The Story-world of Paul's Symbolic Universe Pt.2 (Redux)
A Narratological Approach for Understanding the Pauline Epistles
Introduction
When interpreting Paul’s epistles, it is vital to understand his storied substructure. One should primarily engage his letters through a narratological approach rather than analyze them based on contemporary empirical perspectives of the 21st century. In the post-enlightenment age, Western culture has become accustomed to analyzing everything rationally and empirically. Ancient writers like Paul analyzed their world using a different pre-enlightenment methodology. Ancient worldviews often cause Western readers to question whether one can give any weight to the arguments of pre-enlightenment authors like Paul and those of the New Testament? Can the claims of Paul be trusted? Many respond by suggesting that “one cannot have ‘direct access’ to the ‘facts’ about Jesus, all that we are left with is a morass of first-century fantasy.” There seems to be a widespread assumption about the scriptures and their authors as hopelessly muddled in their backward, irrational thinking. They don’t argue properly as those of the West would today.
While modern approaches help attain some forms of knowledge, studying Paul’s writings primarily from a narratological approach is essential to understanding the organization and substructure behind his arguments. If we do this, some Western criticisms may disappear as irrelevant to the conversation. “Paul’s storehouse of knowledge involves certain paradigmatic stories” and without knowing those “paradigmatic stories,” one is blind to the knowledge Paul reveals for his audience. Paul must be read primarily through the kaleidoscope of “story” to see the arresting radiance of his beautiful proposals for Christ.
Rationalism Criticism of Paul’s writings
There is a prevalent bias from Western readers to dismiss the argumentation of Paul and other ancient authors of scripture when they fail to pass the current empirical standard. “In the modern era Paul has often been accused of exegetical legerdemain, given the creative way he often handles the biblical text.” Some may suggest that Paul’s arguments do not follow the objective textual evidence he attempts to use as proof for his points in his letters. He uses evidence, especially from the Old Testament, with such liberality that he appears to use the Scriptures carelessly to serve his own ends. “Pauline scholars had often suggested that his thought is essentially ad hoc,” The answers Paul gives often seem (to those heavily steeped in rationalistic thinking) like a baseless defense that the evidence cannot substantiate.
This belief that the Western standard of understanding truth is the only one seems quite hubristic. Wright argues extensively on this topic concerning the blind spots of our narrow toolset for understanding reality when he writes, “The Western worldview which gives pre-eminent value to scientific knowing and technological control and power while relativizing the intangible values and belief-systems of human society.” Rationalism and empirical methodology may help bring understanding to many great things, but it would be fallacious to assume that it is the only way to understand reality. The famous intellectual Blaise Pascal wrote:
“We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The skeptics who desire truth alone labor in vain.”
The skeptical West has put too many intellectual eggs in the rationalism basket and is often blind to other (more profound) ways of understanding truth, as Pascal and Wright wisely state. Modern clouded eyes judge the New Testament from the vantage point of two thousand years removed from its original world. Projecting onto the ancient text a contemporary understanding of how one would argue today in our Western context is anachronistic and “special pleading.” Before critiquing Paul’s arguments, one should humbly seek to understand what arguments the author is making and what aspects of truth they are trying to emphasize. The contemporary reader of scripture needs to come ready to listen. Only after doing these things can one fully appreciate and understand what Paul was trying to communicate to his audience in his world.
Understanding Paul’s Storied Worldview
Wright proposes, “It is arguable that we can only understand the more limited narrative worlds of the different letters if we locate them at their appropriate points within this overall story-world, and indeed within the symbolic universe that accompanies it.” Paul isn’t using “exegetical legerdemain” or some sort of sleight of hand to fool his audience. He is making arguments based upon an “overall story-world” that his audience understands. He isn’t using empirical arguments, rationalism, Stoic philosophy, or some other Greek philosophical argumentation but one based on a storied understanding of the world. There is often an overemphasized connection between Paul’s arguments and the arguments of the Hellenistic culture. While there indeed is some cross-over. The emphasis, at times, seems overbaked. Western anachronism perhaps drives this more than the historical and textual evidence suggests, as Wright notes, “The analogies between Paul and the Stoics remain essentially superficial.”
Oral Culture and Historical Context
Paul and his audience were based mainly on an oral culture, especially his Jewish-Christian audience. “Narrative and story are fundamental to the very fabric of oral cultures. This was certainly true of the Jewish culture in which Paul was nourished.” Only around 10 percent of the population in the first century was literate. This meant communication was primarily done through the means of stories, proverbs, songs, and parables. Paul would have been steeped in such a worldview, far more than perhaps we are aware of. Paul would have seen the Old Testament as one unified story fully revealed through Christ. He saw himself as part of this story, as were all the new Christians he was writing to. Paul writes from a substructure based on the stories of the Old Testament. This substructure frames how he understands the meaning of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, the church, and creation. Paul is not alone in using the Old Testament as a metanarrative by which a future community interprets its current circumstances. Witherington notes, “The way Paul interprets and uses scripture is paralleled to the use seen in the Qumran community having an eschatological prophetic quality.” For example, some of Paul’s terminology, like the “present age” (Gal. 1:4), can be found in the Jewish literature of his time. Therefore, there is a precedent within Paul’s own Jewish culture for this kind of storied reasoning that is exhibited in his letters.
The Story Substructure
Adam and Eve and The Original Inciting Incident
All stories begin with an origin story that includes an inciting incident by which the protagonists’ lives are knocked out of order and into chaos. For Paul, the inciting incident occurred in Genesis, involving the devastating actions of Adam and Eve. Paul’s story begins with the understanding that the universe is God’s creation, and when it fell, this affected everything. The entire universe, both stars, trees, animals, land, and people have been impacted (Rom. 8:19-22, Eph. 1:10, Col. 1:19-20) by the “unholy trinity” (the world, the flesh, and the devil). Additionally, it is essential to keep in mind that, as Vladimir Propp points out, all stories have a limited amount of possibilities or “functions” by which the story can change within the narrative framework. Some of the furniture may be moved around in the story, but the main components will stay constant even when we see Paul allegedly being “creative” in his use of the story. These limitations define the parameters by which the rest of the story can play out—a kind of story-logic that must be followed. In Paul’s storied understanding, Satan, the flesh, and the world are the villains and will stay in that role. God is the story's hero and will remain in that role. Therefore, based on the limits of the narrative, only God can save and redeem humanity and defeat the villain. The question for Paul and those of his narrative community was how God would accomplish this? Paul sees Christ as the answer to this question.
The Adamic Typology
Adam is a critical figure in Paul's mind because of his continuing impact on the state of the lived story of Paul’s own time (1 Cor. 15:21-22). This story substructure bubbles to the surface in Romans 5:12-21, where Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way, death came to all people because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Paul assumes his audience knows the story of Genesis and the Fall. Paul demonstrates that Adam gave rise to the entrance of " sin " and “death.” Adam is responsible. Adam’s failure becomes a pattern or typology by which “all” his subsequent descendants will fail too. Additionally, it is essential to see that death comes from sin.
The typology of Adam is clearly a grave problem for humanity. The seemingly indestructible link to him in the story prevents the restoration of creation because humanity is doomed to sin and death if they remain in Adam’s line. “Many died by the trespass of the one man” (Rom. 5:15); sin is not just a problem for Adam and Eve but a problem they have brought upon us all. The question for Paul was how Christ addresses the problems of the story. How does Jesus answer the typological problem? This is an example of the rules to the story that Propp points out. You can’t just overlook this problem; you have to work within the story's mechanisms to answer the story's problem, and that is precisely what Paul does. Paul’s answer is that Christ gives humanity a new typological Adam to be grafted into. Christ perfectly fulfills the role that Adam failed. “Paul sees Christ as Adam’s antitype.” Romans 5:17 says, “by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.” Jesus is the Adam whom the story has been waiting for, a new typology of righteousness and abundant life. Therefore, Paul states in Romans 5:19, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” Once grafted into this new Adam found in Christ, Paul and his audience can live anew. According to Paul, they are to understand themselves as part of a new Genesis, a new creation linked to a perfect Adam. This victorious typology found in Christ will allow them to live in righteousness and abundant life forever. The answer to the catastrophe of the former Adam has been solved in Christ. This way of reasoning may seem strange to Western audiences today because it comes from a completely different understanding of what standards and objectives need to be satisfied to solve the problem. A story problem requires a story answer, and that’s precisely what Paul does. He doesn’t simply think that believing in Christ magically gives someone eternal life at random. It fits within a narrative typological substructure that explains how this process works when one becomes a Christian. However, if a modern reader doesn’t possess this narrative understanding of Adam typology, they will be blind to the story-reasoning Paul is using.
This victorious life in the typology of Christ is found throughout the rest of the theological progression of Romans chapters 6-8. However, many miss this narrative substructure, especially when interpreting Romans 7, as Witherington critiques, “We should read it as the story of Adam, not the story of Luther.” What Witherington means by this is that too often, this passage is seen to explain the tortured life one lives here on earth, struggling with one's sinful bent in futile angst while paradoxically desiring to follow God. However, that misguided interpretation would mean a Christian is living in the typology of Adam, not Christ. Based on Paul's story in Romans, one should understand that Christ has healed the broken typology. He enables the believer to become grafted into himself and bear his patterns, leading to righteous, not sinful actions and life, not death. We see this narrative in Paul’s writings elsewhere, like in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Therefore, to continue to live in sin is also to live in death, which defeats the entire purpose of Christ, giving humanity a new typology to be linked into. The story wouldn’t make any sense. These are the misunderstandings and errors one can make in interpretation if one does not understand the story-world of Paul and his audience.
Conclusion
Pau’s arguments can not be wholly understood if one does not consider the story substructure that undergirds the logic of his statements. One needs to approach the Pauline epistles from the worldview of the author and the audience. The story of Adam and the Fall is critical to Paul’s understanding of the euchatastophe Christ accomplishes in the overall narrative of God’s redemption. Paul views Adam within a typological framework that must be addressed if it is going to answer the issues Paul and his audience are concerned with. They seek answers that address the problems of the story-world they see themselves as a part of. Paul finds that Jesus fulfills those answers. Those typologically grafted into the new Adam, Jesus Christ, enter into—a victorious future of righteousness and eternal life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coyne, Shawn. The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know. New York: Black Irish Entertainment LLC, 2015.
Propp, V. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015.
Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.
Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy-Stories. Expanded. London: HarperCollins, 2008.
Witherington III, Ben. Paul’s Narrative Thought World: The Tapestry of Tragedy and Triumph. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994.
———. The Paul Quest: The Renewed Search for the Jew of Tarsus. Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1998.
Wright, N.T. The New Testament and the People of God. Vol. 1. Fortress Press, 1992.