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Narrative-realism, Preterism, and the relevance of scripture | andrewperriman

Hey Todd, finish reading this and see if you can explain the difference between a narrative-realist reading and a "modern-platonic (or some other better term)" reading

Tags: theology, bible on 2009-01-13 -All Annotations (5) -About

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Much everyday biblical exposition - the do-it-yourself exegesis that we get in sermons, bible studies and popular Christian literature - is essentially either moralizing or allegorizing in character. Or we find that the dense, troublesome text of scripture is everywhere assimilated into the reductive evangelical ’myth’ of the personal saviour who enters into the world to deliver people from their sins and eventually bring them to heaven.
In all these instances the story is told from the perspective of a much later reader who, consciously or unconsciously, views the distant text through the telescope of a tradition, and the tradition inevitably distorts because it must subordinate the text to the interests of an unintended and situationally remote readership.
This leads to what I have called a ’narrative-realist mode’ of reading scripture: we read the Bible as though it were a road traversing the landscape of history; we imagine ourselves walking along that road; we notice the close connection between text and circumstance; and we ask how those who told or heard the story experienced the journey. This is a very different exercise to the more common approach which is either to treat the text as a body of undifferentiated sacred material to be mined for pietistic or dogmatic purposes.
As we walk this road, however, we may discover that much of what we took to be universal teaching has a restricted historical reference or application. When we begin to suspect that this is equally true for what is said in the New Testament about the future, we find that we come under a barrage of accusations that this is nothing other than classic Preterism. So what is Preterism?
we should expect the texts to address the circumstances and concerns of the original reading community unless there is a clear indication to the contrary. One crucial implication here is that that when future events are described, it is likely that a foreseeable state of affairs is in view rather than an inconceivable future beyond the historical purview of the first century church.