I came across Ben Irwin’s blog because he linked to the piece I wrote on Jesus having nothing to say about homosexuality, and quite a lot of people stopped by to look. I noticed that Ben has written a book called The Story of King Jesus, and since, in my view, the recovery of the narrative of kingdom is central to the reconstruction of an evangelical theology after Christendom and after modernity, I got hold of a copy.
It turns out not to be quite the book I was expecting. It is a little light-weight. There are no footnotes and no bibliography. No pages numbers. And not many words. There are signs that the book has been influenced by contemporary New Testament scholarship, but there is nothing that you might call a critical engagement with either the hermeneutical or the exegetical challenges. There is no reference to either N.T. Wright or Scot McKnight. The illustrations by Nick Lee are beautiful and do their bit for the narrative, but they do nothing to raise the intellectual tone of the book.
That said, the story is told well, if a little simplistically for my taste. We begin, as one might expect, with creation. The sin of the “very first people” (is that meant to be ambiguous?) is not separated from the general degradation of human society, with men fighting, teenage daughters yelling at their mothers, and the tower of Babel looming in the background.
Abraham is the beginning of a chosen people which will help God “make the world right and good again”—even better, which will “show the world what it means to be God’s people”. The story of Israel is told with a proper focus on the theme of kingship, culminating in the judgment of exile.
There’s a bit of a hiatus, but then someone comes along who will “rule the way God wanted”. Do you know who that is? Jesus, of course. He is the one to rescue Israel and “make the world right and good again”. The leaders of the people try to stop this, but God will have nothing of that and raises him from the dead.
So now we can live the way God wants. We can have snacks together, grow plants, hug one another, and play in sand pits. The world is still broken, but Jesus our King will come back, and everything will be put to right.
There is a lot I like about this book from a narrative-historical perspective. I like the creational emphasis. I like the fact that kingship is closely connected to the historical existence of Israel—Jesus is not treated as an isolated redeemer figure. I like the focus on kingdom rather than salvation. I like what Irwin says in postscript:
God’s redemptive tale can’t be reduced to a few memory verses from Scripture. It’s not a formula or a plan or a prayer you recite. It’s a drama that you live, and it’s woven throughout every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.
What don’t I like? Mainly that the book does what much contemporary “narrative” theology does. The “story” runs all the way to Jesus and then stops. The story of kingdom throughout the New Testament is thoroughly apocalyptic. This means, as I see it, that the story of King Jesus has to include what comes next: the destruction (again) of Jerusalem and the temple, the painful witness of the early church, and the victory of Christ over pagan Rome. The book ends with a nice picture of the new heaven and new earth, but there’s a lot more to the future of the people of God than this. As a companion piece to The Story of King Jesus you might also read by book The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church (unillustrated).
So all in all a very good book. Yes, it’s disappointingly sub-scholarly. But you could always read it to your kids.
My 7 year old prefers Dunn.
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