Who We Are
Tim Nichols: pastor, teacher, former seminary instructor
Daniel Zanich
…and some others, who haven’t yet been willing to admit it in public.
What We Have in Common
We are Christian exegetes, theologians, and philosophers. But we are exegetes first, theologians second, and philosophers third, insofar as these triune tasks can properly be separated and ranked.
We are practitioners of the DABAR exegetical method, the as-yet-unnamed biblical theology method employing the same principles, and the Narrative Foundation approach to the overall task of theology, culture, and daily life–another triune set of tasks.
As the eponymous site name might suggest, this site is particularly devoted to the Narrative Foundation, but as we see it, the only fully legitimate way to do that is to build on the other two tasks.
What We Do Here
In the Narrative Foundation approach to theology-culture-life, we undertake only two subjects: God’s Word and God’s World, which is to say, everything. Needless to say, we have our work cut out for us.
We ask of our members that they regularly post a brief treatment of some subject, presented from a Narrative Foundation perspective. (Not that anyone complies, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.) We are our own first pupils, and as practitioners, we see the need first of all to think in this manner as a matter of lifestyle, not just when working on a project. Such a pattern of thoughtful living generates insights in a wide variety of areas. Often these insights are unrefined, and sometimes just plain wrongheaded. Lest we fall in love with all our own ideas, including the stupid ones, we share them with the wider group for discussion and critique. (In all honesty, this usually happens with a phone call, but when we get round to it, we post here.) Brief treatments need not be fully researched and thought out, and should not be taken as authoritative statements; they’re meant to draw fire and generate discussion that will lead us all to a greater understanding.
Of course, longer and more involved work is also called for, and plenty of it. We have a number of projects planned, and when we manage to execute them we’ll put something up on this site so people can find their way to our work. However, we all have very full lives quite apart from the joys of posting on the Internet — one of us is in school, two are engaged full-time at churches, and two more are tentmaking whilst planting churches — so it might be a while. In the meantime, we hope that you’ll find our reflections and discussion helpful.
Credit Where Due
The DABAR method is a development of the “Pedantic Exegetical Outlining Method” pioneered by Dale Wheeler. Dr. John H. Niemelä learned from Dr. Wheeler, and when he began to teach, he substantially refined the pedagogy. Timothy R. Nichols learned from Dr. Niemelä, and later collaborated in further pedagogical refinements.
The as-yet-unnamed biblical theology method uses formal tools created by Mr. Nichols, largely by applying the grounding principles of the DABAR method to the task of tracing and validating theological formulation within a single book, then across multiple books.
The Narrative Foundation approach owes its existence to the collision of Charles Clough and his Biblical Framework teaching with practitioners of the above methods over the course of 120 hours of graduate-level instruction (and the innumerable hours of attendant reading and homework), split up into three, three-credit module classes. The resulting (at this moment, nascent) approach to the theological task owes a great deal to Mr. Clough and his teaching.
However, we felt the need to give our own practice a different name from his, for two reasons. First, we see the DABAR and biblical-theology methods we use as foundational to our own work, which means that we go about the work in a slightly different way than Mr. Clough does in his Framework series. Second, we are probably going to express some opinions with which Mr. Clough will not agree. Charlie’s been very good to us and we love him dearly. We have no wish to saddle him with our views — and whatever attendant criticism — by appropriating his term and calling our views “part of the Framework.” The Biblical Framework series is Charles Clough’s creation. We greatly admire it, and commend it to your attention. The Narrative Foundation material — scanty though it be, at the moment — is ours, albeit with a strong Framework influence. Please don’t lay our views at Mr. Clough’s feet; direct whatever opprobrium seems appropriate to us. That’s what the ‘Comment’ feature is for.
Contact Us
If you’d like to speak to one of us privately, you can use the form below. We look forward to hearing from you.
