10 good reasons to switch to a narrative-historical hermeneutic
First, what do I mean by a “narrative-historical hermeneutic”? I mean a way of integrating the Bible into our self-understanding as the church—that is, a way of doing theology—that takes it to be the story told by a community about its historical existence over time, reaching back to the promises made to Abraham, and reaching forward—at least as I see it—to the confession of Christ as Lord by the nations of the Greek-Roman world.
That last part is too historical for most people and perhaps has to be regarded as optional for the time being. The point, though, is that our defining theology is to be constructed as a story about history that looks both backwards and forwards: it remembers what God has done in the past; it accounts for what God is doing in the present; and it imagines what God will do in the future from the perspective of the particular prophetic community.
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