God, out of an explosion of love and desire to expand, created the world and made humans his Eikons.

Those Eikons sinned and were banned from the Garden.

God let the Eikons wander for seven or so chapters in Genesis until he stepped in out of grace and condescending love to make a powerful covenant with Israel and anointed Israel to be God’s priests and rulers in this world.

Israel, though, did not achieve what it was designed to do and God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, as Israel’s Messiah to rule as prophet, priest and king. He liberates and rescues and redeems and justifies those who are in him.

But this good news is for all people, and so the early church expanded “Israel” into an international body, called the Church.

All of this, from beginning to end, is about God’s grace and God’s love and it is fully consistent with God’s holiness and justice.

That narrative is closer to the conventional narrative, and it focuses on Jesus Christ as the center and climax of the Story.

But there’s something here that has to be seen for what it is:

Conventional Christianity has not framed its message in terms of a narrative, but instead in terms of a “plan of salvation.” But here again the word “conventional” is tough: which conventional? The Protestant? the Catholic? Because what is conventional for one is not framed in the same terms for the other. And I’m not so sure Catholics think in terms of a plan of salvation, but in terms of the Church being the place of God’s redemption in Christ through the incarnational theology of the sacraments. So, let me focus on the evangelical side for a moment.

Thus, the plan of salvation for the Protestant evangelical works like this:

Humans are made as Eikons but humans have chosen to rebel against God by disobedience.

Humans are all connected; all humans are sinners; original sin, yes, seems inherent to this plan of salvation.

As sinners, humans are unreconciled to God and are destined for God’s judgment — which, if chosen by humans (only some are double predestinationists) results in hell, and yes many have framed it in terms of eternal conscious torment.

God, in order to redeem sinners from their rebellion, sent Jesus Christ both to absorb the human punishment and to provide redemption and grace.

Jesus Christ, thus, is at the heart of the redemption plan of grace.

This, I would argue, is the conventional narrative/plan of redemption for Protestant evangelicals and is more or less the same with all appropriate nuances for both Catholics and Orthodox (and yes, yes, yes, all kinds of variations and told from different angles.)

But in no place will one find Brian’s narrative.

Brian’s narrative is shaped from a completely different point of view, and I will explain that Monday.