The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama

By Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew

This book provides an overview of the grand narrative of the Bible, showing how God's action in the world gives meaning to our lives and provides us with a foundation for our actions. The authors' bestselling textbook, The Drama of Scripture, presented this message for a student audience. It was then abridged and published at a more popular level as The True Story of the Whole World. This revised edition has been further updated and streamlined throughout for church readers and small groups. It includes contemporary reflection sections and discussion questions for individual or group use in each chapter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781493427529

Michael W. Goheen

Michael W. Goheen (PhD, University of Utrecht) is professor of missional theology at Calvin Theological Seminary. He is also professor of missional theology and director of theological education at the Missional Training Center, Phoenix. Goheen is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including The Drama of Scripture, Living at the Crossroads, A Light to the Nations, and The Church and Its Vocation. He splits his time between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Phoenix, Arizona.

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© 2020 by Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.brazospress.com

Original edition published in 2004 by Faith Alive Christian Resources.

Ebook edition created 2020

Ebook corrections 02.13.2023

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 978-1-4934-2752-9

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 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.

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

To Mike’s parents, Ross and Rilyne Goheen,

for their faithfulness in passing along this story and impacting three generations

To Craig’s father, Leonard Bartholomew,

for his lifelong support

Contents

Cover    i

Half Title Page    ii

Title Page    iii

Copyright Page    iv

Dedication    v

Preface    ix

Prologue The Bible as a Grand Story    1

   Act 1 God Establishes His Kingdom: Creation    7

   Act 2 Rebellion in the Kingdom: Fall    23

   Act 3 The King Chooses Israel: Restoration Initiated    31

Scene 1: A People for the King    31

Scene 2: A Land for God’s People    59

Interlude A Kingdom Story Waiting for an Ending: The Intertestamental Period    93

   Act 4 The Coming of the King: Restoration Accomplished    107

   Act 5 Spreading the News of the King: The Mission of the Church    139

Scene 1: From Jerusalem to Rome    139

Scene 2: And into All the World    157

   Act 6 The Return of the King: Restoration Completed    169

Notes    177

Back Cover    179

Preface

Some years ago Bob Webber and Phil Kenyon issued a passionate clarion call to the evangelical community. It was a summons to grow in faithfulness to the gospel in the midst of huge threats facing the Christian faith. After affirming the authority of Scripture and noting the myriad of global challenges facing the evangelical church at the beginning of the twenty-first century, they say, Today, as in the ancient era, the Church is confronted by a host of master narratives that contradict and compete with the gospel. The pressing question is: Who gets to narrate the world?1

They believe, and rightly so, that if the Christian church is to be faithful in the midst of competing stories, this question must be answered unequivocally in terms of the biblical narrative: the Bible tells the true story of the whole world. Thus their first section is called On the Primacy of Biblical Narrative. Getting this straight is the crucial starting point. The following sections on the church, theology, worship, spiritual formation, and the believer’s life in the world are all tied to the biblical story: the church finds its identity in the role it plays in the biblical story; theology deepens our understanding of this story; worship enacts and tells this story; spiritual formation equips the church to embody this story; and the believer’s life in the world, including all of public life, is a witness to the truth of this story.

Our passion in this book is the same: that people learn to read the Bible as it was meant to be read—as the true story of the whole world. The True Story of the Whole World tells the biblical story as a unified, coherent narrative of God’s ongoing redemptive work in history to restore the entire creation from sin. After God created the world and human rebellion corrupted it, God set out to restore the whole world: While justly angry, God did not turn away from a world bent on destruction but turned his face to it in love. With patience and tender care the Lord set out on the long road of redemption to reclaim the lost as his people and the world as his kingdom.2 The Bible narrates the story of God’s journey on that long road of redemption. It is an unfolding drama of God’s action in history for the healing of the whole world. The Bible is not a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands; it is fundamentally a unified and coherent narrative that records the unfolding of God’s purpose. Every part of the Bible—each event, book, character, command, prophecy, promise, and poem—must be understood as part of one story line. We invite readers to make it their story, to find their place in it, and to indwell it as the true story of the world.

There are three important emphases in this book. First, we stress the comprehensive scope and restorative nature of God’s redemptive work. The biblical story does not move toward the destruction of the world and our individual rescue to heaven. It culminates in the restoration of the entire creation and all of human life to its original goodness.

Second, we emphasize our place within the biblical story—that is, the era of biblical history in which we live. Where do we belong in this story? How does it shape our lives in the present?

Third, we highlight the centrality of mission within the biblical story. The Bible narrates God’s mission to restore the creation. God chooses Israel as a people to embody his creational purpose and design for humanity for the sake of the whole world. They are blessed to be a blessing. The Old Testament narrates the history of Israel’s response to their divine calling. Israel fails, and the Father sends Jesus, who takes upon himself the missionary vocation that had been given to Israel. Jesus embodies God’s purpose for humanity and accomplishes victory over sin at the cross, inaugurating the new creation in his resurrection. He sends his church with the mandate to continue that same mission. And so, mission defines the life of God’s people today. In our own time, standing as we do between Pentecost and the return of Jesus, we as the people of God are to witness in life, deed, and word to the rule of Jesus Christ over all life.

In this book, we have borrowed N. T. Wright’s helpful metaphor of the Bible as a drama.3 But whereas Wright speaks of five acts (creation, sin, Israel, Christ, and church), we tell the story in terms of six acts. We add the coming of the new creation as the final act of the biblical drama. We have also added a prologue, which addresses in a preliminary way what it means to say that human life is shaped by a story.

This is an updated, revised edition of a shorter version of The Drama of Scripture (Baker Academic, 2004) that was previously published by SPCK (2006) and then by Faith Alive (2009). The title remains the same as the Faith Alive version: The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story.

This shorter edition is suitable as a study version for individuals and small groups. Three things distinguish True Story of the Whole World from the longer Drama of Scripture. First, it is significantly shorter—about two-thirds the length of Drama. Second, the majority of the explanatory footnotes, some of the diagrams, and all of the maps have been dropped. Third, each act explores the contemporary significance of that part of the story for our lives today and ends with questions for discussion.

An accompanying website provides a growing number of resources that may help you use this book: a course syllabus, adult Bible study class schedules of various lengths, PowerPoint slides, more study questions, articles, links, a reading schedule for a thirteen-week course, supplementary reading, video suggestions, and more (www.missionworldview.com).

We are deeply grateful and humbled that so many have found the various versions of this book to be helpful; it has been used beyond our wildest expectations in many settings and in many countries. We are thankful it has made a small contribution to a recovery of the Christian faith as it really is in Scripture—the true story of the whole world. We remain indebted to our friend Doug Loney, who has given to these manuscripts much time as a skilled writer and editor to help make it a lively and coherent text.

Michael W. Goheen, Surrey, BC, Canada

Craig G. Bartholomew, Cambridge, UK

Prologue

The Bible as a Grand Story

Alasdair MacIntyre offers the following imaginary and humorous encounter 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 Latin name of the common wild duck is histrionicus, histrionicus, histrionicus." The meaning of the sentence is clear enough. But why on earth is he saying it in the first place?

This particular action can be understood only if it is placed in a broader framework of meaning. Three stories, for example, could give meaning to this particular incident. Perhaps the young man has mistaken the man standing next to 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 therapist, who is helping him deal with his painful shyness. The therapist has been urging him to talk to strangers. When the young man asked, What shall I say? the psychotherapist said, Oh, anything at all. Or possibly the young man 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 will give the event a different meaning.

This is also true of human life. In order to make sense of our lives, we depend on a story to provide the broader framework of meaning. 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 always take its meaning from some larger story.

The story in which I find significance and purpose may begin with the story of my life, my private biographical journey. But it must become broader than this. In fact, the more deeply I probe for meaning, the larger the context that I seek—the story of my family, my city, my country, or even my civilization. And this leads to a very important question: Is there a true story of the whole world that provides the true context for all people, including me? Lesslie Newbigin puts it like this: 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 all places, and therefore for my own life in the world?

Many people today have abandoned the hope of discovering such a real story. They argue that there is no true account of the world, or that if there is, it 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. A commitment to pluralism often implies that we should not even look for any such overarching story, one that 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 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 humanist story believes that account of reality to be true: that humankind will ultimately conquer nature and build a better world for all through science, technology, and the rational organization of economics, politics, and society. This story is still believed—often implicitly—by many people, especially in North America, and it is spreading around the world through the process of globalization.

Christians also believe 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 final coming of the kingdom of God. At the very center of this story is the man Jesus of Nazareth, in whom God has fully revealed and accomplished his purpose for the entire world. This story alone gives true meaning to all of human history and to every culture—and thus meaning to 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 a big story that encompasses and explains all the smaller stories of our lives. Implicit in this claim is the belief that "a story . . . is . . . the best way of talking about the way the world actually is."4 This is how God created the world.

Such a comprehensive story gives us the meaning of not merely personal or national history but of universal or cosmic history. Muslims, modernists, and Christians all believe that their story alone is the true story of the world, that either the Qur’an, or the humanist story of progress, or the Bible will one day be acknowledged by all to be true. But these stories differ and cannot all be uniquely true. We must choose.

We realize how difficult this is to do in the midst of a society that has tacitly adopted a pluralist vision. Pressure for harmony among cultures and nations seems to urge us to regard the Bible as just another volume in the world’s library of private religious stories. But to do so would be to treat the Bible as something other than what it claims to be: the one true story of the world. It would be to change the very nature of the Christian faith. According to the biblical narrative, the meaning of our whole world’s history has been most fully shown to us in the person of Jesus. We may either embrace Jesus and believe that story as true or reject Jesus and spurn it as false. But what we may not do is reshape the Bible to suit our own private religious preferences. The Bible’s claim to tell the one true story of our world is central to its very nature.

Sadly, many Christians have not recognized this essential character of the Bible, especially in the last two centuries. A Hindu scholar of world religions once said to Newbigin,

I can’t understand why you missionaries present the Bible to us in India as a book of religion. It is not a book of religion—and anyway we have plenty of books of religion in India. We don’t need any more! I find in your Bible a unique interpretation of universal history, the history of the whole of creation and the history of the human race. And therefore a unique interpretation of the human person as a responsible actor in history. That is unique. There is nothing else in the whole religious literature of the world to put alongside it.5

His complaint was that even Christian missionaries to India had not recognized the Bible for what it clearly is. Instead, they reduced it to the status of just one more book of religion. This Hindu scholar recognized that there is nothing quite like the Bible in the whole religious literature of the world. It makes a startling and rather audacious claim—to be the true story of the whole world that gives meaning to human life.

Why have Christians, who claim to believe the Bible, not seen what they have? Many Christians, including Christian scholars and pastors, break the Bible up into little bits: devotional bits, moral bits, theological bits, historical-critical bits, narrative bits, and sermon bits. But when we break the Bible into fragments, it will inevitably be absorbed by 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 cultural 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!

Australian sociologist John Carroll, who does not profess to be a Christian, suggests that the reason the church in the West is in decline is because it has forgotten its story. He claims the waning of Christianity as practised in the West is easy to explain. The Christian churches have comprehensively failed in their one central task—to retell their foundation story in a way that might speak to the times.6

N. T. Wright rightly says, The whole point of Christianity is that it offers a story which is the story of the whole world. It is public truth. The very nature of the Christian faith is that it tells the true story of the whole world. And so, he goes on, an essential part of our theological and missional task today is to tell this story as clearly as possible, and to allow it to subvert other ways of telling the story of the world.7 We agree—and that’s why we’ve written this book. We seek to tell the story of the Bible as a coherent and true drama in order to subvert the powerful narrative that dominates our culture.

We employ the metaphor of the Bible as a drama and tell the story in six acts. We also adopt what we believe to be the most comprehensive image found in Scripture, that of the kingdom. The drama is outlined as follows:

Reviews for The True Story of the Whole World

[bkimbrough-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent resource for the person who wants to understand the bible, its overarching and basic redemptive historical structure as well as trace and understand the broad themes of the Bible like covenant, redemption, kingship, sin, dwelling, judgment, Jesus as fulfillment, community, the return of the king. Well written but not so detailed that you get bogged down. Great companion to read alongside the Bible.

[nathan7c7moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In the preface of "The Drama of Scripture: Finding our Place in the Biblical Story," authors Bartholomew and Goheen, suggest that this book was birthed out of necessity. Frustrated for want of a good introductory text for a Biblical Theology course, this book was their attempt to fill a void. However, this should not deter either more advanced readers or lay readers from picking up this book.Leaning heavily upon N.T. Wright's five-act structure of the Scriptures, the authors suggest that the Scriptures contain the story of the world. With God as the director, humans find themselves caught up as actors or agents on the stage of the Great Drama in which God intends to showcase His glory. The authors commend this reading of the Scriptures but suggest a six-act model rather than Wright's five-act model. Focusing heavily upon a kingdom motif, the authors proceed to give a delightful account of the Biblical drama that is likely to interest and educate a wide range of Biblical students. Readers will find that reading Biblical theology substantially illuminates their understanding of systematic theology and their interpretation for nearly every single text. It is from within the Biblical Narrative that thousands of seemingly fragmented books, narratives, and verses find their meaning. As alluded to earlier, one of the greatest strengths of this book is the authors' skill in simultaneously describing both the proverbial forest and the trees. Readers are constantly 'zooming out' to grasp the Biblical story and then 'zooming in' to shed meaning on individual acts or actors. Its like studying the same object with both a microscope and telescope from the same lab. Only precise narrative craftsmanship can avoid the seemingly inevitable headache that would accompany such study. It is the authors' craftsmanship which makes this introductory Biblical theology so distinguishable.

[adamtarn_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Discussing the importance of metanarrative, the authors draw on N.T. Wright's 'five act play' analogy for the bible as a comprehensive story and walk the reader through each of those acts with the addition of an intertestamental interlude and a final act six. For those who need a good, thorough introduction to biblical theology utilizing the motif of the kingdom of God Bartholomew and Goheen's book is priceless. There are also corresponding web resources for those who wish to use the book as an undergrad course or adult bible study. This is a must have!