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Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination
Walter Brueggemann issues a passionate call for a bold restructuring of the imagination of faith in our "postmodern" context. Old assumptions-rational, objectivist, absolutist-have for the most part given way to new outlooks, which can be grouped under the term postmodern. What does this new situation imply for the church and for Christian proclamation? Can one find in this new situation opportunity as well as dilemma? How can central biblical themes-self, world, and community-be interpreted and imagined creatively and concretely in this new context?Our task, Brueggemann contends, is not to construct a full alternative world, but rather to fund-to provide the pieces, materials, and resources out of which a new world can be imagined. The place of liturgy and proclamation is "a place where people come to receive new materials, or old materials freshly voiced, which will fund, feed, nurture, nourish, legitimate, and authorize a conterimagination of the world."Six exegetical examples of such a new approach to the biblical text are included.
128 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
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About the author
Walter Brueggemann
316 books572 followersWalter Brueggemann was an American Christian scholar and theologian who is widely considered an influential Old Testament scholar. His work often focused on the Hebrew prophetic tradition and the sociopolitical imagination of the Church. He argued that the Church must provide a counter-narrative to the dominant forces of consumerism, militarism, and nationalism.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 25, 2015
This was a quick and good read. Three short chapters 1) dealing with the context we find ourselves in, i.e. post-modern. 2) A glimpse at the themes that fund the counter-world of evangelical faith juxtaposed to our contemporary materialistic, consumerist, scientific world. 3) Specific texts that awake or challenge any reader, believer or non-believer.
In the words of Hebrews, the word of God is living and active. Brueggemann, in this book, attempts to attune our reading habits to that truth of Hebrews. Sure the word is living and active, but how so? Surely inattentive, modern reading clouds the vitality of the Bible. Brueggemann clears some ground for us, removing too much of us so that the Bible may be heard rather than me. Modern reading wants to control what God can or cannot do. Modern life assumes the rat race of individual pursuit of wealth is the highest virtue. Modern assumptions about the end of the world derives neither hope or optimism, but ultimately despair. Post-modern thought disagrees with the aforementioned and so too the Bible. Brueggemann funds some of those post-modern thoughts with the Biblical narrative. When God is seen as the creator of the self, world and consummation rather than any idol, that affects our reading, living and well-being.
In the words of Hebrews, the word of God is living and active. Brueggemann, in this book, attempts to attune our reading habits to that truth of Hebrews. Sure the word is living and active, but how so? Surely inattentive, modern reading clouds the vitality of the Bible. Brueggemann clears some ground for us, removing too much of us so that the Bible may be heard rather than me. Modern reading wants to control what God can or cannot do. Modern life assumes the rat race of individual pursuit of wealth is the highest virtue. Modern assumptions about the end of the world derives neither hope or optimism, but ultimately despair. Post-modern thought disagrees with the aforementioned and so too the Bible. Brueggemann funds some of those post-modern thoughts with the Biblical narrative. When God is seen as the creator of the self, world and consummation rather than any idol, that affects our reading, living and well-being.
April 3, 2018
Book titles can be misleading, especially when the reader brings preconceived notions. I cannot recall how I stumbled upon this short monograph, but Walter Bruggemann's Texts Under Negotiation: the Bible and Postmodern Imagination seemed to link together two of my major interests.
The text itself is only 91 pages; the remaining 26 pages are comprised of sections on Abbreviations, Notes, and separate Indices for Authors and Scripture references. Following a refreshingly short preface, the text is comprised of three chapters: "Funding Postmodern Interpretation," "The Counterworld of Evangelical Imagination", and "Inside the Counterdrama." Each chapter is further subdivided into several shorter sections prefaced with Roman numerals. While the title of the first chapter seemed straightforward enough, the other two did not make intuitive sense before reading--perhaps not unusual for a book with the word "postmodern" in its title--and I still cannot quite make sense of them after reading.
Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, is quick to point out that he is not on sure footing: "I have no expertise about the historical and philosophical issues involved in the critique of modernity and must take the word of others for some of the argument. Nor do I regard postmodernity as something to welcome, but simply something to acknowledge as the inescapable context in which we live and interpret" (viii-ix). He states more emphatically in the first chapter that he "shall be concerned with more theoretical matters in which [he has] no particular expertise" (2). He doesn't explicitly define "postmodernism", but knows it when he sees it (vii). The first chapter touches on a variety of modern and postmodern authors and references, ranging from Kuhn's to Lyotard's Postmodern Condition (the well-defined Notes section is one of the plusses of this little book), and ultimately Brueggemann is able to articulate "the crisis modernity and postmodernity" as "the shift from hegemony to perspective" (25).
However, Brueggemann's agenda is not one of theory, but of action, focusing on ministry. Even after reading, this does not appear to be the agenda set forth by the title, but is an increasing focus for the rest of the book.
Somehow we arrive at a "failure of the imagination of modernity" (19) and thus a "counter imagination of the world" in terms of ministry (not theory) is needed. This is the subject of chapter two. "In a postmodern world where neither the old orthodoxies nor the more recent positivism will hold, the preacher's chance (both task and opportunity) is to construct, with and for the congregation, an evangelical infrastructure that makes a different communal life possible" (26). This is a book not about postmodern readings of the Bible, but the narrower scope of evangelical ministerial practices.
Chapter three is headlined by a "counterdrama" neologism. "What is now required and permitted is a mode of scripture interpretation quite unlike most of that we have practiced heretofore. In seeking to find a mode of interpretation congenial to our actual life in the world, I propose that we 'take' reality as a drama [italics original], and that we see the text as a script for that drama" (64-65). Nearly a quarter of the book (pp 71-91) is then spent explicating six Old Testament texts that seem to have little in common (Brueggemann admits that the texts he chose were "taken almost at random" (71)). "I propose then to take up a number of small texts from a variety of genres and comment on them. My purpose is to reflect upon examples of how texts can be taken up with dramatic freedom if we screen out both the dogmatic grip of the eighteenth century and the historical fascination of the nineteenth century" (71). This could have been more interesting as an originally stated premise (framed by a more descriptive title) followed by supporting explication.
There are elements of this book (notes, references) that rate four stars. But the bulk of it (disconnect between title and actual subject; too brief treatment) rates two. This is the first book I've read by Brueggemann, and judging by the titles of his many other works, this one could be an outlier of sorts.
The text itself is only 91 pages; the remaining 26 pages are comprised of sections on Abbreviations, Notes, and separate Indices for Authors and Scripture references. Following a refreshingly short preface, the text is comprised of three chapters: "Funding Postmodern Interpretation," "The Counterworld of Evangelical Imagination", and "Inside the Counterdrama." Each chapter is further subdivided into several shorter sections prefaced with Roman numerals. While the title of the first chapter seemed straightforward enough, the other two did not make intuitive sense before reading--perhaps not unusual for a book with the word "postmodern" in its title--and I still cannot quite make sense of them after reading.
Brueggemann, an Old Testament scholar, is quick to point out that he is not on sure footing: "I have no expertise about the historical and philosophical issues involved in the critique of modernity and must take the word of others for some of the argument. Nor do I regard postmodernity as something to welcome, but simply something to acknowledge as the inescapable context in which we live and interpret" (viii-ix). He states more emphatically in the first chapter that he "shall be concerned with more theoretical matters in which [he has] no particular expertise" (2). He doesn't explicitly define "postmodernism", but knows it when he sees it (vii). The first chapter touches on a variety of modern and postmodern authors and references, ranging from Kuhn's to Lyotard's Postmodern Condition (the well-defined Notes section is one of the plusses of this little book), and ultimately Brueggemann is able to articulate "the crisis modernity and postmodernity" as "the shift from hegemony to perspective" (25).
However, Brueggemann's agenda is not one of theory, but of action, focusing on ministry. Even after reading, this does not appear to be the agenda set forth by the title, but is an increasing focus for the rest of the book.
"The formal premise [italics original] I urge is that our knowing is essentially imaginative, that is, an act of organizing social reality around dominant, authoritative images. This means that the assumptions that have long had unexamined privilege among us are now seen to be sturdy, powerful acts of imagination, reinforced, imposted, and legitimated by power.
On the basis of this formal premise, I assert the substantive claim that the practice of modernity, of which we are all children, since the seventeenth century has given us a world imagined through the privilege of white, male, Western, colonial hegemony, with all its pluses and minuses. It is a world that we have come to trust and take for granted as a given. It is a world that has wrought great good, but that has also accomplished enormous mischief against some for the sake of others. The simple truth is that this construed world can no longer be sustained, is no longer persuasive or viable, and we are able to discern no large image to put in its place (18).
Somehow we arrive at a "failure of the imagination of modernity" (19) and thus a "counter imagination of the world" in terms of ministry (not theory) is needed. This is the subject of chapter two. "In a postmodern world where neither the old orthodoxies nor the more recent positivism will hold, the preacher's chance (both task and opportunity) is to construct, with and for the congregation, an evangelical infrastructure that makes a different communal life possible" (26). This is a book not about postmodern readings of the Bible, but the narrower scope of evangelical ministerial practices.
Chapter three is headlined by a "counterdrama" neologism. "What is now required and permitted is a mode of scripture interpretation quite unlike most of that we have practiced heretofore. In seeking to find a mode of interpretation congenial to our actual life in the world, I propose that we 'take' reality as a drama [italics original], and that we see the text as a script for that drama" (64-65). Nearly a quarter of the book (pp 71-91) is then spent explicating six Old Testament texts that seem to have little in common (Brueggemann admits that the texts he chose were "taken almost at random" (71)). "I propose then to take up a number of small texts from a variety of genres and comment on them. My purpose is to reflect upon examples of how texts can be taken up with dramatic freedom if we screen out both the dogmatic grip of the eighteenth century and the historical fascination of the nineteenth century" (71). This could have been more interesting as an originally stated premise (framed by a more descriptive title) followed by supporting explication.
There are elements of this book (notes, references) that rate four stars. But the bulk of it (disconnect between title and actual subject; too brief treatment) rates two. This is the first book I've read by Brueggemann, and judging by the titles of his many other works, this one could be an outlier of sorts.
October 16, 2021
This is an awesome work. I didn't know what to expect, given the somewhat odd-seeming title, but Brueggemann is a very good, albeit INTENSE writer, and a very good friend has identified him as his favorite author, so that made it a bit easier to buckle down and read this.
I am engaged in re-imagining story-telling for the community of which I am a part, and the concept of "funding" the stories told in ways that more honestly tell of a life than an effort to try to make stories fit a comfortable, modern framework that somehow agrees with or enforces an existing apprehension of reality that needs to be re-imagined....anyway, this book presents me with ways to approach my efforts that more closely show the paradoxes and seemingly random bits of a life every day....
I highly recommend this book; be ready for some very exact writing!
I am engaged in re-imagining story-telling for the community of which I am a part, and the concept of "funding" the stories told in ways that more honestly tell of a life than an effort to try to make stories fit a comfortable, modern framework that somehow agrees with or enforces an existing apprehension of reality that needs to be re-imagined....anyway, this book presents me with ways to approach my efforts that more closely show the paradoxes and seemingly random bits of a life every day....
I highly recommend this book; be ready for some very exact writing!
July 30, 2011
I liked what one reviewer wrote when he said someone needs to translate Brueggemann's work from Pompous into English. One of my seminary classmates agreed wholeheartedly. I'm positive Brueggemann makes up some of the words he uses! He had some nice ideas, but I found his approach too "reader-response" for me. Plus he seemed to be advocating taking passages of text out of context and interpreting them on their own, which works for some passages, but not, I don't think, as a general rule. Following his explanation of his theories, he gives a number of examples of how he would interpret certain passages, and while they were presented as something radical and new, they really didn't do that much for me. The vocabulary is a good brain exercise but if I didn't have to read this for a course, I would have given it a pass.
April 11, 2012
It is the best introduction to hermeneutics I have read, although it isn't necessarily limited to an introduction to hermeneutics, and Gordon Fee's introduction was much more comprehensive. Bruggemann does a great job of answering the questions: Why do we read the Bible today the way we do? What influences have shaped our interpretation of Scripture? Highly recommend.
May 25, 2016
I agree with his statements on the importance of context (it was nice to read a theologian who sees the beauty of the scriptures being written in exilic time periods) but, goodness, it was a dry, vocab-overload book. I miss being in theology classes, but I don't miss this style of writing.
November 29, 2015
Imagination + Theology = Awesome.
February 16, 2015
I <3 Brueggemann
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews