This is the third of three posts outlining the biblical narrative for the purpose of constructing a narrative theology for mission. The first part presented us with Israel as a new creation people called to worship and serve the living God, in the midst of hostile nations, over a long period of time. That traumatic story generated the belief that God would decisively save and restore his people and would eventually establish his own rule over the Israel’s neighbours. The New Testament gives its version of how that hope would be fulfilled through the faithfulness of Jesus and the testimony of the churches. This is explained in part two.

In this section I consider, in a very cursory fashion, how that story has played out over the last two thousand years and how I think it shapes the identity and purpose of the post-Christendom church.

The Old Testament story left us with a two-part eschatological expectation. During a period of great historical crisis the God of Abraham would demonstrate his righteousness or rightness, first, by saving and restoring his servant people, and secondly, by establishing his own rule over the nations in place of the old gods. This would be a political outcome—the climax to the centuries old story of Israel’s troubled relationship with the surrounding nations, which is the story of the kingdom of God. You should read part one if you haven’t already done so. There is no radical disjuncture between the sections of the Bible. They are telling the same story. You should also bear in mind that this is just my proposed reading, greatly simplified. You may want to disagree with it.

My friend Wes and I are running some workshops at the Communitas International staff conference this summer, aimed at helping leaders who do not necessarily have formal theological training instil in their communities a good grasp of how scripture informs church and mission. How do we do credible, practical grassroots theologising? We think that telling the biblical story with enthusiasm, understanding and imagination is an important part of this—perhaps all there really is to it—so I have been preparing some notes on how the story unfolds. Wes will have something to say on how the story and the “eschatology” that arises out of it shape the practice of developing missional communities.

Marc Cortez has written a book called ReSourcing Theological Anthropology: A Constructive Account of Humanity in the Light of Christ. I haven’t read the book, but I know a man who has, and I propose to take issue with the central thesis of Cortez’s book on the strength of Owen Strachan’s mostly enthusiastic review. The problem is that theology is so bent on imposing its totalising programme on scripture that it is unable to grasp the evangelical force—not to mention the exegetical integrity—of the narrative-historical reading.

Last month the Pew Research Centre published the results of a survey of the level of religious commitment of people in Western Europe who self-identify as Christians. The basic finding appears to be that people who call themselves “Christian” in Western Europe are less actively religious—less likely to go to church, pray, believe in God, etc.—than people who call themselves “nones” in America.

Jörg Frey offers a useful critique of N.T. Wright’s understanding of Paul’s apocalyptic in his chapter in God and the Faithfulness of Paul—the massive response to NT Wright’s massive Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I was asked what I think about it, so here’s my brief assessment and a quick overview of how I understand Paul’s eschatology.

The key question, according to Frey, is whether Paul’s apocalyptic vision constitutes a continuation of the “covenantal traditions of Israel” and the narrative of salvation history or a radical interruption of it, the introduction of something fundamentally new (522). The first position is represented by Wright, who insists that Paul’s apocalyptic language must be thoroughly assimilated into the covenantal narrative of Israel. The second position is represented by the cosmic, a-historical apocalypticism of the “Union School” of Martyn and de Boer, and more recently by Douglas Campbell.

I make the point frequently that there are two basic approaches to the interpretation of the Bible operative in the church today, a theologically determined method and a historically determined method. The church tends to regard the historical method as detrimental to orthodox belief and the theological method as supportive. My argument is, to the contrary, that “history”, understood principally as the story that the historical community told about itself and its experience of God, gives us a much more credible and robust account of Christian origins—and of the purpose of the church—than any method that, knowingly or otherwise, obliges scripture to conform to the theological presuppositions of the church.

I tried to give a simple schematic overview of the history of interpretation in a post some years back called “The history of biblical interpretation—a tale of two cities”.