God as Author A Biblical Approach to Narrative

God as Authortakes a thoughtful literary approach to understanding the Gospel. Gene Fant writes in the preface: "Most of us have heard that Christ is 'the Author and Finisher of our faith' (Romans 12:2), so it makes sense that the Gospel would be God's story. As many a church message board has noted so succinctly, 'History is His Story.' In our easy discussions of special revelation, I cannot help but wonder if we have missed something awe-inspiring that may be revealed by a reversal of the lens that we turn toward narrative. Perhaps the Gospel is not just like a story; perhaps story, narrative in general, is like the Gospel. My clear conviction is that something stands behind the power of narrative. In fact, I believe that Someone stands behind it. There is an Author whose skill and grace imbues the broad range of the stories that we tell. There is a Father who gave us a story to help us understand our place in this world, a story that points back to Him. His story is, in many ways, the only story that we know. When we use that realization as a foundation for interpreting and generating narrative, it changes everything, including ourselves."

Gene C. Fant, Jr. is professor of English at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He holds degrees from James Madison University (B.S. in anthropology), Old Dominion University (M.A. in English), the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div. in Biblical Languages), and the University of Southern Mississippi (Ph.D. in Renaissance English literature and a post-doctoral M.Ed. in Educational Leadership).