Narrative Theology in the High School Classroom: Teaching Theology Through the Literature

If Jesus Taught most Frequently through symbol and story, and the early Church passed on his teachings primarily through story, especially the four Gospels, why is today’s Catechesis and theological pedagogy not more informed by “narrative theology” ”“ theology which focuses on the narratives told by Jesus and the Gospels precisely as narratives? This article provides some basic foundations for the discipline of narrative theology, argues for a more narrative approach to theological instruction, and, by way of application, proposes a full year curriculum for high-school students that enables teachers to teach theology through the narratives of both the Bible and secular literature.


INTRODUCTION
T he epigraphs to this paper, which are but a small selection from many similar sayings of Jesus in the Gospels, point to a basic reality about Jesus' teaching and pedagogical method: He taught by stories.This is wellknown.Yet, one might press further.Specifically, two further reflections on Jesus' penchant for story-telling seem compelling.First, as the epigraphs suggest, Jesus most frequently told stories in response to questions that sought propositional answers: "Who is my neighbor?";"What is the kingdom of God?"; "Why do you eat with sinners?"Why did not Jesus answer such questions straightforwardly: "Your neighbor is…"; "The kingdom of God is..."; "I eat with sinners because...." Propositional answers, apparently, were not, in Jesus' view, always useful or, often, even possible.Building upon this insight, this essay argues that Jesus' story-telling is not only a useful pedagogical method, but also a necessary one.That is, Jesus did not tell stories merely because they provided effective illustrations of what he was really hoping to say more plainly, if only people would better understand him, though Jesus' images and parables do often serve the useful pedagogical purpose of elucidating difficult or hard-to-grasp concepts.Rather, Jesus told stories because the subject matter with which he was dealing -"The kingdom of God is at hand.Repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1: 15) -could often only be revealed in its fullness through image and narrative.
A second significant observation is this: when the early Christian church sought to communicate the message and person of Jesus, perhaps the primary vehicle for this communication eventually took the form specifically of a written narrative, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.These Gospels, while often communicating "propositional" knowledge about Jesus' person -for example, he was born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph -and message -for example, the Beatitudes, or his teachings on fasting or divorce -such knowledge is inextricably embedded in a larger narrative structure.Though this structure does not fit neatly into any one literary genre, the Gospels are unmistakably narrative in their overall structure (Meier, 1987); that is, all that is contained in the Gospels is presented specifically within the unfolding story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.Thus, one might say that, when the early Church sought to catechize others about their faith, one of the fundamental ways in which the Church did so was through stories of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and stories about Jesus telling stories.Again, this is not merely a matter of pedagogical utility or methodological preference, but because the faith itself was communicated by an unfolding event, a life -starting in Bethlehem, continuing through Jerusalem, and culminating beyond the empty tomb -that unfolded precisely as a narrative.The Christian faith cannot be taught apart from this unfolding event of Christ, and therefore, in a certain sense, cannot be taught apart from the narrative in which that event was revealed.
This project proposes one way in which catechesis of the Catholic-Christian faith might effectively and compellingly occur; namely, through a more intentional retrieval of the essential narrative quality of the communi-cation of the faith.Specifically, this paper proposes a curriculum that teaches theology through literature, both sacred and non-sacred.That is, the Bible, and particularly the Gospels, is examined as revelatory precisely in its narrative structures.The narrative itself, and not merely the propositions that can be derived from it, is revelatory.Meanwhile, non-sacred literature is used to augment the Christian revelation and cultivate students' minds and imaginations to engage with narrative toward an explicitly catechetical end.
It is important to articulate with ever better clarity and deeper comprehension this theological justification for using narrative as a catechetical tool.Clearly, since Vatican II and its call for updated catechetical methods, especially through Gravissimum Educationis (Vatican Council II, 1975), many educators and catechists in the Church have heard and responded to the Holy Spirit's call to evangelize the modern world through fresh, updated, and innovative means of catechesis.Yet, as the Church has also experienced, especially in the years immediately preceding and following Vatican II, not all catechetical innovation is equally effective or even valid.As was sometimes experienced before Vatican II, catechesis can become overly propositional.See, for example, the tendency in the Baltimore Catechism (O'Brien, 1955) toward propositional definitions of theological realities such as grace and sin: "Grace is..."; "Sin is...." Or, contrast, for example, Jesus' narrative exegesis of the second great commandment through the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 with the propositional treatment of "The Two Great Commandments" in the Baltimore Catechism (O'Brien, 1955).To the other extreme, many post-Vatican II catechetical innovations have been heavy on the innovative side, without a corresponding theological depth or even catechetical effectiveness.So, when introducing a catechetical method or tool, it is essential frequently to ask the question: "Is this a theologically valid and catechetically effective way of teaching the faith?"One does not need an absolutely affirmative answer to begin an innovative project, but the question should inform the development of the project along the way.The curriculum presented here has tried to allow this question of theological validity to guide its development.

WHAT IS NARRATIVE THEOLOGY?
Narrative theology is a branch of theology that began to be more richly explored and developed in the 1970s and 1980s, through the work of theologians involved in Scripture, Christology, ethics, and other theological branches.Theologians such as Schillebeeckx (1981), Navone (1984), Boff (1987), and Hauerwas and Jones (1989) are just a few of the more well-known contributors to the increasing body of narrative approaches to theology.Rocchetta defines narrative theology in the Dictionary of Fundamental Theology: The expression "narrative theology" does not mean simply having recourse to a theology composed of stories but recovering a way of practicing theology in constant attention to the original narration of the event of Jesus of Nazareth and retransmitting it in narrative style.It reflects a theology skilled in analyzing the salvific narratives and the way they used to be presented and were charged with keeping alive the ecclesial community's narrative memory.(Rocchetta, 1994(Rocchetta, , p. 1084) ) Narrative theology is a way of seeing the Gospels, as a whole and in their parts, as an unfolding story.Through such a way of perceiving, one seeks not for theological facts or propositions to be extricated from the story and analyzed apart from it, but one tries to reflect upon the unfolding events themselves, as "remembered experiences" (Rocchetta, 1994(Rocchetta, , p. 1085) ) of Jesus, which bring back to life the person of Jesus, in the midst of one's present life and circumstances.
The unique ability of narrative, the organization of the objects, images, events, and experiences of one's finite life, to make sense of one's personal life and circumstances and more specifically, the unique power of theological narrative (such as the Gospels, or secular literature that treats of humans' theological dimension) to help one gain a deeper insight into God and one's self continues to be argued persuasively by several contemporary scholars.In the early 1960s, Lynch made a landmark argument in the development of the link between the literary and theological dimensions of human experience.In Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of Literary Imagination, Lynch (1960) recognizes the fundamental human dynamic that whenever humans seek to perceive something (an object, an image, another person, God), they spontaneously bring certain attitudes to, and form certain judgments about, the things they encounter.Such a dynamic indicates that "there is more in ourselves and in our images than meets the eye.These attitudes penetrate the images themselves, and the two are always mutually forming, creating, sometimes distorting one another" (Lynch, 1960, p. 7).Finite images, argues Lynch, can become gateways to insight into what is beyond the finite.
When seeking theological insight -insight into the infinite -human beings, because of their finitude, must begin by peering into the finite symbols of their concrete world and existence.For Lynch, the crucial and inescapable step is that, "We must go through the finite, the limited, the definite," so that, "in taking this narrow path, we shall be using our...experience of things seen...to create hope in the things that are not yet seen" (p. 7).One of the primary ways humans do this is by organizing their finite experiences and symbols into narratives, which then, through the analogical power of symbols, can become gateways into theological insight.Persuasive examples of this kind of theology, in which both canonical and secular literature is used to gain insight into God and into humans' theological dimensions, can be seen in contemporary narrative theological works such as Coles' The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (1989), Booth's The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988), and Dunne's The Road of the Heart's Desire: An Essay on the Cycles of Story and Song (2002).
As Rocchetta summarizes, perception of "narrative truth," the insight into truth that we gain from the organization of the objects, images, events, and experiences of one's finite life into the symbolic forms of narrative, involves at least two preconditions: first, discernment of the kind of storyis this narrative a historical account, a parable, a myth?; and second, the identification of its purpose -what is the author trying to tell us in this story?The Gospels beg readers to ask these questions, for they present Jesus precisely through various types of narratives, and Jesus himself frequently teaches precisely through narratives.A pedagogical style that seeks only to convey facts or propositions from the Gospel, and to deduce logical, and often abstract, conclusions from them and thus develop a "theology," does so only by disregarding the primary structure of revelation itself, the unfolding narrative of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.Narrative theology, by contrast, seeks to invite people to reflect theologically on the stories of Jesus, develop implications and conclusions based on these reflections, and over time, organize these ever-deepening reflections into an increasingly fuller vision of the person of Jesus, even as one alive in one's present life and leading one to a concrete way of living and responding to the world.
Thus, finally, a narrative approach to theology and catechesis can be seen as a typical and accessible, and not merely a specialized, method of teaching and reflecting upon the faith.That is, because Jesus often taught through story, and because the early Church received and organized the Gospels in the form of a narrative, catechesis through narrative need not be cordoned off for the "literature people."While literary teachers may have a more informed or nuanced insight into the stories of Jesus as stories, this obviously does not mean that literature specialists have any privileged access to revelation.Rather, the narrative structure of the Gospels suggests that all catechists should engage at some level with the narratives of the Gospels, or at least not completely ignore them and teach the faith as if it were merely a set of straightforward propositions.

CATECHESIS THROUGH "NARRATIVE FAITH"
More specifically, then, one might ask "To what effect and for what reasons did Jesus use story when 'catechizing' the first disciples?""To what effect and for what reasons has the Church used the narrative form of the Gospels as a primary way of 'catechizing' its members?"Several answers could be given.Five answers are highlighted here that are particularly relevant for catechesis in the contemporary world and for a reinvigoration of the Catholic faith in response to five specific tendencies to the contrary in the contemporary world.This curriculum seeks particularly to respond to these five (see Table 1).
Specifically, a narrative approach to catechesis emphasizes an encounter with Jesus that is: holistic; existential; praxis-oriented and applicable to students' daily decisions and actions; conducive to the building of inclusive community; and a fruitful union of the objective and subjective dimensions of revelation.First, narrative faith is holistic.Students will encounter Christ not only through their intellect, but also through their imagination and emotions.Narrative is particularly suited to evoking emotive response in students in ways that propositional catechesis is not.This characteristic specifically counters the contemporary tendency toward over-rationalization.
Second, narrative faith is existential.Students will continually be moving among, and being encouraged to integrate, personal experience, literary experience, and their encounter with Jesus in the Gospels.This "back-andforth" movement between students' experience and others' experience, as articulated in literature and the Scriptures, while sometimes complicated, challenges students not to disconnect their faith from their lived experience.It also seeks to encourage the development of a faith that is in meaningful conversation with, though always transcendent of, their lived experience.This characteristic counters the contemporary tendency to abstract and separate faith from the realities of one's existential, daily life.
Third, narrative faith is praxis-oriented and applicable.Closely aligned with the second characteristic, the criterion of applicability encourages stu-dents to apply their faith to their own lives and to contemporary issues and decisions.It continually invites the translation and application of faith into action.The narratives and literature in this course continually present articles of faith in the context of characters' actions, and consistently encourage the application of faith principles to personal and contemporary issues.Each unit invites students at a certain point to apply imaginatively the theological theme of the unit to a contemporary issue.This characteristic of applicability counters the tendency to disconnect one's faith from one's actions.
Fourth, narrative faith is conducive to the building of inclusive community.Narrative can be particularly effective at "giving voice" to diverse and marginalized peoples.Literature often articulates experiences of the world that counter the mainstream and dominant culture.For example, in this course, students will often encounter the voices of women, children and adolescents, Negro slaves, an impoverished Brazilian family, and others, whose voices are often ignored or silenced by mainstream culture.The Gospels will be intentionally juxtaposed with such voices, in order to stimulate diverse, alternative, and non-traditional interpretations.Furthermore, open-ended reflection on literature invites a multiplicity of interpretations and tends to resist univocal meaning.Listening to diverse interpretations steadily becomes a part of students' learning process.Individual interpretations are challenged to enter into dialogue with divergent interpretations.Thus, a catechetical program that relies heavily on narrative, and the Gospels as narrative, can more consistently seek to build inclusive community.This course could easily accommodate, for example, Monday-morning faith sharing groups, in which the students break into groups of 4-5 students for the first 15 minutes of each week, in order to learn how to faith share about relevant Gospel passages for that week.This characteristic of narrative faith counters the tendency to individualize and overly-personalize one's faith.
Finally, narrative faith can achieve a fruitful union of the objective and subjective dimensions of revelation, as argued most persuasively and systematically in von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (1982).In general terms, this course is structured on an understanding of revelation as a union between an objective revelation -transcendent of, and irreducible to, human subjectivity -and an individual's subjective existence, without which objective revelation is rendered impotent.More specifically, this project holds forth the Scriptures, and the life and person of Christ, as the privileged locus of divine revelation.This life reveals dimensions of experience that humans would not be able to discern from their own lives.At the same time, it acknowledges the Scriptures as communicating revelation always through human mediation, and thus demanding continual interpretation.It thus understands revelation as always demanding integration with one's subjective experience.Narrative, and the Gospels specifically as narratives, again provides a useful tool for approaching this view of revelation.The Gospels present an objective person who must be encountered in his teachings and actions, but the narrative structure in which this person is encountered also readily invites, indeed, demands, diverse and multiple interpretations.This characteristic counters the two contemporary tendencies towards fundamentalism, the over-objectification of revelation and an overly anthropological view of revelation, which denies it of any transcendent dimension.

A CURRICULUM FOR TEACHERS: OVERVIEW
This curriculum is designed for 12th-grade teachers of religion or English.It is a year-long curriculum.It is heavily inter-disciplinary, drawing on core principles from both theology and English, and presumes of entering students an 11th grade level of competence in both subjects.That is, students taking this class are presumed to have completed high school-level work in grammar and composition, and 2 years of literature, usually some combination of American, British, and world literature.The course also presumes 3 years of high school theology, generally, Old Testament, New Testament, Church history, Christian ethics, and social justice.Of course, a thorough mastery of each of these fields is not required; however, the course does presume some basic familiarity with the major Scriptural passages regarding Jesus' life, death, and resurrection; basic familiarity with, and ability to analyze, selections from the major genres of literature, and basic composition skills in both discursive and creative writing.The course content, lesson objectives, and modes of assessment draw significantly from both disciplines.For example, this curriculum's Unit 1, on "The Birth of Jesus," requires students to read and analyze Old and New Testament selections, infancy narratives from Roman and Greek mythology, and a modern short story on birth from a mother's perspective, as well as to compose five diverse writing samples: one informal journal entry, one autobiographical story, two creative writing pieces, and one analytic essay.
The course is structured primarily on Scriptural and Christological grounds, with particular attention to how both the Scriptures and the story of Christ are presented as a narrative whole.The nine major units of the course correspond to eight major events, or groups of events, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, as narrated by the four Gospels.There is also a final synthetic unit on the narrative whole of the Gospels, which will also serve as a final assessment piece.Each of the units explores a central narrative moment or theme in the Gospels, using both Scripture and other related literary works to stimulate imaginative engagement with the person and "event" of Christ, as revealed in the narratives of the Gospels.These units are organized and ordered according to the basic narrative development of the Gospels.They are listed in Table 2 under dual headings that reflect both their theological and narrative/literary focus.Also included in the Appendix as an aid for teachers, is a select theological bibliography for each unit, specifically of narrative-theological treatments of each of the eight main events in Jesus' life treated in this course.These selections were chosen for their accessibility and usefulness in clearly delineating theological issues that emerge specifically from a narrative reading of the life of Jesus, and can be helpful to teachers in the identification of theological themes for each unit.Suggestions for literary and visual works to be used in conjunction with the Gospels are also included in the Appendix.
These nine units are presented in the Appendix in a dual structure.First, the overall, approximately month-long unit plan of each of the nine units is summarized, which provides teachers with: the overall rationale of each unit, including theological and literary focus topics; presumed prior knowledge of the students; the major student outcome; and the culminating unit assessment.
Second, each unit is broken into its major lessons, using a two-place decimal numbering system.The first number indicates a major "Lesson Objective," and there are 3 to 5 major lessons per unit.The second number indicates individual "Student Tasks" that lead to each major lesson objective.These lesson numbers do not correspond to single classroom periods; in fact, the majority of the student tasks in this curriculum will take longer than one class period to accomplish.There are an average of 13 student tasks for each unit.Assuming 2 class days for the majority of tasks, each unit could be completed in about 1 month.Both the overall unit and individual lesson plans frequently utilize the acronym "SWBAT," which stands for "Students will be able to."This SWBAT formulation, along with the organization of units according to student performance objectives and student tasks, helps to maintain an appropriate focus on student output.This is particularly important in this course, as the goal is to achieve a balance between the objective content of the revelation of the Gospels and the subjective experience of that revelation by the students (see Appendix).
Finally, the general method of each unit intentionally and consistently follows a similar, five-step method.This method is designed for a specific catechetical purpose.Namely, each unit seeks to catechize through an encounter of the students' personal, lived experience with similar experiences in the life of Jesus.The method encourages imaginative reflection by the students on personal experiences as well as Jesus' experiences, and seeks to re-imagine their personal experiences in light of the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
With this general method in mind, each unit basically follows a five-step pattern.First, each unit begins with students' reflection on their experiences of the main narrative theme of the unit, either in their own life or in film or fiction -for example, birth, death, coming-of-age, evil, the miraculous.Second, the unit attempts to juxtapose that experience with biblical and secular literary treatments of the same theme.It is during this stage that students are encouraged to reflect upon the significance of their experience in light of others' experience of the same theme as expressed in literature.Third, the theme as it emerges in the life of Jesus is then examined closely.It is usually here that the major catechetical themes of the unit emerge most explicitly.Fourth, some related topic is examined -a secondary character in the Gospels, such as Mary, John the Baptist, Judas, the Pharisees, or the apostles, and/or a secondary theological topic, such as the lives of the saints, the Holy Spirit, or liberation theology.These lesson objectives encourage imaginative engagement with the central theme, as well as application of the central theme to the life circumstances of themselves or another person, or to the contemporary Church.Finally, each unit ends with a comprehensive unit assessment, usually a longer, analytical writing piece that seeks to assess the students' ability both to engage the revelatory aspects of the life of Jesus being studied, and to apply this revelation to a non-Scriptural setting.For example, the assessment may ask a student to compare and contrast a given Scriptural theme with a non-Scriptural work, or to apply the Scriptural theme to a contemporary issue.This five-stage catechetical process can be seen in each of the eight major units.
Certainly, units, procedures, methods, and reading selections will need to be continually revisited and revised as this course is implemented.The course outline that follows, therefore, must be seen as an organic work-inprogress.It hardly need be mentioned that the number of literary works that can be used in such a course is vast, much vaster than the few selections included as literary suggestions for each unit in the appendix.Moreover, following its own guideline of integrating objective revelation with subjective experience, the objectives of this course will need to mature and be refined as they encounter students in the classroom.And, hopefully, the students too will mature and have their theological and literary skills refined and deepened as they encounter Jesus in the narratives of this course -the narratives of the Gospels, of literature, of their own lives, and the lives of their fellow students.
Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice, Vol. 8, No. 3, March 2005, 346-374 © 2005 Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice