The Prophetic Imagination

THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION Second Edition WALTER BRUEGGEMANN FORTRESS PRESS Minneapolis THE PROPHETIC IMAGINATION Second Edition Copyright © 2001 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Biblical quotations are translated by the author. Cover image: Photograph by Andreas Heumann. © 2001 Tony Stone. Used by Permission. Cover design: David Meyer Frontispiece: Door jamb figure of jeremiah. St. Pierre, Moissac, France.© 2001 Giraudon/Art Resource, NY. Used by permission. Book design: Ann Delgehausen Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brueggemann, Walter The prophetic imagination I Walter Brueggemann.-2nd ed. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-8006-3287-7 (alk. paper) I. Prophets. 2. Pastoral theology. I. Title. BS II 98 .B84 2001 221.1'5-dc21 2001018929 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum require ments of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 2329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A. 1-3287 For sisters in ministry who teach me daily about the power of grief and the gift of amazement Contents Prefaceto the Revised Edition IX Prefaceto the First Edition XXlll 1. The Alternative Community of Moses 2. Royal Consciousness: Countering the Counterculture 21 3. Prophetic Criticizing and the Embrace of Pathos 39 4. Prophetic Energizing and the Emergence of Amazement 59 5. Criticism and Pathos in Jesus of Nazareth 81 6. Energizing and Amazement in Jesus of Nazareth 101 7. A Note on the Practice of Ministry 115 A Postscript on Practice 121 Abbreviations 127 Notes 129 Selected Bibliography 147 Scripture Index 149 Preface to the Revised Edition The publication of The Prophetic Imagination in 1978 was my first publication in which I more-or-less found my own voice as a teacher in the church. Much has changed fo r me since then, but the basic thesis that I articulated there holds for me and continues to frame my ongoing work. There are indeed definitive continuities between what I said then and what I would say now. At the same time, a great deal has changed since then. I mark three such changes. First, the changes in method and approach in the critical study of the Bible since then are immense. In 1978 or in the years just preceding when I wrote, scripture study was com pletely defined by historical criticism, even though the first hints of new approaches were on the horizon. For the study of the prophetic texts, this commitment to historical criticism meant un derstanding the prophetic personalities in their presumed histori cal contexts and then extrapolating from that text-in-context to general thematics. Derivatively, the practical use of prophetic texts in "prophetic ministry" meant rather regularly direct, con frontational encounter with established power in the way Amos seemed to confront Amaziah (Amos 7: I 0-17). Such an approach ix x Preface to the Revised Edition that, in retrospect, seems somewhat simplistic did indeed fund and authorize bold and courageous ministries. At that time, however, scripture study generally awaited the articulation of methods that moved beyond or underneath histor ical criticism of a conventional kind. Specifically,social-scientific criticism, stunningly introduced into Old Testament studies by Norman Gottwald in 1979-the year after my book-opened the way to see texts as ideological statements evoked by and evoking specificforms of social action and policy, social authorization, and social criticism.' Robert Wilson helped us to see that the prophets are not lonely voices against the establishment but are in fact rep resentative voices that give social expression to what may be im portant and engaged social constituencies.2 The effect of such study is to situate prophetic texts more densely in the interplay of social forces that are in conflictover the correct characterization of social reality. Thus the texts are brought more closely into contact with the social processes in which they are imbedded and to which the texts themselves may have contributed. In like manner, critical study of the Old Testament in 1978 still awaited the emergence of rhetorical criticism and its appreciation of the generative, constitutive power of imagination. In 1978, the same year as my book, Phyllis Trible published God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, a definitive starting pointin Old Testament study for the ways in which public speech (and thus text) generate alternative worlds.3 Partly out of rhetorical criticism and partly out of the crucial work of Paul Ricoeur on imagination, it became gen erally evident that texts-in particular biblical texts-are acts of imagination that offer and purpose "alternative worlds" that exist because of and in the act of utterance.' Since that early publication of Trible, there has been an explosion of literature on theological imagination with the recognition, against dominant classical views, that imagination is indeed a legitimate way of knowing.' One consequence of this new awareness is that biblical texts, in particular prophetic texts, could be seen as poetic scenarios of al ternative social reality that might lead to direct confrontation with Preface to the Revised Edition xi "presumed, taken-for-granted worlds" (the old liberal assump tion). The canonical text, as norm fo r an intergenerational com munity, might also serve to nurture and fund obedience that is not necessarily confrontational but that simply acts out of a dif fe rently perceived, differently received, differently practiced world (imagination/obedience). Thus a focus on rhetoric as gen erative imagination has permitted prophetic texts to be heard and reuttered as offers of reality counter to dominant reality that characteristically enjoys institutional, hegemonic authority but is characteristically uncritical of itself. The second change since 1978 that I note is my own changed perspective. My dedication of that book to "sisters in ministry" plus my citation of Jose Porfirio Miranda on page 89 indicate that at that time I was only beginning (as most of us were only begin ning) to integrate into my interpretive practice the perspectives that are associated with various forms of liberation theology. My continued attention to issues of a liberation hermeneutic has since that time intensified fo r me. The recurring critiques of liberation hermeneutics are of course well known; in general, however, those critiques strike me as misinformed and offered by critics who have the luxury of social distance from the sharp wounds of social reality. When one considers the issues of liberation and exploitation on the ground, then the intimate contact between biblical texts of a prophetic sort and matters of social justice, social interest, and social criticism seem to me to be incontrovertible. Moreover, the enmeshment of the United States church in the raging force of globalization and the easy accommodation of church faith and practice to consumer commoditism make the ur gency of "prophetic consciousness" palpable among us, any cri tique of method to the contrary. In any case, I believe that the lines of argument I have laid out are, if anything, more important than at the time of my writing, precisely because the hegemonic power of the "royal consciousness" is all but totalizing among us. Thus my own conviction about the matter is intensified as I ponder my own faith in the context where I findmyself called. xii Preface to the Revised Edition The third change that I identify is that the church community in its "mainline" expressions is increasingly decentered and disen franchised since the time of my writing. There is much speculation and gnashing of teeth about the causes of such marginalization, and lots of culprits have been identified. But the likely "explana tion" is the long-term and deep force of secularization. Whatever may be the cause of such marginalization of the church as an insti tution, the effect can hardly be doubted. The consequence of this social reality that concerns us is that the old confrontational model of "prophet versus established power," which was a replication of the Old Testament notion of "prophet versus king," is increasingly difficult to bring off and without great social effect. A confronta tional model assumes that the "prophetic voice" has enough clout, either social or moral, to gain a hearing. Currently, the old "prophetic stance" of such churches lacks much of that authority, so that the old confrontational approach is largely ineffectual pos turing. Given that social reality, which I think cannot be doubted, I suspect that whatever is "prophetic" must be more cunning and more nuanced and perhaps more ironic. For that reason it is important to see that the prophetic texts that feature the great confrontations are not to be directly repli cated and reenacted. Rather, they are to be seen as materials that might fund the would-be prophetic voice, to give wisdom and courage, but which then invite immense imagination to know how to move from such texts to actual circumstance. This move, re quired by contemporary context, is to take the prophetic texts as text and not as "personality," the tendency of the older confronta tional model. Thus my accent on imagination has turned out to be exactly correct, for what is now required is that a relatively power less prophetic voice must find imaginative ways that are rooted in the text but that freely and daringly move from the text toward concrete circumstance. Seen in that contextual way, "prophetic imagination" requires more than the old liberal confrontation if the point is not posturing but effecting change in social perspective and social policy.

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