The Prophetic Imagination

40th Anniversary Edition

Walter Brueggemann

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781506449302
• eBook ISBN: 9781506449319
• Edition: 40
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

A classic text in biblical theology--still relevant for today and tomorrow.

In this 40th anniversary edition of the classic text from one of the most influential biblical scholars of our time, Walter Brueggemann, offers a theological and ethical reading of the Hebrew Bible. He finds there a vision for the community of God whose words and practices of lament, protest and complain give rise to an alternative social order that opposes the "totalism" of the day.

Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Linking Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus, he argues that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people, but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing.

This edition builds off the revised and updated 2001 edition and includes a new afterword by Brueggemann and a new foreword by Davis Hankins.

5

Criticism and Pathos in Jesus of Nazareth

The dominant consciousness must be radically criticized and the dominant community must be finally dismantled. The purpose of an alternative community with an alternative consciousness is for the sake of that criticism and dismantling. In considering the work of Jeremiah, I have argued that the royal culture of his time was numbed and therefore unable to face any drastic historical ending, and that the only way to penetrate that numbed consciousness of denial was by the public presentation of grief. In his poetry of grief, Jeremiah tried to bring Israel to a sense of the end of a social world that the royal apparatus tried its best to perpetuate. If we are to understand prophetic criticism, we must see that its characteristic idiom is anguish and not anger. The point of the idiom is to permit the community to engage its own anguish, which it prefers to deny. Such a judgment about the way of prophetic criticism suggests that the prophets were keenly aware of how change is effected and were remarkably sensitive to the characteristic ways of openness and resistance.

In this chapter we shall consider how the prophetic ministry of criticism is related to Jesus of Nazareth. Clearly Jesus cannot be understood simply as prophet, for that designation, like every other, is inadequate for the historical reality of Jesus. Nonetheless, among his other functions it is clear that Jesus functioned as a prophet. In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal consciousness. He has, in fact, dismantled the dominant culture and nullified its claims. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience. So now I review several dimensions of that ultimate criticism.

Jesus’ Birth

The birth of Jesus itself represents a decisive criticism of the dominant consciousness. The Lucan account of his solidarity with the poor and the Matthean presentation of his abrasive conflict with the powers that be (seen in the birth narratives) both point to the emergence of an alternative consciousness. No attempt, of course, needs to be made to harmonize the two versions as they move in different directions for different reasons and make different affirmations. Nevertheless, in completed form they are perfectly complementary in dismantling by criticism and in energizing by amazement.

The Gospel of Matthew. The dismantling in the Matthean version is found in Matt 2:16-23. The episode juxtaposes the destructive rage of the pseudo-king (v. 16) and the grief of the prophetic tradition (v. 17). The rage of Herod is presented as the last gasp of the old order and the desperate attempt to hold on to the old way.

As in ancient Israel, it is characteristic of kings to deny the end of the old order and, in their blindness, to take any steps to perpetuate what has in fact already ended. Thus Herod engages in self-deception and denial using his best talents, but they are not enough because the king cannot stop the end. In contrast to this is the pathos of Rachel, seen in Jeremiah. The raging of the king comes to an end in grief and lamentation. It is the work of the prophetic tradition to grieve the end, the very end the king cannot face, cannot stop, and surely cannot grieve.

In the construction of Matthew 1, vv. 16-17 on king and prophet are preliminary, whereas vv. 18-23 carry the action. The contrast is complete: the king is dead and the angel brings the child to his future. Herod has clearly been outdone; he is no real king. Jesus is the real king (2:11), and the real king stands as a decisive negation of the no-king. The grieving of Rachel is a grieving for the ending that the king seemed to manage but that in the end undid the king. Indeed, the grieving of Rachel concerns both the ultimate criticism and the newness about to emerge from the criticism. That Jesus is presented as the alternative is signaled in vv. 22-23.^[1] He is a Nazarene, which is to say surely a marginal, faithful one. He is marginal geographically (as a Galilean from Nazareth; vv. 22-23a); and he is also religiously marginal (as a Nazarite, that is, a consecrated one; see Num 6:1-21) embodying a poignant counter-reality—reality always to contrast and finally to destroy the dominant reality.

The Gospel of Luke. In parallel fashion, the Lucan account of the disclosure to the shepherds, the representative marginal ones, announces a newness that will displace the old regime. Appropriately the recipients of unexpected newness are filled with wonder and awe (Luke 2:17-20). The intrusion embodied in the birth of Jesus causes a radical inversion:

He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
he has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and exalted those of low degree;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent empty away. (Luke 1:51-53)^[2]

The birth of Jesus brings a harsh end to a Herodian reality that seemed ordained forever, and it created a new historical situation for marginal people that none in their despair could have anticipated. While the Lucan version celebrates the emerging newness, the Matthean version places grief at the center of the narrative. The newness does not come without anguish, pain, and tears. The tears are for the last desperate destructiveness by the king to save himself. And they are for the victims of that ending because the king will not die alone; he will take with him those he can who appear to be the ones who threaten him. The beginning in Jesus does not come without harsh ending, for that which is ending never ends graciously.

The Announcement of the Kingdom

Herod had reasoned correctly. The coming of Jesus meant the abrupt end of things as they were. Two texts are commonly cited as programmatic for the preaching of Jesus. In Mark 1:15 he announces the coming of the kingdom. But surely implicit in the announcement is the counterpart that present kingdoms will end and be displaced. In Luke 4:18-19 he announces that a new age was beginning, but that announcement carries within it a harsh criticism of all those powers and agents of the present order.^[3] His message was to the poor, but others kept them poor and benefited from their poverty. He addressed the captives (which means bonded slaves), but others surely wanted that arrangement unchanged. He named the oppressed, but there are never oppressed without oppressors.

His ministry carried out the threat implicit in these two fundamental announcements. The ministry of Jesus is, of course, criticism that leads to radical dismantling. And as is characteristic, the guardians and profiteers of the present stability are acutely sensitive to any change that may question or challenge the present arrangement. Very early Jesus is correctly perceived as a clear and present danger to that order, and this is the problem with the promissory newness of the gospel: it never promises without threatening, it never begins without ending something, it never gives gifts without also assessing harsh costs. Jesus’ radical criticism may be summarized in several representative actions.

Forgiveness. Jesus’ readiness to forgive sin (Mark 2:1-11), which evoked amazement (v. 12), also appeared to be blasphemy, that is to say, a threat to the present religious sanctions. At one level the danger is that Jesus stood in the role of God (v. 7) and therefore claimed too much; but we should not miss the radical criticism of society contained in the act. Hannah Arendt had discerned that this was Jesus’ most endangering action because if a society does not have an apparatus for forgiveness, then its members are fated to live forever with the consequences of any violation.^[4] Thus the refusal to forgive sin (or the management of the machinery of forgiveness) amounts to enormous social control. While the claim of Jesus may have been religiously staggering, its threat to the forms of accepted social control was even greater.

Sabbath. Jesus’ ability to heal and his readiness to do it on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6) evoked a conspiracy to kill him (v. 6). The violation is concerned not with the healing but with the Sabbath. Already in Mark 2:23-28 he has raised the issue, and obviously Jesus’ understanding of the Sabbath is that it had become a way of enslavement. Predictably, the objection comes from those who managed the Sabbath and benefited from it. The Sabbath thus stood as the sacred sign of a social settlement, and to call that special day into question unsettled the entire settlement. The day that came to articulate social order was now transformed into an occasion for freedom, freedom that rejected the settlement.^[5]

Table fellowship. Jesus was willing to eat with outcasts (Mark 2:15-17), which threatened the fundamental morality of society. The outcasts were the product of a legal arrangement that determined what was acceptable and unacceptable, clean and unclean, right and wrong. Crossing over the barrier of right and wrong implied that in the dispensing of mercy the wrong were as entitled as were the right, and therefore all meaningful distinctions were obliterated.

Healing and Exorcism. Further distinctive aspects of Jesus’ prophetic ministry are his healings and exorcisms. He touched those afflicted with illness, loss, torment, and demonic possession; and he addressed both the personal and communal aspects of these experiences. These are radical acts because they cross boundaries—including rather than excluding—fearlessly reaching out to those deemed unclean by society (Mark 7:24-30), sinners (Mark 2:1-12), and under God’s judgment (John 9:1). Note the important connection between these stories and those about the prophets Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17—2 Kings 10). Like the gospel stories, the accounts of Elijah and Elisha were told in the context of conflict in political-religion, the abuse of royal power, and the disenfranchisement of the peasants. The political import of Jesus exorcizing the Gerasene’s demons called “Legion,” for example, would not be missed by villagers living in land controlled by Rome’s troops (Mark 5:1-13).^[6] All these actions are signs of God’s reign breaking through (Matt 4:23; Luke 7:18-23).

Women. Jesus’ association in public with women who were not his kin was a scandalous breech of decorum and a challenge to the gender boundaries of the first century. He let a socially outcast woman touch him (Luke 7:36-50). He spoke with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-26). He healed a woman with a flow of blood (Mark 5:25-34). And women traveled with him around Galilee and then to Jerusalem (Mark 15:40-41). Jesus’ proclamation of God’s reign and the attendant healing, eating, and community-building was not to be only a male enterprise, but an inclusive one.^[7]

Taxes and Debt. Jesus often refers to debt in the gospels. Connected with this, the day-laborers were likely peasants who had lost their land due to heavy taxation (Matt 20:1-16). One of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer specifically mentions reciprocal debt forgiveness (Matt 6:12; Luke 11:4), and this was not likely metaphorical. And Jesus’ enigmatic saying about paying taxes (Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:26) was at least open to the interpretation that he was a tax resister (Luke 23:2). The reason for Jesus speaking out about these issues of political-economy was the weight of taxes, tithes, tolls, rents, and confiscation on the peasants of Galilee and Judea.^[8]

Temple. Jesus’ attitude toward the temple (Mark 11:15-19; John 2:18-22) was finally the most ominous threat because there he spoke directly about the destruction. In so doing he of course voiced the intent of the enemies of the ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Prophetic Imagination, 40th Anniversary Edition
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• A Note about the 40th Anniversary Edition
• Preface to the Second (Revised) Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• The Alternative Community of Moses
• Royal Consciousness: Countering the Counterculture
• Prophetic Criticizing and the Embrace of Pathos
• Prophetic Energizing and the Emergence of Amazement
• Criticism and Pathos in Jesus of Nazareth
• Energizing and Amazement in Jesus of Nazareth
• A Note on the Practice of Ministry
• A Postscript on Practice
• In Retrospect (PI at Forty)
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Scripture Index