Chapter 2 discusses how OT theology is and should be done in a post-modern world. He begins with how he thinks it should be done. First, the OT must be understood in its narrative framework: it is a story that reflects Israel's reception of the revelation of its God in its experience. Thus, it is what Israel says about its experience and how the writers interpret it that counts. Second, one must recognize the different voices within the text. For example the voices of order, wisdom and consolidation compete with the prophetic voices of liberation and change, without the issues, like theodicy, being resolved in the text. It is also important to see that the OT text as we have it is a product of the exile. That does not necessarily mean that the original texts are not older or are not historically accurate, but their final form is influenced by the exile. This also shows the importance of intertextuality. The OT was prone to reuse or refer to older texts to apply to new situations, so it is important that we be able to interpret it in terms of those connections. One must also read the New Testament being cognizant of its references to the OT. The OT is a Jewish book which means it must be read that way with its rich metaphor and seemingly contradictory dialog that must be thought through and yields several avenues of understanding.
We now recognize that there is no interest-free interpretation, no interpretation that is not in the service of some interest and in some sense advocacy...Such an interpretive enterprise is a profound departure from the older, long-established hegemonic work of interpretations in which one could enjoy “assured results.” In my judgment, however, faithful interpretation—that is, interpretation congruent with the text being interpreted, requires a willingness to stay engaged in such an adjudicating process and not to retreat to a separated interpretive community. 63
In Israel’s theological rhetoric, it is evident that Israel employed a rich strategy in order to find speech to match the continuing Character whom it rendered at the center of its life...we can see a complexity, oddity, and dangerousness about Yahweh, qualities that could hardly be taken into account by the conventions of positivistic history or by the modes of classical theology. Yahweh, it appears, is always prepared for some new, outrageous self-disclosure, depending on the courage and freedom of Israel’s boldest speakers. 71
The Old Testament in its theological articulation is characteristically dialectical and dialogical, and not transcendentalist...By this I mean that the God of Israel is characteristically “in the fray” and at risk in the ongoing life of Israel. Conversely the God of Israel is rarely permitted, in the rhetoric of Israel, to be safe and unvexed “above the fray.” Even where God is said to be elsewhere, this “elsewhere” is most often in response to Israel’s life, either negatively or positively. 83
Chapter 2 ends with a discussion of several approaches to doing Old Testament theology in the modern world. Brueggemann lays out several different approaches, both traditional/centrist and marginal/radical, to doing OT theology and discusses the work of several different academics doing work in the field. He insists that the church must listen to both the more traditional academics and the ones that are doing work on the margins, especially the non-Western interpreters. Both voices, maintenance of tradition and liberation and change, of the Old Testament must be heard. His conclusion emphasizes that we must be careful reading the OT under the authority of critical scholarship or church dogma. Both are important tools but have their limitations. Critical scholarship removes the supernatural which is the heart of the Bible's message while church dogmas tend to "tame" the Bible and remove the parts which cannot be fit into a particular systematic scheme. Again, we need to let the text be the text and read it, as much as we can, as it was intended. The church's task is always to take the text and apply its message to new situations as they arise.
Exposition is always conducted in the presence of two audiences. In the first instant, exposition is directed at the self-understanding, self-discernment, and authorization of the community that begins in assent to this text...the Old Testament is always addressing, belatedly, a second listening community: the larger public that is willing to host many alternative construals of reality. The long history of this text, especially in the West, attests to the endless points of impingement, whereby this text has provided the categories, the discernment, the energy, and the impetus for a different shape of life in the world. 87–88
While we do not know how to do it very well, one of the primary demands of Old Testament theology in our present context is to work precisely at the interface between these readings (centrist and marginal) in conflict. The conflict between these readings not only concerns interesting methodological questions and incidental interpretive issues, but cuts to the core theological claims of the text. 102
The work of biblical theology, vis-à-vis systematic theology, is one of tension that is honest but not quarrelsome. In practice, I suggest that it is the liturgy that is to enact the settled coherence of church faith, and the sermon that provides the “alien” witness of the text, which rubs against the liturgic coherence. There can, in my judgment, be no final resolution of the tension between the systemizing task of theology and the disruptive work of biblical interpretation. It is the ongoing interaction between the two that is the work of interpretation. 107
No comments:
Post a Comment