Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination

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Summary: Inside Brueggemann's Counterdrama...
Review: After being hooked by "Prophetic Imagination" and "Finally Comes the Poet," I became enamored with two books based upon studying the Psalms: "Psalms and Life of Faith...The Message of Psalms."
Hearing Bruegge in Columbia Seminary teach Psalms, his Survey of Old Testament plus Theology of Old Testament, I became hooked by nearly every book he referred to in Lectures. More than once he named both...Counterworld of Imagination and his Counterdrama!
When he commented upon these 2-3 chapter titles, I began to read what I expected to be his simplest. Yet I discovered even more psychological depth than any earlier example.

"In the Old Testament, it is especially the intimate psalms of lament that voice this unfinished self." (Earlier he paints the finished self.) Rainer Albertz: "He shows the believing self turns to God in profound need and in profound trust, asking God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves." The very pastoral eschatology is sounded most often in "the voice of petition that cedes one's life over to the purpose and power of God." This quite poetic and profound thought creeped often into his final class lectures at the close of Theology of the Old Testament.

"Inside the Counterdrama," Bruegge suggests the dama is a good metaphor appropriate to present time and place: especially as an analogy with Freud's program of psychotherapy! Using his usual multiple variety of Old Testament texts he states that we are "in fact characters in many dramas, sometimes trying to bring the parts into a coherent whole..." He often connects his more potent conclusions to discovering an alternative world!
With grateful appreciation to Bruegge, Retired Chap. Fred W Hood

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Summary: One of Bruegge's Hidden Jewels!
Review: After getting familiar with our Professor's earlier books from Fortress Press, I discovered his best hidden jewel! As he refers to the Counterworld of Evangelical Imagination, he states his thesis negatively: "If this evangelical infrastructure is not carefully constructed the congregation will rely on the dominant infrastructure of consumerism..." Positively, the open situation of the postmodern condition makes such an evangelical construal possible when the church works orally, locally, and in timely ways..." These positive and negative statements lead to more specific themes for his final chapter, "Inside the Counterdrama."

This general thesis becomes Bruegge's early approach to pastoral care, which he calls his discovery of "the finished self." As he often connects the intimate lament psalms of the Old Testament in giving voice to "the unfinished self" he refers to these in notes from both Rainer Albertz and Reinhold Niebuhr: "when the believing self turns to God in profound need & profound trust." This opens the door for him to use the pastoral psycho-therapy of Freud as "pastoral eschatology sounding the voice of petition that cedes one's life over to the purpose and power of God." This is a familiar theme of Prof Bruegge's class lectures!

His most gripping statement comes on page 67: "I submit this way of reading the text (and reading our life) contains enormously helpful access points for pastoral care. The Bible provides a script (not the only script available) for a lived drama that contains all the ingredients for a whole life."

From my intro into "Finally Comes the Poet," until my tenth trip into Bruegge's "Theology of the Old Testament" ...This gripping statement provides his bluntest, simplist, clearest formula for personal change and therefore spiritual growth!
Enough said for my whole-hearted vote of five stars!
Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood

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Summary: Superb Treatment of Postmodernism
Review: This is simply one of the best and most powefully written books on postmodernism that I have read. Brueggemann eloquently expresses the nature of postmodernism against the backgrop of the modernist hegemony stemming from Descartes. Against this, Brueggemann shows how the postmodern denial and deconstruction of the metanarrative of modernism serves the church because it gives the church a fresh context in which to articulate the biblical narrative as a "counterdrama", an alternative rendering of reality that delegitmiates and deconstructs the idols of modernism while also being a source of life and redemption rather than nihilism and despair.

Brueggeman shows through many examples from Scripture how the Bible offers a "counterimagination" of the world, which seemingly flies in the face of what the powers declare to be "objectively real". However, despite the risk of beleiving and living into the biblical counterdrama, Yahweh, who is the primary actor in that drama does not disappoint. The biblical narrative, in its alternative renderning of reality, shows itself to be the only narrative wherein the abundant life of God is poured out and the evils and falsehoods of the powers exposed. It is through an articulartion of this counterdrama that Christainity has the ultimate answer to postmodernism.

Brueggemann's arguement is biblically informed and rhetoricaly persuasive. This book should be requried reading for those who wish to understand Christian responses to postmodernism. Highly recommended.

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Summary: Excellent scholarly word re postmodernism and the Bible
Review: Very well written discussion about how the postmodern imagination can bring new life to the Bible. Postmodernism is not an enemy of Christendom, but an opportunity. Good discussion on how scripture can be authoritative for Christians today. Defines and discusses the origins of modernism and postmodernism. The Bible has its own worldview. By telling all the Bible stories, people can place themselves into the greater Story.