Between Truth and Fiction: A Narrative Reader in Literature and Theology

Providing students with an array of original texts spanning from the Bible into the present, Between Truth and Fiction guides the reader through exercises in interpretation and reflection. With each reading chosen to introduce different forms of theological thinking, this volume raises questions about how we read―and how that affects theological thinking and practice. Intentionally blurring the hard distinctions between "truth" and "fiction," the book is divided into genres (with often-surprising examples within): literary theology; fiction; autobiography; lyrics, poetry, and songs; drama; essays and aphorisms; sermons; postcolonial literature; feminist literature; and the postmodern text.

Includes excerpts from the works of Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury, Karl Barth, Dostoevsky, Ian McEwan, Julian of Norwich, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, William Shakespeare, Meister Eckhart, Graham Greene, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Edwards, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Thornton Wilder, Martin Luther King Jr., Salman Rushdie, Virginia Woolf, and Dave Eggers, among others.