His-Story: The Greatest Story of All-Time
Fr. John Riccardo
June 9, 2021
As we enter into these summer months, this is a time when many of us set aside extra time for reading. Longer daylight hours, the beckoning of back porches, vacations long delayed by COVID and the like, encourage us to waste some time with a good book or two. Given that, I wanted to offer over the next few weeks some excerpts from the book we just published at ACTS XXIX, The Christian Cosmic Narrative: The Deep History of the World.
One of our essential principles for transformation in the Church in this era is to reclaim a biblical worldview. This book is a wonderful aid to such a reclamation. It’s at once easy to read and profound, an almost poetic look at history, that is, His-story (God’s), into which we all have starring roles. Life is a drama, an extraordinary one, and to have a biblical vision is to live with hope, a virtue seemingly in short supply these days amidst all the turbulence in the culture and the Church. But God is...well, God. He is faithful. He has a reason for creating everything, and especially for creating us, made in His own image and likeness. And He has a plan. A plan for each and every one of us. God never sees crowds. He sees individuals. He knows us through and through. By name. And He is passionately in love with us. So much so that He not only brought creation into existence but, when we had unwittingly sold ourselves into slavery, He sent His own Son to rescue us to reconcile us to Himself and to each other. And now our mission in life is to continue Jesus’ own mission of rescue and of reconciliation until He gloriously returns. So, sit back, grab some coffee, and enter deeply into the greatest story of all time. God’s. Yours. Mine.
“Humans have always loved stories. Epic narratives have dominated our imagination, from the Homeric poems and the Icelandic Eddas to more recent examples like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Star Wars saga, the Harry Potter series, and the constant stream of Marvel super- hero tales. We are drawn to drama because we are made for stories; because we are living in the midst of a story; because we know that everything for us depends—individually and for our race as a whole—on the outcome of the story in which we find ourselves.
“Much of what it means to be converted in mind to Christianity is to understand and embrace the Christian narrative, the true cosmic story within which each individual life can find meaning and direction. Our current age has devised myths of its own, narratives of meaning that have become so prevalent that they are assumed by most of us as self-evident. The modern progressive narrative inhabits our atmosphere, and we take it in through our pores. Part of the challenge for modern Christians is that we are attempting to live the Christian life amid a culture that has abandoned the Christian story and has replaced it with a different cosmic narrative, one that is intrinsically hostile to Christianity. Many who call themselves Christians have consciously, if incoherently, adopted the modern progressive myth even as they continue to use categories and language that come from Christianity. Many others who are believing Christians have been deeply affected by the modern cosmic story without fully realizing how much it has shaped their identity and their understanding of the world. The goal of this work is to present an account of the Christian narrative in its broad outlines and its dramatic sweep, such that it can be embraced (or rejected) authentically.
“It is good to remember that Christianity is a historical religion...To say that Christianity is historical means that the Christian religion, like the Jewish faith out of which it sprung and upon which it depends, is necessarily founded on specific historical events. Christianity is not an escape from time; it is rather a redemption through time and history.
“We can see the significance of this historical quality if we compare Christianity with other significant religious traditions and pose certain historical questions to them. If it could be shown beyond reasonable doubt that the figure of Buddha was legendary and never really existed, what would happen to Buddhism? Probably not much; the Buddhist religion would not be significantly affected. Buddha introduced a path of spiritual wisdom to his followers. Whatever his qualities as a person, the path itself is the essential element and would remain intact even if its origins were unclear. What is true of Buddhism is yet more decisively true of Hinduism: there is no great founder of the Hindu religion upon whose actions its beliefs rest. The same quality marks all the great religious philosophies. Confucius, Plato, Lao Tzu, and Zeno were remarkable people and we are interested in whatever we can find out about them, about what they said and how they lived. Still, the philosophies they put forward would lose nothing of their grandeur and wisdom even if little were known of their founders. But what happens when we ask the same question of Christianity? What if it were proven that Jesus of Nazareth had never lived, or had never risen from the dead? Such a discovery would destroy the Christian faith. If Christ has not been raised, wrote St. Paul to the Corinthians, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). The strength (or weakness) of the Christian claim depends on the reliability of its history.
“This historical aspect of Christianity is important because it has momentous consequences concerning the Christian account of reality. Christianity is not fundamentally a philosophy, though Christians have developed impressive philosophic systems. It is not mainly a code of ethics, though the Christian faith clarifies the moral order and makes serious moral demands on its followers. It is not primarily a practical plan for the betterment of the existing world, though Christians have had much to say about that. At its heart, Christianity is an epic adventure, a high romance, one whose hero and primary actor is God, and one that has implications of infinite importance for every person living. As C. S. Lewis put it in God in the Dock, ‘The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.’ It is historical and it is mythical at the same time.
“Our plan is to recount the Christian narrative, to sketch the outline of this gripping story. It has all the hallmarks of an epic saga. It deals with love and sacrifice. It includes danger in dark places and courage against all odds. There is beauty and terror, hope and despair, glorious battle and malicious betrayal. It contains humor and irony, depth of character, folly, and profound insight. It confronts us with the gloomy chasm of death, and it opens us upon a dawn of bursting life. And this intriguing tale is yet more wonderful because it happens to be true. It is the story behind every story, the tale from which every tale rises. It is the true adventure of the human race, and the underlying drama of every individual life.”