From Chapter 3 "Losing the Story" (p.48)
" From reason to gospel amnesia
Walter Brueggemann, a contemporary master of narrative theology, shows that the modern age is an era which is long on information but short on narrative. He sees the intellectual culture that stemmed from the Age of Reason - the philosophical Enlightenment - as programmatically opposed to tradition, the preservation of cultural roots, and the remembrance of things past. It is with the Enlightenment that what he calls Christian 'amnesia' begins. For him, the problem with modern Christians is not merely we are illiterate about our own faith. He sees this as a surface problem which betrays a deeper malaise: we have forgotten who we are.
As long as we continue to be forgetters and not rememberers of the gospel - and Brueggemann wants us to be good Jews in this sense - then no real missionary energy for our modern culture can be found."
Excerpt from:
Walker, Andrew. Telling the Story. Gospel, Mission and Culture Gospel & Culture. London: SPCK, 1996.
*highlighting my own.
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