Theology and ‘Drama’ Notes

[As a follow-up to an earlier post, the following gathers together some personal notes on this topic.]

‘Drama’ has come to the fore in a number of recent studies as a fertile way of reflecting on Scripture and theology. The following works are pertinent here:

Richard Heyduck, The Recovery of Doctrine in the Contemporary Church: An Essay in Philosophical Ecclesiology (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2002); Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Ben Quash, Theology and the Drama of History, Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005); Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004).

The significant influence of Hans Urs von Balthasar is evident in a number of these works, especially his Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, trans. Graham Harrison, 5 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988-98).

Drama, it is said, allows us to move beyond story to enactment, not simply creating a world and engaging us in it, but in giving us a role to play in the ongoing drama.

‘Drama provides a way of conceiving history that allows for involvement of the characters which are invested in the action, attention to the particular circumstances and events that affect particular lives, social interaction, and anticipation of how events will play out… Human beings in history find themselves in a world that already exists and is moving in a certain direction, but they also shape that world through their imaginative, personal participation. History is in this sense dramatic, and it is theodramatic when the involved human beings are directed by and respond to the Holy Spirit’s activity in the world. It is the task of theology to display this particular perspective on the drama of history.’

[Sarah Heaner Lancaster, ‘Dramatic Enactment of Christian Faith: A Review Essay’, Asbury Theological Journal 62, 1 (2007), 119-26, here 122.]

Quash notes that ‘drama displays human actions and temporal events in specific contexts. Theodramatics concerns itself with human actions (people), temporal events (time) and their specific contexts (place) in relation to God’s purpose’ (Theology, 3-4, his italics).

Concerned that Lindbeck’s model places authority in ecclesial communities rather than the biblical canon, Vanhoozer’s ‘canonical-linguistic’ approach to theology seeks to recognise the central place of Scripture even while acknowledging the role played by the believing community in enacting the dramatic script. (Even so, Vanhoozer is careful to note that his approach ‘has much in common with its cultural-linguistic cousin’ [Drama, 16]).

For Vanhoozer, Scripture provides the authoritative script, and doctrine provides direction for how Christians should discover their place in the larger drama (Drama, 31, 78, 108). Drama is an appropriate modus operandi, since in the history of salvation, God both speaks and acts:

‘The basic insight is that the Bible is not simply a deposit of revelation but one of God’s “mighty acts” – a mighty communicative act, to be exact. Scripture has a role – a speaking, acting part – in the drama of redemption precisely as divine discourse. Scripture not only conveys the content of the gospel but is itself caught up in the economy of the gospel, as the means by which God draws others into his communicative action’ (Drama, 48, his italics).

In fact, Vanhoozer does not see drama as a mere analogy to be exploited in theology, but as intrinsic to the way the church relates to Scripture.

‘I’m not sure it’s only an analogy, for at the heart of Christianity what we find is neither a philosophy nor a system of morality, but a gospel: good news. What is news if not a report of something important that has been said or done? Christianity is essentially about dramatic action, about what God has done in the history of Israel and especially in the person and work of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world.’

[Kevin J. Vanhoozer, ‘Experience the Drama’, Trinity Magazine (Spring 2006), 18-21, here 19.]

Incidentally, this has been missed by a number of reviewers of Vanhoozer’s work, though not by Everett Berry, ‘Theological Vs. Methodological Postconservatism: Stanley Grenz and Kevin Vanhoozer as Test Cases’, Westminster Theological Journal 69, 1 (2007), 105-26, at 117.

Quash and Vanhoozer present drama as a more fruitful category than narrative for theology (Quash, Theology, 79-81, 207-208; Vanhoozer, Drama, 48, 273-74). Narrative is feared because it is thought to operate in ‘epic’ mode, assumed to provide a detached observation, and closing down alternative takes on reality (Quash, Theology, 41-42, and Vanhoozer, Drama, 84-91; cf. Wells, Improvisation, 45-57).

But it is not clear that narrative necessarily does this. The features of drama that are perceived to be valuable – such as temporality, followability, complexity, interaction, anticipation – are also features of narrative.

Moreover, the drama analogy can be overplayed. While generally positive about Vanhoozer’s study, Anthony C. Thiselton judges that it doesn’t engage sufficiently with ‘the resources of hermeneutical theory and practice’ (The Hermeneutics of Doctrine [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007], 80, and see 73-80). Lancaster notes that ‘while theologians use drama as a welcome new model to explore enactment, we should be careful not to treat it as another general study into which Christian faith needs to be fit’ (‘Dramatic Enactment’, 125).

Although drama may prove to be an illuminating way of thinking through issues related to the ‘performance’ of the text, what we have in Scripture is not drama, but narrative.

‘Drama’ may be construed as a text type, even as a narrative text type, but is also likely to be understood more fully in its orientation toward performance before an audience. Even so, there is obviously a close kinship between drama and prose narrative, and the theory of one will share common ground with the theory of the other. Hence, it is not necessary, and perhaps even misguided, to pit narrative against drama.

Vanhoozer argues that narrative tells whereas drama shows (Drama, 48). Leaving aside the contention that narrative may exercise the imagination in a way drama does not, however, just this point may be significant. An over-emphasis on drama may lead to downplaying the crucial role of the narrator in narrative discourse, and particularly the ‘omnipresent’ and ‘omniscient’ narrators of the biblical narratives, the gospels included, which provide an orientation for reading.