as much on ‘faith’ assumptions as religious belief.
Science approaches its subject through faith, is confirmed in its beliefs through the consistent results of tests, and then changes its beliefs when different data challenge the commonly accepted beliefs. This is something we have learned through Einstein’s challenge to Newtonian physics, and the challenging world of subatomic physics. I’m sure Lyotard is more sophisticated in what he has to say than my outline, but it makes a point. Science is not really dissimilar in kind from religious belief as a way of ‘knowing’.
Christian faith does indeed depend on a confidence in certain events having taken place in history. One doesn’t have to be a modern to understand the importance of Christ’s having risen from the dead in history. The whole narrative purports to be history - thought not in the modernist mould, a mould which rests on assumptions that are in themselves open to challenge. Problems at the borders, such as divergent understandings of creation, which you mention, are indeed at the borders, though ‘science’, as a way of perceiving through modernist lenses, is coming increasingly into question - eg in the now discredited assumption that life proceeds from simple to complex forms. The discovery of the complexity of cells, ‘the building blocks of life’, comes to mind.
My position would be this: there is a postmodern attitude which defensively rejects metanarratives of all kinds - including those of science itself. The metanarrative of the OT writings as brought to fulfilment by Christ is relatively simple in essence, and can be encapsulated in my own life - I am being destroyed by sin; I need someone who will rescue me from sin; Christ offers to rescue me and give me new life by the gift of the Spirit if I believe in him. This phenomenon is what I mean by the Christian having something ‘worthwhile’ to relate in his/her personal story.
A thousand different stories will tend to reflect this common core. The significance of the experience, and its importance for the human race, and indeed creation, can be understood when it is placed against the larger canvas of the biblical narrative. It’s my opinion that the meaning of the personal experience must be interpreted with the help of the larger picture - but the larger picture need not be, in the first place, the means of communicating the story.
If one who calls him/herself a Christian does not have this core experience, which is an experience of being made part of the people of God, with God dwelling amongst his people as opposed to being a million miles away or not existing at all, then there can be all the theological talk in the world, but it will be of very little practical application or relevance to anybody. If this is the point at which I part company with my friends on the OST website, so be it. We can still be friends, but there will be a huge area of shared experience missing, which I take to be central to the Christian message.
a sprained narrative
Peter -
Your relativist treatment of science reflects developments in the Lyotard’s argument subsequent to his opening salvo. I personally have more confidence in scientific method than you seem to, but I certainly agree that science can never arrive at Truth in any kind of transcendent “God’s-eye view” sense. So the scientific narrative can’t achieve “meta” status.
Lyotard argues, I think correctly, that even a pivotal historical event like Christ’s rising from the dead cannot be independently verified by observation – you have to rely on the veracity of now-absent witnesses that the event actually took place, and on community consensus about what the event means. There is no replicable procedure to falsify either the accuracy of the evidence or the theory for explaining the data. In short, you have to have faith in order to believe the Christian narrative. It cannot achieve “meta” status as a narrative either.
You’re going to vouchsafe the accuracy of the Christian story through personal experience of sin, salvation, and regeneration. Thousands of people can tell the same basic story. This convergence of stories moves you beyond the purely idiosyncratic to the intersubjective test of validity. Not bad; just not “meta” in a transcendent sense. Surely you will acknowledge that thousands of Hindus can tell some common narrative about their own personal religious experiences, but that doesn’t make it transcendently true. So are the Christians and the Hindus merely different “tribes,” each with its own intersubjective validation of a personal narrative, neither with a claim to transcendent metanarrative status?
I think this is why Christians eventually have to invoke a top-down validation from God Himself, apprehensible only by those who have had their eyes opened by the Holy Spirit. How do you know it’s true? Faith, I guess. Still, there are others who draw the boundaries between Christian and non-Christian with either a wider or a narrower circumference than the one you draw. Which one is right? I don’t know, but given my uncertainty in being able to discern accurately the Holy Spirit’s promptings I’d probably lean in the direction of inclusiveness and let God sort it out later.
I have managed to type this missive with a severely sprained wrist incurred during a fall while running this afternoon. Now it’s time to rest, ice, elevate and medicate.
cant think of a clever title
john - ouch on the wrist! hope the ice and medication helped. i hear a guinness or two is great for such things.
i can follow both you and peter quite well…am i unwell?
at any rate, once your wrist is better - or perhaps peter or another can answer - is it a universal understanding of sorts that “meta”narrative is a “transcendent god’s eye view?” if it is, then i agree with you that we cannot attain such a view as we are clearly not god.
i would say that the idea of having had “god’s eye view revealed” is what leaves me with such a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to typical christianity - or any other religion or philosophical posture for that matter - it assumes an arrogance of enlightenment that troubles me. and yet i am again faced with an utter longing for stories of the kind told by tolkein where there is clearly an unseen “meta” story occuring outside the shire. yet i am equally as taken by the idea that there is a narnia on the other side of the wardrobe, maybe another on the planet of perelandra.
is there some singular story that we cannot fully know this side of eternity? or are all religious tales just some kind of random human reaching for something greater than ourselves? if the “end” was the fall of the temple, is this is all there is with no new heaven/new earth eternity to hope for? what do i tell my friend with an autistic son? that this life is beautiful because of christ’s example and that we are now the new creation? she awaits his freedom in heaven. is that modern?
www.theartofstory.blogspot.com
doubting faith
I’m sure that for many it will seem that science and christianity spring from two opposing camps as far as the sort of metanarratives that they seem to espouse. I feel that such oppsitions are somewhat premature because on both sides it is acknowledged that we don’t have the whole picture.
More to the point, science has no business fiddling with metanarratives at all. Hume proved this quite incontrovertibly long ago. Science is largely a method that when repetitively applied can help to sort out stuff like physical cause-effect relations. Science, though, also has a methodological limitation in that the leap from observation to testable theory is never adequately explainable. Furthermore, all scientific theories are by definition replaceable with better ones, so science can never claim to be able to explain anything with any finality. imo it should never try to do so as if it does make this attempt it is denying itself. Science would make us all pragmatists.
The best we can hope for from science is that in its ‘at present’ avataram, it gives us some practical handles on some things and we can hope that application of that ‘current state of knowledge’ may improve our ability to handle everyday problems like agriculture, transportation or health. By my definition, science can make no claim to any metanarrative, though scientists being human often ignore this reality.
Honest christians also acknowledge that we do not know God’s mind. What we do know is that God has revealed Himself to us and this limited knowledge only comes after we have met and acknowledged Jesus as our Lord and saviour. After God has taken the initiative, we feel bound to try to get to know Him better. We know that the best way to do that is to study the bible for now we believe in Jesus the Christ whose life, ministry, death and resurrection are recorded there. What we are not able to doubt though is that God has intervened. He has intervened in Jesus and His intervention we know only because by His grace He has done things in our souls that are inexplicable and wondrous.
Still there will be doubt and I would argue that there should be doubt especially about the state of our ‘knowledge’ and the metanarrative that each of us detects. As Os Guiness pointed out many years ago, doubt can be a very positive driving force that signals areas of confusion and that drives us to improve our knowledge. Doubt also helps us to be humble about how much we don’t know and how little we do know.
The reformed systematic theologian and now evangelicalism’s drive to make everything propositional is itself an acknowledgement of our uncertainty - an attempt to stabilise us in spite of our uncertainty. Instaed of the older bibliolatry we are given propositionolatry.
The problem in much of modern christian thinking is that we would like to think that we have the complete theory that explains everything. Individuals who find this or that theological system convincing enough, know that their particular system relies on more weightage being given to some parts of scripture as opposed to others. They also know that there are paradoxes that the system is unable to explain or is unable to reconcile. Each one has to decide whether s/he can live with those tensions.
There’s nothing wrong with extrapolating with what little we are sure of as long as we acknowledge the uncertainties of our endeavors. But we lack the humble honesty to acknowledge our real limitations…
The difficulty with postmodernity is that everything has been called into question including the existence of any metanarrative. A good effect of postmodernity is that it does ask us whether we are really certain even about the things that we thought our theology had adequately explained. Questions that do need to be raised given our propensity to be falsely smug.
Still, the PoMo analysis, whether genealogical, power analysis, language game, or differance, still points to commonalities in communication without which no analysis will work. There is a silent and necessary acknowledgement of metanarrative. Meaning is implied (e.g. Derrida’s tracings) even when the implied meaning is deconstructed and deniable. There is meaning behind meaning and that is the best proof that we do need metanarrative - though which metanarrative we are still not (and may never be) sure.
As christians we can be sure that there is a metanarrative. The danger comes when we also say that we know exactly what that is! Let us therefore witness to the truth that we know in Christ AND LEAVE THE METANARRATIVE SAFELY IN GOD’S HANDS.
Live to serve : Serve to live
meta-analysis
On the scientific method, this may seem trite, but a friend who was an actuary working for a large insurance company had had a very contentious month charting out the annual policy plan. He’d been missing from our fellowship for quite a while and when he got back he was both mentally exhausted and extremely vexed.
We asked him what was happening and he told us this parable: “My corporate world is like having a blind CEO sitting at the wheel of a large limo with no brakes, driving through the heart of a city, who gets his directions from us, the MIS team, and we are all in the backseat - staring out the rear window and simultaneously yelling out contradictory commands.”
Live to serve : Serve to live