Friday, September 10, 2010

A Narratable Gospel?

We have not thought of Paul as a storyteller, for the Jesus stories of the Gospels are absent from his letters. Yet his use of narrative is very important…because Paul’s central concern was to use the narrative [of Jesus] to form a moral community. The pivotal story for Paul was simple and astounding: God’s son and anointed one was the very Jesus who was most shamefully crucified, dead, and buried, but whom God then raised from the dead, exalted to share his own throne and very name in heaven, to sit at God’s right hand as Lord until all things would be subjected to him and God alone would reign in righteousness over all his people and creation. The drama of Paul’s career turns on his recognition that that story shattered and recreated his own conception of a life lived in obedience to God’s will.

This paragraph is from The Origins of Christian Morality by Wayne Meeks, which is then quoted by Richard Hays in his essay "Is Paul's Gospel Narratable?"

I'm in love with the last sentence by Meeks, and will echo it to form a definition of repentance:

Repentance means recognizing that the story of Jesus shatters and recreates our conception of a life lived in obedience to God's will.

No comments:

Post a Comment