“The church of the first century [as described in the book of Acts] is almost two thousand years removed in time and (for most of us) half a world away in distance. Jesus lived in Palestine, died, and rose again there a little before most of the events recorded in the book of Acts. The ancient nation of Israel sought to walk with God while conquering and settling a homeland in Canaan more than a thousand years before that. The biblical accounts of how all these different people struggled to live faithfully in their distant times and places may seem to have little to do with you and me. Yet it is not so. The world of the Bible is our world, and its story of redemption is also our story. This story is waiting for an ending — in part because we ourselves have a role to play before all is concluded. We must therefore pay attention to the continuing biblical story of redemption. We must resist the temptation to read the Scriptures as if they were a religious flea market, with a basket of history and old doctrines here, a shelf full of pious stories there, promises and commands scattered from one end to the other. Some readers of the Bible turn it into little more than an anthology of proof texts assembled to support a system of theology. Others seek only ethical guidance, ransacking the Old Testament for stories of moral instruction. Still others look just for inspirational or devotional messages, for comforting promises and lessons for daily living. The result may be that we lose sight of the Bible’s essential unity and instead find only those theological, moral, devotional, or historical fragments we are looking for.
“But all human communities, including our own, live out of some comprehensive story that suggests the meaning and goal of history and that gives shape and direction to human life. We may neglect the biblical story, God’s comprehensive account, of the shape and direction of cosmic history and the meaning of all that he has done in our world. If we do so, the fragments of the Bible that we do preserve are in danger of being absorbed piecemeal into the dominant cultural story of our modern European and North American democracies. And the dominant story of modern culture is rooted in idolatry: an ultimate confidence in humanity to achieve its own salvation. Thus, instead of allowing the Bible to shape us, we may in fact be allowing our culture to shape the Bible for us. Our view of the world and even our faith will be molded by one or the other: either the biblical story is our foundation, or the Bible itself becomes subsumed within the modern story of the secular Western world. If our lives are to be shaped and formed by Scripture, we need to know the biblical story well, to feel it in our bones. To do this, we must also know our own place within — where we are in the story.”
—from Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004)
Related reading and listening
- Unmasking claims of “secular neutrality” — Lesslie Newbigin on the Church’s prophetic duty concerning public life
- The kingdom of God has public consequences — Lesslie Newbigin on the subversiveness of the Church’s message to the world
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- The historian’s communal role as storyteller — FROM VOL. 127 Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes)
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- Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
- Where mortals dwell — FROM VOL. 113Theologian Craig Bartholomew provides a biblically rich critique of the contemporary “crisis of place,” a disorienting condition caused by neglect of the meaning of our embodiment. (21 minutes)
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- Fr. Chad Hatfield and Peter J. Leithart on Alexander Schmemann — Alexander Schmemann’s book asks a set of questions about “Christianity and culture” that typically don’t get asked, questions that re-center our lives in gratitude and worship. (20 minutes)
- Robert W. Jenson: “How the World Lost Its Story” — Theologian Robert W. Jenson describes how a postmodern world is characterized by the loss of a conviction that we inhabit a “narratable world” that exists coherently outside of ourselves. (40 minutes)
- Not just a counterculture — Peter J. Leithart on the public (and prophetic) mission of the Church
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- The Church as a public reality — William Cavanaugh on how we must be disciples in public, not just citizens
- Intellectual apostasy and Christian witness — Harry Blamires on unfashionable beliefs about the ends of human beings
- Cultural participation in reconciliation — Jonathan Wilson on faithfully representing Creation in the culture of the Church
- The publicly inert Christ of modernity — Dom Anscer Vonier on secularism’s confidence in its freedom from Christ
- The dead-end of privatized faith — T. S. Eliot on the Church’s duty to interfere with the World
- True transcendence, true immanence — D. C. Schindler on how believers can be practical atheists
- The disabling consequences of winsomeness — Stanley Hauerwas on how many modern Christians offered atheists less and less in which to disbelieve.
- Crowd Culture — Bernard Iddings Bell: “It is because the Church has thus obscured the socially prophetic note that it seems to most people to have no relevancy.”
- Who strangled God? — James Turner examines the ways in which the pursuit of “relevant” theology helped to make atheism plausible in Western culture
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 113 — FEATURED GUESTS: Steven Shapin, Arthur Boers, Christine Pohl, Norman Wirzba, Craig Bartholomew, and David I. Smith
- Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 92 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jake Halpern, Stephen J. Nichols, Richard M. Gamble, Peter J. Leithart, Bill Vitek, and Craig Holdrege
