Monday, November 17, 2008
-
Kind of tragic
I was reading a book in my university library a couple of years ago when I came across this phrase scrawled in the margin:"The church is not the custodian of the culture -- of any culture. Rather, she is the custodian of her own narrative."I think it's kind of tragic that I don't know who wrote that, whether it was original or pilfered from somewhere, because now I can never quote it without a great deal of explanation. But I think it's true.
(If it was pilfered from somewhere, I'm betting on Hauerwas.)
-NDSR
-
recommend
- recs 0
- give stars
- votes 0
-
share
-
email
- sent 0
Post a Comment
- Back to sirnickdon's Revelife Site!
- Note: your comment will appear in sirnickdon's local time zone: GMT -05:00 (Eastern Standard - US, Canada)
Comments (5)
I have no idea what that means.
"custodian of her own narrative"
How about: The church is not the custodian of anything. She is the body of Christ, under His possession. The soul measure of her value is how well she is reflecting Him.
I agree very much with the first part, about not being the custodian of culture, and it sounds familiar, but I'm not sure where I saw it or if I really did.
I'm sure you googled it, but I thought just in case I would too. Nothing from what I can tell. Maybe it is original. The church is not mutually exclusive from culture, but it is not culture or the keeper of culture. However, it does have aspects that are similar to culture and thus fit into any culture if the people of a culture seek to accept it. It is issues within the church and it's polity that impacts a surrounding culture as well. You can see it in China today.
@Pickwick12@xanga - I don't disagree, except to point out that she reflects Christ through her narrative, which consists of proclamation of the gospel, acts of truth-telling and redemptive storytelling, acts of forgiveness, hospitality, reconciliation, and discipleship to the way of Christ. The church, in order to be the church, must always be a kerygmatic church.
-NDSR
@sirnickdon - I suppose I agree, but I don't see why that's any different than saying that the church must always proclaim the works of Christ. That's my understanding of kerygma. Maybe we're agreeing, and it's coming down to semantics.