If you’ve been playing Buzzword Bingo with the emergent Christian crowd you’re in luck if your score card includes the word “story”. Spend any time at a worship service or in conversation with an emergent, po-mo Christian, it won’t be long before you hear the word. And why not? It doesn’t the baggage associated with older terms used to describe the experience of being a Christian (Christ-follower?) and it’s a versatile word capable of conveying an ample array of meanings.
For starters, it gets used to describe one’s conversion experience. “Once I was lost, but now I’m found…let me tell you my story of how that happened…” For those without a killer conversion experience, it can be used for the ways that God has been at work in their life. “I grew up in household with Christian parents. We went to church every Sunday. Even though it’s been a good life, it’s had its ups and downs. Let me tell you that story…”
Beyond the realm of personal experience, it’s a term that gets used to describe the events narrated in the Bible. This can be narrow. “Let me tell you the story of Abraham…” Or it can be broad, such as the broad meta-narrative that comprises the full scope of the Old and New Testament.
A third area of use is a bit trickier, but it’s broadly theological in context and usually refers to matters of salvation—how and why God saves. Those in the Reformed tradition (i.e. denominations influenced by John Calvin and followers) might describe this in terms of covenant: God’s story is that of binding himself to humanity in such a way that he would be their God and they his people.
A final area of use is where two of the above get liked so that personal experience meets the objective reality of God’s interaction with the world. Perhaps you’ve heard something like this: “…where God’s story and my story meet…” In this use of the word the theological use (story as a catch-all term to describe what God has done for humanity) meets the personal (my life events).
Full disclosure: I’m as guilty as the next for (over?) using this particular word. In the realm of the personal, it is certainly a modernization of the old term “testimony.” Of course, testimony has the strength of testifying about something. More specifically it’s testifying about someone. Ultimately a testimony tells about what God did for us or me. “My story” sounds strangely narcissistic. Still from an evangelistic point of view, the use of story in form and in term is powerful. One hears stories and is shaped by them. Rarely do we hear and story and ask “is that true?” The power of story is in its power to influence. Further, in its purest form, story is testimony or witness. Concerning God, to tell the story of God is to tell the narrative of who God is and how God has shown Himself to be. Often it was the way of Jesus himself: “You want to know what God is like? Here let me tell you a story: ‘there once was a man who went and scattered seed…’”. From our perspective this is still powerful: “What’s God like? Let me tell you about a man from Nazareth who came proclaiming a message…”
It’s also a fair term to use in its Biblical and theological sense. Story is a useful synonym for that which Biblical and Systematic theologians have often termed “salvation history”. As a God who has revealed Himself and acted in History, God has entered into a covenant partnership with the created order. In this partnership God has made himself the God who is for his creation. And this partnership has unfolded over the course of history in such a way that we are justified in calling it a story.
Lastly, we are justified in calling the Biblical narratives stories. For that it is what they are. As a champion of creedal and dogmatic theology, I must not forget that at the center of the Christian witness is the story of a man from Nazareth named Jesus Christ. This is seen most clearly in the gospel narratives that are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Much to the chagrin of so-called source critic fundamentalists that wish desperately to wrench the individual incidents out of their narrative unity in order to discern the historical kernel, the narrative must be read as a whole. While much has and will be gained by trying to discern the historical through source critical means, it seems most natural to read the gospel accounts as a literary whole. While they may have emerged from various sources (what historical narrative hasn’t?). They were compiled in such a way to tell the story of a particular man, in a particular place, at a particular man. And, I might add, to invoke a faith response on the part of the listeners. As a particular man, the man Jesus is a unique, unsubstitutable person.
Thus, I argue, reading the gospels as a unified whole is their most natural reading. Natural does not mean easy however. We need all the help we can get. And this is where the late theologian Hans Frei serves as a most useful guide.
For starters, it gets used to describe one’s conversion experience. “Once I was lost, but now I’m found…let me tell you my story of how that happened…” For those without a killer conversion experience, it can be used for the ways that God has been at work in their life. “I grew up in household with Christian parents. We went to church every Sunday. Even though it’s been a good life, it’s had its ups and downs. Let me tell you that story…”
Beyond the realm of personal experience, it’s a term that gets used to describe the events narrated in the Bible. This can be narrow. “Let me tell you the story of Abraham…” Or it can be broad, such as the broad meta-narrative that comprises the full scope of the Old and New Testament.
A third area of use is a bit trickier, but it’s broadly theological in context and usually refers to matters of salvation—how and why God saves. Those in the Reformed tradition (i.e. denominations influenced by John Calvin and followers) might describe this in terms of covenant: God’s story is that of binding himself to humanity in such a way that he would be their God and they his people.
A final area of use is where two of the above get liked so that personal experience meets the objective reality of God’s interaction with the world. Perhaps you’ve heard something like this: “…where God’s story and my story meet…” In this use of the word the theological use (story as a catch-all term to describe what God has done for humanity) meets the personal (my life events).
Full disclosure: I’m as guilty as the next for (over?) using this particular word. In the realm of the personal, it is certainly a modernization of the old term “testimony.” Of course, testimony has the strength of testifying about something. More specifically it’s testifying about someone. Ultimately a testimony tells about what God did for us or me. “My story” sounds strangely narcissistic. Still from an evangelistic point of view, the use of story in form and in term is powerful. One hears stories and is shaped by them. Rarely do we hear and story and ask “is that true?” The power of story is in its power to influence. Further, in its purest form, story is testimony or witness. Concerning God, to tell the story of God is to tell the narrative of who God is and how God has shown Himself to be. Often it was the way of Jesus himself: “You want to know what God is like? Here let me tell you a story: ‘there once was a man who went and scattered seed…’”. From our perspective this is still powerful: “What’s God like? Let me tell you about a man from Nazareth who came proclaiming a message…”
It’s also a fair term to use in its Biblical and theological sense. Story is a useful synonym for that which Biblical and Systematic theologians have often termed “salvation history”. As a God who has revealed Himself and acted in History, God has entered into a covenant partnership with the created order. In this partnership God has made himself the God who is for his creation. And this partnership has unfolded over the course of history in such a way that we are justified in calling it a story.
Lastly, we are justified in calling the Biblical narratives stories. For that it is what they are. As a champion of creedal and dogmatic theology, I must not forget that at the center of the Christian witness is the story of a man from Nazareth named Jesus Christ. This is seen most clearly in the gospel narratives that are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Much to the chagrin of so-called source critic fundamentalists that wish desperately to wrench the individual incidents out of their narrative unity in order to discern the historical kernel, the narrative must be read as a whole. While much has and will be gained by trying to discern the historical through source critical means, it seems most natural to read the gospel accounts as a literary whole. While they may have emerged from various sources (what historical narrative hasn’t?). They were compiled in such a way to tell the story of a particular man, in a particular place, at a particular man. And, I might add, to invoke a faith response on the part of the listeners. As a particular man, the man Jesus is a unique, unsubstitutable person.
Thus, I argue, reading the gospels as a unified whole is their most natural reading. Natural does not mean easy however. We need all the help we can get. And this is where the late theologian Hans Frei serves as a most useful guide.
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