nature
In the current state of scholarship, it is possible to identify three posi-
tions on narrative: a narrative realist position represented by Alistair
MacIntyre; a narrative constructivism expounded by Hayden White; and
a narrativist position represented by Paul Ricoeur. The first position
affirms that culture and history enact a lived narrative standpoint. Since
all subjectivity represents a sequence of actions grounded in intentionality
that forms a narrative, humans are authors and actors of their own narra-
tives, which suggests that the stories are lived before they are told.
MacIntyre indicates that humans are born into a set of pre-given narra-
tives, although they can create something intelligible from these narratives
even within their human limitations. According to White, scholars of reli-
gion construct the narratives that they present as facts from among a vari-
ety of cultural expressions, texts, and events, and they thereby construct
religion by writing about it. This means that the narrative is imposed upon
culture and history from White’s perspective by an authorial voice that is
powerful because of that person’s ability to create the narrative. On the
contrary, Ricoeur thinks that narratives are both lived and told, and not
simply imposed upon a temporal sequence because narrative is a historical
sequence. Ricoeur sees in narrative the importance of time, a central fea-
ture of human experience, that itself becomes human, on the one hand,
when it is articulated through narrative and also attains full meaning when
it becomes a condition of temporal existence. For Ricoeur, narrative can
refigure both the past and the future in the human imagination, and is able
to construct a coherent sense of identity for the narrator. What this means
for scholars of religion is that they work by examining, studying, and
critiquing other narratives from the perspective of their own narratives.
Further reading: MacIntyre (1981); Ricoeur (1984); White (2010)
NATURE
Rivers, mountains, seas, winds, trees, and other phenomena are parts of
nature, which can be defined as the natural world, that in some religious
traditions are considered sacred. The Native American Cree Indians con-
ceive of the four winds, for instance, as brothers that form a circle around
a hunter, with each wind associated with a specific type of weather,
whereas the Navaho refer to wind souls born in a child that give it life
and account for good and bad thoughts. From a cross-cultural perspec-
tive, poets have written about the beauty of nature. In short, nature pro-
vides the physical and spiritual material on which a religious culture can