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Who Gets to Narrate the World?: Contending for the Christian Story in an Age of Rivals

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This is Bob Webber's last book. While he was writing, he was aware that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. So, he wanted to leave us something that we could "chew on." He did. He is concerned that the Christian world view has been lost in recent generations. He explains how it happened and what are the two forces that are vying for the right to take the Christian world view's place. These two forces he identifies as 1) radical Islam, and 2) secular humanism (or, in the Christian community, you could label it commercialism). He asserts that, in a competition, radical Islam will eventually win over secular humanism (as, he asserts, it is already happening in Europe). He is holding out for the Christian world view, but he sees the church reverting to an "ancient future" mission to accomplish this. The book ends with "A Call to Narrate the World Christianly." In some ways, Bob's second-last book, "Ancient Future Worship," brings us more depth and background on what he is advocating in this book. Bob was my mentor in Grad School. Several of us miss him greatly. We're hoping in our ministries to set as priorities what Bob suggests here, where he summarized what he taught us.

As the Western world loses its grip on the biblical narrative, other narratives arise in ascendence. Webber is particularly concerned about the growing Muslim population, especially in light of the fact that "of the forty-six Muslim majority nations in the world, only three are free" (14). Having lost our grip on a defining story, we are left only with the present self: "When the past is lost, as it now is in our Western world, there is nothing left to focus on except the self. We live in a culture of disbelief regarding our Christian heritage. However, when it comes to our personal well-being and future, we live in the culture of belief in the self" (17). Our situation is strikingly similar to the environment the early Christians found themselves in: "Christians in the Roman world found themselves in a cultural setting of moral decadence, philosophical relativism and religious pluralism. However, they narrated the world in a new way. They did not accommodate the faith to culture but set forth the faith in a countercultural way" (51). We should do the same! This is Webber's final book. Last year, he died of pancreatic cancer. Webber has been such a positive influence in my life and in the evangelical world. It is a shame that all the good in this book is partially obscured by its continued "face off between Islamic and Christian ideology" (102). I recommend his superior book, Ancient-Future Faith as a better introduction to Webber's thinking.

One of the last books from Robert Webber, Who Gets to Narrate the World? Contending for the Christian Story in an Age of Rivals (IVP, 2008) may become one of his best-remembered. Though the book is brief (137 pages), it is a substantive work that addresses the fundamental spiritual issue of our day: Whose worldview will triumph? Or as Webber puts it: Who gets to narrate the world?

Written during Webber's battle with cancer shortly before his death, Who Gets to Narrate the World exhibits a personal urgency that stands out among his other books. The ideas flow freely and quickly here, with Webber pleading for renewal of Western Christianity in the face of the challenges of our day.

Webber sees both an external challenge (Radical Islam) and an internal challenge (Christian accommodation to culture) facing the church. He believes we should respond to these two challenges by embracing the fullness of God's meta-narrative. Webber passionately pleads for the restoration of God's narrative - a restoration that will bring change to our churches, reinvigorate our worship, and refortify the pillars of Western civilization.

Who Gets to Narrate the World describes the rise of early Christianity in the context of pagan Rome, and how a biblical worldview formed the foundations of Western civilization. Webber then seeks to explain how the Christian story was lost through its accommodation to culture. Today, secular relativism and pluralism cannot uphold our postmodern, post-Christian, neo-pagan world. The foundations of Western civilization are crumbling under the threat of radical Islam. Webber's urgent tone is buoyed by the strong hope that God story can revive the West and reinvigorate the life of the Church.

Webber's book at times resembles the later thought of Francis Schaeffer (though Webber replaces "worldview" terminology with "narrative"). He argues that reason and science in the modern world have become the enemy of God's narrative through the separation of the secular from the sacred. Turning to the historic understanding of the incarnation, Webber seeks to show that life cannot be separated into sacred/secular distinctions. He rightly claims that the Christian Story (worldview) stands against the other stories. It is "the Holy Spirit versus jihad" (88).

Also Schaefferian is Webber's solidly pro-life stance (92), his approval of exclusive Christian truth claims, and his belief that the Western culture has moved into a cycle of decay. Webber makes the case for democracy as the most superior form of government devised by humanity. He even applauds Democratic efforts to restrain Radical Islam.

But Webber rightly refuses to equate democracy with the Christian story and forcefully argues against the dangers of civil religion. He compares September 11, 2001 to the Fall of Rome in A.D. 410, and writes:

"In a world that has no story, new contenders are emerging to narrate the world their way" (99).

In the past, Webber has been dismissive of the penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement in favor of the Christus Victor model. But in Who Gets to Narrate the World, Webber seems to have softened his stance towards penal substitution, allowing the substitutionary nature of Christ's death to peek through in many places. He affirms that Christ gave himself as a propitiation for our sins and that he came to be damned for us all. "In Jesus, God comes in human skin to reverse the human condition and reconcile humanity to the Father" (32).

Webber's description of God's narrative emerging in a pagan Roman world is very insightful. Roman culture was one of moral decadence, philosophical relativism, and religious pluralism. By pointing back to the Christian faith in the Roman cultural setting, Weber finds the tools necessary to sustain Christianity in today's world. The similarities between ancient Rome and contemporary Western society are striking.

Yet for all of its brilliant insights, Who Gets to Narrate the World does have a few problems. Webber tends to create false dichotomies. In an overreaction against rationalistic apologetics, he turns to "narrative truth" instead of propositional truth. And yet, he seems to miss the very propositional nature of the creeds he himself quotes and affirms (27-28).

Webber's reduction of his vision into false distinctions undermines some of what is good in this book. At times, he seems to endorse a type of fideism. In his rush to throw out rationalistic apologetics, he does not properly take into account the complexities of the early church, especially the work of the early fathers to prove the Christan Story by using the philosophical tools of the time.

The idea that the comprehensive story of God stands on its own and does not need external support is helpful in one sense (we do not need science in order to believe) and harmful in another (after all, if Christianity is true, it is true in every sphere). Webber overlooks the fact that we should be able to find testimony to the Christian truth claims from both inside and outside God's narrative.

At times Webber overestimates the importance of the church's liturgy. He never fully proves his point that an emphasis on proper liturgy will help us hold onto a proper understanding of God's narrative. He writes of the ancient church:

"The church building, the liturgy itself, with all of its attending signs and symbols and especially the words of the Eucharistic prayer, clearly portrayed who gets to narrate the world" (68).

Does proper worship necessarily guard against losing God's narrative? The empty cathedrals of Europe seem to indicate otherwise. And how important is the Eucharistic prayer really?

In other places, Webber resorts to soundbites that are never fully explained. For example, he says that "God invites us to enter his narrative by faith and live out his vision of the world" (116). What does it mean to enter into God's narrative? How does one do so? How does this description relate to the Kingdom? To conversion? Left in soundbite form, Webber's terminology is undefined and rather vague.

But the overall thesis of Who Gets to Narrate the World is fundamentally sound. The Christian message is a single, universal narrative of everything. It is interesting to me that in the final weeks of his life, Webber sounded less and less like the Emerging Church advocate he had become in recent years and more and more like an apologist in the school Francis Schaeffer. It is often said that foreseeing one's own death can be clarifying. Surely this is the case with Who Gets to Narrate the World.

Webber's final work marks the end of an illustrious career, but more importantly, it issues a passionate call to the affirmation of the Christian Story in the face of its challengers.

Another insightful treatment of one of postmodernism's most important issues by my late mentor. Brief, direct, and powerful--well worth the very little time it takes. Bob's treatment of the nature of Islam and its active attempt to supplant all comers to the battle for truth is the best I've read to date. Reminds me of his little known but skillful collaboration with Rodney Clapp, The People of the Truth. A must read for the people of Christ and the new creation!

It is ironical when people say they have no religion, and that religions should be banned from the public domain. Because there is no neutral ground. We all seek to make sense of the world as we see it. That is the peculiar fate of the human being. Even the newborn is a centre of awareness trying to process the environment into which it has plummeted. Each of us develops an internal narrative which outruns, and always will outrun, the evidence available to finally clinch its claim to truth - at least this side of death. And each of us is to some extent influenced, in the evolution of our own story, by the stories of others. This is particularly so in regard to the big picture stories generated by the major religions, and by philosophers who pour scorn on them. Since all persons embrace by faith certain ultimate bets on what is the ultimate nature of the reality they inhabit, we are correctly described as "homo religiosus", even those who deny the ascription, such as scientific humanists.

It is therefore entirely in order to ask, as Robert E. Webber does, "Who gets to narrate the world?' In this relatively small book, Webber packs a closely reasoned argument that societies tend to be dominated by particular big picture stories. He deftly leads us through the narratives, or world-view accounts, of early Christianity and the pre-Christian European era. He then goes on to show how the Judaic and Christian stories became dominant in the West. Then he tracks "how the West lost God's narrative", yielding to a dominant Modernism which rode in on the back of scientific discovery. This in turn has been contested by trends he describes as Postmodern, post-Christian, and Neopagan, with additional contenders challenging these as well, notably Radical Islam. The final substantive chapter sounds "A Call to an Ancient Evangelical future" aimed at helping Christians to regain the ideological initiative through a return to the robust story of God's decisive action, as set down in the early centuries of the church's development.

Webber writes as a thinking Evangelical Christian, though he is quite prepared to deplore the comfortable, privatised narrative which often disfigures the Evangelical tradition, particularly in affluent, middle-class America. His analyses of the various stories are clear and pithy, providing a readable summary which would be ideal as a backdrop for a series of seminars in a church or seminary, using this book as primary background reading. It would be a fine conversation starter in wider circles too. For me, it has drawn together many threads of cultural and theological analysis that have been exercising my own mind, and I commend it to anyone seeking to chart a course for Christian thought and action through the tangle of stories competing for dominance in the modern world.

This is truly a sobering book by Robert Webber, written at the very end of his life, with all his keen insight into history and theology. Webber died from pancreatic cancer shortly after he finished the book and before it was published. Otherwise, he would no doubt be a target for radical Islamic extremists, as he speaks the truth about this very real threat to a Christian world view. The other threat he identifies is cultural accommodation, comparing modern America with the Roman Empire, which fell from within due to it's moral decadence, philosophical relativism and religious pluralism. Webber's call to relearn the Christian narrative and break away from our accommodation to culture is something Christians need to hear and embrace.

"A good book tells about the narration. The content is concise and thorough. A worth reading & collect."

The book came in excellent condition and in good time. The price was right. Thanks for carrying it.