The Bible as Story (Part 1)
Is the Bible strictly a collection of doctrinal statements designed merely to be codified into catechisms, creeds, and confessions, or systematized into theology textbooks for the sole purpose of distinguishing orthodoxy from heterodoxy? Or does the Bible also tell a continuous story with an overarching plotline? How would you summarize—in one sentence—what the Bible is about?
Let me clarify from the outset that nothing I have said in the opening sentence is in any way derogatory regarding the serious doctrinal use of Scripture. But if the Bible is nothing more to us than a textbook of theological ideas, then we are missing one of the most glorious, God-given dimensions of this utterly unique Book as a living, breathing body of divinely inspired literature.
Every child understands that humans are created with a hunger for story. And we also understand that there are differences between stories—that some are some are imaginative and fictional and fun, and others are true and trustworthy and . . . real. There are stories about George Washington and a cherry tree, and then there are stories about George Washington and Valley Forge, Yorktown, and the Presidency. There are the stories I used to tell my children about fantastical things made up out of my own head, and the stories I used to tell them about things I did growing up.
Not every story is historical, but every story is at its roots theological. Every story presupposes some theological construct of the world (a worldview), some view of good and evil, some tilt toward naturalism or supernaturalism. It is impossible to untwist story from theology and, therefore, impossible to disentangle story from worldview. More on that in a moment.
History is nothing more or less than a narrative of reality, a story of how we got where we are. Biblical history is the narrative of reality, the story of how we got where we are. Have you ever noticed how much of the Bible is in the form of story? Historical narrative is story, and the Bible’s historical narratives (Genesis-Job; Matthew-Acts)[i] are reality told as story. The remainder of the Bible primarily explains and expands the Bible’s story of reality.
Story is a noble, God-given vehicle of truth. God sanctifies story as His primary mode of choice for communicating theological reality in Scripture. Never let the world rob you of the dignity of story by defining the word as inherently fictional by default. Etymologically, “story” derived from “history,” not vice versa. Moreover, the first stories, the oldest stories, were not fictional tales but factual accounts. Story is first and foremost truth, history, reality—and secondarily, by extension, a form of fictional sub-creation (some good, some bad).
The Relation of Biblical Theology and Story
Biblical study has for centuries differentiated between systematic and biblical theology. It’s beyond my present purpose to delve into the distinctions between these disciplines. I’ll simply begin with my own definition of biblical theology as the discovery and expression of the message that emerges from the Bible when explored inductively* on its own terms and interpreted in its own context—whether on the level of words, subjects, books, themes, corpuses, testaments, or the whole Bible. (This inductive exploration employs the tools of historical, literary, and exegetical disciplines.) Biblical theology often functions at the book level (the theology of, say, Malachi or Galatians), sometimes at the corpus level (Gospels or Epistles) or the thematic level (Prophecy or the Church). But it’s the “whole Bible” application of biblical theology that I’m interested in at the moment.
Every story is theological, every story assumes a worldview, and every worldview tells a story. Most readers are probably familiar with the common Creation-Fall-Redemption-Restoration storyline that is often attributed to the Bible’s storyline. In his book The Story of Reality,Greg Koukl argues that, in fact, every worldview follows the same basic storyline pattern. Every worldview has some account of where everything came from (a “creation” element), a recognition that the world isn’t as it should be and some explanation as to why (the “fall” component), a conviction about what needs to happen to fix what’s wrong (“redemption”), and a vision of what the world could be like if and when it is fixed (“restoration”). (It may be that such a broad assumption reflects a somewhat provincial, Western view; Eastern worldviews may well vary from this formula. But I think the formula works for most Western views.)
Given how fundamental and universal the concept of story is, it seems remarkable that the nearly universal emphasis on viewing Scripture as a storyline is a relatively recent development in biblical theological studies. And yet the basic idea has actually been around for a long time.
The Welsh-born Anglican priest and poet George Herbert (1593-1633) expressed a sense of the Bible’s interconnected big picture of reality:
O that I knew how all thy lights combine,
And the configurations of their glory!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the story.
One could hardly ask for a better poetic expression of the task of biblical theology.
The prevailing assumption within the current generation seems to be that holistic (whole-Bible) biblical theology is a fairly recent discovery within evangelicalism, especially by the evangelical academy. But there are earlier examples that are generally ignored, if even recognized at all. We’ll look at a couple of those next time.
[i] I understand this is somewhat oversimplified; a number of other genres are mixed into especially the Pentateuchal books. But the exceptions highlight the rule. In both cases, over half of each testament is essentially narrative-story.
