Kia-ora Sam, Thanks for your comment.

I would disagree that "our reading is our theology". The act of reading, especially reading a narrative (as we are focusing on here), engages our minds in a completely different way than creating abstracts and explicit frames of reference, which is the task of theology.

Reading, for reading’s sake, engages our ‘heart’ rather than our ‘head’. We imagine ourselves in the story and are changed by it. We participate in the narrative. Try participating in a tome of systematic theology and let me know how it goes!

A critical reading, as I’m defining it here, is not too much different. We are engaging in, and engaged by, the text. The difference is that we are doing so with explicit frames of reference rather than the implicit/subconscious ones held by casual readers. The power of the story is still found in how we emotionally engage in it and how we are changed by participating in it.

So, I wasn’t trying to create a dichotomy in stating the difference between reading and theologising. I was trying to illuminate the above issue, but perhaps I’ve misunderstood the drive of narrative theology. Are you, in your last paragraph, suggesting that the act of reading the text is the same as the act of doing theology? If so, I must disagree: taken to an extreme that would imply that a three year old watching Barney is doing Media Studies!

If, however, our problem lies in my poor definition of reading, I hope this post remedies the issue.