The following description of an upcoming conference caught my eye. The conference will focus on “The Primacy of the Biblical Narrative” and is sponsored by the Robert E. Webber Center for an Ancient Evangelical Future. Notice that the description of the conference is, in and of itself, a call.
We call for a return to the priority of the divinely authorized canonical story of the Triune God. This story-Creation, Incarnation, and Re-creation-was effected by Christ’s recapitulation of human history and summarized by the early Church in its Rules of Faith. The gospel-formed content of these Rules served as the key to the interpretation of Scripture and its critique of contemporary culture, and thus shaped the church’s pastoral ministry. Today, we call Evangelicals to turn away from modern theological methods that reduce the gospel to mere propositions, and from contemporary pastoral ministries so compatible with culture that they camouflage God’s story or empty it of its cosmic and redemptive meaning. In a world of competing stories, we call Evangelicals to recover the truth of God’s word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of Evangelical life.
This is interesting and compelling stuff, I think. The language of this paragraph is rich with both a tone of narrative theology (which is dear to my heart) and a sense of urgency concerning the task of preserving the church’s devotion to the story of Scripture (amidst all of the “competing stories”). I found it refreshing.