Thread: Historical Narratives

Why must we avoid developing doctrine on the basis of historical narratives? Do you think this is a bad thing? Why?

You mean historical narratives in Scripture?

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine..."

Historical narratives tell the story, they do not always comment on whether what is happening in the story is right or wrong.

Originally posted by daveb
Historical narratives tell the story, they do not always comment on whether what is happening in the story is right or wrong.

Agreed, however we can use the rest of Scripture to determine what is right and/or wrong in the story. But certainly we do not toss historical narratives when it comes to developing doctrine.

Should we formulate, say, government of the church based on Acts 15 and 21? Those are historical narrtives.

Or, should we start a water walking club because Peter walked on the water?

How do you know when you should or should not add in a narrative to doctrine?

Originally posted by webmaster
Should we formulate, say, government of the church based on Acts 15 and 21? Those are historical narrtives.

Yes, I believe so. Although we should not limit our church government to these passages only. No Scripture is of any private interpretation, etc.

WCF 1.9
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself: and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly.

This section of the WCF applies to the above question as well as to this one:

Or, should we start a water walking club because Peter walked on the water?

How do you know when you should or should not add in a narrative to doctrine?

By using the rest of Scripture to discern the meaning of a narrative. Personally, I think narratives can be some of the most difficult passages to understand. You have to think about context, setting, the audience, the characters in the narrative, etc, etc. It's much harder than "You shall not kill." At the same time, though, I think the study of narratives can produce some wonderful knowledge that you simply would not get from the non-narrative sections of Scripture.

Narratives should always be considered in the establishing of doctrine, as they are part of the Word of God. The difficulty, as I see it, is discerning what exactly we are to learn from the narrative.

One might begin by listing out broad sub-categories of narrative.

Some seems to give "facts", but not much about living (these passages may teach us "doctrine" in subtle ways, such as a christian epistemology and historiography, so its not as if they are "value-free").
Other gives facts of human experience.
Other also integrates attitudes, sometimes even God's attitude about the event.

We have prayers.
We have "ordinary business" (like the unstaged, artless conduct of church government).
We have "Thus saith the Lord."

We have "questionable behavior."
We have "evil behavior." Both of these require an ethical scheme of evaluation (i.e. the Law).

I think that all these different sub-categories means that there can be no uniform treatment of narrative, as far as establishing doctrine. Some parts will go farther than others in its abillity to fix a norm. And without imperatives we may not be able to do any more than establish precedent. And so we need a fully-rounded "doctrine" of the usages of Scripture precedent.

So historical narrative compliments didactic teaching, but cannot form didactic teaching, unless of course there is didactic teaching within the historical narrative (like a parable or teaching of Christ).

Is there any theological teaching which we seem to form based on historical narrative and should not?

Originally posted by webmaster
Should we formulate, say, government of the church based on Acts 15 and 21? Those are historical narrtives.

Or, should we start a water walking club because Peter walked on the water?

How do you know when you should or should not add in a narrative to doctrine?

Dennis Johnson deals with this in his book on Acts. Basically we look to other didactic portions of Scripture (i.e. Pauline epistles) to confirm (analogy of faith)

But we legitimately get a lot of theology proper from OT historiography. Gen - Est teaches a lot of theology. I believe we err when we reduce historiography to moralism, particularly to moralism not explicit in the text such as making Gen 37 a warning against favoritism or against being a tattletale when it's a text on the providence of a covenant-keeping God.

The narratives are an important source of doctrinal truth. They form precedent, like caselaw. And like individual cases, not all aspects of all narratives are the "ruling" or the doctrinally binding part. In any event, we derive important doctrines from narratives. Christ, for example, used the narrative of David eating the Showbread to demonstrate the exception of exigency for Sabbath observance. He likewise used the Genesis account to shape the doctrine of marriage. The WCF of course uses narratives often. For example, the proof texts for the chapter of synods and councils as I recall relies almost (or perhaps totally) exclusively on Acts 15. Similarly, the change of the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday relies largely on precedent from narratives.

Originally posted by sastark
Narratives should always be considered in the establishing of doctrine, as they are part of the Word of God. The difficulty, as I see it, is discerning what exactly we are to learn from the narrative.

I have to agree with Sastark that narratives are hard to discern, and yet one can find doctrine through careful and diligent study. Take the book of Ruth for example. The theme of Ruth is that God preserves the royal line of Judah. Is there any doctrine that one can see in the book of Ruth? Yes, it is divine providence.

Originally posted by webmaster
So historical narrative compliments didactic teaching, but cannot form didactic teaching, unless of course there is didactic teaching within the historical narrative (like a parable or teaching of Christ).

Is there any theological teaching which we seem to form based on historical narrative and should not?

I think this is a good question, and I would be interested in hearing some responses to it. One that I can think of right now might be when David went "dancing before the Ark of the Lord." (We'll build a theology of worship on it.)
Or perhaps when he slayed Goliath we might form the opinion that, "We just have to undertake an activity, no matter how outlandish, and not even entertain the possibility of failure, and we are sure to meet with success because of our unwavering faith!"

I'm sure a lot of OT accounts could be used to highlight why some strange beliefs and behaviors occur in the Church today.

Originally posted by alwaysreforming

Originally posted by webmaster
So historical narrative compliments didactic teaching, but cannot form didactic teaching, unless of course there is didactic teaching within the historical narrative (like a parable or teaching of Christ).

Is there any theological teaching which we seem to form based on historical narrative and should not?

I think this is a good question, and I would be interested in hearing some responses to it. One that I can think of right now might be when David went "dancing before the Ark of the Lord." (We'll build a theology of worship on it.)
Or perhaps when he slayed Goliath we might form the opinion that, "We just have to undertake an activity, no matter how outlandish, and not even entertain the possibility of failure, and we are sure to meet with success because of our unwavering faith!"

I'm sure a lot of OT accounts could be used to highlight why some strange beliefs and behaviors occur in the Church today.

I can't go into it right now, but using typology wiht narratives can help to avoid some of the more fanciful applications.