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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
YHWH's dialogical relatedness, May 4, 2010
This review is from: An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Paperback)
Overview:
The heart of Brueggemann's "An Unsettling God" (which itself is a distillation of his larger "Theology of the Old Testament") is his statement that, "the distinctiveness of 'God' in Old Testament tradition concerns YHWH's deep resolve to be a God in relation." He goes on to flesh out what YHWH's dialogical (that word is key) relationships are like with his various partners: Israel, The (individual) Human Person, The Nations, and Creation.
I would recommend this book to nearly any Christian, as it is sure to shake up the rather static categories with which we often think of God, and give insight into the dialogical relationship that he sees as the heart of the Hebrew Bible.
(Here is the link to his larger Theology of the OT:http://www.amazon.com/Theology-Old-Testament-Testimony-Advocacy/dp/0800637658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272900757&sr=8-1)
(The following is a book review, about 1 single-spaced page per chapter, that I wrote for an OT Theology class for which I read this book.)
Chapter 1: YHWH as a Dialogical Character
Brueggemann begins his book by discussing how, "the word God is of course so generic that it can (and has been) construed in any number of directions." (1) He goes on to discuss how "God" can be understood as either a generic impersonal force for good as in Gnosticism or New Age thought. An opposite understanding is, one common in classical theology and popular Christian thought, he says, is to understand God "in terms of quite settled categories," and as "a Being completely apart from and unaffected by the reality of the world." (1) But he goes on to say that the God of the Bible (especially the OT), "does not conform to either the temptation of vagueness or the temptation of settledness," but is "a fully articulated personal agent." (2)
He then discusses how the theology of ancient Israel is in some ways taken from its surroundings in the ANE, but also transformed into its own distinct articulation. He says that, "the distinctiveness of "God" in Old Testament tradition concerns YHWH's deep resolve to be a God in relation." (4) This emphasis on relationship and dialogue is key to the entire book. It is precisely because of this emphasis on relational dialogue that he says that God cannot be understood as a fixed, settled entity. "This God," he says, "is always emerging in new ways in response to the requirements of the relationship at hand." (4)
The next section deals with, "Jewish probes of the dialogical." (5) He says that there is a need for Christians need to appropriate a "Jewishness in our ways of reading the text." (6) This is because, "a recurring Christian propensity is to give closure to our readings and interpretations, it is recurringly Jewish to recognize that our readings are always provisional." (6) He then goes on to discuss how God is a God in pathos. God's pathos, "concerns the engagement of YHWH with Israel and with the world, and therefore YHWH's vulnerability and readiness to be impinged upon." (9) Thus, "the peculiar character of this God is as available agent who is not only able to act but is available to be acted upon." (9)
Brueggemann laments in the next section that "much scholastic theology has reduced God to a monologue." (11) He articulates how there is give and take in the relationship between Israel and YHWH. He sums these up with the terms praise, promises, protest, and rebuke. "Praise is Israel's appropriate utterance toward the God who makes promises. Protest is Israel's appropriate utterance toward the God who offers juridical rebuke." (15) He goes on to say that, "the continuing outcome of such a rich, complex, and thick dialogical transaction is a lively relationship in which all parties are capable of candor, in which all parties are available for new possibilities." (15) "It is no wonder, " he says, "that the God of the Old Testament is cast as a person." (15) Thus, "every attempt to move away from the embarrassing particularity of the interpersonal entails a costly loss of that transformative dimension of faith. Scholastic temptations in theology tend to freeze the relationship and to stifle its dynamism." (15-6)
He then finishes the chapter by discussing how the biblical text itself is a result of this dialogic relationship. He says that the biblical text, which is surely a human document, "is at the same time, an act of divine revelations." (16) This dialogicality leads him to understand that, "the biblical testimony is revelation-as-human-imagination." (16) It is in this dialogue, that, "the human person stands alongside YHWH in engagement with the tribulation and wonder of the world." (17)
Chapter 2: Israel as YHWH's Partner
"YHWH has acted toward Israel in ways that are defining for both YHWH and Israel," begins Brueggemann in his second chapter. (19) Because of this, "Israel's existence is referred to and derived from YHWH." (19) Israel's very existence, a gift from YHWH, is rendered in two primary narratives, that of the ancestors and that of the Exodus-Sinai narrative. (20) Because if this initiatory act, "this relationship, marked by awe and gratitude for inexplicable generosity, brings with it the expectations and requirements of the sovereign who initiates it." (23) This is what is known as the covenant. Brueggemann rejects the distinction between conditional and unconditional in reference to the covenant. He says, "the attempt to factor out conditional and unconditional aspects of the covenant is an attempt to dissect and analyze the inscrutable mystery of an intimate, intense relation that, by definition, defies all such disclosure. YHWH is all for Israel, and that includes both YHWH's self-giving and YHWH's intense self-regard." (24) He prefers Sander's term, covenantal nomism, which subsumes law under covenant. "By inference," he says, "I suggest that grace must also be subsumed under covenant. Covenant is the larger, working category through which this witness understands its life with YHWH." He says that it is a distortion to attempt to sort out law and grace, because in the OT they are both spoken of within the category of covenant.
The primary response and obligation of Israel to YHWH is to love YHWH. (25) Another response is to do justice, which is a "specific and radical command, " that, "is to characterize the whole life of Israel." (28) He says, because of this call to justice, that, "there is ample ground for the recognition that Israel, as a community under obligation, is indeed a community of social revolution in the world." (29) In addition to its requirement of justice, another obligation is that of holiness. These two obligations are complementary, because, "the sovereign faithfulness of YHWH is for the world (thus justice)," and "YHWH's faithful sovereignty concerns YHWH's own life (thus holiness)." (34)
A key part of Israel's relationship with YHWH, "is that Israel did not respond to YHWH's goodness adequately or to YHWH's command faithfully; Israel thereby jeopardized its existence in the world." (39) The "historical mode of nullification is exile," which, "is indeed the defeat, loss, and forfeiture of life with YHWH." (39) But exile, he says, "is not exhausted in its geopolitical dimension. In the end, the exile is a theological datum concerning Israel's life with YHWH." (39) "In that situation of nullity, Israel is compelled to new ways in its practice and life of faith." (40) This includes repentance, grief, presence in absence (priestly disciplines and liturgy), and resilient hope for regathering. However, YHWH makes a "fresh turn toward Israel", articulated especially in the prophets, where YHWH would gather, love, heal, and forgive Israel. "Israel, in its new circumstance as a marginated political community, understood itself to be primarily a community of obedience." (50) Thus, Israel became, primarily, "a community of Torah piety." (50)
Chapter 3: The Human Person as YHWH's Partner
The third chapter of Brueggemann's An Unsettling God concerns the human person. What is interesting is that he makes no attempt to articulate an abstract anthropology, but instead says "the Old Testament has no interest in articulating an autonomous or universal notion of humanness," because, "its articulation of what it means to be human is characteristically situated in its own Yahwistic covenantal, interactionist mode of reality, so that humanness is always Yahwistic humanness or, we may say, Jewish humanness." (57) The Israelites made no attempt to think of humanity in the abstract, because all of life was understood within the context of the covenant, not outside of it. The physiology of humanity is spoken of primarily in "the categories of spirit (ruah), flesh (basar), living being (nephesh), and heart (leb)." (59) He again returns to the focus on YHWH by saying that, "the central concern of Israel regarding humanity, " is that, "the human person is a person in relation to YHWH, who lives in an intense mutuality with YHWH." (60)
In the next section, he discusses three aspects of the YHWH-human relationship and their corresponding actions. The first is sovereignty (on YHWH's part) and obedience (on the human's part). Then there is YHWH's fidelity and man's freedom in the world. The third is the "dialectic of assertion and abandonment." (65) On this, he says that YHWH has at his "core an unsettled interiority of fidelity and sovereignty. With reference to humankind as with reference to Israel, this unsettled interiority in YHWH has as its counterpoint in the partner an unsettled practice of deference and autonomy, each of which is endlessly qualified and corrected by the other." (66) He then discusses three "disciplines of humanness," which are listening (obeying), wisdom and discernment,...
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Unsettling God : An Unsettling Brueggeman, December 30, 2010
This review is from: An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Paperback)
An Unsettling God : The Heart of the Hebrew Bible by Walter Brueggemann is an honest reading. It is an honest grappling with the text of the Old Testament. John Goldingay's remarks however summarize this reading succinctly. He notes, ""An unsettling God? 'An unsettling Walter Brueggemann' some of my students would say." This book is a real look by a real scholar concerning the peculiarities of the Old Testament concerning YHWH as a dialogical character and His partnership with Israel, the human person, the Nations, and Creation.
This text itself is a condensing of Brueggemann's larger work, "Theology of the Old Testament". In the Preface he lets us know that "The big idea of this book is that the God of ancient Israel is a God in relationship, who is ready and able to make commitments and who is impinged upon by a variety of "partners" who make a difference in the life of God." (pg. xi) Indeed a God in relationship "pervades the Old Testament".
In the first chapter Brueggemann suggests Christians "in the present time" are to undergo a "recovery of the Jewishness in our ways of reading the text." (pg. 6) He says that "a recurring Christian propensity is to give closure to our readings and interpretations, it is recurringly Jewish to recognize that our readings are always provisional, because there is always another text, always another commentary, always another rabbinic midrash that moves beyond any particular reading." He also discusses Martin Buber and his likewise dialogic reading of the text. There is truth to this but we cannot get leave it here. Even as we read the text, all the while understanding a dialogic nature, and then re-read the text again and again over time we still glean truths that emerged from our initial readings. The meaning is then found in a relational aspect since much of the Scriptures appear to be pregnant with meaning. This should not mean however that there is no discernible meaning even at first reading.
He goes on to discuss how God is a God in pathos. God's pathos, "concerns the engagement of YHWH with Israel and with the world, and therefore YHWH's vulnerability and readiness to be impinged upon." (pg. 9) He mentions the work of Abraham Heschel concerning YHWH's pathos. He then writes, "the peculiar character of this God is as available agent who is not only able to act but is available to be acted upon." (pg. 9) He also notes the work of Jurgen Moltmann and the ways Christian theology has "asserted the apatheia of God...by acknowledging the suffering of the Son in which the Father does not participate." (pg. 10) Moltmann believes that "it is necessary to talk in trinitarian terms" concerning "what happened between Jesus and his God and Father on the cross..." He also notes "The Son suffers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son." (pg. 11) Brueggeman agrees here and says that "Moltmann's statement is completely congruent, in the categories of Christian theology..." For Brueggeman God is "deeply at risk in the drama of fidelity and infidelity in the world." (pg. 11)
In chapter five Brueggeman goes on to point out that "YHWH takes creation--the whole known, visible world--to be YHWH's partner." He points to Genesis 1-2 as obvious example and says others not so obvious. He cites various passages in this chapter including Psalm 19:1-4; Psalm 24:1-2; Psalm 104:14-23. He defines creation as "the network of living organisms that provides a viable context and home for the human community...an outcome of YHWH"s generous, sovereign freedom." (pg. 138) Often times we do not take into account God's role with creation. Brueggeman rejects Creation ex nihlo and posits that God "ordered the 'preexistent material substratum.'" (Pg. 138)
He goes on to note that creation includes "human creatures but not especially human creatures--are looked after, cared for, sustained, and protected by the generous guarantees that the Creator has embedded in the creation." (pg. 139) YHWH gives the "blessing of life" as "guarantees for all creatures" (pg. 141) and wisdom compels us to give attention to things that "keep the world generative." (pg. 141)
Speaking of a "Renewed Creation out of Hopelessness" Brueggeman brings out attention to Hosea 2:2-23. He notes that on the basis of this text that "the future to be given by YHWH, it is no longer possible to keep distinct the future of Israel and the future of creation..." (pg. 157) He takes us into many texts but cites Isaiah 65:17-25 and says that the "new creation now promised concerns not only Israel, not only the entire human community, but also all of creation, so that hostilities at every level and in every dimension of creation will be overcome." (pg. 160)
Brueggeman concludes that there is a "basis for a genuine alternative to the nihilism of the modern world...This testimony of Israel, echoed by Christianity, not only gives different answers--it insists on different questions, wherein the answers offered are...tenuous...the intramural quarrels in the church, and the ancient alienations between Christians and Jews, are unconscionable...when this lean, resilient tradition stands as a fragile alternative to the embrace of the Nihil." (pg. 176)
This book is not for the faint of heart, or the "weekend warrior". If you are a student of the word and want to dive into the heart of the Hebrew Bible then read this book. You may not agree with everything but you will learn something.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent investigation of humanity's God-related ontology, September 20, 2010
This review is from: An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Paperback)
I first encountered Walter Brueggemann's project as a senior at Milligan College, but I really became a disciple of Bruggemann's in 2000 when as a seminarian I read his gigantic 1997 Theology of the Old Testament. Here was a teacher who certainly wore his ideology on his sleeve (no friend of the Enlightenment's arrogance or the national security state's duplicity here) and whose attention to relationships between texts still impresses me a decade later. I've since had the privilege of attending a few of his public lectures, and this book continues to remind me why being a disciple of Brueggemann is still the most faithful way to read the Bible that I can figure out.
Brueggemann states in this book's introduction that, after ten years, he had decided to revisit some of the central ideas of Theology of the Old Testament, and at several points in the book he retracts certain points of technical scholarship (that is to say, stuff that's so specialized that eight years in English lit have rendered me unable to sustain interest in them), but his more interesting project is to expand significantly on his idea of theology as a dialogical practice.
The idea, although it uses a Hegelian-sounding word, is really just a recognition of the relationships implicit in the Bible: for one, the voice known as YHWH becomes known not by rational deduction but in disruptive, memorable moments of revelation. Moreover, most of the text of the Bible (with very important exceptions) has to do with YHWH's relationships with the Abrahamic clan, then with the Hebrews, then with Israel, then with the Church. The continuities and discontinuities in that succession of relationships is worth thinking on, but the common thread that Brueggemann highlights is that YHWH always and only comes to us in relationship with other entities, and each section of the book treats one large category of those relationships.
After the first introductory section, section two deals with "Israel as YHWH's Partner." Brueggemann breaks up the classical Protestant dualism of works and grace in the opening of this chapter and reminds his reader again and again that it's simply inadequate to the Old Testament. Israel's ethical obligations are real and binding, Brueggemann insists, but those obligations only make sense as responses to entirely gratuitous acts of grace on YHWH's part (38). Moreover, Biblical narrative tends to follow a pattern, though not slavishly, that gives the lie to the hermetic separation of grace and obedience. The steps to that pattern Brueggemann lays out thus (52):
* love for Israel (God's election of Abram, God's rescuing Israel from Egypt)
* command to Israel (covenant of circumcision, Torah of Moses, institution of Torah-cultus by Josiah)
* scattering of Israel (era of oppression after the Exodus, Assyrian conquest, Babylonian exile)
* YHWH turns back to Israel (Isaiah 40, restoration of Hosea's wife and children)
* gathering back to YHWH (rise of Davidic monarchy, return from Babylonian exile)
Brueggemann argues that not only is the overarching narrative of Israel shaped roughly thus; in addition, the Psalms often reflect this narrative sequence. And beyond that, texts like Job, which treat non-Israel individuals, often follow a similar pattern (59). And beyond that, oracles against the nations in Isaiah and other prophets, not to mention the primordial story of the tower of Babel, indicate that the same series of relationships governs how the Bible imagines non-Israel nations (134). And beyond that still, some prophetic oracles, especially those that envision re-enactments of the Exodus plagues, imagines the same series of relationships governing God's relationship with the whole of creation (149). To repeat, Brueggemann is not asserting that every section of the Bible adheres in some sort of neo-classical manner to this pattern; instead, what Brueggemann would point out is that the relational moments (oracle and text, revelation and recipient of revelation, witnessing people and witnessed-to nations) in which the faithful always encounter God extends, in the Bible's imagination, to every relationship that God maintains with every part of creation.
Brueggemann's point here is that the Bible does have a full and robust sense of providence, but that providence is always in tension with an equally full and an equally robust sense of real and powerful agency on the part of YHWH's partners. In other words, although the most frequent and often the most memorable testimonies about God in the Bible are in regard to YHWH's power, authority, and sovereignty, for Brueggemann (and as I said before, I think of myself as his disciple), when a theological datum arises to disrupt that larger picture, the faithful reader of the Bible must take heed and resist the urge to erect systems that silence the datum.
Datum, of course, is the singular where "data" are plural. (My own composition students know well that in my classes, even if not on the cable news, "media" and "data" are always plural.) What Brueggemann means by a theological datum is one of those moments of revelation in which, contrary to the conclusions to which mortals come, God reveals something. Perhaps it's that the sins of mortals actually increase divine wrath, indicating that there was less wrath before the sin and more after and that, therefore, something at the core of divine being really does respond to human agency. At other times a theological datum might be a story in which a mortal's pleading convinces YHWH to refrain from massive destruction. At any rate, contrary to some systematic theologies that make a regular practice of dispensing with such moments as "anthropomorphic" or "primitive," Bruggemann insists that, so long as they share the page with the texts that support systems of theology, they deserve the same sort of weight as those texts bear, even if that means that the text remains paradoxical rather than neatly sorted.
Perhaps it's the English major that I completed before I started seminary, or perhaps it's the sense I have that airtight systems of thought, be they materialistic or theistic, tend to miss some important things about real life, but I remain convinced that this absolute devotion to the text as it stands is going to continue to govern my own theology as I go on teaching and preaching. Brueggemann's book concludes with his expressing a hope that this sort of reading will inspire "different questions" (176) from the ones that theology has classically inspired. If my own career as a Christian teacher counts, it's working already.
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