NothinsGonnaStopIt!

My interest and passion is the pursuit of the storyline of the Bible, the plan of God for creation that nothing can stop. I base my thoughts on the words of Isaiah 46.10-11 where the prophet, speaking in the name of Israel's God, Yahweh, says, "I have made known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come. My purpose will stand and I will do all that I please."

We find in this verse a hermeneutical key to how the storyline of the Bible coheres. All the elements of the end are contained in the beginning. This means that the Bible needs to be studied from the beginning with the end in mind. This does not mean that we are to read the New Testament back into the Old; no, the developing revelation of Scripture must be studied in its developmental chronology to allow the ancient authors to have their unique voices. But when interpreting texts, the astute interpreter has to keep the end in mind in order to interpret the meaning of texts. There is a basic storyline that needs to be uncovered, the trajectory of which is established at the beginning of the narrative. The storyline, then, is always moving forward toward its goal, its telos. History is headed toward a grand finale and the reader must keep this in mind in the reading of the parts; the interpreter must interpret the meaning of the stories in light of the Story.

Despite multiple authors spanning multiple continents, languages, cultures and millenniums, despite a myriad of scrolls of varying lengths and stored in countless libraries in the ancient world, these diverse literary works display a remarkable unity in their parts. The Bible itself reflects the unity in diversity manifest in the eternal Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As such, the Bible can be studied to discover the unity of its parts. And what a marvelous adventure it is to pull back from the atomistic study of the pixels to see the whole picture!

This blog will be dedicated to a community dialogue between those who want to see the forest through the trees, to see the unfolding plan of God in the history of Humankind that nothing can stop. Bring it on.