Login
Salvation Stories
Family, Failure, and God's Saving Work in Scripture
by Ryan Patrick Budd
The story of Scripture is the story of God’s family.
That family, like ours today, has its share of hardships, moral failings, betrayals and dramatic transformations. In Salvation Stories: Family, Failure, and God's Saving Work in Scripture, author Ryan Budd explores the profound humanity of Old Testament figures like Abraham, Jacob, Tobit, Judith, and more and shows how God made his merciful love evident in their sufferings and joy.
What Salvation Stories reveals is that the families in Scripture experienced all that we do. And just as God shaped their stories for his glory and their good, he does so for each of us.
About Ryan Patrick Budd
Ryan Patrick Budd is a Research Assistant at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. He
formerly served as the pastoral associate at St. James the Greater parish and director of Priest
Field Pastoral Center in Jefferson County, West Virginia. A graduate of Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, his previous published writings focus on the works of Cardinal John Henry Newman and St. Ignatius of Antioch.
Praise for Salvation Stories
“By his wounds, we have been healed” (Is 58:5-41). In the eternal Son’s Incarnation, God has transcended his own transcendence and truly taken upon himself our experience of brokenness and pain, precisely in order to heal and elevate us. Ryan Budd’s reflections offer us a glimpse at how that saving work of Jesus was prefigured in the lives of various Old Testament families precisely in the midst of their very messiness, and that this same healing grace is on offer to us as well in Christ."
-Msgr. Michael Heintz
Academic Dean, Mount St Mary’s Seminary
"This is the most hopeful book you’ll read this year. No matter how messed up your family is, it’s probably not as messed up as these biblical households. And God can work miracles through your family as he worked through them. Budd’s book is a fascinating read in the way that watching many different train wrecks is fascinating. But it’s also consoling, inspiring, and strangely beautiful. The takeaway is this: No family is too messy to become glorious. Not your family, not mine."
-Mike Aquilina
Author of Africa and the Early Church
"Ryan Budd tells the biblical story as a riotous history of families. With bigamy, adultery, divorce, and even murder, his chapters often read like soap-opera treatments. But the author brings the whole tangled tale to a credible resolution. While human families are treacherous to each other and to God, God himself is faithful to his promises. Our heavenly Father is raising a family of families, all of us flawed and needy. This book is highly recommended for anyone who has ever lived in a family."
- Scott Hahn, Author, Catholics in Exile, Founder and President of the St. Paul Center