Brueggemann's swing and a miss

For the second time this summer Walter Brueggemann has an online piece dealing with the challenges of biblical historical criticism in the life of moderate Christianity. (Brueggemann, a United Church of Christ minister, is a popular author, exegete and retired Old Testament professor.) Early last month WorkingPreacher.org posted a short video by him, which I commented on. At the end of July he posted an essay on the Christian Century sponsored site Theolog, provocatively titled “Remembering an imagined past.”

Brueggemann is certainly right that historical criticism has created enormous problems for the moderate and liberal churches which have embraced it—much greater than they usually acknowledge. Depriving the Bible of virtually any historical credibility has sucked much of the life and energy out these church’s preaching and proclamation, or as Brueggemann calls it, “confessional passion.”

According to Brueggemann, the problem with historical criticism as it has been applied is that it deprives the church of its “textual memory.” He writes, “It remains for the church and the synagogue, in their thick practicality, to keep opting for memory over historicity.” He then goes on to acknowledge, however, that “to be sure, much of the textual memory is ‘imagined’"—hence the essay’s title.

Yet, as everyone knows, memory is hardly a reliable source, whether individual or collective. Just as we see what we want to see, so too we remember what we want to remember, and we often remember things we would be better off forgetting. So Brueggemann admits that “the biblical text can and often does lead to destructive ideology” along with “risky, faithful, generous obedience.” But when and why does it lead to one rather than the other? And how can it be recognized at the time and what can be used to sort and judge one from the other?

On these questions Brueggemann is silent. His remedy seems to be an idealized view of the gathered believers. “Serious remembering—in a community of self-awareness, moral passion, knowing discipline and generous hope—is thick, elusive and multidimensional.” Well perhaps, but it remains unclear where such communities exist or whether they are typical or exceptional. Certainly such a description isn’t simply synonymous with the church, at least not in my experience.

Obviously a large part of the problem with Brueggemann’s essay is the vagueness of much of his language. “Imagined past”? What keeps that from being simple fantasy? What happens when one person’s or one group’s “imagined past” conflicts with that of another? How does one judge among “imaginations”? What is “confessional passion” as opposed to passion that is misguided and even destructive? Given the “passion” of fundamentalism it would seem that its absence in moderate religious groups isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Brueggemann admits that “no doubt we must keep asking questions about historicity” but doesn’t say why or ever give a clear statement of what, in his view, is the value of historical criticism. What he describes here is all negative. Indeed, for him historical criticism is primarily about depriving the church of biblical texts: “’modernizing’ that seeks generally to get rid of stuff is misguided.”

This, however, is where Brueggemann goes off track. He accuses Old Testament historical critical scholars of concluding that most OT “texts are largely quite late theological constructs designed to serve nefarious ideological purposes.” Late yes, but nefarious? I’m somewhat familiar with their work and that is hardly the conclusion I have drawn. This seems like distortion bordering on slander. Indeed, one of my favorite books in this genre, The Mythic Past by Thomas Thompson, actually restored my awareness of the Hebrew Bible’s value even as it removed it from the category of “history.”

Similarly, Brueggemann accuses the Jesus Seminar of having “voted out much of the memory of the church” by determining what of the gospels genuinely goes back to Jesus and what is the creation of the early church. But how so? He admits much of this “textual memory” is “imagined.” The Jesus Seminar, well or poorly, simply tried to separate the imagined from the real. I’m not aware they concluded that anything not red (the color code for “the real Jesus”) ought to be discarded or ignored.

In assessing the red texts of the Jesus Seminar’s New Testament, Brueggemann says, “Not surprisingly, what is left has turned out to be a Jesus who looks and sounds a lot like the voters.” True, and totally unsurprising. This is what a century ago Albert Schweitzer figured out has been the story of Jesus interpreters all along: Jesus always bears a striking resemblance to whoever is telling us about him. We find in Jesus what we need and what we want to see. That’s the Jesus we proclaim. Jesus may not be Everyman but he is Everyman’s Savior.

In his video presentation, Brueggemann says that historical criticism has stifled preachers’ imagination. While I agree imaginative preaching has taken a hit I think it is flat out wrong to blame this on historical criticism. On the contrary, had the church genuinely embraced it, historical criticism could have provided the sanction for a dramatic revival of creative and imaginative preaching.

It’s pretty evident that down through the centuries, preachers have intuitively known or suspected that much of the biblical material at their disposal fell more into the creative writing category than that of eyewitness reporting. The church’s hang-up with this didn’t come until the Enlightenment.

At that time and since the church has felt its authority challenged by science’s use of objective and observational truth. Attempting, fruitlessly, to compete on that field led to shoving the Bible into such categories through ideas of scriptural inerrancy and literalism. Of course, the very scientific methods the church was trying to keep up with led to the discoveries that undermined any claim for the Bible’s scientific or historical accuracy.

Even while rejecting fundamentalism, liberal and moderate churches still live with a sense of inferiority in relation to the scientific and technological world. Theology still pines to be, once again, the “queen of the sciences.” Even these churches want to be able to proclaim what the late evangelical Francis Schaeffer called “true truth.”

Trying to corral historical criticism is a losing battle, and one that doesn’t even need to be fought. Rather, by abandoning notions of “scriptural authority” the church can at last let the Bible be what it is and drop any need to defend it. Where it is objectionable or simply wrong, acknowledge it. Where it is irrelevant (as any two thousand year-old document must be sometimes), just move on. And where it provides the materials and the impetus for creative reflection on life and the world, go for it.

Freed from any concern over whether this or that really was said or happened, preachers can take biblical characters and images in an infinite number of directions—as great story tellers have always done. Indeed, one of the key discoveries of historical criticism is that this is exactly what biblical writers themselves did with the literary material they found at hand. Rarely, if ever, did they create ex nihilo.

So what’s stopping us? I suspect this is largely a fear that the emperor has no clothes. What is the Bible without any claim to objective and/or divine authority? Most in the church suspect it will become just another book. And they may be right. Yet surely the past century has shown that giving the Bible some special status doesn’t accomplish anything. Its words either move, inspire and teach—or they don’t. Labeling the Bible “holy” or “God’s word” doesn’t change that.

Putting the Bible in some kind of protective glass case will only lead to it becoming a dusty air loom. Indeed, given the rising levels of biblical illiteracy that’s a status it is rapidly approaching. To save the Bible we need to kill it, at least as it has been viewed and used in the past. It needs to be set free from any and all doctrinal and theological straightjackets. Use its stories and images however necessary to be challenging, shocking, inspiring, and enlightening. If we can’t use it to do those things, then it’s time to get new material.