Colin Greene and Martin Robinson, Metavista: Bible, Church, and Mission in an Age of Imagination. Paternoster, 2008.
Referenced in:
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
Greene and Robinson address the concerns of mission in the United Kingdom, and presumably in the Western context in general. The term “metavista” is used to capture the idea that we are both post-Christendom and post-postmodern, and thus have a new and intriguing world before us. By using the narrative of scripture, the church may now reimagine itself in its new missional surroundings.
The authors provide an interesting account of the progression of the church from early Christendom, to the Reformation, and on up to today. Alan Roxburgh, in Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood (2011), describes it as “a wonderful framing of the challenges to mission being faced in that context” (45) and uses Metavista to provide a summary of “the trajectory that has been followed by the Protestant churches in the United Kingdom and Europe.” (46-47)
Typical of emergent literature, the authors trace the church’s current malaise to Christendom and failed Enlightenment categories, and suggest “the church requires a new ‘fiduciary framework’ that abandons erroneous Enlightenment categories of certitude and Christendom models of power.” They add:
“The church is being called to reimagine itself, to find a way to articulate its central defining story among the ‘metavista’ refugees who no longer believe that the church ecumenical and catholic today is being sustained by a credible vision of the true, the good and the beautiful. Where are the contemporary prophets, artists and storytellers who can retell our defining story with vigor, passion and persuasiveness?” (53-54)
To answer the need, the authors propose that we follow a narrative theology wherein the biblical story “takes over all other stories and incorporates their limited schemas into its own vision of universal history.” Indeed, “all other stories must be inscribed into the biblical story, rather than the biblical story into any of them. Insofar as we allow the biblical story to become our story, it overcomes our reality.” (103)
As part of their historical framework, they suggest that the grand narrative of scripture was overcome by the metanarrative of modernity, reducing scripture to “a series of isolated micro-narratives and pericopes with no thematic tension and no eschatological resolution.” They suggest that broadly, postmodernity has successfully deconstructed modernity, with one effect being that the post-postmodern church may now “re-engage with the textual world of the Bible and reimagine the community that reads such texts’ (104).
Not so helpfully, however, is their attempt to avoid using Scripture as “imperialistic.” The authors propose we return to the medieval method of allegorical exegesis. This supposedly allows us to assimilate other stories into the meaning of scripture in a manner similar (?) to biblical writers’ typologies such as Melchizedek, Jesus as the new Adam, etc. which show the integration of a “multitude of narratives.” They suggest the unity of the narrative is preserved as we use the story and identity of Christ as an interpretive layer over the whole. This has its dangers. Beyond the extreme subjectivity of allegorizing, there is also the damage this does to the historicity of the biblical narrative. Although they nod affirmatively toward historical-critical interpretation, when one insists on retelling the story to assimilate other stories, it results in the loss of the story. You are no longer telling the biblical story, but using the biblical story along with others to create another story.
This book certainly has value, but I am hesitant to recommend it beyond an example of an emergent understanding of the progression of the church from Christendom to the present day. It is fairly steeped in the postmodern ethos, perhaps as much as earlier understandings were dominated by modernistic and Enlightenment categories. The language will also be difficult to navigate for those unfamiliar with current scholarship on narrative theology.
From the Publisher
The core narrative of Christianity, the book (the Bible) that conveys it and the institution of the church have been marginalized by the development of modernity and post-modernity. Strangely, post-modernity created an opportunity for religious thinking and experience to re-enter many lives.
Yet post-modernity is not an adequate framework for thinking about life. There is therefore an opportunity for Christians to imagine what comes after and to prepare the church for a new engagement of mission with western culture.
The church, through a creative missionary imagination, can re-define western cultural life. This sketches what such an approach might look like.
About the Authors
The Reverend Dr. Colin JD Greene (PhD., University of Nottingham) is head of theology and public policy at Bible Society and visiting professor of systematic and philosophical theology at Seattle Pacific University, USA. He is Author of Christology and Atonement in Historical Context, METAVISTA: Exploring the Bible, the Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination and Marking Out the Horizons: Christology in Cultural Perspective. He is consultant editor to the Scripture and Hermeneutics seminar.
***For additional information on this resource, including reviews, click the bookstore links. Check the reference at page top or the links below for resource guides on related topics.***
Related Ministry Resource Guides:
- Missional Perspectives 01, Introduction
- Missional Church Resources, Introduction and Index
- Missional Philosophy
- Theology of Mission
- Missional Communities
- Missional Leadership / Missional Strategies
- Missional Lifestyle, Discipleship, Spirituality
- Church Leadership and Renewal, Index to Resources
- Ecclesiology
- Evangelism
See Resources on Over 100 Areas of Ministry Leadership: