In the Beginning Were Stories Not Texts: Story Theology

The Christian Bible is fundamentally a story. Writers painters sculptors artists and indeed people of all walks of life live by the telling of their stories. Stories are the most basic mode of human communication. Thus it is vital to ask why Christians and above all Christian theologians so often fail to express their faith in terms of story. The vast majority of the Hebrew Scriptures for example consists of stories. Jesus proclaimed and taught about the Reign of God through stories and parables. At the heart of the Christian faith are stories not concepts propositions or ideas. Given the deep rootedness of the Christian faith in storytelling this book seeks to address the fact that Christian theology has too often taken the form of concepts ideas and systems. This book is an attempt to speak of Christian faith and theology in stories rather than systems. Through stories both biblical and non-biblical this book shows how we might reimagine the task of Christian theology in the life of faith today. At its heart is the conviction that in the beginning there were stories and that in the end and indeed beyond the end are stories not texts ideas and concepts.