Book Review: An Unsettling God 07/09/2010
 When Brian Nicklaus mentioned he had bought a copy of "An Unsettling God" by Walter Brueggemann, I knew I'd have to borrow it. I'm glad I did. This slim volume, consisting of "only" around 176 pages of text divided in 6 chapters, is dense reading. Seriously, I think I could camp out on this book for a year working out everything Dr. Brueggemann says here. As with virtually everything I read, there are some aspects of the writer's viewpoint I couldn't quite accept, such as Brueggemann's rejection of what he terms "supersessionism," the belief that in Jesus of Nazareth a new covenant has come that supercedes the old. Rather than risk misrepresenting Dr. Brueggemann's position here, I'll just say that I follow the advice of my professors at Harding University: I treat the text like chicken, eating the meat and spitting out the bones. Dr. Brueggeman discusses in this book the nature of God as revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures as one of relationship with four "partners,": Israel, the Human Person, the Nations and Creation. All four were fantastic in their analysis of the text, from a faithful critical perspective. I was especially encouraged by the description of YHWH's relationship with the human person. He spoke in terms of a person at ease living in obedience, discernment (wisdom) and trust, while the person in crisis acts in complaint, petition and thanksgiving. After the crisis is resolved comes praise and hope. In my opinion, the best part of Brueggeman's handling of the Old Testament biblical texts is how he looks at them on their own internal merits, in the light of solid critical scholarship, without undue regard to the later re-interpretations of Christian writers. While, as I mentioned above, I disagree with his position on "supersessionism," I respect his ability to set aside the lens of classical Christian thought in his reading and analysis. Below I include a rather lengthy set of quotations from this book. Read through them slowly and I believe they will make sense, even without their original context. Better yet, buy a copy of "An Unsettling God" and see everything I failed to mention or quote. ________________________________ “The God of Christians, understood in the midst of God's revelation to ancient Israel, is a God deeply at risk in the drama of fidelity and infidelity in the world.” - page 11 “In these ancient texts and in its ongoing life in the world, Israel is indeed an oddity and a mystery, because Israel is a theological phenomenon that has concrete sociopolitical embodiment and is expected to live differently in a world of power.” - page 19 “The command to justice is understood as marking the polity of the community of Israel. That is, justice is not charity, nor is it romantic do-goodism. It is rather a mandate to order public policy, public practice, and public institutions for the common good and in resistance to the kind of greedy initiative that damages the community.” - page 28 “For our purposes, it is enough to see that for reconstituted Israel it is a sure datum that the future is not in hock to the present and will not be extrapolated from it. The future, moreover, is not to be determined by Israel's obedience; the future, as it has been since Israel's most daring core testimony, is in the hands of the One who is sovereignly faithful and faithfully sovereign.” - page 51 “These themes thus form one coherent construal of Israel's unsolicited testimony about its life as YHWH's primary partner: (a) loved to existence, (b) commanded to obedience, (c) scattered to exile, (d) recipients of YHWH's hidden turn, and (e) gathered to obedience and hope.” - page 52 “I have no itch to dismiss either the notion of image or the ancient physiology reflected in the text. But I do not want to be sidetracked from what seems to me the central concern of Israel regarding humanity: namely, that the human person is a person in relation to YHWH, who lives in an intense mutuality with YHWH.” - page 60 “These three aspects of humanness – obeying, discerning, and trusting – are of a piece, even though they are characteristically evidenced in different circles of tradition. These three habits (or disciplines or practices) of humanness articulate the sine qua non of what it means to be human in the purview of Israel's testimony. Humanness requires:
"There is no doubt that YHWH relates to human creatures as free and sovereign. They are created out of YHWH's great generosity, and perhaps out of YHWH's yearning. They are situated in the midst of YHWH's sovereignty and commanded to live on YHWH's terms. When those terms are violated, trouble comes. The world of human persons in their life with YHWH is a fairly tight moral system. The amazing alert offered in these texts is that in the midst of the sanctions that YHWH pronounces, in the face of guilt and in the face of mortality, in the face of both situations in which the human person is helpless, YHWH is attentive. Full of steadfast love and compassion, YHWH is like a father who pities, like a mother who attends. YHWH is indeed for human persons, for them while they are in the Pit, willing and powering them to newness. It is the central conviction of Israel that human persons in the Pit may turn to this One who is powerfully sovereign and may find that sovereign One passionately attentive. That is the hope of humanity and in the end its true joy." - page 97 “Wisdom is the critical, reflective, discerning reception of YHWH's gift of generosity. That gift is not for self-indulgence, exploitation, acquisitiveness, or satiation, all practices of 'foolishness.' Wisdom urges careful husbanding, so that resources of creation may be used for the protection, enhancement, and nurture of all creatures. Wisdom is the careful, constant, reflective attention to the shapes and interconnections that keep the world generative. Where those shapes and interconnections are honored, there the whole world prospers, and all creatures come to joy and abundance. Where those shapes and interconnections are violated or disregarded, trouble, conflict and destructiveness are sure.” - page 141 “The world, as YHWH's creation, requres daily, endless attention to the gifts of creation, for their abuse and exploitation can harm and impede the generosity that makes life possible. Creation, moreover, has within it sanctions to bring death on those who neglect the enhancement of generosity.” - page 141 “Israel bears witness, as did its antecedents, to an enduring force of chaos in its life. This chaos may go by many different names – Tiamat, Leviathan, Rahab, Yam, Mot – which we may summarize under the names of Death or Nihil. In a variety of texts, this rhetoric in Israel points to a recognition that something is at work in the world seeking to make impossible the life of blessing willed by YHWH.” - page 143 “This is a powerful, irresistible, transformative resolve, to be undertaken with a high level of emotional intensity. It is a burst of generativity that is going to change everything and create a newness. This is a God who will not forsake: 'I will not forsake them' (42:16); 'You shall no more be termed Forsaken' (62: 4). In this resolve to new creation, YHWH promises to overcome all forsakenness and abandonment known in Israel and in the world. When creation is abandoned by YHWH, it readily reverts to chaos. Here it is in YHWH's resolve, and in YHWH's very character, not to abandon, but to embrace. The very future of the world, so Israel attests, depends on this resolve of YHWH. It is a resolve that is powerful. More than that, it is a resolve that wells up precisely in tohu wabohu and permits the reality of the world to begin again, in blessedness.” - page 161 4 Comments | 
Adam Gonnerman - Former missionary, ESL teacher, customer service rep, social media manager and web producer; currently employed as a project manager in New York and volunteering through HOPE worldwide.
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