The Incarnation of the Word
The path of God’s redemptive work has always been: “words carrying forms, forms generating theology, and theology shaping faith structures.”
The Incarnation of the Word
The path of God’s redemptive work has always been: “words carrying forms, forms generating theology, and theology shaping faith structures.”
1. Form is Content
God’s truth reveals itself not only through “what is said” but also through “how it is said.”
God has never merely communicated through “propositions” but has shaped the structure and perception of human faith through the establishment, evolution, and refraction of forms.
The most primal divine revelation was “the Word” (logos):
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light”;
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
However, this “Word” was not an abstract “sound” but gradually entered “linguistic structures, textual forms, and literary genres”:
Genesis → Historical narrative
Psalms → Prayer, poetry
Proverbs → Aphorisms, parallel structures
Prophetic Books → Laments, oracles, parables
Gospels → Biographical narratives, testimonies
Pauline Epistles → Apologetic letters, logical discourse
Revelation → Symbolism, apocalyptic literature
These genres are not mere accessories; they are carefully chosen linguistic vessels by God, used to convey different dimensions of spiritual reality. This demonstrates that form itself is part of revelation.
2. Form Generates Theology
Once revelatory texts take specific forms, these forms are gradually understood, interpreted, categorized, and transmitted by people – this is the stage where “theology” is born.
For example:
Narrative form + Salvation history → Developed into “Historical Salvation Theology” (Heilsgeschichte)
Poetic form + Soul’s struggles → Developed into “Spiritual Formation Theology”
Epistolary form + Logical argumentation → Developed into “Systematic Theology”
Oracular form + Eschatological symbolism → Developed into “Revelation and Eschatology”
In other words, theology is not “extracted” directly from revelation but is an understanding of revelation that develops from the “formal structures of the text.”
Therefore, if you give language a new formal structure, you are creating a new theological structure.
3. Theology Shapes Faith Structure
Theology is never an ivory tower intellectual game; it reshapes the believer’s “way of perceiving faith.”
Systematic Theology → Logic, propositions, adherence to rules
Charismatic Theology → Emotion, experience, manifestation of power
Reformed Theology → Covenant, predestination, a faith shaped by repentance
Feminist Theology → The cry of the oppressed, identity construction
In other words, the theology you provide to people will dictate the kind of faith life they live. Because theology is not about “what to believe” but “how you imagine your relationship with this God.”
The essence of this path is the progressive logic of “the Incarnation of the Word“: from the eternal Word → entering linguistic forms → becoming faith structures. Thus, the form of the text itself already bears His glory and calling.
What I must do now is respond to this calling.
Stylistic Breakthroughs: Vessels for the Sacred Voice
Throughout history, truly revelatory works — those with transformative power — often derive their impact more from “stylistic breakthroughs” than from purely “intellectual innovation.”
Stylistic Breakthroughs: Vessels for the Sacred Voice
Throughout history, truly revelatory works — those with transformative power — often derive their impact more from “stylistic breakthroughs” than from purely “intellectual innovation.”
Many significant theological movements, too, haven’t necessarily created entirely new “truths,” but rather rediscovered, re-emphasized, and clarified ancient ones. However, the profound influence of these “returns” and “clarifications” often stems from their being encapsulated within innovative “styles”:
Augustine’s Confessions: The first “autobiography.” Before this, philosophical and religious works were largely abstract speculations or historical records, lacking deep exploration of an individual soul’s struggles, internal conflicts, and the embodied experience of God’s redemption. Confessions integrated theological truth into the living story of a person’s life in the first person, allowing readers to see universal human predicaments and the specific manifestation of divine grace.
Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses: An “action manifesto.” It wasn’t an abstruse philosophical treatise but rather a concise, direct, and challenging “thesis” that sharply critiqued contemporary church corruption and articulated a clear stance. Its very style carried a call to action, spreading rapidly and igniting the Reformation.
Tyndale’s Bible Translation: Translated the Latin Bible into “the common tongue that a plowboy could read,”breaking the Church’s monopoly on sacred texts and allowing ordinary people direct access to and understanding of God’s word. This “popularized” style had a far greater impact than any abstract theological debate, as it directly changed how faith was received and the relationship between believers and God.
Barth’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans: A “Gothic, explosive, disjunctive style.” Barth’s theology, with its uncompromising, unpolished, and tension-filled language and structure, powerfully challenged liberal theology, refocusing attention on God’s transcendence and revelation, and rejecting all easy and superficial understandings.
C.S. Lewis’s and Tolkien’s Fairy Tales/Fantasy Literature: Their works are not direct theological treatises, but through the styles of allegory, symbolism, and narrative, they presented profound theological concepts in an accessible and engaging way to the general public, even non-believers. They touched hearts through “imagination” rather than “logical reasoning,” achieving an invisible dissemination of theological thought.
When God’s word and sense of presence are carried by a new style that resonates with the times, it can break old modes of perception, creating a sense of freshness and immediacy. This allows readers to feel as if they are hearing that ancient voice and experiencing its vibrant presence for the first time, thus generating an immense “revelatory impact.”
How to Re-present Jesus
Can language truly bear the personhood of Christ? Has anyone genuinely touched the inner being of Jesus through words? Church history seems never to have fully resolved this tension.
How to Re-present Jesus
Can language truly bear the personhood of Christ? Has anyone genuinely touched the inner being of Jesus through words? Church history seems never to have fully resolved this tension.
The Gospel writers‘ portrayals of Christ are largely “eyewitness accounts,” focusing on His words, actions, and miracles. They exercise extreme restraint in “psychological depiction,” even offering almost exclusively objective descriptions of “Jesus’ emotions before His Passion” (such as the prayer in Gethsemane and His sweat like drops of blood), without revealing the unfolding process of His inner struggle.
Ancient theologians like Augustine, Athanasius, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas focused on the logic of the Incarnation, the mystery of the two natures of Christ, the structure of salvation, and original sin. They rarely touched upon the unfolding of “Christ as a human being with complex humanity.”
Modern and contemporary writers and poets have made occasional attempts that come close, such as Dostoevsky, Pascal, and T.S. Eliot. However, their empathy might have remained at an aesthetic or philosophical level, or fallen into humanistic misinterpretations, diminishing Christ’s divinity and reducing Him to a “great moral exemplar” rather than “God.” This has led to each believer internalizing a Christ image according to their own will, disregarding Christ’s otherness.
To accomplish this, one must be a theologian, yet theologians are too far removed from “character development” and lack an understanding of narrative tension and psychological complexity. This person must be a literary artist, but literary artists are too far removed from theology, unable to grasp Christ’s two natures and the foundations of revelation.
Therefore, this person must be a theologian and a literary artist, but, more importantly, someone whose life has been revealed and transformed by Christ.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” (Wittgenstein)
God created light through language. Thus, language as a vessel is more important than light. God endowed humans with the capacity for language, allowing us to use it to look up to Him in prayer and inquiry; He also used a Bible to carry His revelation, leading us to contemplate truth. Language and written words are humanity’s dignity and the core of civilization; each person’s life is a feast of expression.
Therefore, language itself is God’s ultimate self-revelation, and like the flesh, it is also a “vessel”—this is precisely the “Incarnation.” If this is the case, why can’t the person who is revealed bridge the two, and directly express Christ’s humanity through language? If language can be used by people, then Christ’s personhood can also be empathized with.
Is paradox the ultimate expression of thought through language? I know language cannot contain God. However, to apply a classic literary judgment—the more adjectives, the lower the quality; the more verbs, the higher the quality—the more one attempts to describe and define who Jesus is, the easier it is to diminish Him (this is what contemporary gospel popular songs love to do); the more one reveals His “choices within paradox,” the more one can perceive who He is.
So I don’t need to write about Christ using definitional and descriptive language. Instead, I will use paradox itself as a writing strategy, writing about layers of unfolding relationships, choices, and emotional tension (emotions, will, memory, sorrow, love, repentance, waiting, loyalty, knowing deeply without speaking…), allowing Christ to be “presented” as a person of paradox.
If the Christian faith is an edifice of paradox, then as long as one can perceive the tension of paradox, one can encounter this human Christ in their subjective heart through the “personal tension” of the Incarnate God re-presented by “Incarnation-like words.” Historically, those who grasped the essence of God often fell into speechlessness. But what I aim to do is simply offer a path, a path to encounter Christ as the “Other.” How far people can walk on this path, how deeply they can perceive, is not my mission, nor can I decide it.
To achieve this, one must possess ultimate empathy, insight, a thorough understanding of theology, mastery of linguistic expression, and a self-sacrificing will.
The Predicament of Karl Barth
In principle, a theological system inevitably shapes a corresponding way of life for faith and church practice. This is evident historically:
The Predicament of Karl Barth
In principle, a theological system inevitably shapes a corresponding way of life for faith and church practice. This is evident historically:
Augustinian Theology → Monasticism, Inner Struggle, Grace-Centered
Catholic Scholasticism → Institutionalization, Sacrament-Centered, Hierarchical Structure
Lutheranism → Theology of Suffering, Mystical Grace, Two Kingdoms Doctrine
Calvinism → Divine Calling, Covenant Ethics, Church Discipline, Cultural Transformation (Puritan Tradition)
Anabaptist Theology → Radical Discipleship, Non-Violence, Communal Pious Living
Liberal Theology → Moralism, Cultural Gospel, Social Reformism
Pentecostal Theology → Experientialism, Charismaticism, Individual Renewal over Structure
Therefore, when we ask, “What kind of faith life did Barth’s Neo-Orthodox theology bring about?” the question itself demands a practical test of theology. Although Barth’s theology aimed to bring God’s “otherness” back to center stage and combat cheap grace, why does contemporary church life still proliferate with cheap grace, and a worse “mixture of consumerism and spiritual laziness”?
1. Theology and Life: Did Barth’s “Spiritual Breach” Affect His Theological Authority?
“Consistency between word and deed” has always been the foundation of spiritual authority. However, Barth’s decades-long extramarital relationship with his assistant was not only publicly known but also “justified” as academic collaboration. This was not a “private moral issue” but a continuous, unrepentant impropriety that caused emotional distress to his wife, and even violated the most basic standards of “repentance,” “obedience,” and “being taught in grace” within his own theology.
This caused a disconnect between his theology and his life. While he extolled God’s sovereignty and divine otherness, he did not genuinely live out the discipleship of “obedience to Christ” in his own life. This also led to a rupture in his spiritual authority, as his theology did not permeate the lives of ordinary laypeople because he was not a witness whose “life could be imitated.”
2. Did Modern Theology Initiate an “Academic Model” of “Piety-Theology Separation” Through Barth?
Although Barth fiercely attacked liberalism, he did not completely return to the apostolic tradition where discipleship and theology are integrated. He did not establish a new “theological community” but maintained an “academic + individual faith” framework. Furthermore, his theology, being profound and voluminous, ironically provided legitimacy for modern seminaries to treat theology as an “intellectual game.”
This created a new “vacuum”: people could study theology without necessarily loving Christ or upholding the earthly life of the church.
3. Dilemma: The Abstract “Otherness of God”
Barth opposed any “pursuit of faith” that originates from human subjectivity. He insisted that faith is not a subjective choice but a factual calling. So, even if you, as an “individual,” respond, it is not a response initiated by you, but one generated by God within you.
So, where is this channel of response? Is it the “church”? The “Word”? “Others”? Or “the depths of the heart”? Barth’s tension lies in this: He denied that human experience, history, or culture are channels of revelation; yet he was unwilling to move towards mysticism or radical individual existentialism; ultimately, he retreated to: “God speaks freely through the means God has chosen.” Therefore, for Barth, the response is individual, but not subjectivist; it is absolute, but not actively constructed by you; it is practically embodied, but can never become institutionalized experience.
How, then, can a God who is an “absolute other” be truly responded to by a “relatively weak” individual? Does the response then become “human work” again? Is it only when “God responds to God on my behalf within me” that human subjectivity can be avoided?
This is precisely why Barth was unwilling to move towards pietism, unwilling to acknowledge existentialism, and yet found it impossible to have a concrete method of practicing his faith.
Releasing Tension Through Non-Fiction Narrative
I’ve come to realize that the theological tensions present in Barth’s work cannot be reconciled through logic. My approach, therefore, is not to “resolve” paradoxes, but rather to allow them to unfold as an ontological dynamic tension within a non-fiction life narrative.
Releasing Tension Through Non-Fiction Narrative
I’ve come to realize that the theological tensions present in Barth’s work cannot be reconciled through logic. My approach, therefore, is not to “resolve” paradoxes, but rather to allow them to unfold as an ontological dynamic tension within a non-fiction life narrative.
My writing method doesn’t offer a harmonizing theological explanation (i.e., it doesn’t solve the “otherness vs. response” problem through logic), nor does it resort to pure individual empiricism or pietism (avoiding the reduction of faith to a purely subjective, manipulable psychological phenomenon). Instead, it documents the narrative truth of “God actively intervening in the structure of human life, and humanity struggling with their whole being to respond.” In this way, the tension between “otherness” and “sovereign presence” is not weakened; it becomes the very fabric and ultimate purpose of the text’s structure.
This is the new theological literary structure I aim to create: in a non-fiction narrative, God’s sovereignty is revealed through historical events, other people, conflicts, and heartbreak. The individual does not subjectively interpret all of this, but rather is revealed, renewed, and shaken in the process, ultimately being compelled to respond with their whole being. In other words, it is about “witnessing” God’s work within human subjectivity through life narratives, rather than humans subjectively constructing faith.
Distinguishing My Approach from Barth’s
Therefore, my distinction from Barth lies in this:
Barth’s theology remains sermon-centric. Although he rejects experience, he confines “response” to the fact of faith. My approach, however, is a narrative life theology. It carries the tension between response and manifestation within “real events,” focusing on the specific manifestation of the “incarnation” within an individual’s life journey.
This is an experiential theology that is non-empiricist, and a subjective writing that is non-subjectivist. It maintains reverence for God’s transcendence and “otherness,” not attempting to fully incorporate it into a system with human reason. At the same time, it avoids the problems of abstraction and impracticality that Barth’s highly intellectualized theology might lead to.
Implications for Institutional Experience
However, this does indeed mean that my writing is likely to be similarly incapable of becoming an institutional experience.
Perhaps in the deeply de-institutionalized, fragmented late-modern, or even eschatological stage, when the wheat and the tares are about to be separated, there is no longer a need for any institutionalization—only for the authentic testimony of individual lives.
Because no system, denomination, or institution can claim, “We are the wheat.” The true church is simply those who, after being harvested, stand in glory, having used their lives to bear witness to Christ.
The History of Text and the Logos
The role of “text” in church history is shifting from “conveying God” to “carrying humanity’s spiritual response”—this is the gradual unfolding of the “incarnational logic” within the structure of human language.
The History of Text and the Logos
The role of “text” in church history is shifting from “conveying God” to “carrying humanity’s spiritual response”—this is the gradual unfolding of the “incarnational logic” within the structure of human language.
This trend can be described as: Text evolving from a vessel of revelation to an existential witness of humanity’s response to truth.
Stage One: Text = “Divine Revelation” (Apostolic Age)
The primary function of text was to directly record God’s words. Biblical authors were “moved by the Holy Spirit to speak from God.” Text served as the initial expression of God’s revelation to humanity; the emphasis was not on writing skill, but on the authority and purity of the revelation.
Stage Two: Text = “Tool for Defining Theological Truth” (Patristic and Scholastic Periods)
Facing heresies, philosophical challenges, and Greek culture, text took on the responsibility of systematizing, philosophizing, and rationalizing the content of faith, leading to the development of the Trinity, ontology, and Christology. Text became a “sharp weapon for guarding doctrinal boundaries,” yet the very essence of language was squeezed into logic and concepts, serving the system rather than the soul.
Stage Three: Text = “Faith Mobilization and Identity Construction” (Reformation and Enlightenment Crossroads)
Luther and Calvin, through pamphlets, treatises, and public confessions of faith, promoted popular confession and the awakening of individual spiritual subjectivity. Bible translation became a revolutionary step in the “democratization of church language.” Text was no longer merely proclaiming revelation or defining doctrine, but became a medium for mobilizing collective action among believers.
Stage Four: Text = “Cultural Battlefield for Faith Against Modernity” (Modern Apologetics, Neo-Orthodoxy)
Barth, Lewis, Tillich, and others strived to re-establish theology within modern philosophical and cultural frameworks. Text became a “form of response to rationalism, skepticism, and consumer culture.” Its essence was to re-articulate the rationality and necessity of faith in a disordered world.
Stage Five: Text = “Existential Record” of Encountering the Incarnate God (The Stage I Am Entering)
No longer about proclaiming the gospel, defending the gospel, or mobilizing for the gospel, but using language to record the process of a genuine encounter with the Logos, allowing my soul’s struggles, waiting, repentance, prayer, and yearning to become the very substance of the text. The act of writing itself becomes a sacred act of responding to salvation, and the literary style returns to the soul’s cry found in the Psalms, Job, Lamentations, and Confessions.
Summary:
1. From the “Logos” becoming the completion of text, serving as the written form of revelation.
2. “Logos-become-text” transforming into a formatted text for defining the “Logos.”
3. “Logos-become-text” becoming a trumpet call for promoting “faith.”
4. “Logos-become-text” becoming a defensive wall against “unbelief.”
5. “Logos-become-text” becoming a re-presentational witness to the “incarnation.”
Therefore, this final step is not about literary innovation or stylistic innovation, but rather inheriting the entire historical evolution of text within the church, completing a “soul-level closed loop” in this evolution.
De Persona Dei
The Christian view of history and the world is profoundly shaped by the concept of “two kingdoms,” a thread running from Augustine’s City of God through the Reformation era with Luther and Calvin.
De Persona Dei
The Christian view of history and the world is profoundly shaped by the concept of “two kingdoms,” a thread running from Augustine’s City of God through the Reformation era with Luther and Calvin.
There are two kingdoms in the cosmos: the kingdom of Adam, the realm of the flesh, and the City of God, the kingdom of Christ, the heavenly Jerusalem. These two kingdoms overlap, and through Christ’s death and resurrection, the second kingdom expands within the hearts of those still dwelling in the first. This overlap creates an inner battle, a clash between heaven and earth within each Christians.
Thus, after De Civitate Dei was written, the natural next step would be De Persona Dei—a work that traces the inner battlefield of these two kingdoms through the non-fictional lives of individuals.
The Micro-theology of Redeeming History—The Individual
The vast history of a Christian’s soul is the history of Christ’s journey on earth. To write the struggle of a real Christian is to extend the narrative of Christ. The words of someone who has truly wrestled with God, been broken, and healed carry an inherent spiritual authenticity. Such non-fiction is not merely “documenting someone” but allowing the Word to pass through them. This is not the literary “first person” but a spiritual writing of “the Word made flesh.”
The question, then, is whether there exists an expressive form—using “non-fictional lives” and “authentic language”—that directly re-presents the truth of “the Word made flesh,” a form that has been overlooked or underutilised in two millennia of Christian history.
In other words, for two thousand years, Christianity has wrestled between “theological systematicity” and “literary narrativity”, but few have treated “individual non-fiction narrative” as a theological methodology in itself.
Abstract Self vs. The Person of God
The Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries) marked a turning point in Western thought. It inherited Christian humanism (e.g., “God-given reason”) and advanced tolerance and democracy, but its byproduct was the reshaping of humanity into an “autonomous, rational, self-contained modern self,” diminishing or erasing dependence on God, creating a spiritual void. Humanity became a “self-luminous creature,” severed from the dynamic connection with the incarnate Christ. This void has been amplified in postmodern fragmentation and technological rationalism. Yet, many contemporary “spiritual” emphases fall into self-indulgence or self-deception—a “drunken” complacency rather than true spirituality. This reflects the Enlightenment’s legacy: rational autonomy has evolved into emotional autonomy, commodifying or individualizing spirituality, ignoring God’s sovereign intervention.
To mend this fracture, we must recenter “the person of God”—not the Enlightenment’s rational self, but a soul interacting with God’s grace and kingdom-building through authentic individual narratives. This responds not only to Enlightenment humanism but also transcends depersonalized views of history. Communism’s myth of “the people creating history” replaces the individual with the collective, overlooking God’s work through specific lives (e.g., Moses, Paul) in advancing redemption. Elitism, conversely, confines meaning to a few “rational” individuals, contradicting Christianity’s doctrine of “all made in God’s image.” Through non-fictional narratives—texts of pain, error, cries, and paradoxes that re-present Christ’s suffering and resurrection—we can re-present the truth of “the Word made flesh,” dismantling both collective myths and elitist biases.
Here, redefining “spirituality” is crucial. In non-fictional narrative, “spirituality” is not an abstract emotion or self-indulgence but the display of God’s sovereign intervention through a real life’s brokenness and renewal (e.g., the paradox of repentance, the struggle of submission). It distinguishes true spirituality (God-centered, whole-person response) from false spirituality (self-projection, emotional complacency). For instance, a narrative might depict an individual’s shift from “drunken” complacency to theological depth, akin to the biblical critique of false prophets (Jeremiah 23:16), emphasizing that spirituality stems from God’s Word, not self-projection. This avoids the subjectivism of “personal devotional experience,” using narrative as a “test of spiritual authenticity.” An individual’s life struggle becomes an experimental ground for verifying true versus false spirituality.
A Breakthrough in the Existing Narrative Styles
To “re-present” the incarnate God through “incarnational” writing—this is neither literature, nor theology, nor testimony. It is a new genre that uses a real life to respond to a real God. True Christians must attempt to write their life’s non-fiction narrative in this era, because Christ can only be “revealed” through the tension of a real life, not recreated in fiction.
A Breakthrough in the Existing Narrative Styles
To “re-present” the incarnate God through “incarnational” writing—this is neither literature, nor theology, nor testimony. It is a new genre that uses a real life to respond to a real God. True Christians must attempt to write their life’s non-fiction narrative in this era, because Christ can only be “revealed” through the tension of a real life, not recreated in fiction.
Breaking the Tradition of Fictional Primacy in “Spiritual Writing”
Fiction is when man creates a world; it is “man playing God.” Non-fiction is God’s history in which “God speaks in man’s world.” When a true Christian writes non-fiction, it is a response to the script written by God Himself, with man simply faithfully recording how Christ “appears” in a mortal’s story.
The image of Christ cannot be fictionalized. The Christ figures in novels are not the self-existent Creator and cannot bear the weight of the real cross—the logic was wrong from the very beginning. A novelist cannot “imitate” Christ without overstepping boundaries, which becomes sacrilege or an empty symbolic game. C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Marilynne Robinson, and Flannery O’Connor have made immense contributions as “Christian writers”; yet their novels imagine Christ on a level of “vague resonance” and have never used “first-hand material” like “how I was torn down, rebuilt, wept, and resurrected in my walk with Christ.”
“Writing about Jesus” can only be done through empathy, not through recreation. True Christians who are “connected” to Christ are the real first-hand material. Shaped by the indwelling Holy Spirit, their lives are themselves a history of their relationship with Christ, and they are the ones who will ultimately enter that “Trinitarian fellowship.”
Therefore, empathy is not a “personality trait” for them, but the fundamental essence of their faith. When Jesus became incarnate, He did not abstractly “fulfill His mission”; He entered into our suffering, our sin, and our shame. When He saw the crowds, that they were harassed and helpless, He had compassion on them. He understood us not through doctrine, but through tears. And the life of a prophet is to stand between God and man, tearing open God’s heart for man to see, and carrying man’s sin back to God. Without empathy, a person cannot endure the fire in between.
Breaking the Low-Level and Formulaic Nature of “Testimony Literature”
Most modern “Christian non-fiction” works are functional testimonies (“I was saved,” “I was healed”), evangelistic toolkits (“God loves you, look at my story”), or devotional exhortations (“I walked through a valley, praise the Lord”). These texts have a very poor narrative layer, substituting partial experience for holistic revelation, utility for theology, and shrinking faith into a “tool.” As a result, there is almost no deep narrative recreation of theology, history, culture, or civilization in Christian non-fiction. The worst part is that this mode of discourse is entirely self-centered, using a psychological, autobiographical, and feel-good writing style, lacking the narrative coordinates of “God—history—universe—redemption—my place.”
Therefore, no matter how widespread these testimonies are, they lack the power to penetrate culture. They cannot address the foundational questions of the human narrative (existence, time, meaning, history, value, order); they only “fill emotional holes,” rather than “rebuilding the narrative framework.”
Because the false Christian writes about themselves using “God,” only the true Christian will use “themselves” to write about Christ. The former speaks about themselves in the name of God, while the latter offers themselves up, a life being written.
This is precisely a powerful correction against modern church culture and the “manipulation of self-narrative.”