Imagine a New World in Which God Speaks

A quote from another book I am reading lately:

But consider what would emerge if the clergy accepted as their modest role the voicing of scripture material, without excessive accommodating -- that is, without accommodation to political liberalism or political reactionism [conservatism?], without accommodation to religious orthodoxy or critical urbaneness, but only uttered the voice of the text boldly, as it seems to present itself, even through it does not seem to connect to anything....What is yearned for among us is not a new doctrine or new morality, but new world, new self, new future.¹

What I like about Brueggemann is that he makes me think and imagine, often because his books can make me as uncomfortable as they encourage me. On the one hand, he is really directing people, namely pastors and priests, back to scripture as it is, apart from our hopes for what we think it should be. Letting Scripture speak on its own terms is in my view the best way to learn about God's imagination. On the other hand, he has set up for us dichotomies that I am not sure follow. In other words, it does not seem to me that "religious orthodoxy" or critical prowess (which I take to be a reference to proficiency in Textual Criticism) are necessarily opposed to letting the text speak for itself.

If the Scriptures are in fact the articulation of the imagination of God, as it were, then it would seem that they, on their own terms, are concerned about both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. In this way, Church Tradition would seem to be entailed in this articulation of the supreme imagination. Further, it would appear that if the Scriptures are in fact the articulation in textual form of God's revealed imagination then, of course, critical prowess is significant because we need to know what was in fact articulated.

However, if I understand the spirit of what Brueggemann is after, it is that in confusing the energies or effects of the divine imagination with its essence, we make the minor the major, missing the forest for the trees. Though the texts may "not seem to connect to anything", I believe that Brueggemann is directing us towards that, with which they do, as a matter of fact, connect. It is not primarily that the scriptures give us magnificent doctrines, but that the proclaim a new world order of which we may be a part in Christ. The scriptures point us in fact to the very essence of that for which we long. We behold Christ who is the essence of morality, the essence of beauty the essence of what it is to be made new. We behold in the scriptures the articulation of the One who has made himself know to us existentially; the incarnate imagination of God, who has caused us in authentic angst to cry out to Him, "I am yours, save me!"


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¹ Brueggemann, Walter. Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp 20-21, 25.