1. The Story
Christian preaching and teaching are narrative in form, even apart from the comings and goings of theological buzzwords such as “narrative theology,” because of the nature of the material, and because we are story-telling creatures: hearing and telling stories is how humans make sense of life. It is not surprising that our salvation should come to us in means that match our shape as humans, by, that is, our hearing a story, retelling that story, entering into it, and making it our own story. That story is not just the story of Jesus, as in the narrative section of the Creed, but also the story — that is, the narrative interpretation — of the whole of creation and redemption.
2. An Odd Thing about That Story
Normal human stories are about the use of power — perhaps hidden, paradoxical, magical, or sneaky power, but power nonetheless. But the story of creation and redemption is different from the stories we usually tell because at its center, in the story of Jesus, and also throughout the whole of God’s relationship with us and our universe, it is a story of giving up the use of power and submission to the will of others. God has given up use of power for the sake of incarnation and crucifixion, as told of in Philippians 2:8, and also in creating us and our universe, in providing for us, and in bringing us to salvation. This giving up of power in submission to the other and in death is therefore a more reliable account of how the universe works than our more usual narratives of how exercise of power accomplishes things.
3. Freedom and Love
If creation is thus kenotic, then what is the creator God like? “The universe becomes, more than anything else, a place where love happens.”
4. A Place for Us
Six perspectives on kenosis as God having made room for creation.
an excerpt: Joe and Bob
5. Falling
The “fall” and our post-fall world, here focusing on the stories in Genesis 3-11, arguing for a more grace-oriented understanding of them than is usual and drawing out from them a detailed understanding of sin.
6. The One Problem
The post-fall world continued, focusing now on the “halted middle,” that is, the present-tense seeming interruption of the story of creation and redemption, and on competitiveness and self-justification as characteristics of sin.
an excerpt: Nakedness
another excerpt: Joe and Bob again
7. Myths, Heroes, and Monsters
The post-fall world continued, focusing on sin as the universal human condition and as that which has shaped history and on the constant human attempt to moderate that reality with myths of knowledge, maturity, reason, and idealism — and on how humans consistently give up their freedom to institutional and ideological powers in the false belief that therein lies the solution to our fears.
8. Redemption
Our redemption, focusing in this chapter on the illogicality and, indeed, stupidity of divine grace and on the historically competing “theories of the atonement,” arguing for an inclusive use of the “theories” and for a focus on Jesus as the one who has carried out his mission and thereby has taken other people along into a new humanity and on Jesus’s defeat of the powers described in chapter 7.
an excerpt: Divine Illogic
9. How the Odd Story Converts Us
Our redemption, focusing now on the nature of faith, justification (harking back to chapter 6), confession, and testimony.
10. Following
Discipleship to Jesus and the life of the community of faith are part of our redemption and display the same kenotic character as the rest of the story, and chapters 10-11 are focused there. Chapter 10 sets out discipleship as following Jesus as the model in his completion of his mission (recalling chapter 8) and as the teacher with his “metaphors for followers” (cross-bearer, child, and slave). And it ends up with a defense of “personalist” ethics.
an excerpt: yet more Joe and Bob
11. Witness to Freedom
Because they are those who testify to that story, which is different from the usual human stories, Christians stand out like “a city on a hill,” unashamedly but unobnoxiously different, giving witness to the freedom brought to them by the kenotic story. This has particular ramifications for an understanding of government and the differentness of Christian witness. The book closes out with a return to the idea of testimony, now in connection with the U.S. resort to military solutions to what Americans fear.
an excerpt: “Much of [the church’s] history has been one of saying ‘Yes, that sounds like a good idea’ to the devil when he has offered alternatives to patiently waiting for and following Jesus.”
The One Story 