Faith living understanding: towards a theatrical model for oral theologizing

Vanhoozer’s theatrical model provides a framework for theology that moves beyond intellectual abstraction to embodied performance in community informed by church tradition and bound by the canon of Scripture. The question I raise is to what extent Vanhoozer’s model might provide a framework for oral theologizing. In order to answer this question, I explore Vanhoozer’s model through the lens of orality studies. Using a tripartite structure of orality - dramatic epistemology, embodied rationality, and communal hermeneutics - I explore a framework for an oral theology by building upon Vanhoozer’s model. I also explore real-life implications for the model using vignettes from my own work. In doing so I show how the communal nature of oral theology might enrich Vanhoozer’s model. Furthermore, oral theology moves beyond Vanhoozer’s understanding of doctrine to suggest that oral theology operates as canonical habitus. Proverbs, songs, story, drama, and dance become expressions of the canonical habitus, or oral doctrine. Beyond illustrating that Vanhoozer’s model is an adequate framework for oral theology, I suggest that oral theology might be considered the proper domain for Vanhoozer’s theodramatic theology in that it moves beyond the written word and the stage to embodied action in the real world. Oral theology is theodramatic in that it is embodied theology in community, and oral theodramatic theology provides a middle way between the fixedness of the biblical text and the perceived ephemerality of orality. Thus, oral theology is faith living understanding – faithfully, contextually, creatively, and communally.