During my two weeks at St Deiniol’s Library in Hawarden (www.gladstoneslibrary.org)[1], as well as writing a sample chapter and revision of the introduction of my proposed Meeting the Jewish Jesus for Grove Books[2]; I have been wrestling with the whole topic of improvising faithfully with the Christian Scriptures.

Much of the recent discussion about faithful improvisation has sprung from engagement with the work of N T Wright, the former bishop of Durham. It is worth offering a quotation of his in full to set the scene for the drama.

Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost. The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged. Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own. Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.

Consider the result. The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand. That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, mentioned earlier, had not reached its proper resolution. This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again. It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.[3]

Wright’s contention is that Christians engage faithfully with the biblical text and improvise with it. He links it particularly with his own five-fold interpretation of the Christian Scriptures, which are as follows:

Act 1: Creation

Act 2: Fall

Act 3: Israel

Acts 4: Jesus

Act 5: Mission of the Church

For Wright this schema or story is a way of encouraging Christian disciples to enter more fully into the great drama of God. Seeing the Bible as a big picture or a drama is an argument that is won. Church leaders of different traditions would appear to concur.

John Vincent writes for example, ‘Theology takes place as the people of God see themselves as part of the biblical story, project themselves into that story and then project that story out into their corporate and individual lives’.[4] Vincent is writing from a liberationist perspective. The early liberationists were passionate about linking the story of the written bible with the story of the bible of people’s lives.

Scott McKnight, a theologian of the emergent church, would also appear to on the importance of story. He summarises his arguments in The Blue Parakeet as follows:

‘Here’s where we are:

• The Bible is a story.
• The Story is made up of a series of wiki-stories.
• The wiki-stories are held together by the Story.
• The only way to make sense of the blue parakeets in the Bible is to set each in the context of the Bible’s story.

None of the wiki-stories is final, none of them is comprehensive; none of them is absolute; none of them is exhaustive. Each of them tells a true story of that Story’.[5]

The problem with Wright’s schema lies, I think, in two areas. One the sequence and two in what types of improvisation are allowed or not.

Sam Wells wants to readjust Wright’s schema a little, as do Craig Bartholomew and Michael Gohen. Wells wants to do to so to make the Act concerning the church the penultimate one. This works for me simply because it allows the final act to be all about God rather than human beings muddying ‘the consummation of all things’, even allowing for divine partnership with mortals J

The second problem is perhaps more pertinent and revolves around the simple question; how can people improvise if they no longer know the story? Improvisation both in music and drama require great skill. The best Jazz musicians have perhaps been classically trained.

Those who wish to improvise with the Bible need to have entered it. How we do that will be the subject of later blog.