(From someone who I was having a listserv dialogue with some years ago)
First, thank you very much for your
astute and heartfelt words on WB. In both of your messages, your WB
quotes get at the essence of his core message at least in his powerful essays.
I haven’t studied his more formal writing in any depth, so perhaps he is a bit
more systematic there in his book on Genesis
and Theology of the Old Testament.
I assume there’s a fair amount of “leakage” there, too, though perhaps not as
much as when he is writing “imaginative” (quote meant positively) essays in his
confrontation with the hegemony of postmodernity. I enjoyed his
collection, Interpretation and Obedience:
From Faithful Reading to Faithful Living a great deal and found in
particular, “The Legitimacy of a Sectarian Hermeneutic” based on 2 Kings 18-19
nothing short of stunning, where WB speaks about being at and behind the wall
in addressing the claims of the empire. I also found his essay “The Third
World of Evangelical Imagination” very rich in “daring speech” (my quotes,
mimicking WB) about God in the very epicenter of secular
modernity/postmodernity.
I’ve mentioned here what I take to
be the core of WB’s project in the piecing of postmodernity one verse, one
miracle, one revelation at a time, and the quotes that you provided in both of
your messages provide a substantive demonstration of such piercing.
In terms of the canon, you point to
its “unfathomable diversity.” No doubt there is a great deal of range, but
I would still rather say, unfathomable depth.
One can discern such in Romans alone in Paul’s complex exegesis on the
relationship between grace and the law.
Then there are the particularly poignant chapters, 9-11 where he’s
struggling with his religious progeny, through an incredibly diverse use of the
OT scripture in his various arguments by analogy (as exhibited throughout
Romans). The evocation of such speech
undoubtedly had a powerful impact on the early church as if God himself
were speaking through Paul’s words—speech which still resonates today for those
who have ears. The subtlety of 9-alone bears comment in his own
grappling with the meaning of the new covenant in light of the permanency of
the original one: “Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake (accent
on the last three words), but concerning the election they are beloved for the
sake of the fathers” (accent on the last 6 words) (Rom 11:28).
And as previously written in Romans,
“If their fall is richness for the world and their failure riches for the
Gentiles, how much more their fullness"” (11:1-12). “For if their
being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be
but life from the dead?” (vs 15). Then, after three rigorous chapters of
this intense wrestling he can only but accept what to human beings can only
seem profoundly paradoxical: “Oh, the depth and the riches both of
the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and
His ways past finding out!” (11:33 ). As
someone on the list put it, “I find the Gospel very exciting and out of control,
at least of our control...” Thus, Paul, himself seems to be downright
Brueggemaniann in his “imaginative construals” of the OT text in his
preaching of fresh words in and about the Gospel of Christ.
The reconstruction of the
Deuteronomic text through the mouths of the prophets in light of the Babylonian
exile is another profound grappling with the narrative, which WB tells so
well. In short, fresh interpretation streams throughout the biblical
narrative that at least to some readers brings home the core point that, “All
Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).
Accent here on “All Scripture” and “is profitable,” which speaks to
potentiality, but nonetheless, all scripture, a point that WB does not deny,
but then I get troubled when he privileges certain texts over others, which at
least puts in jeopardy the notion of all scripture.
WB is the master of drawing out the
imaginative depth of the individual text and in that he offers much potentially
both to hungry liberals and conservatives seeking a fresh word of truth in a
land that may be very dry. In his wrestling with the text WB is a consummate
preacher and expositor. I take no issue with that, which I view moreover,
as his primary gift to the modern/postmodern church. What I do find
troubling is an almost dogmatic-like aversion to the “grand narrative” of the
canon as a whole, from Alpha and Omega to various points between. While I
agree with you that the biblical text can be domesticated, it not need be so
and does not have to be to the extent that preachers, teachers, and other
communicators of the Word honor both the text and the context in which the Word
and people are situated. Of course, this is what WB seeks to do, but I
think we do have to look closely at his core project of “funding”
postmodernity, which he views as kairotically integral to the times in which we
(in the west) live.
I, for one, do not dismiss the
potency of this moment; this off-centered (geographically defined) Christianity
in which marginality rather than Christ the center defines the primary space of
where so many people who are willing to hear the Word, live. That has
defined my own space for a very long time, one that I know quite well, which
has its own allures and appeals, and who am I to say that it is not authentic
space. This Christ at the margins is a very real space where many who sit
in our pews, and perhaps more than a few pastors, as well, live. What WB
does is to give them voice and in that he is making a substantial contribution
to mainline identity and in the process he re-introduces the legitimacy of the
Bible. This is no small achievement. His “angular” interpretation
speaks to this mode.
I want to keep this angularity and
the imaginative construals that fresh interpretations evoke. I want to do
this, however in a way that honors the canon in its entirety; the grand
narrative as well as the many little stories that comprise this constructed
text. This, I believe, WB has not adequately grappled with, and, in fact,
exercises a profound hermeneutics of suspicion against any such project, as
indicative in his ongoing canon criticism of biblicist Brevard Childs.
The question that I pose back to you is what do we do with the grand
narrative? Is this simply part of a mythopoetic legend that speaks an
idiom of an ancient world, but has no applicability today? Be clear, I,
too, want to separate the wheat from the chaff of critical historiography and
modern scientific understanding, and the allures of obscurantism have no appeal
to me either.
That said, we still have to deal
not only with the matter of interpretation, but the standards upon which
interpretation is based; the standards upon which our faith is grounded;
particularly the relationship between the text and the world. What I find
in the serious evangelicals like Bloesch, Fackre, Erickson and others is a
profound grappling with the challenges of modernity/postmodernity, while at the
same time, when push comes to shove, viewing the Bible as interpreting the
world rather than the world setting the context in and through which the Bible
is interpreted. Obviously, the relationship is more complex in that
there is considerable interplay between these two— complexity always leaking
out against our best construals. This I grant. Nonetheless, we do
have to decide at some level below having complete or perfect knowledge and our
decisions are invariably based on where our ultimate vocabularies and
commitments reside. At his best moments, WB is nothing short of prophetic
in his electrifying imaginative construals, which, in the very act of his
speaking (writing) it is as if God is piercing postmodernity that is grasped at
the moment of reading. That is obviously very powerful and to lose that is
to lose much.
Even still, and this is where I
want to raise a very big issue, to what extent does he see funding
postmodernity as he describes it in Texts
Under Negotiation as THE kairotic moment of our times? For if that is
our times, then WB's marginalized but very powerfully spoken Christian faith
may be nothing short of the will of God for our times. However, if he is
holding onto this vision tighter than perhaps God intends, then perhaps there
is some idolatry lurking in his insistence that marginality is in fact the key
characteristic state of our times, or that even if it is, sustained inward
cultural migration is simply not a feasible place for “serious” Christians to
confront and address the world (Hauerwas).
Again, I'm very glad that you have
raised these important issues. I don’t think anyone here is saying there are
simple answers. Sill, there is direction and choices have to be made on
the basis of where one locates ones ultimate commitments and vocabulary.
For me, the Bible, all of it, is a very solid place to go; a place I go with my
eyes wide open and with a fair amount of knowledge of its many
contextualizations, but where I go as a predominant resource as the Spirit
leadeth.
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