The Gospel of Jesus Christ as a Story to Be Told: The “Narrative” Theologies of Eberhard Jüngel and Hans Frei

This article explores how Eberhard Jüngel and Hans Frei employ the category of “narrative” in Christian theology. Although Jüngel and Frei receive inspiration from different quarters, they end up drawing some similar conclusions. At the same time, their approaches to narrative theology reveal deep and striking differences between their programs for theology. My comments focus on the problem of language’s referential character, that is, the capacity of words and discourses to signify external objects and states of affairs. As I demonstrate, both Jüngel and Frei seize upon the “problem” (as they both deem it) of the structure of referential language. And yet, how Jüngel and Frei frame this issue and what they do in order to resolve it are conspicuously different in the arguments they unfurl. This difference, I show, folds back upon their distinct agendas for recovering narrative in theological discourse.

Who is Jesus Now? Maxims and Surprises

This article is a very personal attempt, within the horizon opened up by the Prologue of the Gospel of John and the past century of Christian theology, to articulate seven maxims in answer to the question, Who is Jesus now? The maxims focus on the Gospel story, analogical thought and imagination, living before the face of Jesus, covenantal commitment, being sent as Jesus was sent, reconciliation, and continuing surprises. Key references are to the Gospel of John, Hans Frei, Frances Young, Richard Hays, David Tracy, Denise Levertov, and Jean Vanier, and to ecumenism and Scriptural Reasoning, which relates to all the maxims.

Which Theology for Anthropology?

This chapter suggests that defining the concept of theology may seem more suited for the professional theologian rather than the anthropologist. However, it may be the anthropologist who is best positioned to investigate theology in order to discover what conversations can be profitably brought into the work of anthropology. It begins with a typology of theology first suggested by Hans Frei in the latter part of the twentieth century. The typology serves to compare the present project to one undertaken recently by anthropologists engaging philosophy. Finally, the chapter presents an ethnographic vignette from fieldwork in the Philippines to illustrate how this particular understanding of philosophy–theology may serve to answer anthropological puzzles.

Limitations of a Purely Salvation-historical Approach to Biblical Theology

A salvation-historical approach to biblical theology emphasizes the historical and progressive nature of revelation such that the Bible’s primary meaning is (too often) reduced to its reference to the sequential events of a special (salvation) history. After offering a general description of the development of the salvation-historical approach to biblical theology, the essay considers the representative example of D. A. Carson. Then, noting the criticisms of Hans Frei, Karl Barth, and Brevard Childs, the paper argues that limiting one’s biblical theology to a salvation-historical approach replaces Christ as the subject matter of both Testaments with “the temporally distinct and ordered stages of the history of salvation.” Although the insights of a redemptive-historical biblical theology are important, when taken as the exclusive methodology for biblical theology it risks flattening the relationship between the two Testaments and missing Scripture’s theological subject matter.