I watched one of Regent College’s Reframe videos with the Harlesden crowd earlier in the week. Old Testament professor Phil Long does what everyone seems to be doing these days—he tells the story about Israel that climaxes in Jesus. I’m all in favour of it, but I think that the video highlights some basic flaws in the typical evangelical appropriation of the shiny new narrative model.
As Phil tells it—and it is nicely done—it is the story of how God sets out to redeem a deeply corrupted and broken world. This seems to be a standard assumption. It begins with Abraham and is traced through the sojourn in Egypt, to the Exodus, quietly passing over the bloody conquest of Canaan, through the period of the Judges, to the moment when Samuel anoints a king to rule over Israel. Then the promise is made to David that God will build a house for him, be a father to his son, and “establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12-16). The conquest of the northern kingdom and the Babylonian exile are mentioned briefly. But then it’s a big jump to the fulfilment of Israel’s story and the climax of history in Jesus. End of story.
So here are what I think are some basic shortcomings….
1. I don’t see how it can be claimed that God called Abraham for the purpose of redeeming the world. The world is not redeemed in the biblical story. Creation is not redeemed. In the end, it passes away, it is replaced with a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1). Israel is redeemed—and, it turns out, needs to be redeemed before it will be a blessing to the nations (Jer. 4:1-2; Acts 3:25-26; Gal. 3:7-14). The vision is of a redeemed people that swears, “As the Lord lives”, and walks “in truth, in justice, and in righteousness”, on account of whose presence in the world the families and nations of the earth will “bless themselves” in the Lord (Jer. 4:1-2). That changes things, but it is not redemption.
2. The standard narrative argument is that the story of Israel finds its fulfilment in Jesus, and in a sense that is indisputable. But by putting it in such terms, we find that we are becoming less interested in the concrete history of the people of God. In Phil Long’s narrative, by the time we get to David the history of Israel has ceased to have much relevance. We have caught a glimpse of the coming of a future glorious King, and the whole story of kingdom, exile, restoration—not to mention the clash with Greece and Rome—can be more or less ignored. Jesus is important biblically precisely because he solves the problem of Israel’s historical existence.
3. The story of kingdom begins with Saul and gains decisive shape with David. But it is the second part of the story—the clash with pagan empire—that primarily determines the message about kingdom in the New Testament. Jesus becomes Israel’s King because of, for the sake of, the imminent war against Rome—to save the people of God from annihilation, from the judgment of Gehenna. This redemption of Israel will then lead to victory over pagan Rome and rule over the nations of the ancient world which, in this historical sense, is how the nations will be blessed in Abraham.
4. The telling of this story draws not on the narrative from Abraham to David but on the painful experiences of exile and oppression under Antiochus Epiphanies. The defeat and maltreatment of God’s people—especially of the righteous among God’s people—by overweening pagan empire gives rise to the hope that eventually the tables will be turned, and Israel will be the head and not the tail. How does this come about? Through the upside-down trajectory of Jesus’ mission: in order to rule, he must first be obedient, to the point of death on a cross (Phil. 2:6-11). Kingdom is given to the figure like a son of man, who represents, embodies in himself, the persecuted saints of the Most High (Dan. 7:13-27). This crucial part of the narrative is missing from the Reframe reframing of the Old Testament.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not the end of the story. They are not the end of the story that Jesus himself tells. He has much more to say about what will happen in the future than about what has happened in the past. The narratives of exile and pagan oppression have generated an apocalyptic outlook that should not be glibly universalised simply because we have lost interest in history—from beginning to end it is a story about a historical people struggling to fulfil its calling in the world, stumbling from one crisis to the next. Perhaps later videos in the series—“Jesus the King” can be viewed online—will correct this impression.
Look at that little guy hopping over the pagan empires. Look how happy he is!
My take on this is that the vid was more trying to find something of practical application to normal people from the story while also touching on at least some of the overall narrative (this is the aim of the video series I believe) than attempting a theological synopsis. Phil Long chose ‘God uses everyday people’ and ‘life is messy’ as two main themes. How would you go about shifting focus to the hostile empires and drawing out something of digestible relevance? Perhaps it’s a part of the bible that connects better with parts of the world that have actually known more war and suffering?
@Andy:
Hi Andy,
It’s a good point. I thought the video was trying to fulfil both objectives—tell a story about redemption that would culminate in Jesus and show how the Old Testament can be of practical relevance for Christians today. The discussion we had focused very much on the second one, but in broader terms it seems to me to be a matter of considerable importance, in the long run, that we understand how the Old Testament explains Jesus.
The problem is that the sort of reading of the story that I advocate, with the emphasis on the “political” circumstances of first century Israel, does not easily produce practical benefits. The approach taken in the Reframe series is to emphasize the creational dimension to the story, which allows us to talk about justice and the environment constructively, and we’re all happy with that; but that story is too big to account for the New Testament picture of Jesus.
Yes, in parts of the world Christians are facing situations that are like the situation of the church in the New Testament, but that doesn’t get us very far. The challenge is to think historically. What are the practical implications now of belonging to a people to which these things happened in the first century. Whether that “paradigm shift” will greatly change how we behave, I’m not sure. But I strongly believe that it will give us a much more robust and compelling understanding of the New Testament—and of Jesus. I think it’s worth wrestling with the uncertainty and disorientation in order to gain that.
@Andrew Perriman:
I’m going to take my life into my own hands and disagree with you.
I have found that a more narrative-historical approach to looking at the Bible to be incredibly practical and often more accessibly practical than your typical spiritual abstractions. I think it only appears less practical because A) it’s unfamiliar, and B) you have to “transpose.” In other words, part of getting to the practicality is figuring out in what way a Bible story is our story, then what does that look like in our own historical context corporately and individually?
You also have to consider that a great amount of “practical” application that comes from a more traditional view is either relatively arbitrary or boils down to “get saved and sin less.” From where I stand, I’m not sure how practical “God uses everyday people” or “life is messy” is. How is that practical?
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