Biblical Presuppositions: The Covenant

Stories matter to God. He is the grand storyteller. Reality itself is His story. Because we are made in God’s image, people tell stories too. Because stories matter, literature matters. When God revealed himself to us, he didn’t just give us theological treatises, a book of collected sermons.

Covenants are personal agreements that the transcendent God makes with his creation. They always have the same structure.

1. They begin by asserting God’s TRANSCENDENCE. This means that God is the covenant’s author. It’s his story. We see that this in God’s mighty work of creation, revelation, and redemption. 
2. Next, these covenants set up responsibilities called HIERARCHIES: the proper roles people should have in relationship to God. Hierarchies establish the story’s main characters and their roles. The most important human character, our story’s hero, is Jesus Christ, God in human form, a mediator or go-between for us. 
3. Next, this story operates according to certain RULES or ETHICS. As characters in God’s story, we can follow or disobey those rules. Jesus Christ is the hero of this story because he followed all of God’s rules without making one mistake.
4. Those rules lead to the next feature of God’s covenants: what we call SANCTIONS or the CONSEQUENCES of obeying or disobeying. You can think of this as cause and effect When we follow the rules God gives us, we receive blessings. When we disobey God’s rules, we receive curses. 
5. Finally, those individual chapters point to God’s work in time: ultimate rewards or ultimate punishment. We call this SUCCESSION. God’s story never ends. He truly has authored a neverending story: eternity. Christ offers eternal life to the people who abide by his covenant. He offers eternal death to those who fail to live by his covenant.

We start here because:

1. God is reality’s ultimate author.
2. He has given us symbols that point us to Him: his WORD, the SACRAMENTS that remind us of Christ, and PEOPLE.
3. He has established rules through the chapters of his covenant that show us how to read his word and interpret the sacraments and people correctly
4. We are part of God’s story. If we see and glorify and enjoy God, we will receive eternal life. If not, we will receive eternal death. Those are the consequences: eternity itself.
5. Every human story we read or watch, from Hamlet to Hit and Run or from The Sound and the Fury to Friends, shows human beings trying to figure out God’s bigger story. 

So how does the biblical covenant model give us a way of reading literature?

1. First, literature demonstrates the power of words/symbols. God revealed himself to us in words–the power of images and repeated patterns–for a reason. These words have power. The best authors use the symbols God created to create their own stories.
2. Second, all literature has precursors, forerunners or predecessors that it references as having more authority than itself. The poet William Blake said, that the Old and New Testaments of the Bible were the great code of art. Students and scholars of Western Literature know that the Bible is the great precursor for the stories authors tell. 
3. Third, different kinds of literature–what we call genres–have different kinds of rules–what we call conventions or patterns. Satire is different than tragedy which is different than comedy which is different than romance. Literature helps us see the larger patterns of God’s story.
4. Fourth, literature succeeds or fails insofar as it clarifies the master story God is telling: one of creation, fall, and redemption. Just as people can decide to follow or disobey the rules of God’s covenant, so too can authors choose to enhance or tarnish God’s story. When a powerful author tells a story that distracts from or distorts God’s story, the results are disastrous. When an author tells a story that 
5. Fifth, literature leaves a legacy. The stories Homer told of Achilles or  Sophocles told about Oedipus or Antigone are almost all we have left from Greek culture. Stories live on. The Jewish people have been telling the real story of The Passover for millenia. The Christian church has used the parables Christ told for 2000 years.