S1: Theology and Imagination

E3: An Incomplete Beginning

The first line of a good story invites the reader to enter its narrative offering incomplete knowledge, thereby creating a curiosity in the reader to know more. What emerges as the reader goes further into the narrative is a complete story. However, this is not always the case even when the reader arrives at the last page of a book. Questions can linger about key elements of the narrative that were not explained. C. S. Lewis best illustrates this in his seven publications of The Chronicles of Narnia.[1] The first line of the first book reads,

“Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.” 

The first line invites the reader to know more about these four characters.

Over the next five years, Lewis wrote further episodes of Narnia, but readers were left with many questions when arriving at the last page of each book. How did the world of Narnia begin? Who created it? Why was it created? Why was evil present in this extraordinary world? Why was Aslan the ultimate and final means of redemption? Knowledge was obviously incomplete. To resolve these questions, Lewis wrote The Magicians Nephew as a prequel to his first book, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. The story of Narnia was now complete. Interestingly, the first line of the prequel reads,

“This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child.” 

Unlike his first book, Lewis does not start with four adolescent characters who lived at a certain time in British history, but at the beginning before Narnia began.

Consider some of the first lines in the Old and New Testament books. The same incompleteness is seen leaving the reader wanting to know more. Despite an invitation to enter the narrative, questions linger because incomplete knowledge remains: 

• If God so loved the world, how did this world begin?

• Who created it?

• What went wrong?

• Why is evil present in this extraordinary world?

• Why is Jesus the ultimate and final means of redemption? 

In order to answer these questions, an additional literary episode is needed that completes the whole biblical narrative similar to the story of Narnia needing a first episode to make sense of what followed. That episode is called the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). It is a necessary first episode to make sense of the biblical narrative that follows, with one exception. 

 Like other first lines, Genesis offers incomplete knowledge creating curiosity in the reader to know more. As the reader journeys through successive books of the Bible, the Pentateuch serves as a literary device for sense making towards the penultimate line of the last book of the Bible, “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).  

The Pentateuch, is not a prequel to the biblical narrative. It is foundational, and in the case of Genesis, it is more of a prologue[2] containing the account about how the universe began.

Choosing a method and style of communicating the biblical narrative is difficult. Imagine entering BASKIN-ROBBINS and choosing just one of thirty-one flavors of ice cream. Such is the act of communicating the biblical narrative. Like choosing between traditional ice-cream and sorbet, which method is best suited for the audience: preach, teach, lecture, or discuss? If the initial choice is too perplexing, further bewilderment may not be too far behind. Once a method is selected, what is the best style? Expository, topical, textual, narrative, analogical, biographical, doctrinal, or analytical, just to name a few?[3] Any of the two methods and multiple styles can be used to communicate the biblical narrative.

The choice becomes somewhat narrower dependent on how the practitioner approaches the Pentateuch as a foundational episode to make sense of the whole narrative. On one hand, all five books comprise a full understanding of Torah (law).

However, approaching the Pentateuch strictly as Torah runs the risk of using the word law as theological shorthand.

The law is not presented in the Pentateuch as contemporary legal writ. Neither is it sealed in the text for professionals to crack open as an expert voice. If this were the case, it would exclude people from accessing its truth for themselves. 

On the other hand, if the basic literary form of the Pentateuch is narrative, as opposed to a technical style, its truth is accessible. Commencing with creation, the narrative connects successive events all the way through to Israel settling in the land God had promised them. Therefore, if torah can be broadly defined as instruction, any approach to the Pentateuch can include both law and narrative.

In many ways, the Pentateuch is like laying out The Magicians Nephew to make sense of the other books of the Bible. 

It lays a foundation for answering questions: If God so loved the world, how did this world begin? Who created it? What went wrong and why is evil present in this extraordinary world? Why is Jesus the ultimate and final means of redemption?

Sense making must involve what the narrative of the Pentateuch meant in its historical context, and equally what it means in the present contemporary context.[6] Admittedly, there is a homiletical chasm that must be crossed, fraught with cultural diversions possibly resulting in an alternative gospel for the sake of cultural relevance. Too often, a bridge is built of analogy claiming the human experiences in the historical context are like our own. However, the Pentateuch is rich with odd cultural nuances that collapse the bridge while crossing it.

In what way can these alarming practices become analogized without falling from the homiletical bridge to the wincing of men, fury of women, and giggling of children?

For example, in Genesis, Lot is okay about his daughters being raped. In Exodus, God decides to kill Moses until his wife cuts off their sons’ foreskin and throws it at Moses’ feet. In Leviticus, God rejects men with damaged testicles. In Numbers, married women suspected of adultery are forced to drink a priestly potion that could destroy their uterus. And, in Deuteronomy, if two men are fighting and either man’s wife tries to separate them by grabbing the other man’s genitals, her hand is cut off.

Perhaps the bridge from historical to contemporary meaning is less perfunctory, procedural, mechanical, and linear than it is imaginative, artistry, creative, and metaphoric. Within the narrative of the Pentateuch, instruction may be interwoven in plain sight, but the same cannot be said for sense making. If this was not the case, the bridge between what the historical context meant and what it means today would be profoundly mechanical, even systemized – mind numbingly boring and lifeless!

The narrative must be presented creatively, visibly, and available to the contemporary church.

In doing so, the narrative not only says something, it also does something engendering effect on people. The effect is not generated by a mechanical explanation of the narrative. Rather, it is precipitated as the narrative explains us. The result of that effect is powerfully endearing. 

As such, we feel at home, or known, when the biblical narrative reads us. If so, the odd experiences in the historical context are not so much about the mutilation of male and female genitalia, but on God revealing Himself. From Genesis through Revelation, the one decisive and redeeming presence in the narrative is simply God Himself.

The Pentateuchal narrative may have numerous characters that experience odd situations compared to our own, but the ultimate protagonist of the narrative is God.

As such, when the narrative explains that God is not only with us, but He is profoundly revealed to us echoing His historical pursuit of humanity, “I will be their God.” Perhaps this is why people continue to gather as the church, because they want to know of this pursuit is actually it true.

There are three dynamical voices that enable the biblical narrative to interpret us: the narrative itself, the person speaking, and the contemporary church gathering. A classic line from The Magician’s Nephew sheds light on interpretation by multiple voices. It involves the voices of Uncle Andrew, the Cabby, Polly, and Digory.

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing.”

The dynamical voices that interpret us stand in different places. 

For instance, the voice of the narrative stands in a certain historical context enriched with cultural differences compared to a contemporary church gathering. The voice of the speaker stands in a contemporary context with the challenge of building a homiletical bridge from a historical context. In many ways, the voice of the gathering helps the speaker build the bridge with the haunting and subtle question about God’s pursuit of us, “Is it true?”

Both speaker and church gathering ask the question.

Recognizing that the narrative has a voice of its own is not common. Walter Brueggemann said, “For all our prattle about ‘the authority of Scripture,’ almost all of us are schooled in silencing the voice of the text…well-educated liberals have utilized historical criticism largely to explain away the voice of the text…there is no authoritative voice left except our own.”[9] This is what Uncle Andrew did with his own interpretive voice. The events that took place were solely his own authoritative interpretation. 

However, the Biblical narrative is far more radical, offensive, and dangerous than any of us, either liberal or conservative. 

The danger and offense does not fall into stereo-type political correctness. Rather, it is theologically offensive and dangerous because it challenges the contemporary notion that we have now made God in our own image.

The voice of the narrative does not ask the speaker to do anything. It does not ask for approval, consent, or any particular action except to be heard. On its own, it does not give the speaker thirty-one flavors to choose from offered as ice-cream or sorbet. Therefore, the speaker must allow the voice of the narrative to be available and accessible to a contemporary church gathering instead of making it his or her own, like Uncle Andrew. In doing so, a healthy interpretive distance between the voice of the narrative and the voice of the speaker is feasible and observable by the contemporary church gathering. 

The distance is where liminality takes place, a space where the Holy Spirit is at work aside from the voice of the speaker and the church gathering.

It is here where the living Word of God as narrative pushes the speaker and the gathering where they don’t want to go, stand, see, or hear. It’s simply too dangerous. However, people who are pushed this way begin to grasp, understand, and know God as He is revealed in the voice of the text, defined out of a dangerous theological narrative.[10] He is not what the speaker or the gathering expected. This should be no surprise because God is introduced in the first line of the first book in the Pentateuch without explanation or definition. 

His introduction is nothing short of creative cosmic drama. A brilliant beginning!

If the Pentateuch is a necessary foundation and prologue to make sense of the biblical narrative that follows, ironically the first line of Genesis offers incomplete knowledge like other first lines. Consequently, the line creates curiosity in the reader to know more. 

• Who is God?

• Where did He come from?

• Who created Him? 

Addressing these questions reveals the didactical nature of the whole biblical narrative. The Pentateuch lays an instructional foundation and prologue to make sense of the biblical narrative that follows, but the biblical narrative also makes sense of the Pentateuch.

For example, the answer to the identity of God is successively and gradually revealed throughout the Old Testament to the fuller revelation in St. Peter, the self-disclosure of Jesus, and beyond, in the New Testament. It is not until the Book of Psalms, and particularly Isaiah, that questions of God’s origin are fully answered. Consequently, the proclamation of the gospel must begin at the beginning. Though God is not explained at the beginning, He is further elucidated as the biblical narrative unfolds; and as it unfolds, light is shed on the beginning. The absolute constant is God!

Hope proclaimed in the penultimate verse of the last book of the Bible makes no sense without the beginning: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). Who is testifying? Why does the one testifying need to come again? When did the one testifying come the first time? Answers to these questions are concealed throughout the Old Testament and revealed in the New Testament. However, reasons for these questions and answers go back to the Pentateuch, particularly the prologue in Genesis.

Because of sin, relationship between the first human being and God ruptured in its perfection, as did the ground, animal world, and all creation. It is here the unexplained God is negatively portrayed as the mental image that Eve had of God is attacked. God becomes more of a fiend than a friend as Eve gives in to temptation. Despite the negative and false image, an eschatological promise emerges at the same time that finds a conclusion in the penultimate verse. A redemptive seed is promised that will come from woman. The seed points to Jesus, and only to Jesus, and leaves out everybody between Eve and Jesus.

The redemptive line of Eve’s seed begins with Seth and climaxes with Jesus. He came as the eschatological promise to redeem a ruptured relationship, and all creation. It is Jesus to whom the penultimate verse testifies. It is Jesus who will come again. It is us who respond, “Amen. Come Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20)  

Beginning at the beginning is necessary to fully proclaim the gospel to a contemporary church gathering revealing God, His Son, His purpose through His Son, and the reason for that purpose.

The revealing of Jesus as the Messiah is nothing short of pointing directly back to the Pentateuch fully reinterpreting the narrative as the beginning of God’s purpose—redeeming His creation. A brilliant beginning!

The last line from the last book in The Chronicles of Narnia provides a creative way to conclude this blog:

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”