God has placed the U.S. Church in a situation of enormous risk.It is a risk brought on mostly because of policies and attitudes rooted in a conviction of exceptionalism, but nevertheless a risk that is deep and broad, and generative of enormous anxiety…I understand, of course, that there is no easy interface between the contemporary “Big Sort” and scripture, but will seek to make a useful connection through this thesis: The temptation to exclusionary absolutism is an old and deep and recurring seduction in the community of faith. But one can also detect scriptural strategies””by which I mean interpretive strategies undertaken by those who put the Bible together””that seek to resist off such exclusionary absolutism that is characteristically rooted in anxiety. I will use my time and energy to consider three such interpretive strategies, with the suggestion that these same strategies are now available in our interpretive practices and may be useful in present circumstance for the sustenance and maintenance of church unity and church fidelity.
What a meandering mishmash of straining rhetoric.
I particularly like this line:
[blockquote]Fifth, the teachers of the church, enthralled by the classical tradition of theology or by the bewitching power of systemic theology, have in my judgment ill-served the church by teaching that biblical faith is a seamless package of coherent truth. It is, in my judgment, much more faithful and much more pastorally helpful it is to exhibit the Bible in its disputatious pluralism, in order to show that no trajectory has the power or the authority to be the ultimate.[/blockquote]
That’s it, Great Teacher. Let’s definitely get away from the notion of “coherent truth” and get to the “disputatious pluralism” of Truth.
And then there’s this classic “revisioning” [read: spinning] of a situation. I need to try this one on one of my parents when I get into trouble — simply priceless:
[blockquote]The second scriptural strategy against exclusionary absolutism that I suggest and review is that the preferred mode of interpretation in our time and place is not the Babylonian exile but more properly the Persian period of flexible negotiation. I pay particular attention to this because the mode of the “Persian period†is a relative innovation in scholarship.5 When most of us were in seminary, the Persian period was not even on the syllabus, so little was known about it.
The Babylonian period and its theological categories have been clear and well-known and compelling among us for a long time. It was a rendering of the history of Jerusalem generated by a small group of elite fanatics who were deported to Babylon, who seethed in displacement, who yearned for return to Jerusalem, and who became the moving force in the formation of Judaism. This group of fanatics, like every group of fanatics, took its own experience of deportation (exile) and their passionate hope of return, and imposed that experience as the governing truth for all Jews, whether they had been deported or not, whether they had ever left Jerusalem or not.
This model of faith depends upon absolute clarity vis a vis Babylon without any compromise. The clarity is a) that Babylon is an unmitigated evil, and b) Israel is the chosen, forgiven people who are the unique carrier of God’ way in the world. This contrast between good forgiven Israel and evil, condemned Babylon leads to a radical either/or that invites courage and daring hope, and a sense of blessed exceptionalism that requires risk and defiance.[/blockquote]
All in all, a shambolic, preening, faux-academic exposition against the passe notion of truth, under the pretense of “biblical” “scholarship.”
Our bishops spend their time listening to the snake-oil remedies of quack doctors.
What. A. Travesty of Wasted Time.
Although I’ve given up blogging for Lent, I will make an exception in this case. This is a meaty and important essay that contains much valuable information, sprinkled with the keen exegetical insights and occasional memorable phrases for which Dr. Brueggemann is well known and justly famous. Nonetheless, in the end I find his essay deeply disappointing and seriously misleading.
And the reason for my dissatisfaction is simple; Brueggemann fails to do justice to the unity of the biblical witness in many crucial matters in his zeal to accent and highlight the plurality of perspectives on many matters among the various writers of Holy Scripture. In a word, he has oversimplified the biblical evidence and overstated his case.
Of course, a 33 page essay can’t be refuted in a brief blog comment. So let me cut to the heart of the matter and illustrate the sort of problems about which I’m complaining. The very title of the essay is simplistic and misleading, for by labelling the viewpoint he is attacking “exclusionary absolutism,” the retired professor is lumping together all his opposition as if they were inerrantists and fundamentalists. Mainstream scholars who oppose the leftist agenda on issues such as homosexual behavior or abortion (such as Robert Gagnon, Richard Hays, or Karl Donfried to name a few) can’t be so easily dismissed. It’s grossly unfair and misleading; more propaganda than serious scholarship.
To take the homosexuality deabe as a case in point, it simply is not true that there is a plurality of perspectives or trajectories on that particular moral issue. The Bible is in fact totally consistent, clear, and very emphatic on that matter, just as is the moral teaching of the Church for the last two thousand years. And the prophetic calls for social justice and the pre-eminent importance of loving one’s neighbor can’t be legitimately used to overturn those absolute prohibitions without begging the question and importing an unjustified assumption that we know better than the biblical writers what is just and moral in this controversial matter.
I wonder: did the HoB hear an opposing view from the other side? Probably not. Maybe I’ll have to write an essay refuting Brueggemann.
David Handy, Ph.D.
Oops. A typo obviously in the next to last paragraph: I meant “the homosexuality debate” naturally.
David Handy+
Brueggeman has composed a magnificent argument for continuing open-mindedness and toleration of different sensibilities within the Church. May I also suggest that it is Jesus Christ – who did not write, edit, and vote upon the canons of Jewish and Christian scripture – who died on the cross for the sins of the whole world, and not the scriptures themselves. Just as far too many people make too little of the scriptures, so to are far too many people making too much of them.
This speech is 33 pages long!
Assuming that the writer was speaking to colleagues for whom a sentence could replace a paragraph, it is far too long to make pithy and concise points.
Even if those points were clearly made at the end of this presentation, it is conceivable that many in the audience would have in in a REM-state of drowsiness at that point.
RE: “Brueggeman has composed a magnificent argument for continuing open-mindedness and toleration of different sensibilities within the Church.”
[blockquote]All in all, a shambolic, preening, faux-academic exposition against the passe notion of truth, under the pretense of “biblical†“scholarship.â€
Our bishops spend their time listening to the snake-oil remedies of quack doctors.[/blockquote]
Both excellent articulations of the different and mutually opposing gospels residing within one organization.
RE: “This is a meaty and important essay that contains much valuable information, sprinkled with the keen exegetical insights and occasional memorable phrases for which Dr. Brueggemann is well known and justly famous.”
I listened to these sorts of “meaty and important” essays, “sprinkled with the keen exegetical insights” of many of my grad-school peers as we strove to emulate our professors’ styles.
; > )
Really an embarrassment — response in an academic sense regrettably elevates his essay far beyond its worth. And it’s essentially fruitless anyway, since the author doesn’t share the same language — and quite deliberately and obviously so, judging by his adoration of deconstruction of texts which he considers to be wrongly powerful.
Derrida call your office.
RE: “. . . so to are far too many people making too much of them.”
You’re so right, Henry Greville. God’s word written is merely a bagatelle — a trifle which we are assigning far too much worth to.
What’s that you say?
Oh. Yes. Right . . . scripture doesn’t really mean that to revisionists.
Once again illustrating the truth of comment #6.
Remember this was a U.C.C. member speaking to Episcopal Bishops.
I wonder how many of the Bishops stayed awake for the whole thing. Fortunately we can speed read throough the presentation.
Did any of the Bishops speak up and say that this paper could have said in far fewer words that “there is no Truth on this side of the shade so it is okay to go with the New Thang?” I suspect they nodded politely and applauded with joy in the knowledge that they had “endured to the end.”
My fear is that no one objected to the underlying absolutist message that there are no absolutes.
“May I also suggest that it is Jesus Christ – … – who died on the cross for the sins of the whole world, ….”
— But aren’t you making too much of the scriptures with that statement? I have it on good authority that sin is just not knowing our own goodness. And who’s to say that Jesus really died, as if he were human?
Sincerely,
Slippery Slope
Dear Sarah and episcoanglican:
On what or whose authority are you certain that the scriptures are absolutely what you believe them to be?
Bonjour, Henry Gréville! That authority is called “faith” and “belief.” You can most absolutely read about them in Holy Scripture.
Reading the paper disappointed me. I have read Brueggemann before and been greatly edified. This was troubling in its sitting lightly to the accumulated wisdom of the Church with regard to the scriptures. What I came away with was the realization that a biblical theology needs to be accompanied by an ecclesiology. We do not interpret the scriptures in a vacuum but as members of a community of faith open to the Holy Spirit. The late Brevard Childs stressed the Old Testament as scripture with an inherent unity because it lived through its use by the Church. (And we might add, given that these are the Jewish scriptures too, their use by the synagogue.)
Thanks very much, David Handy, for your good comments. It’s a rich essay by Bruegemann, as one would certainly expect.
I agree with you: it’s very easy to show the theological diversity in the Old Testament (and equally easy if not more so for the New Testament). Everyone knows that who has taken a first-class introduction to either testament.
Just as you can show the diversity in the Torah via JEDP, wherever those theoretical sources may have come from (and I don’t have a problem with them, to be honest), why not also show the diversity between the Sermon on the Mount and the Paul of Galatians. For example: Matthew 5:17 and Galatians! I would even add the diversity between 1 Thessalonians with its statement that there will be no signs preceding the Day of the Lord, because it will be so sudden, as compared with 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12, which gives an apocalyptic timetable of the signs that have to have occurred before the Day of the Lord would come (obviously I’m arguing against Pauline authorship of 2 Thessalonians). So, yes, of course there is diversity. The fathers of the church knew that!
On the other hand, when you can see biblical writers–with their diversity fully intact!–in full agreement on the morality of certain sexual behaviors, then why would anybody want to toss that tradition out?
There are a large number of New Testament scholars who are NOT fundamentalists, literalists, or inerrantists who oppose the political agenda of pro-homosexual behavior. Robert Gagnon, Karl P. Donfried, Richard B. Hays, Robert Jewett (see the long section on 1:26-27 in his 2006 [i]Romans: A Commentary[/i], Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), and any number of others. Look at the long list of people in the UK and here who endorsed Gagnon’s book, including Cranfield and Dunn and younger scholars like Duane Watson. Look at Raymond F. Collins, [i]Sexual Ethics in the New Testament[/i], and the literature he cites. No fundamentalists there!
All best,
Rudy+
Rudy+ (#14),
Thanks for the kind words. Let me return the favor; I appreciated your balanced and helpful comment too. I don’t intend to be dragged into further discussion of this misleading and biased paper Brueggemann presented to the HoB, although for those who are interested, I’ll mention that I just posted a similar and longer criticism of it over at Stand Firm, where there is a longer thread devoted to the essay.
But I think I’ll resume my Lenten self-discipline of abstaining from commenting on blogs for Lent (though I do continue to read them, at least occasionally). Keep up the good work, Rudy. We’re close enough in our general stance to these matters of biblical interpretation that you can speak for both of us (at least until Lent is over!).
David Handy+
Re: #s 11, 13:
In brief, “quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est,” whereas Bruggeman seems to profess “quod nusque, quod nusquam, quod ab nullis creditum est.”
4, your statement is based on the very scriputres you repudiate. Ok, cite some contemporary, say 30-80 AD non-cannonical writings to support your statement.
[Comment deleted by Elf – please avoid personal remarks on commenters]
Brueggeman of late… I remember him from years ago when he spoke at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia (my alma mater). Then he was more about the centrality of the Cross.
He writes, “there is interpretive pluralism in the tradition that moves in the direction of sacerdotal purity or societal justice, together with all of the derivatives that these two commitments evoke in terms of liturgy, ethics, and public policy. The reason these twinned moral trajectories may interest us is that they readily translate into our own preferred categories of conservative and liberal (or progressive), into a tradition of equilibrium and a tradition of transformation.”
There is no pluralism in the tradition of the people of the Bible when it comes to purity of Priests. They either were or God disqualified them, often through drastic measures. Nor does the biblical tradition hold sacerdotal purity in opposition to justice. I can’t imagine where he gets this idea.
We should be very careful about readily translating the tradition of biblical people into the terms of contemporary American politics.
It’s kind of long, isn’t it? But it’s kind of interesting, as well. However, and maybe I’m taking it the wrong way, but I feel that what Dr. Brueggeman terms as disputatious pluralism (red vs. blue, conservative vs. liberal, twin trajectories) is in reality meant to be complementary. We are commanded to love God and neighbor. Perhaps that’s what Brueggeman’s saying, but you couldn’t prove it by me. And, as one commenter put it, there are certain issues such as sexuality that have not been subject to disputation. And so far as the Spirit speaking concerning sexuality, it seems pretentious to look either before or behind the comma, unless you can prove that there is actually a comma. Still, it’s interesting, but it would have been a real challenge to stay focused for the whole thing.
That even merely saying too much can be made of scripture provokes reactions among this blog community that one is repudiating scripture seems to prove the original point in #4 above.
Bill, I recognize Vincent of Lerins and ‘that which has been believed everywhere, always and by everyone’ ie his definition of the catholic faith. But I have struggled a little with translating your antithesis, which might (roughly) be translated as ‘that which never been believed anywhere, ever, or by anyone.’ The trouble is that the Latin negatives if strictly translated sound odd in English: ‘that which has nowhere, never or by no one been believed’. Not kosher English.
Prof. Brueggeman’s main suggestions: stop “excommunicating each otherâ€, deal “less intensely†with “internal disputes over moral questionsâ€, become wary of “final interpretations†(p.24). He is mostly unhelpful in explaining how these slogans work.
Brueggeman’s “classic example” of slavery (p.24) eventually involved a bloody civil war and protracted civil rights movement from the Emancipation Proclamation of 1962/63 to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and onward. I doubt that theologians and congregants of the time were more ‘scribal’ than ‘prophetic’ in Brueggeman’s sense. Additionally, the example involves only one side of that debate: does Brueggeman think that abolitionist theologians were “excessively final” in their interpretations as well? Would we today be better served if abolitionists had considered per Cromwell that they might be mistaken about the evil of slavery? Brueggeman’s principle about disdaining final interpretations is of little use if his classic example is an exception.
Prof. Brueggeman writes [i]”Such absolutism [of conservatives or liberals] is to fall into the Enlightenment trap of drawing singular conclusions rather than engaging in dialogic processes”[/i] (p.9). He also writes that [i]”final interpretations are a dangerous step along the way to the Final Solution”[/i] (p.28) The latter thesis is popular among humanities departments today. Nazi war crimes could or would have been averted if Hitler and his cohort were sufficiently skeptical of metaphysics, meta-narratives, etc.
First, Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Kant thought they were making peaceable dialogue possible for theological, philosophical, and political traditions in conflict. They ruled out “singular conclusions†in speculative theology and metaphysics as underdetermined or incoherent. Brueggeman like many today merely widen the matters about which we ought to disdain decisive conclusions. Second, I think Brueggeman’s proposal involves errors analogous to those of some Christian traditions that contend that ridding worship of ‘Catholic’ elements will prevent idolatry. I doubt that there is any safe ground respecting idolatry or unjust violence. Even the most fastidious Biblicist can be an idolater. Perhaps a nation of principled, broad agnostics might be incapable of embracing National Socialism. But the refusal of truths can be just as destructive as the embrace of falsehoods, so I refuse Brueggeman’s interpretation of the Final Solution whether he advances it as a penultimate or a final interpretation. Third, the slogan “refuse final settlement” is fine if your decision is whether we should have chicken or fish for supper. It is unhelpful if your decision is whether we should have babies together. Eighty-years from now, the former decision will be of negligible significance whereas the latter decision will be profound and irreversible. Churches reconstitute themselves from generation to generation (re ordinands, liturgical forms, etc.) and this often raises divisive questions that pluralism and accommodation do not forestall or answer. Whether, say, women can be ordained priests is not answered by saying with a pluralist or pragmatist that the question is underdetermined by scripture and philosophy and thus a question that ought not to be asked.