In God is Not a Story: Realism Revisited, Murphy criticises narrative trinitarian theologies, including ‘story Barthians’ such as Lindbeck and Frei, ‘grammatical Thomists’ like Herbert McCabe and the American Lutheran ‘story Thomist’ Robert Jenson (p. 6). While her argument is complex, the thesis is simple: God is not a story. By making this claim, Murphy is calling for renewed attention to Christian metaphysics – or, ‘realism revisited’.
She argues that narrative theologies, which aim to descriptively tell the story of God, in fact turn God into a story because they are ultimately foundationalistic. With the emphasis on ‘how we know’ rather than ‘what we know’, they create an enclosed and self-referential world not connected to real existents such as persons and events. As a consequence, these theologies have a weak sense of personhood, both divine and human. Whether the Trinity is understood as a descriptive narrative or an analytical sentence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are depicted as relationships, not persons. Likewise, human beings are ‘identities’ constituted by stories, but without uniqueness in themselves (p. 71). Murphy contends that without substantial personhood one does not have free agents, but rather divine and human characters in a story that takes the place of God.
To demonstrate this, Murphy compares narrative theologies to melodramatic ‘movies’, which are characterised by ‘“closed romantic realism”, called “closed because these films . . . create worlds that do not acknowledge that they are being watched and the actors behave as if the camera isn't there”’ (p. 4). For example, in chapter 2 she argues that in narrative theologies Christ is present to the church monologically, as a movie character is present to an audience (p. 82), rather than dialogically. In chapter 3, she criticises narrative theologians for interpreting Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways as a deductive method of talking about God, like editing a movie about God, rather than proving God's existence (p. 92). And in chapter 6, she asserts that narrative theologians are ‘modalists by force of a metanarrative’ (p. 254), wherein the story plays three roles, like one actor playing several characters in a movie.
Along the way, Murphy relies on Hans Urs von Balthasar's theo-drama to put forward her alternative to narrative theology. She especially leans on his four-fold argument for the existence of God, which she takes as a ‘creative re-presentation of Thomas' proofs’ (p. 205). Von Balthasar's proofs are based on the interaction between a mother and her infant child, and Murphy argues for them because they are inductive, rooted in reality and history, and operate in the light of faith while still being reasonable to a non-believer. They provide us, she says, with an ‘analogy of grace’ in the ‘givenness of the mother's love’ (p. 236), depicting a God who is free and who freely loves.
Throughout, Murphy displays an impressive breadth and depth of knowledge, but her discussion is often too dense. One is asked to critically engage with a wide range of theologies, as well as aesthetic theories which are unfamiliar to the average theological reader. In many cases the reader simply has to take Murphy's word for it. Moreover, she moves quickly and sometimes disjointedly from theory to theory, and draws generalisations about several similar theologies from the work of one person. It is thus challenging to track and assess the development of her thesis.
Nevertheless, Murphy offers an imaginative and provocative critique. Her argument by aesthetic analogy is creative, she illuminates troublesome aspects of narrative theologies and her case for renewed attention to Christian metaphysics is compelling. Additionally, Murphy is motivated by a welcome apologetic concern that Christian theologies provide the resources to discourse reasonably and convincingly with those who do not believe. Indeed, to persuade others that God is not just a story.
