What is the Universe’s Story? – Part Two
What comes after the climax is the denouement. In Biblical terms, these are the Last Days. The former age, the rising action of the Jewish covenant, has passed (is finishing its passing); the new age of the church has dawned. The denouement of a story, more generally, is the outworking of the climax. The story’s end has been decided, but it has not been accomplished. The One Ring has been destroyed, but Gondor does not yet know, Frodo and Sam are still on Orodruin’s slopes, and Sauron’s army is still a threat, if much less of one. The White Witch has been vanquished, but the kings of Narnia have yet to be crowned, to take up their rule. The dragon has been slain, but St. George has yet to free the maiden or announce the country’s freedom.
In most fiction, this section is dramatically shorter than the rising action. The problem of fulfilling good is less compelling, to our minds, than that of achieving the decisive victory. Now, that’s a dangerous perspective to have in real life, given how our victories are all partial, how bad handling of aftermath can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (see: World War One and the Treaty of Versailles). On this earth stories succeed stories. Our fiction may stop itself with a relatively brief denouement, but that is a limitation produced by focus. In Narnia, Lewis does not spend much time on the denouement because the problems of that time are their own stories, not properly part of Narnia’s story. In daily events, the end of one conflict is the seed of a thousand more, large and small, each with its own story to play out.
Yet the victory of Christ is with respect to all of creation; we cannot diminish it. The denouement of history, therefore, seems unusually large. Four thousand1 years of rising action and two thousand (more) years of denouement is a bit unbalanced; that’s as if The Lord of the Rings, famously heavy on denouement as it is, had an extra 400 pages devoted to it. Even the Bible devotes 43 books to the climax and its predecessors, giving 23 books to the denouement and conclusion. Even accounting for their decreased average length, this seems disproportionate.
The answer is that history is a very big thing, and God needed to give us a lot of instruction for our place in it. See, we live in the denouement. The climax has passed, and we work it out. This is not a story like The Lord of the Rings, where the working out of the climax is a matter for characters, much of its summarized or understood, with an entire world that continues on when the conclusion is reached. No, this is the fulfilment of a reality-defining climax. The fulfilment, in fact, has its own millions of nested, interconnected sub-stories, all working towards the final conclusion of history.2
That conclusion is the Second Coming of Christ and the final instatement of His Kingdom in perfection. The denouement, you see, is only the lead-up. It has the character of the conclusion but not its fullness, just as the rising action had the tension of the climax but not its resolution. The conclusion of the story, then, is when the Kingdom goes from predominant to ubiquitous, when Christ rules not just by the proclamation of His people and of His Spirit but by His direct presence. It is the difference between a hot summer day and the sun walking among mankind.
Fictional stories, to be honest, only rarely touch this finality. The conclusion of a story, however, should have a taste of it. The Lord of the Rings may not end with all perfected for eternity, but it does end with the final rest of Frodo Baggins. The Divine Comedy does not summit with Christ’s return, but it does bring Dante a great deal closer to perfection-of-soul. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ends only with the healing of Narnia accomplished, with the Pevensies having reached the summit of their rule (which necessitates new adventures), and thus it looks forward, like Dante with his enlightening and Frodo with his sabbath-journey, to a final healing and summation. In Narnia, that’s The Last Battle; in Arda, that’s Dagor Dagorath and what follows; in our world, that’s the Second Coming, the final arrival of the new heavens and the new earth.
That’s the story which connects all of Scripture, but it’s not the only story in Scripture, except in the sense that all the other stories are part of it. One important story which lies within it is the story of Israel, Abraham’s children by the flesh. The beginning of this story is Abraham and his departure towards the Promised Land,3 clearly, but we must remember that unlike the other, this is not a total story. It covers only a part of reality. Abraham, therefore, is derived from another story, from the greater story, the story which started with Adam.
From the inciting incident, then, sprouts the rising action. Israel grows from a man and his wife, through their son Isaac, though not without danger, as Ishmael and Lot show us. Jacob, Isaac’s son, receives the name Israel, and the story is off to the races from there: twelve sons, Egypt, Exodus, the wilderness. Joshua leads the people into the Promised Land, but the protagonist, Israel, shows his flaws, his human unfaithfulness, sloth, and fear. Canaan is still not quite made into Israel when the Israelites reject the Lord’s law, seeking a king like other nations, and Saul is crowned. After Saul comes David and Solomon, then the splitting of the kingdom, exile, and return. In the Bible, four hundred years go by in silence; in history, Israel degrades, falling into legalism and disbelief.
During all this time the greater story already outlined above is going on, working through Israel’s story, and now their convergence is plain. Christ arrives, and His ministry begins. He preaches revival to Israel; this is a moment of decision. Israel, our protagonist, makes the choice between tragedy and comedy. He chooses tragedy, crying that the blood of Christ shall be upon him and his children (Matt. 27:25). Thus the rising action comes to a sharp close. Christ is murdered; this finishes too the climax. All that is left is denouement and conclusion. What a conclusion it will be, though; Israel has made a choice.
The denouement of this story happens in the background of Acts and the Epistles. In Jerusalem, the Christians prepare to flee, selling their property and dispersing (Acts 4:32-37; Matt. 24:16). They witness to the Jews; many listen, many do not. Israel’s fate is sealed, though, and the church which succeeds it is the Jew’s only hope. He cannot cling to Abraham’s flesh if he hopes to keep Abraham’s promise (Gal. 5:2).
The conclusion of this story is prophesied in Scripture, but unlike with its parent-tale, this story’s conclusion is also seen in history. Matthew 24 spoke of the abomination of desolation which was foretold by the prophet Daniel (v15); Luke 21 offers the (to us) clearer recounting, and he tells of “Jerusalem surrounded by armies,” tells the Jews, “then know that its destruction has come near” (v20). It was this warning (v21) which led the Christians to flee Jerusalem, and now it comes to fruition. Israel, having rejected the true promise, still holds to the promise it has dreamed up; Israel rebels against Rome. Here the denouement comes to its final days; here the conclusion appears.
Jerusalem is torn apart. The Temple is destroyed so that two stones do not stand atop each other (Matt. 24:2). Babylon the Great, killer of the prophets, is slain by the hand of the Lord (Rev. 14:8). The tragedy is complete: for his sin, Israel is cast low. The Lord’s “days of vengeance” are come, and He “fulfil[s] all that is written” (Luke 21:22). This is the story’s conclusion, and yet this is not a total story, so it has more to come. Israel is cast down, but it is given hope of healing, that the Lord will call Israel’s people to Him once again, into His church (Rom. 10). The conclusion of this tragedy is mercy, mercy which was made possible only by the central sin of Israel (Matt. 21:33-46).
A note, before we finished. The decree of God is total. He decided the end and the beginning; He created all and upholds all. The story is written by God, and He did not start writing without knowing every iota, every dot and speck, every subatomic particle and every twitch of the soul, everything which would be part of His story. He writes it in its total in His decree. This does not make the story lesser. This fact is a glory to God, not a detriment to the tale. To complain of it is like complaining to an author that his book is finished, like arguing that the main flaw in The Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien already finished writing it.
Our stories, in sum, are a part of the grand story of history. Every story in creation is a part in that symphonic story, whether large or small, obvious or obscure. The story of history has passed its climax. God recorded that climax for us and gave us sight of it. For this reason, among others, we are blessed beyond the saints of the Old Testament (Matt. 13:17). These are the days which David and Moses and Noah longed for, that we see the story’s victory accomplished. Let us therefore, in tribute to Him, make our life-stories comedies, tales of triumph in covenant with Him and in His service, rather than tragedies, the results of God’s law broken in our hearts.
God bless.
Footnotes
1 – Four to ten, though I generally prefer four, for reasons I’ll not go into here.
2 – We should also note that with just a bit of stretching we can include a lot more into the denouement of a story than is contained in the pages of the book itself. Strong Poison ends, but its climax only finishes its repercussions nine books later, a series which includes one of my most favorite books. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe finishes, but the final resolution of Narnia as a place is only found in The Last Battle five books (and a prequel) later. In a sense every story has a series of stories after it, told or untold; even this creation has a sequel in the world which is to come.
3 – Technically I could set the departure of his father as the inciting incident, but the matter comes to the same conclusion, for our purposes.
