I began reading [amazon:978-0830827480:inline], edited by C. Marvin Pate, on my flight from London to Los Angeles. The thesis of the book is that the Bible is held together by the “paradigmatic story of Israel” and that this story properly counts as a biblical theology. I like the thesis as stated—apart from the word “paradigmatic”—but there are three critical observations that I want to make here. First, the book puts forward its biblical theology as a literary rather than historical construct. Secondly, the narrative pattern it works with is incomplete. Thirdly, if the biblical theology is genuinely narrative in shape, then the “paradigmatic” element is self-defeating.

In his discussion of the imperial cult in Paul and the Faithfulness of God Tom Wright notes that Domitian liked to be addressed as dominus et deus (“lord and god”)—a phrase “familiar to readers of John’s gospel” (341).

Domitian was emperor from AD 81-96. He revived the imperial cult, which had languished under Vespasian. He constructed an imperial temple at Ephesus, where, according to Wright, “fragments of what must have been a positively enormous statue of Domitian have come to light”. He also came down hard on foreign religions. Suetonius records that the tax on the Jews was “levied with the utmost rigour” (Suet. Dom. 12.2), and according to Eusebius Domitian “became a successor of Nero in his hatred and enmity toward God”: he was “the second that stirred up a persecution against us” (Eus. Hist. eccl. 3.17). Tertullian accused Domitian of a rather half-hearted approach to persecution:

Domitian, too, a man of Nero’s type in cruelty, tried his hand at persecution; but as he had something of the human in him, he soon put an end to what he had begun, even restoring again those whom he had banished. (Tert. Apol. 5.4)

Reading the New Testament as historical narrative rather than as “Christian theology”—as raw material rather than as over-refined intellectual product—is not a matter of self-contained interpretation. It’s not just about how we understand the text. It’s about how we live with it. If the relationship between God and his people was constructed narratively then, it is constructed narratively now. But how do we get from then to now? Or as James put it in response to “The gospel, the story of Israel, and personal salvation: no compromise”: “how would the historical-narrative approach provide a message that could be propagated in the public square—today in our society?”

Earlier this week I recorded a video lecture for St John’s College Nottingham on 1 and 2 Thessalonians. One of the things I wanted to stress was that if we locate these letters loosely—the fit is not perfect—in the account of the apostles’ journey through Macedonia and Achaia in Acts 17, what emerges is a rather intense and compelling narrative about the power that a Jewish gospel had to transform the pagan world within the cultural and historical purview of its protagonists. The biblical God is all the way through a God of history.

I read a couple of old articles this week responding to Scot McKnight’s book [amazon:978-0310492986:inline] from a Reformed perspective: Scot McKnight and the “King Jesus Gospel” 2: Points of Concern by Trevin Wax, and What God Has Joined Together: The Story and Salvation Gospel by Luke Stamps. Both agree with McKnight’s insistence that the gospel cannot be understood apart from the story of Israel, which I think is a pretty clear indicator of the impact that the narrative-historical hermeneutic has had on traditional evangelical/Reformed thinking. But they are troubled by the claim that the “plan of salvation” is not part of the gospel. They think that McKnight has overstated his case, in Stamps words, “by separating the story of Israel from the promise of personal salvation”.

What strikes me about the critique is that the final position is structurally much the same as McKnight’s: the story of Israel finds fulfilment in Jesus, then we have personal salvation in Christ. The only difference is that whereas McKnight wants to associate the term “gospel” with the narrative part of the formula, Stamps and Wax would prefer to keep it with the theological part, as you would expect from the Gospel Coalition.

A few days ago I raised some questions about how well the characteristically “neo-Anabaptist” emphasis on the cross as the lens through which we must now view God—he is the “crucified God”, the “Jesus-looking God”—works within the overall narrative of the New Testament.

My argument was, on the one hand, that the New Testament does not really bear out the idea that the weakness and suffering of Jesus is to be projected on to God, and on the other, that the core political-religious narrative does not stop at the cross: it makes Jesus judge and ruler of the nations. The Anabaptist critique of Christendom and the exercise of power has much to be said for it. But if we are to read historically—rather than theologically—I don’t think we can get round the fact that the New Testament envisaged exactly the sort of political-religious transformation of the ancient world that came about with the conversion of Rome.

This pointed question was posed by Zach Hoag in a brief conversation about Jesus and violence that I was following on Twitter over the new year:

Honest Q: Is there tension between the “Jesus-looking God” of neo-anabaptists & the “1st century Jewish Jesus” of the new perspectivists?

I am not an Anabaptist—though like many evangelicals today I have a lot of respect for the moral and theological integrity of the Anabaptist position; and I can’t say for sure what the Anabaptist God looks like. But I imagine that he eschews violence, in some sense shares in the suffering of the cross, has been re-cast in the image of Jesus, is opposed to empire, identifies with the oppressed… and must have been deeply disappointed with the church for its post-Constantinian accommodation to political and cultural power.

Is that the God that we find in the New Testament? For that matter, is this the Jesus that we find in the New Testament? Here are some new perspectivist or, as I prefer, narrative-historical thoughts on the matter….

I haven’t done this before, but it seems a cheap and cheerful way to bring the year to an end. I got the idea from Brian LePort at Near Emmaus. It’s an inexact exercise. I know which posts received the most hits over the last year, but obviously those which went into the vineyard early have earned more than those which went in late. So what follows is more a personal selection from among the most popular posts with one or two later ones artificially bumped up the order—such is grace. Happy New Year!