Hauerwas on Story and Theology

1. As human beings we enjoy stories, especially if they relate to us in some way. When they relate to us, they are defined as a "good" story because we recognize ourselves in them. The Bible is the best story written because it is "God's way of always being with human beings as they are, as the concrete, temporal beings who have a beginning and an end--who are, in other words, stories themselves" (72).

2. The word "story" can often be misused in that a story need not be factual to be truthful. This can be an attack on the existence of Jesus, because we do not demand any historical fact to back up the written story, but rather the story itself defines who Jesus is and who the church says He is.

3. A story is not merely a series of events that unfold, "but rather the interaction of events and the people that make them" (76). Stories are interchangable in that two or more stories may be told to make the same point.

4. Story is not always necessary, but when trying to make a point there is no other way to do so.

How do we use stories to speak of God? How do we know which ones are "true" according to Hauerwas?

Because a story is defined by our own being and that in a good story we see ourselves, we use stories to better understand God. We must understand ourselves in order to understand God. Knowing oneself cannot exist without knowing God and vice versa. "[T]o ask how I am to know which story best helps me know myself or God is in fact two interdependent questions, not in the sense that one is logically necesary for the answer to the other, but rather each is morally necessary to the other if we are to have a story that provides us with the skills to form our lives truthfully" (81).

A true story is more than a statement of fact. "[A] true story is one that helps me to uncover the true path that is also the path for me through the unknown and foreign" (80). True stories "must enable us to know what our engagements have committed us to" (80). As in the previous Hauerwas reading, we must realize that community creates some part of who we are. Therefore, community defines who we are as Christians and what we will write about. Being a part of a community is one of these engagements in which we are committed and we must understand our role in the community in order to understand the engagement itself and stories about our community give us guidance.

Hauerwas says to understand which stories about God are true we must go directly to Scripture. Christians, by definition, "produce truthful lives" (80), which means that the stories they have told about themselves and their place in the world and events they have been a part of are truthful and tell some part of who God is. Hauerwas also states that theology is biography (81) in that they are about something or someone, both self and God. If the stories are about ourselves, who are truthful beings, then it is truthful about God as well. If we know a story to be true of God, then coincidentally it is also true of ourselves. In fact, there are stories that are necessary to understand God, which, in turn are necessary to know ourselves. Neither the stories of ourselves or of God came first or are more important than the other.

Is the story of the Bible as good when told by someone else than by reading it yourself? Do we have to read it to understand it or can it be taught? Do we get the same results and understand the same thing when we read it or when the same idea is told to us?

What are the stories that are necessary to know ourselves and therefore God?