Re: Being a disciple of Jesus is not enough

For me the primary issue is the literary one: How do we best give an account of the coherence of the biblical texts? ‘Narrative’ seems to me at least one of the most useful categories for answering that question, so we then ask: What sort of story is being told? Is it a single story? Many stories? And how does that narrative structure affect our understanding of key events and concepts such as the death of Jesus or ‘justification by faith’?

But then there are also questions about how we believe or live in relation to the narrative structure of scripture. I would say that people who have chosen, or been chosen, to be part of the ‘new creation’ that was established through the death and resurrection of Jesus have made the biblical narrative their own. They do so in repudiation of - or at least relativization of - other narratives.

Whether it helps to say that it is for us a metanarrative, however, I’m not so sure. What is a metanarrative? The biblical story does not purport to explain everything about the world - it is bound to coexist with other narratives. I don’t personally think that the goal of Christianity is to bring all of the earth under the lordship of Christ so that every narrative is eventually subsumed in the Christian metanarrative (see ‘Psalms 2 and 22 and the conversion of the whole world’). I think the basic missional task is to exist in the midst of the nations and cultures of the earth, which must entail a certain relativization or contextualization of our story. We are called to live faithfully according to our story, which in effect makes it absolute for us - it is a matter of corporate conviction. But we remain acutely conscious of the fact that we are culturally and intellectually marginalized by that commitment - well, at least, in Europe we are.