The Witness: We Must Always Begin Again

We Must Always Begin Again
By Michael Hopkins
Monday, March 7, 2005

The Book That Breathes New Life: Scriptural Authority and Biblical Theology by Walter Brueggemann (ed. Patrick D. Miller)
Augsburg Fortress, 2004, $35, pp. 248

Brueggemann is no stranger to readers of The Witness, having been a frequent contributor and subject over the years. This reviewer confesses to be an unabashed admirer. He has been a consistent voice calling the church and the world to the cause of justice. Yet, as much as he has articulated the Old Testament's fundamental assertion of justice as the cause of the God of Israel, and thus been deeply appreciated by progressives in the church, he has also been deeply challenging to our tendency to be generally dismissive and simply ignorant of the claims of the Hebrew Scriptures or the Bible as a whole. Liberals have too easily dismissed conservative approaches to biblical authority without articulating a strong understanding of our own. Brueggemann calls us to do so.

The book is divided into three sections: three essays on biblical authority, six essays on twentieth-century approaches to Old Testament theology, and four essays in which he engages in dialogue with his contemporaries in the field, particularly Brevard Childs. While the first section will be the most attractive -- and accessible -- to readers of The Witness, the other two sections are rich in their own right, and I found them to be very helpful in understanding the deeper undercurrents of dispute about biblical interpretation so prevalent in the church today.

"As soon as one voice in Israel says it is so, another voice, or the same voice in a second utterance, is sure to counter the claim."

Easily the most satisfying -- and challenging -- essay in this volume is entitled "Biblical Authority: A Personal Reflection," which previously appeared in a collection of presentations to a Presbyterian conference on the issue of human sexuality, called Struggling with Scripture. In this essay he brings home his frequent assertion that there is no innocent reading of the biblical text. "I have become convinced that we will be well served if we can be . . . honest about the intimate foundations of our personal stance on [the questions of biblical authority]" (p. 20). It is a delightful journey, showing how his upbringing brought him to read the Bible in a particular way, developing into a deep conviction that "the process of interpretation precludes final settlement on all issues."

The other side of this seemingly irenic approach to biblical authority, however, is the unleashing of a dangerously living God, who continues to be assertive and disruptive in our lives, who challenges every assumption, certainty, and ideology. Brueggemann's challenge is clear, here and throughout this book, "What if liberals and conservatives in the church, for all their disagreement, would agree and put their energies to the main truth against the main threat?" (p. 35)

Brueggemann's chief contribution to Old Testament study and theology has been his relentless insistence on the unsettled (and unsettling) nature of the biblical witness, and his understanding of the current context for interpretation (which he calls "postmodern"), "the loss of hegemonic privilege among Christian interpreters or, alternatively, among the 'ruling class' of critical scholars" (p. 131). He finds warrant for this denial of normative interpretation in the biblical tradition itself, a tradition that is constantly self-subversive. "As soon as one voice in Israel says it is so, another voice, or the same voice in a second utterance, is sure to counter the claim" (p. 136).

It is not enough for [liberals] to free the Bible from dogmatic, conservative control. We must free it from our own minimalistic, liberal control as well.

His chief critic in this approach is Brevard Childs. The Book that Breathes New Life includes much conversation with Childs and other of Brueggemann's contemporaries, including a review by Childs of Brueggemann's magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, published in 1997. Childs argues that there is a final, settled testimony of the Old Testament, when read in conjunction with the New Testament as historically interpreted by the church in its regula fidei (rule of faith). In doing so he compares Brueggemann's arguments to Gnosticism, resulting in a faith that can only be speculative rather than "the sure grounds for an unswerving truth" (p. 175). Brueggemann rejects this criticism as a caricature of his work and argues that the lived life of faith requires an approach that is sensitive to both "liturgy and pastoral reality, [where] one is endlessly aware of the disjunction and tension that must be faced and embraced and not overcome rationally" (p. 177).

All in all, it is a deeply satisfying and challenging book. I am left with a question. Liberals in the church like to quote Karl Barth: "I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally." But are we taking it seriously enough? Perhaps a more Brueggemann-like way of asking the question is, "Are we liberals willing to recognize our own hegemonic agendas we bring to the biblical text?" It is not enough for us to free the Bible from dogmatic, conservative control. We must free it from our own minimalistic, liberal control as well. Seeking to impose our own settlement on the text is no better than our conservative brothers and sisters doing so. Brueggemann joyfully warns us "All our proposals might properly have a modesty about them because having finished, we must always begin again" (p. 117).

The Rev. Michael W. Hopkins is rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Luke & St. Simon Cyrene in Rochester, N.Y. He is past president of Integrity USA, and is a contributing editor to The Witness. Michael may be reached by email at MWHopkins@rochester.rr.com.