Telling God's Story
Bible, Church and Narrative Theology

Introduces narrative theology, and demonstrates how this theology is both orthodox and radical.

Gerard Loughlin (Author)

9780521432856, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 January 1996

284 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.4 x 14.2 x 2.7 cm, 0.497 kg

'... an attractive presentation of the church in the postmodern world as a community which embodies and performs the story of Jesus, particularly in the eucharist, 'a narrative that enfolds the participants within the biblical story …'. David Horrell, Expository Times

This book presents narrative theology as radically orthodox. It is orthodox because it is in the tradition of all those who maintain the priority of the story of Jesus, as it is sacramentally performed in the Church; and radical because it eschews all modern attempts to found Christian faith on some other story, such as that of reason, critical history or human consciousness. Acknowledging the indeterminacy and textuality of human existence, Telling God's Story presents the Christian life as a truly postmodern venture: the groundless enactment of God's 'future now'. In the epilogue this book focuses on the Eucharist as the sacramental site in which the story and body of Christ consumes and is consumed. Through this bodily telling and consumption the Church is enabled to receive again God's gift of return and to be the telling of God's story, once more.

Preface
Preface to the paperback edition
Prologue: at the end of the book: 1. Future now
Part I. Consuming Text: 2. Around Christ
3. Character/circumstance/community
Part II. Reading and Writing: 4. Making it plain
5. True stories
Part III. Linkages: 6. The event of God
7. Only love
Epilogue: in the middle of the story
8. Eating the word
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM]