한스 프라이의 초기 내러티브 신학에 대한 연구

Abstract

Hans Frei is a prominent scholar who, through his ground-breaking work The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative gives inspiration of the concept of narrative to contemporary theologians and religious philosophers in literally reading of the biblical narrative. Frei’s argument was that Christians should try for “a reading in which the text itself is the meaning” so that they understand the text internally, since “the narrative form indispensable to the narrative’s meaning. Following Karl Barth’s theological position, Frei argues Scripture, itself, is the revelation of God such as proclamation and sacraments. In fact, its way of literal reading of the biblical stories seriously threatened with the emergence of historical critical approach. The emergence of critical historical approaches in which literal and historical reading broke apart demanded it to be proved as “a historical-factual argument” in terms of unifying the canon. According to critical historical eyes, figural interpretation was not an appropriate instrument to demonstrate the unity of the canon. Furthermore, historical critics were not concerned with the unity out of the Bible itself. Rather, the specific historical sequence in which specific texts and specific historical circumstance were formed was importantly dealt within the arena of historical demonstration. Frei suggests three elements related to the pre-critical realistic interpretation of the biblical narratives that has been broken up by the modern historical critical approach. The first significant element of pre-critical reading was its “realistic” orientation. To read a biblical narrative automatically meant that “it referred to and described actual historical occurrences.” Yet, for Frei, it was far from the acknowledgement that it followed the fact that biblical narrative was a reliable historical report. The second element is that several biblical narratives could be put together as one cumulative narrative. Particularly, the narratives of the Old and New Testaments must be seen as a fulfillment in one large cumulative narrative. For Frei, Jesus of Nazareth is at its center. For this reason, he advises starting with the synoptic Gospels. Thirdly, since this one cumulative story of narrating biblical narratives in sequential penetration is established in the one and only real word, it has to incorporate “the experience of any present age and reader.” Based on these three elements, Frei suggest the literal-realistic reading to interpret biblical narratives. What Frei ultimately suggests through describing the process of The Eclipse, as Barth does, is that “we must be naïve as our forebears were before the rise of criticism in the interpretation of the Bible and as naïve as the Bible itself.”