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C. S. Song. In the Beginning Were Stories, Not Texts

Article in Christianity & Literature · March 2016

DOI: 10.1177/0148333115617084

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Tom Steffen
Biola University
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538 Christianity and Literature

appreciation of their composition and poetic craft as I learn to pay attention to

deixis and the potential instability of the “I” of medieval texts.

M. W. Brumit
University of Dallas

In the Beginning Were Stories, Not Texts. By C. S. Song. Cambridge, U.K.: James
Clarke & Co., 2012. ISBN 978-0-227-68023-0 Pp. vii-172. $18.90.

Choan-Seng Song is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theology and

Asian Cultures at the Pacific School of Religion in San Francisco. His book In the
Beginning Were Stories, Not Texts seeks to challenge “Western biblical scholars
and theologians who have monopolized the interpretation of the Bible” (115). He
desires to throw “wide open the door of interpretation to men and women from
outside the West, to people of different ethnic origins and cultural backgrounds, to
women as well men, to the powerless over against those who hold power, whether
political, social, religious, or academic” (115). Here is how Song structures the
book to accomplish his goal.
The book consists of ten tightly integrated chapters and a bibliography.
Chapter headings include, “In the Beginning Were Stories, Not Texts,” “Story Is the
Matrix of Theology,” “Theology Rewrites Stories,” “Stories Rectify Theology,” “The
Theological Power of Stories,” “In Search of Our Roots,” “Stories within a Story,”
“Stories Are Culturally Distinctive,” “Stories Can Be Theologically Interactive.”
The final chapter, “The Bible, Stories, and Theology,” provides the reader
“approaches” to pursue theology conceived in stories inside and outside of
Scripture. Chapter 10 answers this question, “How is … intense theology to be born
out of the matrix of stories?” (152). The first step of story theology is, “Awareness of
the theological nature of stories” (155).
For Song, “story is the matrix of theology” (18). This axiom drives his book,
challenging the Western penchant for systematic theology. He raises some intriguing
questions to make his case, “Who says theology has to be ideas and concepts? Who
has decided that theology has to be doctrines, axioms, propositions?” (6). Song’s
conclusion? “God is not concept; God is story. God is not idea; God is presence.
God is not hypothesis; God is experience. God is not principle; God is life.” He
adds, “theology worthy of its name has to be part and parcel of the dramas of life
and faith” (116).
Song ably answers the above questions in the book. And his story-based
approach to theology is his major and masterful contribution to the Christian
world. The book reminds one of Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A
 Book Reviews 539

Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (1974), Robert Alter’s

The Art of Biblical Narrative (1981), Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones’ Why
Narrative? (1997), Leland Ryken’s How to Read the Bible as Literature (1984), Kevin
J. Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine (2005), and Rob Bell and Brian McLaren, among
others, in the emergent church movement in the U.S. One significant difference
between Song and the above authors, however, is his entertainment of secular
stories in theologizing.
As one who has lived in Asia for many years, I loved the stories from the
various countries from that part of the globe, as well as the more familiar “The Ugly
Duckling.” But why include secular stories? How does this relate to discovering
the theology of Scripture? Song surmises, “Stories have the capacity to transcend
time and space” (162). In secular stories, whether real life stories, parables, fables,
folktales, myths, Song searches for themes related to theology within Scripture in
these three areas: (1) suffering and faith, (2) sin and death, and (3) transformation
of life (131). Why? Because “Whatever form or genre it may take, it is a real life
story both to the storyteller and the listener” (132). For example, the real life stories
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, and Martin Luther King cross
“oceans and continents” and carry theological truths.
“The Ugly Duckling” serves as a second example in that a metaphor of the
gospel can be embedded in a fairytale. To illustrate, the ugly duckling can be
transformed into a beautiful swan if she is willing to journey into an unknown
world. Song does not seem to be arguing for spiritual equivalency of Scripture and
secular stories, rather he perceives the universal of earthiness in both.
While Song provides excellent definitions of the various genres, not all readers
will agree with the genres he assigns to various parts of Scripture. Some will
interpret this as a weak, subjective view of Scripture that does not give Scripture its
historical due. For example, Song categorizes Genesis 2 and 3 as a folktale (137-44).
This criticism will not bother Song in that he sees truth embedded in any genre.
“It is truthful not in the sense that it is derived from what is called ‘objective truth,’
but because it gives expression to their genuine fear about things beyond their
control and their sense of helplessness when faced with crisis of life (137). Others
will argue that this book is too one-sided—consider the title. Everything centers on
story. It is interesting that one rarely hears this observation in relation to the sole
propositional side.
Song, of course, has his reasons for the story emphasis which he documents
thoroughly throughout the book (see title chapters above). One of these is,
“Theology does not make us see, but story does. A theological thesis does not
enable us to hear, but a story does … Story makes us see deeply into the abyss of
the human heart desperately looking for the God of love” (69). Even so, Song seems
more interested in sequence than superiority. Consider this statement, “John,
the author of the Gospel that bears his name, is a brilliant theologian and also a
magnificent storyteller. Perhaps he is a storyteller first, then a theologian … it is
540 Christianity and Literature

from stories, real-life stories, that his theology has developed and grown” (30).
How will one walk away from a thorough read of In the Beginning Were Stories,
Not Texts? That will depend on a number of things. One’s theological background,
generation, and pedagogical preferences will no doubt impact the read. Some will
find it provocative. Others will find it perplexing or puzzling. Still others will find
it provoking and persuasive.
Wherever the reader lands, what cannot be denied is the ability of story to
communicate to the East and the West, particularly to a postmodern audience
currently characterized as oral-preferenced learners. These individuals, who
John Sachs calls “digitorials,” prefer stories and images over statistics and abstract
concepts; screens over printed texts. Is it time to reintroduce a story-based theology
to regain a lost perspective (particularly in the West) of Scripture? Is it time to
provide propositions a story-based home from which they emerged? Song would
answer these questions with a resounding, “Yes!”

Tom A. Steffen
Biola University

The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the

Remaking of Northern Europe. By Anders Winroth. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2012. Pp. 238. $28.00.

In The Rise of Western Christendom Peter Brown observed, “When they

came to accept Christianity, the Northmen preferred to remember having done
so on their own accord. … In [AD] 1,000, the farmers of Iceland voted at their
annual Assembly at Thingvellir, to adopt a single ‘Christian law…’” In this volume,
Anders Winroth very much accepts this historical event in Iceland as a model for
Scandinavia’s institutional acceptance of Christianity. The opposite model for him
is found in the case of Saxony in northern Germany which had no such vote by
its chieftains, but found itself entangled in a thirty-years war of resistance against
Charlemagne’s Christianity, to which it was finally forced to submit by superior
force of arms.
Initially, I found this book somewhat perplexing, despite rewarding insights
and connections not previously seen, and this difficulty was caused by the unusual
lack of correspondence between the title of the book and its contents. The author
calls the book The Conversion of Scandinavia, which creates expectations, but then
divides his book in a way that does not seem to correspond to the title, whether
“conversion” is understood as the official, institutional date of conversion, or as the
very long time period of gradual Christianization. The book, like Gaul, is divided

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