A crucial responsibility for Christian interpreters of Scripture, says Richard Bauckham, is to understand our contemporary context and to explore the Bible s relevance to it in ways that reflect serious critical engagement with that context. In this book Bauckham models how this task can be carried out. Bauckham calls for our reading of Scripture to lead us to greater engagement with critical issues in today s world, including globalization, environmental degradation, and widespread poverty. He works to bring biblical texts to bear on these contemporary realities through the Bible s metanarrative of God and the world, according to which God s purpose takes effect in the blessing and salvation and fulfillment of the world as his cherished creation."