Stories are the most basic mode of human communication. Writers, painters, sculptors, artists, and indeed, people of all walks of life live by the telling of their stories. Christianity itself is deeply rooted in storytelling - the vast majority of the Hebrew Scriptures, for example, consist of stories, and Jesus proclaimed and taught about the Reign of God through stories and parables. At the heart of the Christian faith are stories, not concepts, propositions, or ideas.In the Beginning Were Stories, Not Texts laments the fact that Christian theology is all too often expressed in terms of abstract systems of concepts and ideas, and offers an alternative way of addressing the substance of Christian faith through narrative rather than abstraction. Through stories, both biblical and non-biblical, the author offers a bold and invigorating rethinking of the task of the modern Christian theologian.