2: Theology as Narrative
Three Strands.
- Universal or ethics for anybody. Focuses on finding common ground.
- Subversive or ethics for the excluded. Subversive ethics rebels at the universal strand because that strand is the voice of powerful minority and ignores other voices.
- Ecclesial or ethics for the church. Concerned with the liberating power of Christianity. “It also assumes that if the church is to be faithful, it must always be the church of the poor. The much-quoted saying “The poor are always with you” means not “. . . and therefore you can ignore them,” but “. . . and therefore you are always with the poor.”
This book is concerned with the third strand. Each strand presupposes a story.
Underlying Narratives in Christian Ethics. Wells discusses the stories underlying the universal and the subversive strands.
Ecclesial Ethics and Its Discontents. Ecclesial ethics seen as the practices of the church and is about a sacred people. There temptations have misled the church over the centuries.
- To see the principal location of the location of theology as the world or society.
- To assume that God has no purpose for creation outside the church.
- To assume that the spiritual quest is inherently an individual matter. Human community is secondary. The modern term for this is Gnosticism.
Four elements combine to make ecclesial ethics distinctive.
- The church.
- The narrative. The way the church remembers its identity.
- Practices. The center of the church’s life.
- Witnesses. The end result
Saints and Heroes. Five differences between heroes and saints. “if theological ethics is to tell a story that continues to be about God, it must concentrate on the narrative and practice of the church and the witness of the saints.”
Excerpt From: Samuel Wells. “Improvisation.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/improvisation/id473939687?mt=11
Excerpt From: Samuel Wells. “Improvisation.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/improvisation/id473939687?mt=11