The One Story: Kenosis in Creation, Redemption, and Discipleship

by John W Simpson

Overview

Our creation and redemption by God and our discipleship to Jesus are all one story, and it is an odd story. It is odd because the method God follows in all his actions toward us--and which we imitate in discipleship to Jesus--is characterized not by triumph, even paradoxical triumph, or by assertion of a hero's individuality and strength, but by weakness, submission, self-enslavement, and loss. God has followed this method in creating a universe to stand alongside and even challenge God's existence. God has also acted in this way in continuing to nurture the existence of the human rebels against God. So God has also acted in the incarnation, in, that is, the kenosis of Christ (his "self-emptying," Philippians 2:7), which provides us the sharpest delineation of the divine method. And so God has acted for our redemption and our creation as a people conformed to Jesus and giving testimony to the defeat--by his kenosis--of the powers that have enslaved humanity. The One Story fills out the progress of this one story of creation and redemption and speaks a challenge to how the church understands and lives out the victory, by kenosis, of Jesus.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798385224197
Publisher:	Pickwick Publications
Publication date:	01/23/2025
Pages:	258
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

John W. Simpson Jr. is a writer and editor living in Michigan. He has authored several articles in journals and reference works. For more info, visit theonestory.online

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In The One Story, John Simpson makes a sustained case for the thesis that Christian faith and life is rooted in the single story of creation and redemption, and that God’s self-limitation is the unifying theme of that odd story. With perceptive exegesis of biblical narratives and discerning engagement with theologians across church history, Simpson argues that kenosis is the keystone to the structure of Christian theology. This intriguing book deserves, and rewards, careful reading.”

—Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, author of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church



“In his book, The One Story, author John Simpson invites readers to a ‘bottoms-up,’ story-based, upside-down, table-turning understanding of God defined by the biblical word kenosis, or self-emptying. The book may be unsettling to readers used to the status-quo, top-down, biblical, creedal, and systematic theologies of the past and present. Yet, it remains deeply resonant with the best of Christian understandings of the nonviolent, benevolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.”

—James E. Brenneman, president, Berkeley School of Theology



_________Front Matter_______

“In The One Story, John Simpson makes a sustained case for the thesis that Christian faith and life is rooted in the single story of creation and redemption—and that God’s self-limitation is the unifying theme of that odd story. With perceptive exegesis of biblical narratives and discerning engagement with theologians across church history, Simpson argues that kenosis is the keystone to the structure of Christian theology. This intriguing book deserves, and rewards, careful reading.”

—Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, author of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church



“In his book The One Story, author John Simpson invites readers to a ‘bottoms-up,’ story-based, upside-down, table-turning understanding of God defined by the biblical word, kenosis, or self-emptying. Simpson’s argument for a kenotic understanding of God undergirding all of Scripture is story-based, even as it attempts to persuade the reader of its explanatory power for understanding Trinity, creation, sin, discipleship, and redemption. His narrative approach to reading Scripture allows for an expansive flexible interpretative method for understanding complex, even mutually exclusive insights, when constructing one's theology. Metaphor and story replace more rigid, traditional, and dogmatic disciplinary reading strategies. Yet, it remains deeply resonant with the best of Christian understandings of the nonviolent, benevolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.



“Simpson rightly places great confidence in the capacity of story to provide an understanding of the unity of God. By extension such a narrative arc supports the ancient biblical Shema, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is One.’ He writes in such an accessible manner as to be a must-read for pastors, teachers, church leaders and others. While Simpson argues against having to read the footnotes if that in anyway detract from the overall narrative flow of his storytelling, I did not take his advice. For me, the footnotes were some of the most delightful parts of the book.



“As a fellow Mennonite/Anabaptist Christian with the author, this is a book for which I have waited a long time, one that challenges standard approaches to theology from creation to the grave and beyond, in the Bible and out. One does not have to agree with all of his attempts to establish the unity of God as he sees it to appreciate his framing his interpretation of reality from the point of view of Jesus of Nazareth, as the protagonist of a literary story, a possible human-based projection, of who God might be. Simpson’s book is a voice from the ashes of Christian martyrdom and the margins of those early Anabaptists of the 16^th century. Such a vision of God’s kenotic unity that the author envisions may help us celebrate, if not reconcile, differences of the past that have too often led to escalating violence and murderous exclusion within Christ’s body, the Church, and the world.”

—James E. Brenneman, president, Berkeley School of Theology, professor of Hebrew Bible, and ordained Mennonite minister

Editorial Reviews

In The One Story, John Simpson makes a sustained case for the thesis that Christian faith and life is rooted in the single story of creation and redemption, and that God’s self-limitation is the unifying theme of that odd story. With perceptive exegesis of biblical narratives and discerning engagement with theologians across church history, Simpson argues that kenosis is the keystone to the structure of Christian theology. This intriguing book deserves, and rewards, careful reading.”

—Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, author of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church



“In his book, The One Story, author John Simpson invites readers to a ‘bottoms-up,’ story-based, upside-down, table-turning understanding of God defined by the biblical word kenosis, or self-emptying. The book may be unsettling to readers used to the status-quo, top-down, biblical, creedal, and systematic theologies of the past and present. Yet, it remains deeply resonant with the best of Christian understandings of the nonviolent, benevolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.”

—James E. Brenneman, president, Berkeley School of Theology



_________Front Matter_______

“In The One Story, John Simpson makes a sustained case for the thesis that Christian faith and life is rooted in the single story of creation and redemption—and that God’s self-limitation is the unifying theme of that odd story. With perceptive exegesis of biblical narratives and discerning engagement with theologians across church history, Simpson argues that kenosis is the keystone to the structure of Christian theology. This intriguing book deserves, and rewards, careful reading.”

—Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, author of Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church



“In his book The One Story, author John Simpson invites readers to a ‘bottoms-up,’ story-based, upside-down, table-turning understanding of God defined by the biblical word, kenosis, or self-emptying. Simpson’s argument for a kenotic understanding of God undergirding all of Scripture is story-based, even as it attempts to persuade the reader of its explanatory power for understanding Trinity, creation, sin, discipleship, and redemption. His narrative approach to reading Scripture allows for an expansive flexible interpretative method for understanding complex, even mutually exclusive insights, when constructing one's theology. Metaphor and story replace more rigid, traditional, and dogmatic disciplinary reading strategies. Yet, it remains deeply resonant with the best of Christian understandings of the nonviolent, benevolent God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.



“Simpson rightly places great confidence in the capacity of story to provide an understanding of the unity of God. By extension such a narrative arc supports the ancient biblical Shema, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God is One.’ He writes in such an accessible manner as to be a must-read for pastors, teachers, church leaders and others. While Simpson argues against having to read the footnotes if that in anyway detract from the overall narrative flow of his storytelling, I did not take his advice. For me, the footnotes were some of the most delightful parts of the book.



“As a fellow Mennonite/Anabaptist Christian with the author, this is a book for which I have waited a long time, one that challenges standard approaches to theology from creation to the grave and beyond, in the Bible and out. One does not have to agree with all of his attempts to establish the unity of God as he sees it to appreciate his framing his interpretation of reality from the point of view of Jesus of Nazareth, as the protagonist of a literary story, a possible human-based projection, of who God might be. Simpson’s book is a voice from the ashes of Christian martyrdom and the margins of those early Anabaptists of the 16^th century. Such a vision of God’s kenotic unity that the author envisions may help us celebrate, if not reconcile, differences of the past that have too often led to escalating violence and murderous exclusion within Christ’s body, the Church, and the world.”

—James E. Brenneman, president, Berkeley School of Theology, professor of Hebrew Bible, and ordained Mennonite minister

From the Publisher