As readers of this blog may know, I have my problems with narrative. All things being equal, I prefer argument and analysis. A large part of this, I suspect has to do with temperament, and an even larger part has to do with training. There is also an aesthetic component to my preference for argument: I like the clarity and structure of good reasoning. I even have some substantive reasons for preferring argument to narrative. Story telling lends itself to a subjective and inaccessible kind of justification that makes me uncomfortable. I also suspect that many appeals in favor of the nuance of and complexity of narrative are basically attempts to avoid the hard work of reasoning. As anyone who has sat through an advanced seminar knows, the easy answer is always to insist on complexity and difficulty. Finding and justifying simplicity and clarity in the face of criticism is much more difficult.<\/p>\n
Yet for all of this, God seems to prefer narrative. There are really very few arguments as such in the scripture. Furthermore, in those places where there are arguments they tend to be interpretive arguments. For example, 2 Nephi contains a prolonged argument in favor of baptism, but the argument takes the form of an interpretation of a story about the baptism of the Son of Man. In other words, by and large scriptural argument is parasitic on narrative. At the end of the day, God seems to teach by telling stories. This, in turn, seems to suggest that despite my resistance, literary criticism of some form or another seems to be a required part of acquiring spiritual knowledge. In a very real sense, one of our primary ways of relating to God is as a character in a literary text that we come to know by interpreting the stories.<\/p>\n
I take solace in the fact that even if the scriptures are basically devoid of philosophical arguments they do contain a lot of law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As readers of this blog may know, I have my problems with narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}