One major caveat here on the presentation's primary limitation: Exploring the biblical narrative is like an ice-cream lover being given a $500 gift certificate at Baskin Robbins. The flavors are endless and each worth savoring. But in the lecture—as you'd expect—all you get is a feeble taste-test of 5 or 6 flavors with one those wimpy pink plastic spoons. What a tease! Among the excluded topics are: The nature of the atonement, decision-making, community life, spirituality, character development, cultural engagement, along with moral & political philosophy, suffering and theodicy, etc. This just points out the need to follow the lecture with one of the many books listed on the handout.

Life is Shaped by Story

All of human life is shaped by some story. A. MacIntyre offers an amusing story to show how particular events receive their meaning in the context of a story (cf. After Virtue [Notre Dame Press, 1984] 210). He imagines himself at a bus stop when a young man standing next to him says, “The name of the common wild duck is histrionicus, histrionicus, histrionicus.” One understands the meaning of the sentence. But why on earth is he saying it in the first place? This particular action can only be understood if it is placed in a broader framework of meaning, a story that renders the saying comprehensible. Three stories could make this particular incident meaningful. The young man has mistaken the man standing next to him for another person he saw yesterday in the library who asked, “Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common duck?” Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who is helping him deal with his painful shyness. The psychotherapist urges him to talk to strangers. The young man asks, “What shall I say?” The psychotherapist says, “Oh, anything at all.” Or again he is a spy who has arranged to meet his contact at this bus stop. The code that will reveal his identity is the statement about the Latin name of the duck. The meaning of the encounter at the bus stop depends on which story shapes it; in fact, each story will give the event a different meaning.

Likewise with our lives, “The way we understand human life depends on what conception we have of the human story. What is the real story of which my life story is a part” (The Gospel in a Pluralist Society [Eerdmans, 1989] 15). What L. Newbigin is referring to here is not a linguistically constructed narrative world that we fabricate to give meaning to our lives, but an interpretation of cosmic history that gives meaning to human life. N. T. Wright says that a story is “the best way of talking about the way the world actually is” (The New Testament and the People of God [SPCK, 1992] 40).

For those of us living in the West, basically two stories are on offer: the biblical and the humanist. As Newbigin points out: “In our contemporary culture . . . two quite different stories are told. One is the story of evolution, of the development of species through the survival of the strong, and the story of the rise of civilization, our type of civilization, and its success in giving humankind mastery of nature. The other story is the one embodied in the Bible, the story of creation and fall, of God’s election of a people to be the bearers of his purpose for humankind, and of the coming of the one in whom that purpose is to be fulfilled. These are two different and incompatible stories” (15-16). Read more.

Michael W. Goheen, Reading the Bible as One Story, Catalyst 33.3 (March 2007).

Video of two conference lectures, "Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story," given by Dr. Goheen, September 2006 (in Real Audio format): Lecture 1, Lecture 2  More on Mike's book The Drama of Scripture is found below.

In lecture 2 Mike refers to "the Contemporary Testimony" from the Christian Reformed Church entitled "Our World Belongs to God" 

The Bible as a Whole is Best Read as a Narrative

"The Bible is fundamentally a story. While is does contain a wide range of other genres, including poems, laws, prophecies, lyrics, proverbs, letters, apocalypses, and more, at base the Bible is a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end."

John Stackhouse, Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 181. Amazon

"So I invite you to read the Bible, not for bits and pieces of dry information, but as the story of God’s embrace of the world told in poetic images and types.”

Robert Webber, The Divine Embrace (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 128.

"Nothing comes to us apart from the form. The Bible, the entire Bible, is 'relentlessly narratival.' And we cannot change or discard the form without changing or distorting the content... The way the Bible is written is every bit as important as what is written in it: narrative--this huge, capacious story that pulls us into its plot and shows us our place in its development from beginning to ending. It takes the whole Bible to read any part of the Bible."

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 47-48. Amazon. See also Peterson's "Living into God's Story"

“The biblical gospel is not a collection of timeless statements such as God is love. It is a narrative about things God has done."

John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume 1: Israel’s Gospel (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 31. See OT Resources

Consider what it means to get to know a person. One can read an account of his character and career such as might be embodied in an obituary notice. But in order to know the person one must see how she meets situations, relates to other people, acts in time of crisis and in times of peace. It is in narrative that character is revealed, and there is no substitute for this.  

If we follow these suggestions we get a picture of the Christian life as one in which we live in the biblical story as part of the community whose story it is, find in the story the clues to knowing God as his character becomes manifest in the story, and from within that indwelling try to understand and cope with the events of our time and the world about us and so carry the story forward.

Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 99. Amazon

I lived and taught in India for a number of years. On one occasion I was teaching a seminar over a weekend for Christian professionals in Andhra Pradesh, on one of my favorite themes--the ethical teaching of the Old Testament and how it applies to Christian living today.  After the first session a man came to speak to me, his eyes gleaming. ''I'm so glad you are teaching us from the Old Testament," he said, "for I became a Christian through reading the Old Testament." Now you don't often hear that, as an Old Testament teacher, so I asked him to tell me his story.

He was then a lecturer in engineering at the local university. But he had grown up among the despised Dalit (outcaste) community in his vil­lage, and his whole family had suffered greatly at the hands of the high­-caste Hindus in the village—all kinds of harassment, violence and injus­tice. He had a great thirst for revenge, and so he worked very hard at school, to get to university, so that he could get a job with some influence and power, and then turn the tables on his enemies. That, he said, was his deliberate intention.

The day he arrived at the university, he found a Bible on his bed in his room in the student hostel. It was in Telugu (his state language), and it had been left there by some Christian students of the Union of Evangel­ical Students of India. He had never read one before, though he knew that it was the Christians' holy book. He opened it at random and started reading the story of Naboth and Ahab in 1 Kings 21. He was amazed. The story had so many familiar elements. "This was my story," he said. His family had also experienced theft of land, false accusations, murders, the brutality of the powerful against the ordinary people.

But then he read on and was amazed to read about another man called Elijah, who, in the name of some God called Yahweh (or whatever the translation of the personal name of the God of Old Testament Israel is in the Telugu Bible), denounced King Ahab, and said that he would be judged and punished by this God. This was astounding, my friend said. Here was a god who took the side of the suffering ones and condemned the government and the powerful for their wicked deeds. "I never knew such a god existed" were his exact words to me, which I have never forgotten.

My friend had millions of gods within Hinduism to choose from. He knew the names of many gods. But he had never heard of such a god as he was reading about in this Bible. Here was a god quite unlike anything he had met before in his own religion.

So he went back to the beginning of the book and started reading the Bible through from Genesis. He grew even more amazed. "This god thinks of everything!" he said, as he read through the laws of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. He was impressed by the character of the God of Israel, with his concern for the poor and needy, his passion for justice, and so on. Exactly the kind of god he was looking for in his own thirst for justice.

When he reached Isaiah and started to read of the love of God (in Is 43, for example), he was not so pleased, he told me, for he wanted a god who would give him vengeance on his oppressors, not love them! How­ever, just about that time, the Christian students visited him, and like Philip in Acts 8, led him from the text of Isaiah to Jesus, and eventually led him to faith and conversion.

What struck me in this man's testimony was this. It was precisely the story of the Old Testament that demonstrated the identity of the God of the Bible. Furthermore, he found great surprise, but also great reassur­ance, in aspects of the identity and character of the Old Testament God that some Christians find disturbing. But essentially he found salvation not because he found "a god" (for he had plenty of gods already), but be­cause he learned the true identity of the true and living God, through his encounter with the text of the Bible.

Christopher J. H. Wright, Salvation Belongs to Our God: Celebrating the Bible's Central Story (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2007), 47-49.  Amazon

To Play our Role in God’s World We Need to Know the Story...

               ...and Where We Fit In

Making Meaning

To put it another way, if there is no point in the story as a whole, there is no point in my own action. If the story is meaningless, any action of mine is meaningless.  ...so the answer to the question "Who am I?" can only be given if we ask "What is my story?" and that can only be answered if there is an answer to the further question, "What is the whole story of which my story is a part?" To indwell the Bible is to live with an answer to those questions, to know who I am and who is the One to whom I am finally accountable.

Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 100.  Amazon

Finding Our Place on the Map

We cannot determine how God would have us live unless we understand where in the story we find ourselves, or, to switch metaphors, where on the map we stand.

We will understand and live out our ethos best if we understand where we are in the great narrative of the Bible and thus understand our parts in God's plan. In the early days of shopping malls, painted plywood signs were located at each entrance to guide shoppers to their desired destinations. Invariably, however, some unhelpful youngster would soon scrape off a crucial datum on that map: the circular Day-Glo orange sticker that told a shopper, "You are here." Without this crucial orientation, the rest of the map was virtually useless, open to a wide range of misinterpretations and thus misguided shoppers. Fundamental errors in Christian ethics, likewise, have been made by failing to take seriously the narrative shape of the Christian scheme of things, and also by failing to locate oneself properly within that story. We need to comprehend our context as a condition for deciding properly about how to act in this context.

John Stackhouse, Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 182. Amazon

Inscribing Ourselves into God's Story

Knowing the story of God in the world is crucial if we are to participate in its ongoing expression in our own day, or, as Joel Green explains, to inscribe ourselves in the story. He writes:

Tales of suspense and mystery often move their readers to a heightened sense of anticipation by withholding what will happen. Even as the last chapter is begun, readers are often able to visualize multiple paths to the resolution of the plot. This is not the case with the narrative of Scripture. In Scripture, what will happen in the end is not hidden. The narrative world cast in Scripture is comprehensive in its grasp of history, holding in one hand creation and in the other new creation. Creation, fall, the covenant with Noah, divine election of Israel, exile and promise, the advent of Jesus Christ, the outpouring of the Spirit, the ongoing formation and mission of God’s people—all of these are central features of this narrative, and all are oriented toward the final resolution of God’s purpose in the eschaton, the End. In the narrative of Scripture, we know what will happen in the End ("We have read the last chapter"), but this does not neuter this narrative of any sense of drama or suspense. Questions remain. In particular, still being written is the narrative of how God’s purpose will come to fruition; the question remains, Who will serve this purpose, and who will oppose it?

To put this somewhat differently, we find in narrative the possibility and power of participation. The narrative of Scripture projects itself beyond the pages of the New Testament, with the expectation of its continuing to be written as the ongoing history of God’s people, “until kingdom come.” On the one hand, this helps to locate the importance of the church, its life and mission, within the work of God, which is prior to the Scriptures but which is articulated and exhibited in its pages, and which is served among the people of God in the world beyond the apostolic period sketched in the New Testament.

The story of God is still being written. Our present is given meaning by the past work of God, and God’s future casts its beacon backward so as to remind us how our present life and witness have consequences into eternity.  On the other hand, this perspective presses the importance of the church’s coherence with the biblical drama, its mandate to continue this particular narrative in particular ways. It is, after all, the story of God, not our story. With so many chapters having already been written, and with the final chapter already firmly in place, the options for intervening material are limited, if we are to continue this story. Accordingly, our task is to align ourselves with these landmarks on the biblical terrain—or, better, to write ourselves, to inscribe ourselves, into the biblical narrative, so that our sense of past, present, and future is congruous with the story of the universe found in Scripture. Christian faith is lived at the confluence of personal, ecclesial, and biblical narrative.

Joel Green in Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation, editors Joel B. Green and Michael Pasquarello III (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 32-33. Amazon

Living within the Unfolding Drama

We need to know where the story has been and where it is going if we are properly to play out our roles. An analogy from British New Testament scholar Tom Wright is helpful here. The story is likened to a grand Drama. It moves from creation’s harmony (Act 1), to the disruption wrought by the fall (Act 2), through the dynamics of restoration including Abraham and ancient Israel (Act 3), and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection (Act 4), to the era of the Spirit and the church (Act 5), and on finally to the Consummation (Act 6), when all will be set right in the new heavens and the new earth. I have added a couple comments in brackets to distinguish Act 5, this era "between the Advents" in which we live, and Act 6, when the Lord "makes everything new." 

Suppose there exists a Shakespeare play whose fifth act had been lost.  The first four acts provide, let us suppose, such a wealth of characterization, such a crescendo of excitement within the plot, that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be staged.  Nevertheless, it is felt inappropriate actually to write a fifth act once and for all: it would freeze the play into one form, and commit Shakespeare as it were to being prospectively responsible for work not in fact his own.  Better, it might be felt, to give the key parts to highly trained, sensitive and experienced Shakespearian actors, who would immerse themselves in the first four acts, and in the language and culture of Shakespeare and his time, and who would then be told to work out a fifth act for themselves.

Consider the result.  The first four acts, existing as they did, would be the undoubted ‘authority’ for the task in hand.  That is, anyone could properly object to the new improvisation on the grounds that this or that character was now behaving inconsistently, or that this or that sub-plot or theme, adumbrated earlier, had not reached its proper resolution.  This ‘authority’ of the first four acts would not consist in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier pans of the play over and over again.  It would consist in the fact of an as yet unfinished drama, which contained its own impetus, its own forward movement, which demanded to be concluded in the proper manner but which required of the actors a responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together, and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.

This model could and perhaps should be adapted further; it offers in fact quite a range of possibilities.  Among the detailed moves available within this model, which I shall explore and pursue elsewhere, is the possibility of seeing the five acts as follows: (1) Creation; (2) Fall; (3) Israel; (4) Jesus.  The New Testament would then form the first scene in the fifth act, giving hints as well (Rom 8; 1 Car 15; parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end [perhaps as Act 6].  The church would then live under the ‘authority’ of the extant story, being required to offer something between an improvisation and an actual performance of the final act [or the fifth of six acts].  Appeal could always be made to the inconsistency of what was being offered with a major theme or characterization in the earlier material.  Such an appeal—and such an offering!—would of course require sensitivity of a high order to the whole nature of the story and to the ways in which it would be (of course) inappropriate simply to repeat verbatim passages from earlier sections.  Such sensitivity (cashing out the model in terms of church life) is precisely what one would have expected to be required.

Excerpted from N. T. Wright, “How Can The Bible Be Authoritative?”Vox Evangelica 21 (1991): 7–32; italics original.

Improvising in Harmony with the Ongoing Musical Performance

The notion of "improvising" is important, but sometimes misunderstood. As all musicians know, improvisation does not at all mean a free-for-all where "anything goes," but precisely a disciplined and careful listening to all the other voices around us, and a constant attention to the themes, rhythms and harmonies of the complete performance so far, the performance which we are now called to continue. At the same time, of course, it invites us, while being fully obedient to the music so far, and fully attentive to the voices around us, to explore fresh expressions, provided they will eventually lead to that ultimate resolution which appears in the New Testament as the goal, the full and complete new creation which was gloriously anticipated in Jesus' resurrection. The music so far, the voices around us, and the ultimate multi-part harmony of God's new world: these, taken together, form the parameters for appropriate improvisation in the reading of scripture and the announcement and living out of the gospel it contains. All Christians, all churches, are free to improvise their own variations designed to take the music forward. No Christian, no church, is free to play out of tune.

N. T. Wright, The Last Word: Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005),126-127. Amazon. 

A. The Story Itself

Mars Hills Church (Grandville, MI)

Here's the opening of their articulation of the story of God and his world:

In the beginning God created all things good. He was and always will be in a communal relationship with himself – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God created us to be relational as well and marked us with an identity as his image bearers and a missional calling to serve, care for, and cultivate the earth. God created humans in his image to live in fellowship with him, one another, our inner self, and creation. The enemy tempted the first humans, and darkness and evil entered the story through human sin and are now a part of the world. This devastating event resulted in our relationships with God, others, ourselves, and creation being fractured and in desperate need of redeeming.

We believe God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay; rather he promised to restore this broken world. As part of this purpose, God chose a people, Abraham and his descendants to represent him in the world. God promised to bless them as a nation so that through them all nations would be blessed...

 

Read the full essay

Sean Gladding

The Story of God, The Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2010). Amazon

The Author

Originally hailing from Norwich, England, Sean Gladding has made his home in the U.S. for the last two decades, where he has served in various forms of pastoral ministry, getting around on his '84 Ironhead Sportster. During his time at Asbury Theological Seminary he first encountered the concept of the metanarrative of scripture, an experience that has deeply shaped his life.

 

His first book, The Story of God, the Story of Us, has its origins in a Bible study Sean led during a summer internship at Mercy Street, a church in Houston, Texas, for people in recovery from addiction and from bad church experiences--often both. Sean went on to co-pastor Mercy Street for seven years, during which time he and his wife Rebecca narrated the "Story of God" with people who had never heard it before or who had only heard a fragmented version. Hearing the "Story" with both the enfranchised and those on the margins has continually deepened their understanding of scripture, and shaped their lives and the way they tell the "Story."

 

Over the years they have made "The Story of God" narrative freely available to anyone who wanted to use it. The "Story" has been told in homes, churches, college campuses, coffee shops, pubs and laundromats, spread over five continents.

 

Sean and Rebecca have two children. After their time with Mercy Street they returned to Lexington, Kentucky, to rejoin friends at Communality--part of the family of New Monastic communities--where they are seeking the welfare of the city.

The Book 

"The ever present ache of exile rises above the comforting sounds of the river, as the image of the house of the LORD in ruins breaks the peace. . . . Despite the warmth of the fire, he feels a chill. He wraps his cloak around him and looks into the eager faces of his people, then closes his eyes. 'Picture this scene . . .'"

 

Before the Bible was a book, it was flesh and blood.

 

In this book, you can travel with Sean Gladding between the lines of the Scriptures to listen in on the conversations of people wrestling with the Story of God for the first time. Whether sitting around a campfire in Babylon, reclining at table in Asia Minor or huddled together by candlelight in Rome, you'll encounter a tale that is at once familiar and surprising. The Story of God, the Story of Us can be read alone but is especially rich shared with a group. Sean Gladding presents an account of the Bible that pays attention to its audience as well as its message. He introduces you to people who may remind you of yourself or your family, friends and coworkers. As much as the Bible is a story about God, it's also a story about you--and all of us--as we encounter God in a new way.

A Passion for God’s Story: Discovering Your Place in God’s Strategic Plan (Cumbria, UK: Paternoster Press, 2002), 267 pages. Amazon.com  For an excerpt on "Flexible Sovereignty," see our OT Staring Points

Greenslade has been working with Crusade for World Religion (CWR) since 1991. As well as being a full-time lecturer and tutor, he is also the Consultant Editor of ‘Bread for the Journey’ pastor’s journal, and, with Selwyn Hughes, a teacher on the Institute of Christian Ministry.

 

This book presents a vision of God's big story. This accessible survey introduces the Bible as a whole and shows how the important pieces of the biblical narrative fit together in their right context and perspective. The Bible tells the story in the broadest way, implementing Gods kingdom rule in history through a series of covenantal arrangements all in pursuit of a coherent redemptive plan the ultimate goal of which is new creation.

 

When asked, “Why read the Bible at all?” Greenslade replies:

 

Because as you read you discover God’s Story. Jesus proved with His parables that there’s no better way to communicate God than through stories. This is what the Bible essentially is – a thrilling, action-packed adventure with God, one in which we can play a part. It is not a pick-and-mix catalogue of religious goodies or spiritual recipes. It is not an occult code to be deciphered by 'experts'. And the Bible is most definitely not a compendium of texts which we can use to buttress our own theological position.

 

Under pressure to 'make the Bible relevant”, too often we trivialize or water down its message, reducing its impact to slogans and soundbites. We can end up draining the Bible of its colour. We squeeze the life out of it and render it a “flat” book, a bland moral mandate with passionless principles. But this is not the way the Bible came to us.

 

It came as a story – a vast, sprawling, untidy, story, but a story nonetheless. It’s not always the easiest book to read, but it is the most rewarding and enriching. 

Professor Travis is former Vice Principal, St. John's College, Nottingham, England. Biosketch 

 

Many people find the Bible a puzzling book, difficult to follow. Stephen Travis offers a solution for people who long to read and understand the Bible but simply to not know where to begin. The Bible in Time offers the reader a sense of the developing story of the Bible by offering commentary on 130 passages in chronological order. The first passage treated is the Prologue to John's Gospel ("In the Beginning was the Word . . .") This is a book for people who want a better sense of how the Bible fits together as a whole, who want an introduction to the basic themes of biblical faith, and who want to read the Bible regularly for themselves.

 

Our "book club" spent two years walking through the OT passages of the Bible with Professor Travis as our guide. Our discussions can be found here.

The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 198 pages. Amazon.com

McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative 'emerging' Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. He is a frequent guest on television, radio, and news media programs. He has appeared on many broadcasts including Larry King Live, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and Nightline. His work has also been covered in Time (where he was listed as one of American's 25 most influential evangelicals), Christianity Today, Christian Century, the Washington Post, and many other print media. His web page.

In this book McLaren tells the story of Scripture in the midst of a contemporary fiction of a pastor’s challenging engagement with postmodern culture and strands of postconservative evangelical theology. Read more.

Brian structures his retelling of the biblical drama using these principal headings: Creation, Crisis, Calling, Conversation, Christ, Community, Consummation. One community of faith in Southern California has taken Brian's outline and built a 5-part teaching series around it, looking at what God has really been doing on the earth and our part in it. They call it, appropriately, God's Story. 

J. Richard Middleton