Texts That Linger: Quotes from Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament

Brueggemann, Walter. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. $30.98. pp.v-777. ISBN 978-0-8006-3765-1. ★★★★☆

I just recently finished Walter Brueggemann's massive 750-page Theology of the Old Testament. While I would love to write a review of it, I wouldn't even know where to begin, and would not be able to recall all the thoughts I had over the course of reading it. Thus, I thought instead I would just post several quotes from the book that I found compelling and/or thought-provoking:

"Israel's speech about Yahweh is characteristcally situated historically. I intend only to rule out questions of positivistic history that seek to limit Israel's imaginative utterance about Yahweh to recoverable happenings. Stated another way, the history to be reckoned with in this project is emic, i.e., as accepted by the Israelite cast of characters, and not etic, i.e., the past recoverable by the reckonings of the rationality of modernity." (118)

"Yahweh is slow to anger ('rk 'ppym). The actual Hebrew idiom translates as "has long nostrils." The usage perhaps indicates that Yahweh's long nose permits divine rage and anger to cool off before they threaten Israel." (216)

Speaking of Hosea 2:2-23: "Yahweh's divorce (abandonment) of Yahweh's wife Israel was, so the poet asserts, due to Israel's fickleness as a spouse . . . [but then] the poet moves beyond divorce to contemplate remarriage, a move unthinkable in the old law of Moses." (223)

"Israel's characteristic adjectival vocabulary about Yahweh is completely lacking in terms that have dominated classical theology, such as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. This sharp contrast suggests that classical theology, insofar as it is dominated by such interpretive categories and such concerns, is engaged in issues that are not crucial for Israel's testimony about Yahweh and are in fact quite remote from Israel's primary utterance." (225)

"Yahweh goes through loss, anguish, rage, and humiliation." (254)

"The term passion [with regard to Yahweh] . . . refers to a propensity to suffer with and suffer for, to be in solidarity with Israel in its suffering, and by such solidarity to sustain a relationship that rightfully could be terminated." (299)

"One may suggest . . . that the move toward incarnation . . . is in some inchoate way already present in Yahweh's radical decision for covenantal solidarity with Israel and more radical decision toward pathos with Israel. . . . [W]hatever may be claimed for the radicality of God in the New Testament is already present in all its radicality in these Jewish witnesses to the character of Yahweh." (302)

"Israel as witness knows that if Yahweh is not endlessly criticized and subverted, Yahweh will also become an absolute, absolutizing idol." (332)

"[I]f we are to identify what is most characteristic and most distinctive in the life and vocation of this partner of Yahweh, it is the remarkable equation of love of God with love of neighbor." (424)

"The human person, like Israel, is invited, expected, and insistently urged to engage in a genuine interaction [with Yahweh] that is variously self-asserting and self-abandoning, yielding and initiative-taking." (458)

"[S]o-called conservatives tend to take careful account of the most rigorous claims of the Bible concerning sexuality, and are indifferent to what the Bible says about economics. Mutatis mutandis, so-called liberals relish what the Bible says in demanding ways about economics, but tread lightly around what the Bible says about sexuality." (458)

Yahweh "in mutality invites challenge. The high classical tradition of Christian interpretation has not paid sufficient attention to this . . . aspect of Yahweh's fidelity, which issues in pathos and vulnerability to the human partner." (459)

"[T]he wisdom traditions make clear that obedience is not simply slavish, fearful conformity to rules and laws. Thus wisdom is a guard against legalism. Obedience, according to the traditions of wisdom, entails the imaginative capacity to take positive initiatives for the enhancement of creation." (466)

Book Review: "Yahweh is a Warrior" by Millard Lind

Lind, Millard C. Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in Ancient Israel. Scottdale: Herald Press, 1980. $14.91. pp.11-232. ISBN 978-0-8361-1233-7. ★★★★☆

When I talked to a professor of mine about this book, he emphasized the fact that Millard Lind is a Mennonite and so, a pacifist. As a pacifist, he would only look at the warfare theology in the Old Testament in one specific light. While this might be true, it doesn't shine through completely in Lind's book. For the most part, Yahweh is a Warrior is an academic overview  and does not attempt outright to address the theological problem that the Ancient Israel's war material poses (except maybe in a comment here and there). Here, I will try to outline his overall treatment of the subject, and with that will provide what I think he might be suggesting as far as the theological problem is concerned.

First, Lind contends that the pre-Mosaic period as put forth in Genesis shows that early Israel was pacifistic (see chapter 2). I won't go into the specifics of his argument, but he basically provides that the violent historical events of this period are seen as wicked. Yahweh is not an agent of war or violence here. The exodus marks the drastic change in Israelite theology, where Yahweh becomes warrior and king; it "provides the fundamental paradigm of holy war in the Old Testament" (p.47). Furthermore, he shows throughout the rest of the book that the holy war narratives in the historical books (and probably the rest of Old Testament--he only covered the historical books) refer back to the exodus. The theology of holy war, then, was a theology inspired mainly by the exodus.

That being said, this was not without gradual changes. As Israel went along, more and more emphasis was placed on the human involvement in war; whereas, in the exodus, Yahweh was the sole agent. This shift in thinking comes to a particular fruition in the monarchical period:

The rebellion of Israel in demanding kingship was not that the people wished to take the next logical step in the chain of social development, but rather that the people wished to change their theo-political system of government for one that was 'like all the nations' . . . , towards autonomy from Yahweh. (p.127)

With this, human involvement in war started to overcome the theology of Yahweh as the lone agent of victory in battle:

In the old tradition a military crisis was responded to by a voluntary militia which depended for victory upon the intervention of the divine. Miracle was now [in 2 Samuel] replaced by professional army. The pathetic attempt to preserve the form of the ancient tradition only highlights the fact that this form was emptied of its real content--faith in the decisive act of Yahweh--and replaced by faith in the professional army. The shift is further emphasized by the fact that Yahweh is not mentioned once in the narrative. (p.118)

As an aside, his use of the word 'pathetic' is probably telling of his pacifism; he obviously doesn't approve. This can also be seen in a statement he makes early on: "If one truly believes in the promise of grace that God will give the land, then one has no need to take the way of works by fighting for it" (p.38). To use the word 'pathetic' is to not understand the way ancient Israel operated as a community. While he no doubt did understand this (and better than I do), we see here the pacifist talking and not the biblical scholar. While I agree with his general sentiment, I wouldn't say the attempt was pathetic. The nature of and the nuance present within Israel's cultural development does not support such a claim.

So, then, one could gather from Lind's treatment that Yahweh liberated Israel from Egypt by force, and from this, Israel developed a theology of warfare, in which Yahweh was always on their side fighting for them, looking out for their interests at the cost of the interests of others. Over time, maybe Israel became a little more honest with themselves, acknowledging that they were the ones waging war. Or maybe their priorities changed; they came to honor warriors above prophets, and armies above Yahweh. Whatever it was, we return to the initial pacifism that defined the pre-Mosaic period when we come to Jesus, whom Lind brings up in the very last page, probably to suggest a kind of supersessionism (p.174).

Lind's approach carries with it a few problems. 1) He relies too much on the historicity of many of the narratives he covers, including the exodus. 2) He relies too much on the documentary hypothesis, which, as far as I have come to see, is more ambiguous than he treats it. 3) He is too confident about the dates of events. His whole treatment of the warfare material basically relies on the timeline he has constructed, one that may or may not actually be accurate. 4) He does not address the question of Yahweh's actual involvement in the war stories of Israel. He doesn't seem to object to Yahweh's involvement in the exodus, and certain comments of his suggest that he does not accept Yahweh's participation in other war stories, like the conquest; but why not? If they are as historical as he treats them, why shouldn't we accept Israel's testimony?

Overall, I would not recommend Lind's book for someone casually interested in the topic of war in the Old Testament. Not that it isn't good, but it is very dense and quite technical. However, for the serious student of this material, do not overlook it. It offers a lot, not just for the study of Israel's warfare theology, but for several areas of Old Testament study.

Purchase Yahweh is a Warrior on Amazon (here)

Entrapment, or Yet Another Aspect of Reformed Thinking I Cannot Stand

I've been taking an apologetics course, and I have found a new nemesis: reformed apologetics (Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman's term).(1) Reformed apologetics starts with the foundational premise, "Christianity is true and all other worldviews are false." These apologists make no attempt to objectively approach something; they consciously choose to start with this premise, and they want to instill in Christians ultimate confidence and certainty, not even deeming possible the truth of any other worldview. Thus, reformed apologetics merely consists of revealing to everyone else that their worldviews are wrong.

Furthermore, they do not think the human mind can determine what is true, so they reject all attempts to discover truth by rationally analyzing and evaluating reality, especially the Bible. The Bible, they say, is what we should use to analyze everything else; all facts must conform to Scripture's teaching. Scripture itself should not be subjected to critical analysis.

What we have here is a trap. They establish Christianity as their foundation, and then they wall themselves (and others) in so that they cannot get out. The belief system is perfectly sealed, not subject to any doubt or questioning, but immutable and safe from all adaptation.

If significant questioning or concrete evidence is presented against a reformed apologist, he will appeal to mystery, or to the fallen state of human reason. Take for example predestination and free will. Ask a reformed person how an action can be both predestined by God and a free action for which the human is morally responsible; he will either say, "it's a mystery," or "it doesn't make sense because our reason has been tainted by sin."

Do you see how this is a trap? The system is conveniently set up with the all the necessary provisions to dismiss all questioning and all doubt.

First of all, beginning with the presupposition, "Christianity is true and everything else is false," is absolute intellectual dishonesty. This is not the mindset of someone actually concerned about knowing what is true. It is circular reasoning.

All non-Christian worldviews are false.
How do you know they are false?
Because Christianity is true.
How do you know Christianity is true?
Because of the Bible.
How do you know the Bible is true?
Because of the Holy Spirit.
How do you know the Holy Spirit exists?
Because of the Bible.
...

Or, see two actual examples:

Why should I believe in Jesus?
Cornelius Van Til: Because Jesus is God(2)

Why should I believe in the Bible?
Gordon Clark: Because the Bible is the starting point for all knowledge(3)

(Maybe thinking is just too hard?)

Secondly, responding to all evidence or reasoning against one's beliefs by appealing to mystery, the sinful state of human reason, or some other spin-doctoring, is dangerous. It creates and fuels ignorance, and has no real interest in knowing what actual truth is, but is merely interested in maintaining what one already believes to be true. Except he doesn't acknowledge it as a belief, but embraces it as fact, and rejects everything that suggests otherwise. "This is true. You question it because you're sinful." This attitude is unwise on so many levels.

Such a system of thinking is a step toward insanity. No wonder so many people are leaving the church; they can see this blatant ignorance and will have no part of it. Well, have no part of it! Don't buy into this kind of "reasoning." It is insufficient and often ridiculous. Christian faith should not consist of blind certainty and a refusal to face questions and doubt.

Why would someone willingly put oneself in the cave that Plato spoke of?

Israel as witness knows that if Yahweh is not endlessly criticized and subverted, Yahweh will also become an absolute, absolutizing idol. - Walter Brueggemann

Notes:
(1) The description of reformed apologetics here comes from, "Reformed Apologetics: God Said It," part 4 of Kenneth Boa and Robert Bowman, Jr., Faith Has its Reasons, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2005).
(2) See Ibid., 319.
(3) See Ibid., 317.

Part II of "What makes you doubt Christianity?"

Here are the contributions I received from the original blog (here). I respond to some of them with reflections and/or suggestions for what to study. If you would like to contribute, please email me at johndanielwashere@gmail.com. 

The tension between law and grace, faith and works.

I've struggled with this one before, and have written on it here. One has to shed a lot of what Luther read into the text in order to come to terms with the seemingly contradictory statements regarding Christian life in Scripture. Christianity is about living the kingdom of God, embodying the reality that Jesus accomplished on the Cross. Thus, works consist of our active participation in the kingdom of God, in Christ's reality. The law is not made up of rules, but ways we can apply the kingdom to our lives. It is easy to turn this into legalism, but that's when we start regarding Scripture as a rule-book.

It's hard to deal with/love fundamentalists and/or people who believe and teach damaging doctrines.

How patriarchal the Bible mostly is.

One major consideration needs to be made when dealing with this issue: context. It also needs to be addressed on a text-by-text basis, and often simply considering the historical context will remedy the problem. There are so many good books on this topic. Why Not Women? is one that was highly recommended to me, but there are many others. That would be a good place to start. For an assessment of one text, see my, "Does Genesis 2 Support Complementarianism?" (here). It should be said, though, that the "patriarchal nature" of Scripture is often over-stated. In many places, the Bible is quite woman-exalting.

Most Christians are so certain of what that they believe that they never question it. A great many Christians do not engage in critical thinking.

Christian hypocrisy and self-righteousness, manifested in things like treatment of/talk about homosexuals, or people of other religions.

What about those who have never heard the Gospel?

I can see this one being very hard for Calvinists, but it isn't hard for me at all. While it is unfortunate that so many people in history, as well as in our time, are not subjected to the Gospel, if one affirms a great wideness in God's merciful saving love, we can feel at peace about this issue. I have written about this here. A good book to look at on this is A Wideness in God's Mercy by Clark Pinnock, as well as those cited in my blog on the subject.

"I know my level of intelligence and understanding and there are a lot of better equipped thinkers out there who do not believe what I believe. So I wonder, who am I to think this stuff is true?"

Prayer. How come some prayers are answered but most aren't? How come someone's headache is healed, but someone else's cancer isn't? Don't we serve an all-powerful, all-loving God? Why wouldn't he heal everyone if he could?

I have some pretty bad back and neck problems that I wake up with every single morning, so this was something I struggled with for a while (and still do, depending on how bad I feel on a particular day). I have written on the subject here, "Petitionary Prayer: What is it Good for?", but I also recommend Greg Boyd's book Is God to Blame?, as well as his chapter, "Praying in the Whirlwind" in Satan and the Problem of Evil. Vincent Brummer's What Are We Doing When We Pray? is another good one. There is a lot of really good literature on this topic, but those are good places to start, as well as the works cited in my blog.

The problem of evil and suffering. It is difficult to reconcile God's benevolence with the existence of things like cancer and AIDS.

All honest Christians struggle with this at one point or another. While I have read a lot on the subject, I can think of no better person to go to than Greg Boyd. Specifically, his book Satan & The Problem of Evil. If you're really into the topic, supplement it with his God at War. For a shorter, easier read, see Is God to Blame? There are tons and tons of books on this topic, but Boyd would be the perfect person with whom to start.

Pluralism. If I were born in other parts of the world, I would not be a Christian. Do I think Christianity is true simply because of my context? How can I be so bold as to claim that the religion I follow is THE truth? There are thousands of religions all over the world, and plenty have their holy books, what makes Christianity so special?

This is an issue that is often daunting to me, and very humbling when I speak of things that I 'know'. For me, this is where the rubber meets the road, faith-wise. I wrote a personal reflection on pluralism here, saying that, in the end, one has to look at the subjective truth claims of this world and ask oneself, "Which one is more worthy of my faith?" because we can't know that Christianity is actually true.

Angels and Demons, Heaven and Hell. They seem so make-believe, as if they were made up to deal with death.

This is a tough one. What makes it worse is how angels, demons, heaven and hell have been portrayed over the years. We tend to have a shared concept of angels as winged, effeminate and covered in white; demons as ork-like or dragon-like beasts; heaven as a golden city in the sky; and hell as a fiery pit with black castle-like buildings, where people are tortured by demons. I have tried to re-word these terms in an effort to steer away from these preconceived ideas--using terms like "metaphysical" instead of supernatural, forces of chaos, instead of demons, and others. Sometimes, when words have been ascribed images that make them ridiculous, we just have to come up with new ways of referring to them.

Another thing that helps me is to recognize the signs of their existence in the world. We have desires that go beyond our experience, that go beyond what we can satisfy. We have urges to do horrible things sometimes, and we often don't know why we do such things. Sometimes things happen that can only be sufficiently explained by divine hands (I find all other "natural" explanations dissatisfying). Other things can only be explained by an actual force of evil at work--attributing the misfortunes in nature to the trial-and-error process of evolution isn't going to do it for me. I can think of many examples, but you get where I am going. There are signs in the world around us that point us beyond, and affirm what we see in Scripture.

Debt-Free Living: A Christian Vocation

You know what one factor contributed the most to not only our recent financial crisis, but to the Great Depression as well? Debt. Debt is slavery. It inevitably leads to crisis.

Proverbs tells us, "the rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender" (22:7). This is what happens when the people at the top of the pyramid exploit the people at the bottom. They don't raise wages, but they have no problem having people borrow money from them. They have no problem putting people into debt-slavery. Both major financial crises in the last 100 years have resulted from this phenomenon.

What do we do? Stay out of debt. Get out of debt. Have you ever thought, "I wonder how much money I would have if I didn't have any debt"? The abundance is there. We just have to be good stewards of it.

Say what you want about Dave Ramsey, but he refuses to let people treat their debt as an ontological given, just a part of life that has to be accepted. He wakes people up to the reality that they can get out of debt; they don't have to be in slavery. He might be helping the economy more than any one politician because he lives to assist people in freeing themselves from debt.

But to do it, we have to get rid of our commodity fetishism. We have to stop spending money we don't have, especially on things we don't need. Karl Marx said, "Money is the alienated essence of man's labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it." Except, in the case of the bottom 90%, this money worship has become credit worship.

You can get out of debt. You can. Debt is not an ontological given! I paid off thousands of dollars on my car before I was a Senior in college, and now I don't have a car payment. My wife and I are killing off her last bit of student loan debt in the next two months. I am not just bragging, I am making a point: you can get out of debt!

If you are out of debt (or when you get out of debt), help others get out. If you really want to help the economy, get out of debt and help others get out of debt. We need to break down our autonomous, prideful, keep-it-to-yourself money management. We need to start being honest with our friends and churches about where we're at, and we need to start helping our friends when we can. If you don't have money troubles and your friend does, help your friend out--selflessly; as Jesus said, "You received without paying; give without pay" (Matt. 10:8) and, again, "give without expecting to get anything back" (Lk. 6:35). Or, as we are told in Deuteronomy 15, if anyone is poor among you, "do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need" (vv.7-8). A few verses earlier, we are told,

"there need not be any poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I am giving you today. For the Lord your God will bless you as he has promised, and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you." (vv.4-6; emphasis mine)

The abundance is there. Use it wisely; don't feed the system, don't go into slavery.

(See also, my blog on "Eucharist Money Management," here)

Verses Against Limited Atonement and Irresistible Grace

I think Calvinists might as well take a marker and black out these verses and all others like them, because no amount of spin-doctoring is going to reconcile them with their doctrines.

Limited Atonement

"[Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world." 1 John 2:2

"[God] wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim. 2:4)

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Pet. 3:9)

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!" (Ez. 33:11)

"I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (Jn. 12:32)

"As in Adam all died, so in Christ all will be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22)

Irresistible Grace

"The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John." (Lk. 7:30)

"You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!" (Acts 7:51)

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matt. 23:37)

"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations." (Isa. 65:2)

Passages could be brought against all the TULIP doctrines, but if L and I cannot be true, then the rest follow.