Sarcasm & Myth

As I was reading Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments today (as anyone is prone to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon) I ran into a small sarcastic quip that I thought again shows Kierkegaard extremely relevant for today. It is his introduction into one of his parables to explain how "the god" lisps to his loved one in order to have a reciprocal love:

"Suppose there was a king who loved a maiden of lowly station in life - but the reader may already have lost patience when he hears that our analogy begins like a fairy talk and is not at all systematic."

It seems that the problems we have today with systematic theologians has a long history (with Philosophical Fragments written in the first half of the 19th century).

Even then history was often considered more "truthful" than parable (or dun...dun...dun..."myth") and that "husking" the narratives of Scripture to get at the "kernels" is what is really important.

What a mean and petty God we serve who gave us a book that is mostly narrative and only partly propositional so that we have to spend all of our time finding out how to reduce the narratives to propositions...Wait a minute...