Narrative Apologetics

Now, ask yourself this: how similar is the structure of the book you just imagined to the structure of the Bible? Did you have lots of genealogies? Or the whole section of the Law? Or the minor prophets?

Most importantly, how many stories were there in your book?

Alister McGrath wants to convince you that you need more stories in your book. Narrative
Apologetics is a clever, short book trying to convince you that if you want to talk about the gospel, you really need to learn to talk about and tell good stories.

The starting point for thinking about this is the shock of realization from the thought experiment above. When most people imagine explaining Christianity, the default is a theological or philosophical set of propositions and arguments. But, when the Bible sets out to explain Christianity, the default is stories. Indeed if you think about the story to philosophical argument ratio in the Bible, it is really high. Why is that?

McGrath argues that we have been thinking about apologetics all wrong.

Apologetics is not primarily about persuading people that a certain set of ideas is right, although the demonstration of the truth and trustworthiness of the Christian faith is clearly important. It is more about depicting its world of beauty, goodness, and truth faithfully and vividly, so that people will be drawn by the richness and depth of its vision of things.

This actually explains something that has been bothering me for some time. I have grown quite weary of all the attempts at apologetics which claim to offer Proof of the Truth of Christian Doctrine. It is a bizarre thing when Christians say, “We are saved by faith in God, and now let me prove by rational means that God exists and is who He says He is.” Take your pick—are Christians saved by faith or by reason? The problem here is that many Christians have forgotten what the word “faith” means.

As McGrath notes, this type of apologetics is fraught with problems. For example:

There is a danger that apologetics becomes fixated on questions about the historical reliability of the Bible and in doing so fails to set out its powerful vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.

So, if we are going to start thinking more broadly about apologetics, why narratives? The most obvious answer is that narrative is the way the Bible tells the story, so there must be something about the narrative form which is compelling. Again, we instinctively know this at one level. If someone came up to you to ask which book of the Bible would be a good first book to read, would anyone really suggest Romans? Aren’t the gospels the most obvious starting place?

A narrative is not some kind of literary embellishment of the basic ideas of Christian theology; rather, it is generally the primary form of disclosure of God’s identity and character, which gives rise to those ideas.

That is the key insight of this book. Christians tend to treat the narrative portions of the Bible as a flawed vehicle for communicating truth. We treat the narrative as perhaps a way of making a theological or philosophical truth memorable, but it is the underlying message which is the main point. The story itself is a purely a device for delivering the real content. Think about every sermon you have ever heard. How often is it just a story? If a preacher simply read a narrative story, offering no explanation or elaboration, would you feel satisfied with the sermon?

McGrath argues that Christians would have a more powerful witness, be more effective in communicating the gospel, if they would earn how to use narratives. 

We are called to out-narrate the dominant stories that shape our culture, by exposing their weaknesses or showing how they are enfolded by our own or how they are eclipsed by more luminous and compelling story.

The bulk of McGrath’s book is giving examples of how narratives can be a better means of communicating truth than a theological treatise. He uses lots of examples, but let’s think about the chapter he devotes to C.S. Lewis. The Narnia tales are obvious Christian allegories. Once you know that, you are tempted to try to map the Narnia tales onto Biblical accounts. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe seems like an easy translation. The Magician’s Nephew is also pretty simple. The others? Well, not so much. When I was much younger, I tried really hard to believe The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was meant to imitate Acts; I always knew that was a silly comparison, but onto what else could it possibly map?

McGrath, however, ably demonstrates that looking for such one-to-one mappings misses the point of Lewis’ use of the story. Instead, Lewis is using stories to communicate larger truths.

Which truths? And here is where McGrath gets into trouble with his argument. He sets out to explain what Lewis is arguing. His explanations are interesting, to be sure. I suddenly saw things I wonder how I never noticed before. But, now that someone has read McGrath’s explanations, do we still need Lewis’ stories?

And therein lies the problem with narrative apologetics. It sounds great. There is no doubt that stories are powerful means to communicate truth. But once we hear the story, do we need to have it explained? After Jesus explains the parable, do we still need the parable? Why?

At this point, we realize McGrath’s argument is less an explanation of the power of narrative apologetics and more a suggestion that maybe he is on the right track. McGrath’s argument is quite powerful in demonstrating the limits of thinking of apologetics as a series of logical proofs. McGrath is extremely persuasive that there is some virtue in narratives themselves. But, what exactly are those virtues? Why is narrative explanation more powerful than theology? McGrath’s initial forays into answering these questions are suggestive, not definitive.

Something in our souls suggests that narrative matters; something in our souls longs for a good story. Why? Why are we constructed to long for truth in the first place? Why are we constructed to long for the narrative form?

I don’t know the answer to that. But, McGrath convinced me that the answer is more likely to be found in Genesis or the gospels than in Romans or Hebrews.