core narrative

During the final journey to Jerusalem Jesus tells the disciples that when they get to their destination, everything written in the prophets about the Son of man will be accomplished: he will be handed over to the pagan occupying force, Israel’s enemy, by Jews who have effectively abandoned the covenant with YHWH; he will be mistreated, humiliated, brutalized, and in the end killed; and on the third day he will rise (Luke 18:31-33).

We are preparing a teaching series on Romans to be given in our church community later in the year. Seven or eight people who are gifted in speaking and teaching will meet together for a ‘teach-in’ on the letter before the series begins. I wanted to set the letter in the narrative context of Israel’s history, in which it clearly belongs and obtains meaning. But how to do that? I started to sketch out some narrative insights around some key motifs provided by Genesis, which are repeated throughout the OT, and arguably find their fufilment in the NT. The various motifs, and others which are added as the story develops, seem to me to provide a window into the story which is very helpful, and avoid oversimplifynig the story itself. The story can be understood through the window of its key motifs. For interest, I submit the summary of the motifs below, and how they wind through the biblical narrative. If anyone can be bothered to plough through it, I’d be interested in feedback as to whether this would be a useful way of setting Paul, and Romans in particular, in a narrative context, as opposed to a more abstractly theological context.  

Danutz has posted a wonderfully irreverent, subversive, thought-provoking, and even illuminating reflection on Palm Sunday on his blog. I think he may be in rather too much of a post-liberal hurry to get from Jesus’ politically motivated protest march (Borg and Crossan’s reading, if legitimate, is brilliant) to a Palm Sunday demonstration outside his local ‘exclusive country club’ - there’s a lot of narrative context that gets missed out along the way. But it’s a darn sight more exciting than making palm crosses. Please read it.

The Providential Preservation of God’s People and Word. Israel in the bible is called a Multitude of Mighty Nations Perpetually, the Christian Nations of the "North West". All twelve tribes have continued being tweleve seprarate kindred nations with similar dialects in Christendom, fulfilling Bible prophecy. We will demonstrate this through the following articles and audio sermons.

A vastly expanded attempt to take on board, critique and modify a narrative/historical approach to emergent theology

What is being proposed? A narrative/historical account of the people of God, and approach to soteriology, in which an understanding of political and historical circumstances relating to Israel and Rome in the 1st century shape the narrative. The people of God are described and defined in relation to Israel’s history at that time.

God promised Abraham that he would multiply his descendants and would give to them ‘the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession’ (Gen.17:5-8; Ex.6:2-4). The liberation from slavery in Egypt was an act of redemption, but it was also a step towards the fulfilment of that promise: ‘I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians… I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob’ (Ex.6:6-8). It is, moreover, a land of material abundance, flowing with milk and honey, and if the people ‘walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them’, they will enjoy prosperity and security, God will make them fruitful and multiply them, and he will walk among them and be their God (Lev.26:3-11). The echoes of the creation narratives are unmistakable: the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham is in some way a renewal of creation, a new start for humanity.

Hello. I’m new as a poster, but I’ve lurked around a bit.

Just today I was responding to several posts within a thread begun by a non-Christian in a forum which I visit daily. This forum is dedicated to ideas and questions regarding the work of Ken Wilber who is a philosopher specializing in Integral Philosophy. It’s all very interesting to see what is going on there, and multitudes of good questions are being asked and ideas pondered. As I was responding to a question about the Purpose of Life, I stumbled upon something that I never really saw before.

I credit Jolene and MichaelD for inspiring me. Michael was using the Bible passage of Genesis 1:26 to express dissatisfaction with the value of “dominion” which he understood to be Christian and posited instead his value for humans to produce meaning. I applauded his intuition about the bad news of “dominion” and offered some help in seeing it from a larger view. I’ll edit my post a bit so as to fill in gaps and eliminate unnecessary context, but this is what I came up with:

Having been away from a local congregation of people-identified-as-church for a while, one of my online homes is making some changes to the way it will be doing things. Nothing terrible: I’m not an endangered species.

Their concern is to be Christ centred. What do they mean by that? What do I mean by that?

The synoptic Gospels tell a story which for the most part has no direct significance for the bulk of humanity. It is a Jewish story; and in an important sense these writings are better seen as a coda to the Old Testament than as an overture to the New. Taken on their own terms, the Gospels present the argument that the grand religious experiment of the Mosaic covenant reached its culmination in the person of Jesus the Messiah.

This lengthy article is an attempt to outline a revised understanding of the story about the coming of the ‘kingdom of God’ that I think potentially constitutes a more accurate synopsis of New Testament teaching than traditional interpretations and may prove in the long run to provide a more appropriate narrative core for an emerging theology. However, please note that there are still gaps in the argument and that I have not included the necessary supporting material.

The perspective presented here is by no means novel: others have put forward similar reconstructions, most notably N.T. Wright. There is plenty of scope to discuss the exact form the story takes. My main concern is to make sure that we are telling the right sort of story. In any case, whatever the merits and demerits of this particular reconstruction, I think that a postmodern theology needs to start grappling more seriously with the narrative core of Christian faith and the manner in which we communicate it.