I was saddened to find out that last week on June 5th Dr. Walter Brueggemann, the Protestant theologian, teacher, and scholar of the Old Testament passed away. From the obituary titled, “Died: Walter Brueggemann, Scholar of Prophetic Imagination,” by Yonat Shimron of the Religious News Service in Christianity Today:
Walter Brueggemann, one
of the most widely respected Bible scholars of the past century, died on June 5
at his home in Michigan. He was 92.
The author of more than
100 books of theology and biblical criticism, Brueggemann was professor
emeritus of Old Testament studies at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur,
Georgia, until his retirement in 2003.
His specialty was the Hebrew Bible and especially the Hebrew prophets, and his books were aimed primarily at clergy and church leaders. But through sermons, Brueggemann’s concepts, have become familiar to many churchgoers.
I was introduced to Walter Brueggemann by a Protestant friend of mine where she suggested I read Brueggemann’s most well-known work, The Prophetic Imagination. I did just that and was quite drawn in, and had intended to write a post on it. I had started that post but had to set it aside. The theme of my post was going to be a rebuttal to Dr. Brueggemann, a rebuttal not in any Catholic/Protestant disagreement but on his social reading of the Old Testament. To put it succinctly, Brueggemann is on the socially liberal side of the church divide in a sort of 1970s sympathy with religious church activists. In the Catholic world, Dorothy Day would be a similar figure, as would I think Pope Francis.
To be sure, I am not critical of social activists who live out the Gospel. The world needs more people like Walter Brueggemann and Dorothy Day fighting for the poor, the under privileged, and the alienated. You can read my memorial poston the passing of Pope Francis where I highlighted just that about him. My disagreement with Brueggemann was over how he shoe-horned Old Testament history to support his social activist philosophy. It was more of a conservative/liberal disagreement than a denominational one. I found Mr. Brueggemann actually to be quite sympathetic to things Catholic. In The Prophetic Imagination Brueggemann lists among his historical “three towering prophetic figures,” Bartolomé de las Casas (the other two being Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr.), the Catholic priest and Dominican friar who defend the natural rights of the Native Americans in the 16th century from the rapacious New World explorers. He is sometimes looked at as the first social activist of the modern world. That a Protestant would even have known of de las Casas was a bit surprising to me; that he would list him as one of his three all-time heroes in history is heartwarming.
I had started that post on Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination almost two years ago but I had to set it aside. First, who am I to rebut an Old Testament scholar, and one of Walter Brueggemann’s stature? I had read the OT but could I bring up OT history to support my argument? I had to re-read major parts of the OT to find supporting warrants for my claims. So I have been reading major parts of the OT for past two years. And not too long ago I had determined I was ready to go back to that essay and challenge Brueggemann. So yesterday I did a search for Brueggemann to see if he had been active in any way only to find he had died last week. Well, he lived a good long life. May he rest in peace. I am now more determined than ever to write that essay! I must admit that in my re-reading of the OT with Dr. Brueggemann’s thoughts in mind, I have found him to be more correct than I thought. So my essay will not be so much a rebuttal but a qualification. Enough on that. Let’s get to a memorial for Walter Brueggemann.
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Walter Brueggemann was born in Nebraska in 1933 to a pastor of the German Evangelical Synod of North America. He went on to seminary himself and became a pastor himself (ordained in the United Church of Christ), and then a scholar and theologian. Over his life, he was a renown teacher at Eden Theological Seminary and at Columbia Theological Seminary. His Wikipedia entry says he wrote over 58 books (his obituary said over 100!) and hundreds of articles and commentary. He was a giant in his field. Since I am not really up on the nuances of Brueggemann’s thought I collected a number of short YouTube clips to capture his importance and give you a feel for the man.
This
video recollection by this Jeremy Duncan at Commons Church summarizes the
importance of Walter Brueggemann’s work.
I thought that he captured Brueggemann’s thought here very nicely. You can see how a conservative might look askance at some of that but I think Brueggemann is more mainstream than appears.
Here
is an outline of his great work, The
Prophetic Imagination.
Yes, you can see how this is solidly on the left side of politics, but I have to admit his connections with the Old Testament prophets are solid. Wait for my essay qualifying his thesis!
There
are so many YouTube video clips of Brueggemann for people to sample. He became quite an internet celebrity in his
old age. Here is Brueggemann himself
explaining how one should read the calls for vengeance in the psalms. Notice his distinctive raspy voice and pizazz
as an orator.
Isn’t
that right! His exegesis is
traditional. Perhaps his social
implementation of the Gospel might be more radical, but so was Mother Teresa’s. After watching a number of his interviews and
video clips, Brueggemann began to feel grandfatherly to me. Here he is delivering a sermon on Exodus but tying
it into today’s society.
That
was really good. Finally to end with
just a single quote from The Prophetic
Imagination, I pick this.
“It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”
Eternal
rest onto you Walter Brueggemann, and may eternal light from the face of God shine
upon you.
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