An impoverished Christianity

Walter Brueggemann is perhaps one of the most prolific Bible scholars ever to have lived. He authored more than a hundred books and countless other articles and essays. There is a reason that there are several pages devoted to his life and work in IVP’s Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters (2007). Among the many luminaries surveyed in this volume are Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, and Brueggemann appears right there among them.

Brueggemann, who died last month at age 92, influenced generations of ministry students and pastors through his teaching and biblical commentaries. He taught at Eden Theological Seminary in Webster Groves, Mo., from 1961-86. Afterward he became a professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., from 1986 until his retirement in 2003. He served as an editor for Fortress Press and the Journal for Biblical Literature. In 1990, he served a term as president of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Brueggemann’s storied career unfolded largely in the context of mainline Protestantism and theological liberalism. In a 1998 biographical sketch, V. S. Parrish noted that Brueggemann was a departure from modernism and the dominant schools of interpretation in the early 20th century. Brueggemann forged his own path forward “by forming an alliance between literary and sociological modes of reading the Bible.” There is no question that Brueggemann’s influence in 20th-century biblical scholarship has been enormous, but he is also one of those rare authors who knew how to communicate to ordinary readers and non-specialists.

His most significant work is The Prophetic Imagination (1978), which has sold over a million copies. It is here that Brueggemann made his mark as a scholar of the biblical prophets. In this work, he describes the “task of prophetic ministry” as nurturing, nourishing, and evoking “a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” Thus, his understanding of prophetic Scripture had application to the way modern people should relate to the structures and systems of modern life in the West.

This emphasis is reflected in his larger body of work, which often focused on social justice and progressive causes. In a 2018 lecture for Sojourners, Brueggemann set out a programmatic application of the “the prophetic imagination” to contemporary social problems. He argued that the prophets aimed to lambaste the “totalism” of the Jewish monarchy. The prophets were very much concerned about economic inequality. The Jewish kings are “managers of extraction,” officials who use their power to extract largesse from the peasantry. He admits that “church people” sometimes view his “social analysis” as communism, but he insists that the biblical prophets were doing this kind of social analysis long before Karl Marx.

Brueggemann argues that “the prophetic imagination” requires economies to be reordered so that wealth might be transferred from the richest to those who are poor and vulnerable. He says, “there is no way to cover over or to hide or disguise that we are talking about policies of redistribution.”

Brueggemann claims that “the prophetic imagination” embraces a “new ecumenism that makes room for other chosen peoples, other than Western white Christians.” For him, that doesn’t mean Christians giving up their claims about Jesus. But it does mean that Christians must recognize that “our claims about Jesus are not universal statements, but they are confessional statements about how we intend to live our life. And that means that we have to make room for other religious traditions, and respect the viability of their claims, and find allies where we can about the main prophetic tasks of justice and holiness.”

Brueggemann says that the prophetic imagination requires “a new ecological perspective in which the earth and all of the creatures of the earth are treated like covenant partners who are entitled to dignity and viability. Every acre, every squirrel, every radish, every whale, every cornstalk is entitled to viability and respect.”

Brueggemann rejected the inerrancy of Scripture and warned that “biblicism” is a dangerous threat to the faith of the church. He warns that the gospel and the Bible are not the same and that “the Bible contains all sorts of voices that are inimical to the good news of God’s love, mercy and justice.” According to Brueggemann, some biblical texts contradict the gospel. Texts that condemn homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13) cannot be reconciled with those that welcome the marginalized (Isaiah 56; Matthew 11:28-30; Galatians 3:28; Acts 10). So, he argued, we must view texts that condemn homosexuality as out of step with the gospel.

Sadly, the strength of Brueggemann’s orthodoxy did not match the strength of his prolific scholarship. He was a scholar of great renown who advanced an impoverished and compromised version of the Christian faith. I only encountered him in person once—on an elevator at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. I don’t remember what I said, but I wish I had said more.