Nick Carter has just added a comment to an old article called Jesus, God and narrative theology. He asks about how we deal with the apparent tension between a narrative theology - at least as I described it in that post - and the need to establish and defend doctrinal formulations:

Your first point leaves me with one question: If narrative theology dissuades “reductive and rationalizing theological schema” while allowing “a diversity of perspectives without having to arbitrate between them” Then…

Is that to say that there is never a need to arbitrate between theologies? That hairs never deserve to be split? That doctrines such as the nature of Christ are so unimportant that we should not only seek unity but establish a framework for our doctrine that forbids any debate?

There seem to be an awful lot of refuting false teachers and false doctrines in the epistles, and nobody told any stories to do it.

(This was originally a comment attached to the ‘Why the historical Jesus matters‘ post.)

I find such hope in how Jesus conveys to us the Kingdom of God. I feel I want the kingdom of God much more than Christianity. But this chapter (Matthew 22) plain scares me. It is a parable of a wedding, invitation, murder, re-invitation, and throwing out. If I imagine my own wedding, I was indeed sad when someone said they could not come.

Andrew,

You describe your Cracks in the Pavement post as ‘a narrative eschatology.’

I have been fascinated to note that there are a number of contributors to OST who argue for some special significance being assigned to the views/writings of the Church Fathers especially when we look to try to understand the bible. The matter crops up in various discussions here and there, but I just thought that I would ask the question regarding formative-emerging theology: