Bible Interpretation, Student Workbook, SW05

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B I B L E I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

Story, Theology, and Church (continued)

as celebrating the mysteries of God or have come to call simply the sacraments. Story (word), celebration (festivity), and ritual (sacrament) all go together. Of course, it can happen and has happened that a ritual can lose its story connection through routine, boredom, and repetition. When this happens, people often continue the ritual out of rote, but no longer remember the story it was attached to or expressed. To revitalize or recast the ritual we must go back and remember the story. Church renewals are basically an exercise in this.

Tenth Proposition: Stories are history.

Since stories are open-ended, they cannot be or must not be literalized. Stories have a life of their own and each age extracts from and adds to the story in a kind of symbiotic relationship. The result is a profound enrichment. History is the bridge from which we view the story in all its forms and in all its aspects of truth. Ideally, history saves the story from the twin dangers of idolatry and irrelevance.