Chris Wright on Postmodernism and the Bible

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 46-47, as he comments on one aspect of postmodernism (diversity and plurality) and the Bible:

"[...] The living dynamic of the gospel has been such that, while it has an unchanging core because of its historical rootedness in the Scriptures and the Christ event, it has been received, understood, articulated, and lived out in myriad ways, both vertically through history and horizontally in all cultures in which Christian faith has taken root.

[...] The Bible got there before postmodernity was dreamed of - the Bible which glories in diversity and celebrates multiple human cultures, the Bible which builds its most elevated theological claims on utterly particular and sometimes very local events, the Bible which sees everything in relational, not abstract terms, and the Bible which does the bulk of its work through the medium of stories.

All of these features of the Bible - cultural, local, relational, narrative - are welcome to the postmodern mind. Where the missional hermeneutic will part company with radical postmodernity, is in its insistence that through all this variety, locality, particularity, and diversity, the Bible is nevertheless actually the story. This is the way it is. This is the grand narrative that constitutes truth for all. And within this story, as narrated or anticipated by the Bible, there is at work the God whose mission is evident from creation to new creation. This is the story of God's mission. It is a coherent story with a universal claim. But it is also a story that affirms humanity in all its particular cultural variety. This is the universal story that gives a place in the sun to all the little stories." (Emphasis his)