This is a timely intervention, and to the need for exercising theological restraint could be added the need for exercising restraint in posting comments - at least, when applied to myself.

I want to suggest two qualifications in the appeal for a more narrative-based understanding of the biblical texts, which arise from what I see the NT texts in particular as pointing us towards:

1. That the texts are seeing in Jesus the fulfilment of the OT narrative in the broadest sense; this includes especially the story of Adam, and the story of the world which hovers behind Israel’s particular story. Israel’s vocation had always been to bring the blessing of Abraham to the entire world, and this found its multiple fulfilment in Jesus - his death/resurrection, ascension/outpoured Spirit.

2. That the NT texts have a polemical function: in maintaining God’s essential ‘oneness’, for instance, they do so in the light of paganism’s idolatry. And they assert that in Jesus, God is summoning the entire world to obedience to himself, through Jesus’s death/resurrection, ascension/outpoured Spirit. The use of story is a springboard to mission which addresses (and challenges) other ‘stories’.

I think it is helpful, and maybe essential, to bring a variety of critical lenses to bear on interpreting the bible. For instance, I personally think that it is valid to look at Thomas’s confession of Jesus and see it as more than Thomas (or John) making a confession solely relative to a particular context. I think the same might be said of Stephen’s dying prayer.

On a broader level, it’s not unreasonable to pick up the clues that Jesus himself was providing as to the purpose of his mission, which challenge us on a theological level. There needs to be some qualification of the idea that he was ‘acting out’ certain roles: this can lay itself open to the charge of ‘play-acting’, which does not ring true of Jesus’s consistent emphasis.

Along these lines, we might reasonably ask what the atoning sigificance of the death of Jesus (as provided in the clues he has given us) tells us about God. So for instance, if Jesus were simply a man, what would that tell us about a God who required a human blood sacrifice of an innocent victim? For me, I am left with no option than to consider theological formulations - and provided this is not the only way in which I approach interpretation, I do so without feeling the need for any postmodern hesitation.