Exploring Ethical Potentials of Christian Narrative Testimonies

1 Introduction

At least since the 1970s the category of narrative has received much attention in Christian theology and ethics. The emergence of narrative ethics is closely linked with the endeavor of narrative theology. There are many shapes and forms of narrative theology, but they share a common thread: the idea that people give God, their surroundings, and themselves a narrative meaning.^[1]

In the German-speaking context, the project of narrative theology is linked with the names of Dietrich Ritschl, Harald Weinrich, or Johann Baptist Metz. Their work focused on the question of how narrative could enrich or confront doctrinal, academic theology. Since 1973 the Catholic theologian Metz argued that systematic theology had the task of explaining God and his revelation in an understandable way and in relation to biography, experience, and history. Metz’s narrative approach is one sub-aspect of his political theology program. For Metz, the narrative was a form of God’s speech that relates to lived experience, especially in the face of unatoned suffering. Metz represents a strong approach to narrative theology. He sees narration not only as one way of speaking about God among others, but as a potential and corrective for academic theological discourse.^[2] Metz placed narrative at the service of the “dangerous” memory of theology after Auschwitz. For Metz, telling the story of the Christ event means refusing to remain passive in the face of human suffering. According to Metz, people who narratively remember the Christ event are embedded in a specific storytelling community – the Church. Through interpretation and reflection narrators come into a relationship with their self-narrations and the narrations of others as well as with the painful and liberating memories these narratives entail. The memory of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, is, for Metz, a “[…] reflection about concrete human suffering which is the point at which the proclamation of the new and essentially human way of life … can be in.”^[3] According to Metz, this reflection allows anamnetic solidarity for the other. For Metz, such anamnetic solidarity must exist universally, encompassing the distant other, those whose victimization and suffering have yet gone unanswered and the dead. Anamnetic solidarity therefore entails “[…] the solidaristic hope in the God of the living and the dead who calls all persons to be subjects in God’s presence”^[4] as well as the on-going memory of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.

While Metz argued from a Catholic background, the so-called Yale approach to narrative theology is closely connected with the names of the protestant theologians Hans Frei or James McClendon Jr and especially with Stanley Hauerwas. Embedded in the American context, the main focus for these theologians was the relevance of understanding reality through narrative in regard to a substantial relationship with God. More than Metz, Hauerwas focuses on the identity-forming power of narratives.^[5]

Stanley Hauerwas is also the main proponent of an ethics that sees narrative at the center of character formation and moral actions. For him, narrative ethics is a much-needed alternative to principle ethics. He is thus being critical of the Kantian categorical approach to ethics.^[6] According to Hauerwas, narratives give orientation not in regard to what we should do but in regard to who we should be or become. Accordingly, the decisions people make and their dealing with moral issues ultimately depend on the character they possess. Character formation, for Hauerwas, takes place within particular historical communities and is shaped by their narratives.^[7] In Hauerwas’ view, the specific Christian’s community narrative is constituted by God’s calling of Israel, the Christ event, and the life of the church.^[8]

Hauerwas’ strong model of narrative ethics has received both approval and criticism. His criticism usually pleads for a more nuanced approach to narrative ethics. Thus, narratives cannot substitute ethical discourse, but are nevertheless important for such discourse.^[9]

One of the most prominent nuanced narrative ethicists in the German-speaking tradition is the Catholic moral theologian Dietmar Mieth. At a time when Metz and others argued for a greater consideration of the narrative roots of theology and referred more consciously to the Judeo-Christian narrative tradition, Mieth unfolded a hermeneutical and experience-related approach to narrative ethics. For Mieth, the theological–ethical relevance of the narrative is primarily based on the power of the concrete individual narrative, the basic experiences that precede all values and norms and without which theology and theological ethics would not be themselves.^[10] As an ethics of the model of narrative ethics attempts then to take people seriously and their sometimes strange or bewildering reality. In this view, ethics is not based only on rational concepts or deductive arguments, but it rather must remain connected to emotions, feelings, and sensations.^[11] The model function of literary and other narratives is central for Mieth as people can use such models to reflect on, test, confirm, and change their attitudes and convictions.^[12] In doing so, they might experience contrast which makes them critically reflect on their own living conditions, values, and ways of life by comparing them with other, often contrary, ways of life or situations. They also might experience the meaning of a profound, personal experience discovering or learning a deeper meaning in life or in certain life situations.^[13] According to Mieth, “[…] experience in this sense contains motivation to practice, which is not easily dismissed by the subject of experience […].”^[14]

Mieth’s approach to narrative ethics has been taken up and further developed by thinkers such as Marcus Düwell, Walter Lesch, or Hille Haker. Haker, who teaches theological ethics at Loyola University Chicago, defines narrative ethics as “ethics that reflects on the hermeneutic, identity-theoretical and narrative-theoretical implications of lived and narrated morality as well as ethics itself with a view to its very own issues of ‘good and right’.”^[15] In the context of narrative-ethical reflection, according to Haker, it is about “[…] amplifying the voice of another, experiential reality.”^[16] In this amplification process, people come into contact with narratively mediated experiences that relate to their life reality to a greater or lesser extent and are thus confronted with their own explicit or implicit ethics. Against this background, the task of narrative ethics is, on the one hand, the interpretative commentary of narratives and, on the other hand, the critical reflection on the morals inherent and portrayed in them.^[17] In addition to reflecting on reasons and motivations for action, narrative ethics, according to Haker, also reflects on the narrative structure of identity, which is both constituted and continuously reconstructed in narratives.^[18]

Already this brief, by no means exhaustive, overview highlights that the narrative turn in theology and ethics is embedded in a wider discourse on the importance of lived experiences for identity, the relation between experience and ethics, the tension between rational and nonrational interpretative traditions, the relevance of the relative in face of universal moral adoption,^[19] the inherent multiplicity of “God-talk,” or the crisis of religious language in phase in which narratives or forms of storytelling seem to lose their dominant role in society or at least undergo significant change.^[20]

The overview also highlights features that are often regarded as important for narrative ethical approaches. The most fundamental idea is that narratives have ethical potential and can either replace or enrich principle ethics. Narratives are also seen as a way of relating ethical discourse to the morally relevant experiences of the narrative self and its convictions and values. There is also a shared conviction that people construct their identity narratively, making narrative sense of themselves or building their character through narratives. The “voices of another experiential reality” (Haker) as represented in literary narratives (Mieth, Haker), “the memoria passionis and resurrectionis” (Metz) as well as collective narratives such as the Christian’s community narrative (Hauerwas), are interpreted as a critical ethical corrective for individual narrative life stories. The narrative of the other is also seen as a call into solidary action for the other (Mieth, Haker), e.g., a call for “anamnetic solidarity” (Metz).

In the following, I will argue that the mode of Christian testimony to God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ is narratively structured. Second, I will unfold a threefold hermeneutic of these narratives: a hermeneutic of the simultaneous presence and absence of God in these testimonies, a hermeneutic of commentary and criticism, and a hermeneutic of attentive humility in face of other narratives. This threefold hermeneutic also exposes ethical potentials of Christian narrative testimonies: Christian narrative testimonies are able to bear witness to God’s absent presence, especially when they reveal themselves as radical contingent, when they are open to transformation by narratives of the other and when they motivate people to question and transcend the status quo of any given society in order to envision and act for a more just future.

2 The Narrative Heart of Christianity

The whole bible entails diverse narrative testimonies to human experiences with God’s self-disclosure.^[21] The sentences of the Decalogue begin with narration and remembrance: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of slavery” (Ex 20:2). To separate the ten commandments from their narrative embedment would mean that their specific function and intention would no longer be recognizable.^[22] Biblical narratives also reflect upon the question of how to act in response to God’s liberating actions. For example, the ban on oppressing a stranger is itself justified with a reminder of the Exodus narrative: “You shall not oppress the stranger. You yourselves know how the stranger feels, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex 23:9). Here, the memory of the Exodus experience serves to build a narrative identity that is not too sure of itself, but leaves room for the other.^[23] Throughout the Bible narrating one’s self is revealed as relevant to a relationship with God: “I tell you my ways, and you hear me.” (Ps 119, 26). God appears here as a listener, an answer giver, and the addressee of one’s own life narrative with its highlights and failures. The impulse for orientation comes from revealing one’s own way of life to God: “[…] teach me your statutes.” (Ps 119,26).

One could also say: all through the Bible it is people with whom God tells his stories of liberation and salvation. His stories are alive. They are able to transform people.^[24]

The same is true for the Second Testament. The story of Christ is – from a Christian point of view – embedded in God’s story with Israel: The Gospel tells, unfolds, and testifies God’s free decision of love to become man in Jesus Christ and tells stories about Jesus Christ who himself narrates.^[25] The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates that Jesus does not want to teach love of neighbor as an abstract concept. Rather, he wants to involve his listener by telling a story. It seems that the question “Who is my neighbor?” cannot be solved without recourse to a narrative. What is decisive in Jesus’s narrative is the shift from a need to define an act of identification: Instead of answering the need to define who one’s neighbor is, Jesus, by telling a story, asks back to the scribe and to us: “Who of these three do you think was the neighbor of the one who fell among the robbers?”^[26] Jesus told the story in such a way that it changed something. It is impossible to say what he meant without retelling the parable. For Mieth, therein lies the indispensability of narrative in ethics. For him, the parable of the good Samaritan and its re-telling is convincing due to the concrete testimony of the model of action it contains. The parable is able to conquer and change people precisely because it involves them directly through their imagination and not more abstractly by a chain of arguments.^[27]

Many Christians took and still take part in the act of re-telling and giving narrative testimony. In their own testimonies, they tell their experiences with God’s story and of their experiences with reconciliation, forgiveness, redemption, conversion, vocation…, in short: of the Christian faith that proves itself in deeds of love. They unfold their own life story in relation to their experiences with God’s story.^[28]

Yet, Paul Lauritzen wonders, what the relation between such narrative testimonies and the truthfulness of Christian convictions is.^[29] He unfolds his concern for truth in discussion with Hauerwas and Metz. As he illustrates, Metz and Hauerwas meet in their particular emphasis on the practical consequences of the “dangerous” memory of the Christ event. Both also insist that diaconia must be informed by the imitation of Jesus Christ in accordance with the biblical narratives.^[30] However, if we take a closer look at the consequences Metz and Hauerwas draw from this common ground, according to Lauritzen, “[…] we may feel that they are reading different stories.”^[31] On the one side, Metz argues for Jesus narratives calling us for anamnetic solidarity with the oppressed and near revolutionary social–political action, on the other side, Hauerwas insists on a life of pacifistic witness.^[32] The finding that Metz and Hauerwas differ so much when it comes to the point of drawing normatively relevant conclusions from their engagement with the category of narrative, is, for Lauritzen, problematic:

For if the truthfulness of the Christian story is to be judged by its practical consequences, and these consequences are as varied as Hauerwas and Metz’s writings would suggest, how does an appeal to narrative establish the truthfulness of Christian convictions, even on pragmatic ground?^[33]

Apart from the problem of truth, another problem for Lauritzen arises from what he sees as preference for narrative over argument: “[…] what do we do when our stories conflict? Or again: if two interpretations of the same story diverge, how do we resolve this conflict?”^[34]

3 Hermeneutics of Christian Narrative Testimonies

In response to the issues Paul Lauritzen brings forward, I would like to illustrate a threefold hermeneutic of Christian narrative testimonies:

1. A hermeneutic of the simultaneous presence and absence of God in Christian narrative testimonies.

2. A hermeneutic that allows for commentary as well as criticism of Christian narrative testimonies.

3. A hermeneutic of attentive humility in the encounter with other narrative testimonies.

In the following, I will unfold these hermeneutical perspectives in more detail.

4 Conclusion

Looking at the narrative heart of Christianity, an ambivalence within it can be recognized – the result not only of an unequal struggle between hegemonic and subversive narratives, but also of the relation of these irreducibly particular narratives to their radically contingent founding event, God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ.^[85] A hermeneutic of these narratives is one of revealing and keeping open the absent presence of God and one of revealing their particularity and contiguity. It also emphasizes that their inherent deep ambivalence makes the search for normative criteria and the evaluation of validity and truth claims both complex and indispensable. Seeking a normative evaluation of narrative testimonies to the Christ event, a continuous circle of commentary and criticism entails a context- and person-sensible approach, while at the same time offering a distinct ethical positionality that is oriented toward the idea of the good life for all in a more just society.

In regard to the person giving narrative testimonies to the Christ event the narratives of the other are central. First of all, this applies to the contribution of the other narratives to the necessary process of understanding “oneself as another” (Ricœur). Yet, the complex relation between narrative and identity construction could only be hinted at here.^[86] The engagement with the narrative of the other indicates various ethical potentials: From the encounter between the self’s narrative testimonies and the individual as well as collective narratives of the other, “responsory attentiveness” (Haker), “empathetic identification” (Kearney and Williams), and “anamnetic solidarity”(Metz) for the other can emerge. Such encounters might also reveal alternative visions and ways of being thus motivating people giving narrative testimony to the Christ event to act for a more just society. They also might lead to a subversion of hegemoniality making forgotten traditions, practices, and discourses “[…] visible – and, therefore, possible.”^[87] Yet, in these encounters a limit may be reached, which then requires critical resistance despite the fundamental willingness to listen to the narrative testimonies of every other person. This is for me the case when the narratives of the others do not resist the temptation of establishing one particular, hegemonic testimony, do not unmask their implicit will-to-power, conceal their particularity and contingency, devaluate or dehumanize others, pretend to be in possession of the truth or claim to provide Christian God-talk with the presence of God.^[88]

It remains an on-going challenge to interpret and reflect the constitutive contingency of Christianity theologically as well as ethically.^[89] The access via the exploration of the ethical potential of narrative testimonies to the Christ event is one among many.