Christ is All: Frank Viola Audio #254: A Bombshell Dropped on the New Testament Playground
Dec 9, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Frank Viola, an author and Christian teacher renowned for his insights on the New Testament church, dives into his groundbreaking work on the New Testament's narrative. He reveals how the disjointed arrangement of biblical texts obscures understanding and uses a jigsaw puzzle analogy to highlight the importance of context. Frank critiques the modern approach in seminaries that overlooks the overarching storyline, while also illuminating cultural nuances that shift our perception of early Christianity’s social message.
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Reconstructing The New Testament Story
- Frank Viola reconstructs Acts and the epistles chronologically to reveal a single cohesive New Testament narrative.
- This narrative approach unlocks the meaning of letters by showing their historical context and sequence.
Get The Big Picture First
- Learn the overall story before assembling isolated verses to avoid forcing mismatched interpretations.
- Use a chronological narrative as the 'picture on the box' so verses fit where they belong.
Jigsaw Puzzle Analogy
- Frank uses his wife's jigsaw puzzle to illustrate how a picture-on-the-box (the narrative) prevents forcing wrong pieces together.
- He argues narrative context stops teachers from misassembling verses into false doctrines.