The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story

By Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen

The story of the Bible and its account of God's action in the world give meaning to our lives and provide us with the foundation for our actions.

In this bestselling textbook, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen survey the grand narrative of the Bible, demonstrating how the biblical story forms the foundation of a Christian worldview. In considering the biblical story, the authors emphasize the unity of the whole, viewing the Bible as a drama in six acts: creation, sin, Israel, Christ, church, and new creation. Two overarching themes--covenant in the Old Testament and kingdom in the New Testament--tie the biblical story together. Throughout, the authors suggest, God is revealed through the story and calls us to participate in his drama.

The third edition has been updated and revised throughout. Additional resources for students and professors are available through Textbook eSources.

"I am delighted to see solid scholarship made easily accessible in this splendid fashion."--N. T. Wright, University of St. Andrews; former bishop of Durham

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: May 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781493445875

Craig G. Bartholomew

Craig G. Bartholomew is the Director of the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, Cambridge. He is the author of numerous influential books on the Old Testament and hermeneutics, including Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics, Old Testament Wisdom Literature and the volume on Ecclesiastes in the Baker Commentary series on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms.

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Praise for Previous Editions

Much recent scholarship has emphasized the narrative quality of Scripture. This book takes that insight and brings it to life, enabling even the beginner to grasp the sense of Scripture as a single great story—a drama in which we are all invited to play a part. I am delighted to see solid scholarship made easily accessible in this splendid fashion.

—N. T. Wright, University of St. Andrews; former bishop of Durham

This book is an intelligent, engaging overview of the narrative of Scripture in six acts. Bartholomew and Goheen have produced a clear and theologically sensitive account of the Bible that is perfect for college students or adult Bible study groups.

—Christopher Seitz, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto

This is a vivid introduction to reading the Bible as a coherent story of God’s purposes for the world. It will not only help the new reader but also enable the experienced reader to distinguish the central themes of Scripture from mere sidelights.

—Gordon J. Wenham, author of Story as Torah and Psalms as Torah

Bartholomew and Goheen do a masterful job of presenting the Bible as an organic whole. They powerfully demonstrate how the themes of covenant and the kingdom of God provide a coherence for Scripture that helps the reader make sense of its varied parts. I enthusiastically recommend this book as a university-level textbook, but all who want to enrich their understanding of the account of God’s redemptive plan will benefit from reading it.

—Tremper Longman III, Westmont College (emeritus)

"The Drama of Scripture is just what we would expect, and need, from the partnership of an accomplished biblical scholar and a noted missiologist. This is an entrée into the grand sweep of God’s story told with a keen eye for Christian formation and the mission of God’s people. Though Bartholomew and Goheen are obviously in conversation with relevant scholarship, their narrative is uncluttered and disarmingly transparent in its invitation for us not only to grasp but also to be grasped by the big story of God’s project."

—Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary

A model of biblical scholarship, integrating sound critical methods with a disposition of faith that is open to the revelation of the living God through his Word. This engaging book opens up for students the panoramic vision of the Bible that has been obscured by centuries of confessional battles and has been fragmented by Enlightenment rationalism. It succeeds in rendering the biblical world truly habitable, thus bridging the gap between the Bible and Christian experience.

—Mary E. Healy, Sacred Heart Major Seminary

Bartholomew and Goheen have produced a volume that will help inexperienced readers of the Bible get a view of the big picture before moving into more atomistic treatments of the Bible. It will serve well in introductory level Bible courses and may serve equally well in basic courses in hermeneutics. Its easy, nontechnical language will make it a popular text with such students.

—Jeffrey S. Lamp, Review of Biblical Literature

This very user-friendly guide to the Bible as a unified drama spanning both testaments presents a useful overview of many of the key themes in the biblical story. . . . The authors draw important implications from the biblical drama for the life of contemporary believers and their charge to spread the good news in today’s world. Over twenty-five maps and/or graphic illustrations enhance the book that also includes extensive notes and a helpful index. This overview of the Bible is suitable for advanced high school or college students.

—Barbara E. Bowe, RSCJ, Catholic Library World

[This book] occupies a unique place in the literature: nothing else focuses so clearly on Scripture as a story while competently interacting with secondary literature. . . . It would make a very good required text for a biblical theology course or as a more theological component of a traditional Introduction to OT or NT. Likewise, it could be used for adult education in the local church. . . . Bartholomew and Goheen have done an admirable job of showing how Scripture tells a unified story of God at work to establish his kingdom, and their book deserves wide use.

—Charles A. Anderson, Trinity Journal

The story of the Bible is a story waiting for an ending, in part because we have a role to play before all is concluded in the new creation. Such a holistic view of God’s saving purposes in Christ disallows a reduction of the Christian mandate to evangelism and cross-cultural mission. While affirming these as non-negotiable and essential, the authors show that the mandate includes the renewal of politics, education, ecology, business, family, and community. This is a timely reminder that we must resist the privatization and internalization of the Christian faith.

—Greg Goswell, New Life

© 2004, 2014, 2024 by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

Grand Rapids, Michigan

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-4587-5

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations labeled NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Paula Gibson

Baker Publishing Group publications use paper produced from sustainable forestry practices and postconsumer waste whenever possible.

To Marnie,

Ross and Rilyne Goheen,

and Bernie and Margaret Poole

To the Trustees of the Kirby Laing Centre, led by Dr. David McIlroy

for their faithful service,

and to Elizabeth Harley and the Trustees of the Kirby Laing Foundation

for their indispensable support over many years

Contents

Cover

Endorsements    i

Half Title Page    iii

Title Page    v

Copyright Page    vi

Dedication    vii

List of Figures    xi

Preface    xiii

Prologue: The Bible as a Grand Story    xxi

Act 1 God Establishes His Kingdom: Creation    1

Act 2 Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall    15

Act 3 The King Chooses Israel: Redemption Initiated    21

Interlude A Kingdom Story Waiting for an Ending: The Intertestamental Period    95

Act 4 The Coming of the King: Redemption Accomplished    111

Act 5 Spreading the News of the King: The Mission of the Church    161

Act 6 The Return of the King: Redemption Completed    207

Notes    215

Scripture Index    237

Subject Index    247

Back Ad    257

Back Cover    258

Figures

1. Bus Stop Encounter    xxi

2. Pagan Myths versus Genesis 1    5

3. A Biblical Understanding of Humanity    12

4. A Biblical Understanding of Humanity—the Effects of Sin    18

5. Abraham’s Journeys    29

6. The Exodus    41

7. Hittite and Egyptian Empires, ca. 1500 BC    46

8. Wilderness Wanderings    54

9. Covenant Structure    57

10. Conquest of the Land    60

11. Cycles of Judgment    66

12. World Empires    82

13. Jewish Expectations    105

14. Fulfillment Announced by Jesus    133

15. Ass on a Cross    151

16. Acts 2:42    167

17. Paul’s First Missionary Journey    176

18. Paul’s Second Missionary Journey    178

19. Paul’s Third Missionary Journey    179

20. Main Entrance into Paul    181

21. Fulfillment in Paul    185

22. Paul’s View of Evil in the Old Age    189

Preface

Twenty years after the original publication of this book, we remain deeply grateful and not a little surprised at its widespread use in a growing number of languages.1 We are thankful that God seems to be using this book to nourish and equip his people to live faithfully in the world. And for us few things are more urgent today than recovering the Bible as one story in a way that leads us to Christ in whom we can be restored to our full humanity for the sake of the world.2

Writing near the end of the twentieth century, the Jewish bioethicist Leon Kass said, As the curtain begins to descend on the twentieth century, we who find ourselves still on the stage are, truth to tell, more than a little befuddled about how to act and what to think. . . . We barely remember the name of the drama, much less its meaning or its purpose. Our troubles are spiritual, he believes, and our hungry souls crave the drama that brings real life. The causes of our spiritual distress and alienation are many, he writes, but the root of the difficulty is . . . our failure to understand or even deeply to ponder the truth about our human situation. Who and what are we? How are we related to the rest of nature and to the cosmic whole? What would it mean to live a dignified and truly human life, a flourishing life, a life not alienated from ourselves or our true place in the world? How does one truly nourish the hungry human soul?3

The Western drama of confessional humanism, rooted in the history of Europe, regnant yet faltering in North America, and spreading around the world in globalization, is clearly in tatters. It can no longer answer the deepest questions about human life. Followers of Jesus should not be surprised. Any story not founded on the rock of Jesus Christ will be built on the sand of idolatry and will surely collapse. As our friend Chris Wright likes to say, Idols never fail to fail. But the Bible offers the true story of the world. It is the story of God’s purpose to return his rebellious creatures who are created to image his glory from their wayward path to the way of life and the whole world with them. It is a story about how God will restore the truly human life, the flourishing life, in and through the work of Jesus and his Spirit.

That is why knowing the biblical story is so important. It offers the true story that answers the deepest questions of our lives and shows what it means to be a thriving and flourishing human person. It offers the only story that can nourish the hungry human soul. But more! It has the power by the Spirit to incorporate us into that story because it is the living and powerful Word of God. At the very center of the story, God has revealed and accomplished his purpose for humanity and creation in the work of Christ and now draws us into that purpose by the Spirit through faith. This is a drama that reveals and offers the real life our hungry souls crave.

In the second century AD one of the first major theologians of the church, Irenaeus (130–202), penned Proof of Apostolic Preaching to catechize new believers into the faith. The church faced a dual threat: Judaism told the story of the Old Testament but rejected Jesus as the key to reading it. Gnosticism dismissed the Old Testament story and placed Jesus in the context of its own pagan story. Irenaeus’s work tells the biblical story from creation to consummation with Jesus as the interpretive key. This catechism is designed to shape new converts by renarrating their lives with the biblical story to re-form their identity and their behavior. The goal was to make them look more like Jesus and thus be attractive to the unbelieving world. Irenaeus recognized that new believers had been deeply formed from birth by the powerful idolatrous story of the Roman Empire and had to be detoxified from this story. The lengthy catechetical process carried out before baptism accomplished this purpose by providing a new story for their lives. This pattern of narrative catechism became normative and continued in the early church.4

This is needed today more than ever! And so, we again offer Drama of Scripture, alongside many other materials that share the same goal, to re-form God’s people today into true followers of Jesus. The story of God’s purpose told in Scripture, fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and implemented by the Spirit in and through the mission of the church, is the Christian faith. The eclipse of biblical narrative in the last several centuries has not only reshaped the Christian faith; it has been devastating to the spiritual health of the church. The neopagan humanist story has shown itself to be powerful and seductive. And too often it has been this narrative that has shaped the church. As Lesslie Newbigin puts it, If this biblical story is not the one that really controls our thinking [and our lives,] then inevitably we shall be swept into the story that the world tells about itself. We shall become increasingly indistinguishable from the pagan world of which we are a part.5 And so, it is incumbent on church leaders today to return to the path of Irenaeus and catechize the church in the biblical story.

The Drama of Scripture tells the biblical story of redemption as a unified, coherent narrative of God’s ongoing purpose to restore the world again to the creational blessing he always intended for it. After God created the world and human rebellion marred it, God set out to restore what he had made: God did not turn his back on a world bent on destruction; he turned his face toward it in love. He set out on the long road of redemption to restore the lost as his people and the world as his kingdom.6 The Bible narrates the story of God’s journey on that long road to accomplish his creational purpose. It is a unified and progressively unfolding drama of God’s action in history for the salvation of the whole world that culminates in the work of Jesus Christ. The Bible is not a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands; instead, it is fundamentally coherent. Every part of the Bible—each event, book, character, command, prophecy, and poem—must be understood in the context of the one storyline.

Yet many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits—devotional bits, theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, narrative bits. But when we break the Bible into fragmented bits, we reduce its power to shape our lives. All human communities live out of some story that gives unity, meaning, and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular and pluralist Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to form our lives, then we will embody the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence, the narrative unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshipers!

There are four important emphases in this book. First, we narrate this story as the true story of the whole world. It is a worldview-story, a metanarrative, an interpretation of cosmic and universal history. We have found it necessary to repeatedly make this point over against attempts to reduce this book to a particular way of doing theology (narrative or biblical theology) or a hermeneutical method (redemptive-historical interpretation). Although the narrative structure of Scripture entails theology and hermeneutics, it is much more important than that. Scripture gives us a faithful narrative account of God’s purpose for the whole world. This is the most fundamental structure of the Bible and thus the very nature of the Christian faith. This story is the most comprehensive context in which to interpret anything and everything in the entire world.

Some story will answer the deepest and most profound questions that shape human life. Who are we? What gives unity and meaning to human life? How can we flourish as human beings? What kind of world do we live in? How do we relate to the rest of the nonhuman creation? How do we fit into the cosmic whole? What is wrong with our world? How can this be fixed? What role should I play? Is there meaning to universal history? Answers to these questions, and many more deeply existential ones, will shape us even when we are unaware of them. Since the Bible is the true story of the world, it answers these questions.

Second, we stress the comprehensive scope of God’s redemptive work in creation. The biblical story does not move toward the destruction of the world and our own rescue from the creation to heaven. Instead, it culminates in the resurrection of the body as part of the full restoration of the entire creation to its original goodness and intended goal. God is not cleaning us up to take us to be with him but cleaning up the whole world so he can come and live with us. The comprehensive scope of creation, sin, and redemption is evident throughout the biblical story and is central to a faithful biblical worldview.

Third, we emphasize the believer’s own place within the biblical story. The structure of the biblical story and the Christian faith is cosmic–communal–personal. The Bible tells a cosmic story that begins in creation and finds its goal in creation regained. At the center of this story is a covenant community chosen by God to be the means through which he accomplishes his purpose for the world as they embody God’s purpose. But each of us is to read this story as our story. The story is never simply for information purposes but a call and summons to each person to make this story their story, to repent and believe and find their place in this story.

Fourth, we highlight the centrality of the mission of God’s people within the biblical story.7 The Bible has a missional direction: it moves from one nation to all nations, from one place to the ends of the earth. And so, the Bible also gives God’s people a missional role to play in the drama: to be what Adamic humanity failed to be to draw all nations into God’s purpose. God has chosen and covenanted with a people to embody his purpose for the sake of the world. If we have heeded the call of Jesus to follow him, we are part of this community and thus called to participate in the task to embody and tell the story of God’s purpose for the sake of the unbelieving world. And we do so amid the idolatrous cultures and stories of our day. The idolatry of the nations has always threatened to derail the people of God from their vocation, and it remains the same today.

We have borrowed from N. T. Wright his helpful metaphor of the Bible as a drama.8 But whereas Wright speaks of five acts (creation, sin, Israel, Christ, church), we tell the story in terms of six acts. We add the coming of the new creation as the final, unique element of the biblical drama. We have also added a prologue. This prologue addresses in a preliminary way what it means to say that human life is shaped by a story.

In this new edition we considered changing the terminology in labeling the acts. We have employed the biblical imagery of redemption to speak of God’s purpose in Scripture: redemption initiated, redemption accomplished, and redemption completed. This imagery arising out of ancient Near Eastern culture emerging first in the story of the exodus and working its way through Scripture until Christ’s work is a powerful and central image. Yet we considered substituting the image of restoration (e.g., Acts 3:21 and elsewhere), another central metaphor in Scripture. The reason we considered the change is that for many the language of redemption has become a dead metaphor. The vivid notion of liberation from the power of pagan idolatry and the rescue of a son from slavery restored to his true home, characteristic of the first exodus from Egypt and the second exodus in Christ, is often lost on those of us who don’t understand the social customs of the biblical time period. Moreover, the imagery of restoration pushes back on the powerful individualistic and Platonic currents of our time that misshape salvation or redemption into an individual and otherworldly future. God is restoring his whole creation—that is the thrust of the biblical story. And the word restoration captures this clearly. However, we finally decided against this change, since we know that many have used and even memorized this outline of six acts in various settings.

We pray that a deepening discipleship and formation process will more and more characterize the life of the twenty-first-century church so that it might be faithful to its vocation to be the true humanity for the sake of the world in every cultural setting for the praise of God’s glory. We are thankful for the places that God has provided for us to play our small role in this task. For over a decade I (Mike) have had the opportunity to train leaders at the Missional Training Center (MTC) in Phoenix, Arizona, an experiment in theological education that makes mission central to the whole enterprise. This process has given me a growing sense of the urgency of the biblical story as I have wrestled with how to shape theological education to equip leaders to disciple their churches into this story. Thus, I am very thankful for the gifted and insightful leaders I have worked with and their commitment to living more into Irenaeus’s catechetical intention to renarrate the life of God’s people in a neopagan setting. Moreover, as MTC has formed partnerships in Chile and Brazil, working extensively with leaders there has deepened my conviction of the urgent task of the global church to embody and tell the story. I have gained so much more from them than I have been able to give in return. And so, I give thanks to the Lord for them and the insight I have garnered from fellowship with them about the importance of the Bible as one story. Over the past few years both of my parents have gone to be with the Lord. And as my wife, Marnie, and I move toward the seventy years described by the psalmist (Ps. 90:10), a landmark we both will reach the year after this twentieth-anniversary edition is published, we are reminded of the brevity of life, the importance of seeking first the kingdom in the short time we’ve been given, and the profound gift of family, friends, and colleagues to accompany us on that journey. I am thankful for the gift of a wife and friend like Marnie, who for forty-five years has been the best possible partner in ministry. I am grateful for the discipleship of my parents (Ross and Rilyne Goheen) and of Marnie’s parents (Bernie and Margaret Poole) who have equipped us to pass on the story to our four children and eleven grandchildren. I dedicate this new edition to Marnie, my parents, and hers.

Craig and Mike were professors at Redeemer University in Ontario, Canada, when Drama was first published. In 2017 I (Craig) returned to Cambridge, UK, and in 2020, amid the pandemic, was involved in launching a new charity, the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge (KLC), of which I am the director. This has been exhilarating and challenging. KLC is a research center committed to Christian research across the disciplines oriented toward the question, How then should we live? We seek to do our work in community rooted in deep, Christian spirituality. This means that the Bible is central to our work, and we need to know how to take hold of Scripture as a whole so that it takes hold of our lives and research as a whole. Hence, the sort of approach to the Bible set out in Drama remains fundamental to our work.

It is a privilege to celebrate twenty years of Drama and the third edition. Indeed, the reception of Drama has exceeded all our expectations, and we are most grateful to Baker Academic for publishing it. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is not that we see Drama as indispensable—rather, the Bible is. In our Western cultures in particular, there is an urgent need for us to retrieve the Bible as a whole and to open it to our cultures as a whole. In our opinion, it is only the sort of narrative reading of the Bible that we execute in Drama that will meet this challenge.

With many opportunities for teaching and writing, we continue to grow and develop, as readers will see from this new edition. We hear regularly from professors and church leaders who use this book and offer suggestions for improvement. So, in this twentieth-anniversary edition we have taken this into account in our revision. While the changes are not substantial, we have attempted to improve and update the text.

We remain committed to providing resources to help teach this book. Syllabi, reading schedules, PowerPoints, supplementary reading, and other resources can be found at https://missionworldview.com/, at https://kirbylaingcentre.co.uk/project-true-story/ and at www.BakerAcademic.com /professors. Craig learned from Paul Williams, CEO of the British and Foreign Bible Society, that, in order to really get this approach embedded in the lives of churches, we need a glut of such resources. We are thus delighted that Brazos, an imprint of Baker, has published a second edition of The True Story of the Whole Word: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama (2020), a shorter and more accessible version of Drama. In 2021 Craig and Paige Vanosky published The 30-Minute Bible: God’s Word for Everyone (IVP, 2021), the most accessible version of this approach to date. Thirty minutes a day for thirty days takes the reader through the whole story of the Bible. Our hope is that children’s, youth, and other such resources will be published in the years ahead.

We expressed our gratitude to a number of people in prefaces to earlier editions of this book. We will not name them all again. However, there are two we must again thank. Jim Kinney from Baker has supported and been personally involved in this project from its inception. He has become a friend in the process. And Doug Loney has given much precious time to make the text clear and aesthetically pleasing.

We offer up this book yet one more time to God for him to use as he sees fit to root the church even more deeply in Christ so that we might be the new humanity in whatever cultural context for the sake of the world to the praise of his glory.

Prologue

The Bible as a Grand Story

Alasdair MacIntyre offers an amusing story to show how particular events can be understood only in the context of a story.1 He imagines himself at a bus stop when a man standing next to him says, "The name of the common wild duck is histrionicus, histrionicus, histrionicus." The meaning of the sentence is clear enough. But what on earth is he talking about?

fig001-400

Figure 1 Bus Stop Encounter

This particular action can be understood only if it is placed in a broader framework of meaning, a story that renders the sentence comprehensible. Three stories, for example, could make this particular incident meaningful. The man has mistaken him for another person he saw yesterday in the library who asked, Do you by any chance know the Latin name of the common duck? Or he has just come from a session with his psychotherapist who is helping him deal with his painful shyness. The psychotherapist urges him to talk to strangers. The young man asks, What shall I say? The psychotherapist says, Oh, anything at all. Or he is a Soviet spy who has arranged to meet his contact at this bus stop. The code that will reveal his identity is the statement about the Latin name of the duck. The point is this: the meaning of the encounter at the bus stop depends on which story shapes it. In fact, each story gives the event a different meaning.

This is also true of human life. In order to make sense of our lives we depend on some story. Some story provides the broader framework of meaning for every part of our lives. Again MacIntyre says it well: I can only answer the question, ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question, ‘Of what story do I find myself a part?’2 Every part of our lives will take their meaning from within some larger narrative.

The story in which I find significance and purpose might be simply the story of my life, the narrative of my private biographical journey. But it might be broader than this: the story of my family or my town—even of my country and my civilization. The more deeply I probe for meaning, the larger the context I will seek. And this leads to a very important question: Is there a true story of the whole world in which I am called to live my life? Lesslie Newbigin puts it this way: The way we understand human life depends on what conception we have of the human story. What is the real story of which my life story is part?3 Is there a real story that provides a framework of meaning for all people in all times and places, and therefore for my own life in the world?

Many people today have abandoned the hope of discovering such a real story. They would argue that a true account of the world can’t be found. People and communities must be content with the separate meanings to be discovered in their own more modest and limited stories.4 A commitment to pluralism often implies that we should not even look for any such overarching story, one which could be true for all people, all communities, all nations—for to find such a thing would imply that not all stories are equally valid.

Yet there are many others who would claim that there is one true and real story that gives meaning to all people and all communities. Muslims, for example, believe that their story (told in the Qur’an) is the true story of Allah, his creation of the world, his rule over history, and his final triumph. One day, a Muslim might say, all people will see that this is the one true story. Similarly, the modernist who is still committed to the Enlightenment story—even now as this story has been reduced to an economic shape and is spread around the world in globalization—believes that account of reality to be true: that humankind will ultimately conquer nature by the application of human reason alone and that science and technology will help us build a better world for all. This story is still believed by many people in Western Europe and North America, and increasingly by many in urban parts of the non-Western world.

The Christian, too, believes that there is one true story: the story told in the Bible. It begins with God’s creation and human rebellion and runs through the history of Israel to Jesus and on through the church, moving to the coming of the kingdom of God. At the very center of this story is the man called Jesus in whom God has revealed and accomplished his purpose for the world. This story alone gives true meaning to all of human history and to every culture—and thus the meaning of your life and mine.

This kind of story provides us with an understanding of the whole world and of our own place within it. It’s