I thought you may be interested in some of what I have learned about genres to help you understand the Christian story better.
Shawn Coyne’s insights about the essential importance of genre shed light on the binary core value…
So what’s the very first thing an editor or a writer needs to do? Well the very, very, very first thing they need to do is to figure out what genres their story is going to be a part of.
The first questions we need to ask ourselves are, ”What are the Genres of our Story?” and, ”What will we have to do to meet those Genres’ expectations?”
Genre choices are the most important decisions you need to make.
Those choices will tell the reader what they are in for if they pick up your book. They will direct all efforts from your publisher from the front cover art to the publicity tour. If you are not writing in ”Genre,” you’re lost. Every Story ever told has Genre classifications.
Here’s an interesting question from a well known Christian writer…
What sort of tale have I fallen into? is a question that would help us all a great deal if we wondered it for ourselves. It just might be the most important question we ever ask.
And, well, I’m a little uncomfortable with this, but also acknowledge that he’s right. Which story are we in, is a compelling, haunting question…
Everyone believes in or buys into a big story, whether they realize it or not. The only question is which great story we will accept as the one that tells us the truth about the way things really are. Which guiding story will we claim as our story?
Researching to evaluate the Christian story has opened up all kinds of questions for me. And I’m wondering if there is some sort of parallel importance between the genre question and the question, “Which story are we in?”
What is Genre and Why is it So Important?
I felt confused at first about what is the genre of the Christian story in the bible.
You see, the Christian scholars I read seem to talk about it in a different way than Shawn Coyne and Robert McKee. Here is how Coyne explains it…
A Genre is a label that tells the reader/audience what to expect. Genres simply manage audience expectations. It’s really that simple. Don’t let the French etymology and pronunciation scare you.
What is a genre? A genre is a very fancy word classifying every story ever told since the beginning of time. That’s really all it is. The classifications are all about managing audience expectations. This is just a fancy way of saying what exactly is it that you’re going to want to know before you read a book or watch a television show? These are all the things that marketers and advertising people put on covers of books and movie posters. And the classic genres are things like the crime genre, the mystery genre, the love story, the science fiction story. These are all those things that a lot of literary people kind of turn their nose up at. Every single story has a genre.
But here is some of what I found from bible scholars…
Genre is a French word which means “kind, sort, style.”1 Gattung is a German word which approximates the French Genre, roughly translatable as “form” or “type.” “In German, Gattung denotes a group of things which have … distinguishing characteristics in common.”2 Gattung has been used to designate longer literary units, for example, Gospel, Epistle, Apocalypse. English often translates Gattung as Genre. The German word form is sometimes used to designate smaller literary units often thought to have arisen in “oral traditions.”
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This paper will frequently use the term genre to indicate major kinds of literature, especially in the Old Testament, such as, Narrative, Prophecy, Psalms, and other categories. The term subgenre will designate what appear to be various categories of literature within one of the broader genres.
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Genre, as in the title of this paper, means a unit of scripture which has a combination of vocabulary, mood, ordering of its “parts,” and purpose in common with other units of Scripture with similar features. Each unit of scripture so characterized may be said to participate in that genre. This definition does not necessarily conform to published definitions.
The Use Of Genre In Bible Interpretation, By Richard W. Engle, Journal of Ministry and Theology, Spring 2000
Thus, for our purposes let us stipulate that the word genre involves focus on style and form, as primary aspects, and on content only as a possible supplemental or secondary contributor. I think that, for the most part, that is also what biblical interpreters have had in mind when they talk about genre.
Dealing With The Genre Of Genesis And Its Opening Chapters, Vern S. Poythress, Westminster Theological Journal, Fall 2016
Perhaps the reason for this great lack of agreement lies in the fact that “no consensus exists as to a precise definition of genre” and this results in great liberality to assert opinion. Daniel Chandler, describing the concept of genre as a whole, wrote, “The classification . . . of genres is not a neutral and ‘objective’ procedure. There are no undisputed ‘maps’ of the system of genres within any medium (though literature may perhaps lay some claim to a loose consensus). Further, there is often considerable theoretical disagreement about the definition of specific genres.” Chandler’s description leaves the field all too easily malleable to the whim of the interpreter.
Genre Override In Genesis 1—2, By Jeremiah Loubet, Journal of Dispensational Theology, (Dec 2011)
And such a difference in the way of seeing genre can lead to an unfortunate distinction between story and doctrine…
Leslie Leyland Fields: But we will not tell the story and the stories of Scripture right without the “telling” of the rest of Scripture, the non-narrative portions that help us interpret them. Nor will we fully understand the non-narrative portions of Scripture without the stories that illuminate them. We need to embrace all the genres that God chose to reveal Himself in, recognizing that each one has an important place in communicating God’s redemption to us. We don’t get to pick and choose and declare one form of expression superior to another. Of course story is more fun than law or even a book like Ecclesiastes, with all its complexity, recursion and seeming contradiction. But we’ve got to wrestle with those more difficult books as well and not simply gloss over them.
There’s nothing shocking about efforts to shrink and simplifying the Scriptures this way. We’re always reducing God’s Word in some way, just because it is so vast, so layered, so alive, and spans such history that we cannot contain it all at once.
But when we make story primary, and when we hoist a single sail, we’re going to drift off in a number of directions because we’ve lost the rudder of the rest of the Scriptures. We’re called to submit to God’s Word – all of it – not to submit God’s Word to our red pens.
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I think we can consciously teach both, that children and adults are capable of grasping both story and doctrine concurrently.
And yet, you can see from the following how the differences may not be as great a chasm as it seems…
Considerations of genre as part of the introductory matter of recent commentaries have become virtually required because most commentators hold that genre is important for interpretation. A recent text on hermeneutics puts it this way: “Biblical authors used different literary conventions in order to accomplish different purposes.. .. Each literary form, therefore, reveals literary function. Determining what the author is trying to say involves our recognition of the genre employed —a literary decision which facilitates authorial intent as well as a reader’s comprehension. Hence, before we can discover the meaning of what was written, we need to understand how it was written.” Grant Osborne states this view in a manner that is quite typical: “As I will argue in appendix two and in the section on special hermeneutics below, the genre or type of literature in which a passage is found provides the ‘rules of the language game’ (Wittgenstein), that is, the hermeneutical principles by which one understands it. Obviously, we do not interpret fiction the same way as we understand poetry. Nor will a person look for the same scheme in biblical wisdom as in the prophetic portions.” These are not isolated examples of this conviction. Leland Ryken asserts, “Each genre has its distinctive features and its own ‘rules’ or principles of operation. As readers, we need to approach passages in the Bible with the right expectations. Our awareness of genre programs our encounter with a biblical text, telling us what to look for and how to interpret what we see.” As we have said, this view is pervasive and almost universally accepted as a critical feature of a good hermeneutic.
Does Genre Determine Meaning?, By Thomas A. Howe, Christian Apologetics Journal, Spring 2007
So perhaps those struggles could be helped by looking at the story in the Bible through the lens of genre in the way Coyne and McKee see.
Consider how the following fits with that…
Having selected the passage, we must first examine it in its context. The passage does not exist in isolation. As individual verses rest within a paragraph, the paragraphs are part of a chapter, and the chapters are part of the book. If you were reading any other book, you would not open it to page 50, read a paragraph, and from that, assume that you could speak with some authority about the author’s meaning. The author may be giving you the argument of an opponent, not his own. At the very least you would want to read the whole chapter to discover how this one paragraph fits within the larger section. If you really want to understand your paragraph, you would also ask questions about how the chapter that contains your paragraph fits within the entire book. The old saw still has a sharp edge: “The text without the context is a pretext.”
For this reason, we begin our study of a biblical passage by relating it to the broader literary unit of which it is a part.
It’s important, they say, to understand the storyline of the whole bible…
The main truth for preachers here is that they must preach in such a way that they integrate their sermons into the larger biblical story of redemptive history. Those in the pews need to see the big picture of what God has been doing, and how each part of scripture contributes to that picture. We do not want to preach in such a way that our people fail to see what God is doing, so that they lose the larger perspective.
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We may get many compliments from our people for our moral lessons and our illustrations, but we are not faithfully serving our congregations if they do not understand how the whole of scripture points to Christ, and if they do not gain a better understanding from us of the storyline of the Bible.
And important to keep in mind the big picture…
The meaning of a word is its use in a sentence; the meaning of a sentence is its use in a paragraph; and the meaning of a paragraph is its use in the larger document to which it contributes. Details are vitally important, but they are important as part of the overall picture. And the burden of my song in …. this book is that we’ve all forgotten what the big picture actually is.
But before we go on, you might find it helpful to keep in mind what McKee says about different genres in relation to the overall story…
From the point of view of the writer looking from the Inciting Incident “down the Spine” to the last act’s Climax, in spite of all we’ve said about genres and the various shapes from Archplot to Antiplot, in truth there’s only one story. In essence we have told one another the same tale, one way or another, since the dawn of humanity, and that story could be usefully called the Quest. All stories take the form of a Quest.
The Flexibility of Genres
So, can genres be mixed in a story? Coyne says yes…
Mixing genres is a natural act. That is, if you are full bore on your core focus—executing your global Story spine—you won’t be able to not layer in other external and/or internal genre elements into your work. It’ll just happen.
And it fits with these observations about the Bible…
The literary feature of the Bible that is perhaps most noticeable is the heterogeneous nature of the material. Judged by classical standards of unity, the Bible is an untidy patchwork of diverse material. Nonliterary material like genealogies, historical notes, commands, and travel itineraries is mingled with literary material. Poetry appears right in the middle of expository and narrative prose. As we read the stories of the Bible, we seem always to be interrupted by extraneous documentary or didactic material. Narrative and discourse jostle for supremacy in the Gospels. Nearly every book in the Bible exhibits a mixed-genre format in a degree unparalleled in other literature.
The Complete Literary Guide to the Bible, By Leland Ryken, Tremper Longman III
But the literary genres of the Bible are quite diverse and demand vastly different approaches.
More broadly, the Bible’s many books and numerous literary genres are all set within a detailed storyline that must be deeply absorbed.
Can There Be a Christian University? By D. A. Carson, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Fall 1997
And as I explored how the approach to genres by Coyne and McKee fit with the story in the Bible, I found these insights to be very helpful…
Needless to say, no Story ever aligns perfectly with a single Genre, and like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the closer you analyze and pick at a particular Story to classify it, the more it moves away from your microscope.
But with all of the above said, Genres are fluid.
They morph and combine and adapt to the tenor of time. That is, Genres shift and change to reflect the anxieties of the particular historical period. I’ll make a case later on that the thriller is the dominant Story form today because it serves the largest segment of society, those overwhelmed by the threats of modern life.
Robert McKee: The term “ground rules” is inappropriate when talking about any aspect of writing, Inciting Incident included. As I’ve said many times: Art forms have no rules; all art is guided by principles. Rules are rigid. They say, “You must do it this way!” Principles are flexible. They say, “This form underlies the nature of the art and is conventional in practice. However, it may be bent, broken, hidden or turned upside down to serve unconventional uses that may enhance the telling.” Rules are objective applications that require no feeling for the story’s characters or events; their use is justified by their traditional function and their comfortable familiarity to the audience/readers. Principles require a deeply subjective understanding of a technique’s effect forward and backward along the timeline of a story’s events. A principle guides the writer’s use of his materials – motivations, characterizations, coincidences, settings, flash-backs/flash-forwards, set-ups/pay-offs and the like – in terms of their effect on both characters and audience/readers. A rule is microscopic; a principle is macroscopic.
An Interview with Robert McKee, by Debra Eckerling, StoryLink, August 18, 2009
Here’s more on keeping to principles, rather than rules…
Structure is a form, but it needn’t be a box. It’s not something that you have to do. This doesn’t have to happen at page 52. You don’t have to do that at the 75% mark.
All of the stages in the Comic Hero’s Journey happen in most movies, but not at set page numbers or percentage points. These are stations of the cross that may happen at different points or in different sequences in different narratives. So yes, many scripts have the dark night of the soul moment about two-thirds, three-quarters of the way through the script. But it’s not a rule, not obligatory. What’s necessary is following your characters through their story and telling their story authentically and honestly.
The Christian God is not bound by “ground rules,” and so the story in the Bible may not perfectly align with whatever rules we want to lay down.
Some thoughts on the Christian story being in the social/political/status genre…
Here’s some material I also included in Stage Five: The First Action about how the status genre fits in with the inciting incident in the Christian story.
First, let’s turn to a helpful description to get acquainted with the Status Genre…
Status stories are about a change in social position. They’re driven by the nature of the protagonist’s inner conflict. Characters in a Status story WANT validation from others because they NEED esteem and self-respect. In short, their external object of desire is different from their internal need. …. [A] Status story arises from the need for esteem. The Status protagonist’s primary goal isn’t survival, safety, or love. It’s esteem, standing, third-party validation. A firm place in the social order.
SECRETS OF THE STATUS GENRE, by Rachelle Ramirez, Story Grid
So, look at this connection the status genre has with the balance in the story in the Bible…
Status is anchored in self-respect.
SECRETS OF THE STATUS GENRE, by Rachelle Ramirez, Story Grid
In the balance of the Christian story, the status of humans includes being Image Bearers, which includes a deep sense of self-respect.
Let’s look next at how the status story fits with what happened in the inciting incident in the Christian story. An inciting incident challenges the protagonist’s status quo ….
A Status story isn’t going to be incited by a deadly tornado, but by a threat to the protagonist’s position.
SECRETS OF THE STATUS GENRE, by Rachelle Ramirez, Story Grid
Here’s a refresher on how the need and desire to restore the balance is a basic part of story…
But let me try to answer that question by making a simple and clear definition of story itself. Story begins when an event, either by human decision or accident in the universe, radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life, arousing in that character the need to restore the balance of life. To do so, that character will conceive of what is known as an “Object of Desire,” that which they feel they need to put life back into balance. They will then go off into their world, into themselves, in the various dimensions of their existence, seeking that Object of Desire, trying to restore the balance of life, and they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will come from their own inner natures as human beings, their relationships with other human beings, their personal and/or social life, and the physical environment itself. They may or may not achieve that Object of Desire; they may or may not finally be able to restore their life to a satisfying balance.
If an event were to throw your life out of balance, what would you want? What would any human being want? Sovereignty over existence. By throwing life out of balance, the inciting incident arouses the natural human desire to regain control and restore balance.
This analysis by Stephen Prothero fits so well with the shared human need and desire to restore the balance…
What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: something is wrong with the world. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi tells us that life is out of balance. Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells us that there is something rotten not only in the state of Denmark but also in the state of human existence. Hindus say we are living in the kali yuga, the most degenerate age in cosmic history. Buddhists say that human existence is pockmarked by suffering. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic stories tell us that this life is not Eden; Zion, heaven, and Paradise lie out ahead.
Religious folk worldwide agree that something has gone awry. They part company, however, when it comes to stating just what has gone wrong, and they diverge sharply when they move from diagnosing the human problem to prescribing how to solve it.
And Koukl agrees…
It is clear to most people that the world is not the way it ought to be. Something has gone terribly wrong, and everybody knows it.
It makes sense that a big part of what went wrong in the human story was the loss of our status. And so it makes sense to me that there is a universal desire for status…
Decades of research have shown that we’re all deeply affected by status. …. We can all relate to a Status story because status-seeking is in our basic nature, in our biology as social animals.
SECRETS OF THE STATUS GENRE, by Rachelle Ramirez, Story Grid
And let’s visit the great novelist Tom Wolfe, who understands the status genre so well…
Nevertheless, both the exultation and the depression were real emotions, curious emotions, on the face of it, entirely aroused by status concerns. The surprising insinuations of status concerns into every area of life must be understood if one is to understand the nature of the human beast.
Tom Wolfe, The Human Beast, Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities, May/June 2006
That a wound to one’s status, not to one’s body, not to one’s bank account, not to one’s general fortunes in life, that such a wound to one’s status could have such a severe effect upon the psyche of the human beast, is no minor matter. It means that we have come upon a form of anguish that is somehow primal. Even the most trivial and the most unlikely circumstances can be colored by the beast’s constant and unrelenting concern for his own status. Which is to stay, his own standing, his own rank, in the eyes of others and in his own eyes.
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I kept coming upon situations in which I thought surely other emotions would rule, love, if not love, passion, or if not passion, at least lust. Instead, as elsewhere, status ruled.
Tom Wolfe, The Human Beast, Jefferson Lecture, National Endowment for the Humanities, May/June 2006
And the issue of status runs from the inciting incident through to the climax of the Christian story…
Central to the redemptive activity of God is the cross of Christ, for through it Satan is defeated and human beings are enabled to regain the holy, royal status Adam and Eve lost.
The Christian story seems to be a mix of genres…
…disclaimer: this is a sample smidgen.
Here’s some passages from the bible that seems to suggest a mix of genres.
First, here’s a fascinating passage which fits with the Social/Political genre, and, highlights the need and want difference, between God and humans…
“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
And here is the famous passage which fits with the Love genre…
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
And here is one which fits with the Action/Rescue genre…
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
And here are two passages which weave the Society/Political with the War Genre…
They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.
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