Fatal Attraction

Why We Need Faithful Story-Telling, Story-Thinking

OK. I think a head-gasket just blew. Listen to this quote from the great book, Science and Grace—God’s Reign in the Natural Sciences from Crossway Books.

The authors are talking about the place of the study of science within the story of God’s Hand in day to day providence and His Hand of special revelation: that is, His story of Jesus Christ—born, lived, died and raised. Here we go, Science and Grace, pp. 168-170:

“Our Modernist-shaped instincts lead us to assume that science is and should be exclusively about the ‘seen,’ and the material ‘stuff’ of the universe. But the story is being played out—is being gestated and demonstrated—in both the seen and the unseen, and if science is a part of that story, it must be pursued with both the seen and unseen in view….[This] story metaphor can also help us resist the dominance of reductionism—the idea that we are only making progress in understanding the universe when we break it down into smaller and smaller components isolated from the whole.

Story-thinking forces the relationship nature of created being and rich conception of its contingency to the forefront of the discussion…[this] contingency of the universe is based on a moment-by-moment dependency in past, present and future tense. This dependency is not just interesting background information, but is held to be an integral element of what the universe really is. Created being has its existence and meaning only in relation to its Author and Sustainer and the story He intends to tell in and through it. This Author doesn’t stand outside the story but actually enters into it in the incarnation of the Son and by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Individual characters and settings have real existence and significance in themselves, but they cannot be isolated from the story itself without loss of meaning and significance and even a diminishment of their reality.

In the providence of God, the characters would not be the same without the story, and the story would not be the same without the specific characters. In view of this it makes no sense to contend that if we want to really get to know a character in the story, some feature of nature, we must first try to isolate the character entirely from the story. It makes no sense to contend that a true understanding of the story is advanced by focusing on isolated parts without at some point considering each part in context of the whole or that we want to understand the story better, we will consciously try not to pay attention to the Author’s ‘notes’ and His commentary concerning the structure of the story and His purposes in telling it.”

I am humbled by the goodness and skill of these two authors, Mr. Morris and Mr. Petcher. Over the years, I have thought that by getting down to greater and greater specificity that I am getting deeper and deeper into truth. I am one who gravitates to the study of bits and pieces; for example, in the study of God’s Word, I customarily think that in isolating those bits and pieces, I am somehow digging into deep stuff. I have worked from a wrong assumption: that the small bits contain the really, really important stuff, and I have missed the power of context, the relationality of truths—the place of story. I have missed God’s way of the comprehensive cosmic context. I have missed the meaning of the parts by ripping them out of the context of the beauty and power of the whole!

With this in mind, it is the doctrine of the Trinity to the rescue once again! There is only one true God. This one true God exists as three distinct persons. Each person is fully divine. The Father works of himself, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The One and the Many: Particularity and Wholeness.

G. Mark Sumpter