The God of All Flesh: And Other Essays

By Walter Brueggemann and K.C. Hanson (editor)

Essays by a pre-eminent Old Testament scholar on the biblical emphasis on the material life and its implications for social, political and economic issues.

ISBN: 9780227176177

Description

Biblical faith is passionately and relentlessly material in its emphasis. This claim is rooted in the conviction that the creator God loves the creation and summons creation to be in sync with the will of the creator God. This collection of essays is focussed on the bodily life of the world as it ordered in all of its problematic political and economic forms. The phrase of the title “all flesh” in the flood narrative of Genesis 9 refers to all living creatures who are in covenant with God – human beings, animals, birds, and fish – as recipients of God’s grace, as dependent upon God’s generosity, and as destined for praise and obedience to God.

The insistence on the materiality of life as the subject of the Bible means that the difficult issues of economics and the demanding questions of politics are front and centre in the text. So the Pentateuch pivots around the Exodus narrative and the emancipation from an unbearable context of abusive labour practices. In a similar manner, the prophets endlessly address such questions of social policy and the wisdom teachers reflect on how to manage the material things of life and social relationships for the well-being of the community.

This emphasis, pervasive in these essays, is a powerful alternative and a strong resistance against all of the contemporary efforts to transcend (escape!) the material into some form of the “spiritual”. All around us are efforts to find an easier, more harmonious faith. This may be evoked simply because of a desire to shield economic, political advantage from the inescapable critique of biblical faith. Such a temptation is a serious misreading of the Bible and a critical misjudgment about the nature of human existence. Thus the Bible addressed the most urgent issues of our day, and refuses the “religious temptation” that avoids lived reality where the power of God is a work.

Additional information

Dimensions 229 × 153 mm
Pages 186
Format

Trade Information JPOD

About the Author

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament Emeritus at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He is a prolific author, whose works include The Role of Old Testament Theology in Old Testament Interpretation (also published by James Clarke & Co Ltd).

Contents

Abbreviations
Foreword by K.C. Hanson
Preface

1. The God of All Flesh
2. The Creatures Know
3. Jeremiah: Creatio in Extremis
4. Israel’s Sense of Place in Jeremiah
5. Imagination as a Mode of Fidelity
6. Psychological Criticism: Exploring the Self in the Text
7. Psalm 37: Conflict of Interpretation
8. The “Us” of Psalm 67
9. Authority in the Church

Acknowledgments
Name Index
Scripture Index

Extracts

Endorsements and Reviews

… this volume highlights some of the collected essays written between 1974 and 2009 as Festschriften by famed biblical scholar, Walter Brueggemann. … This reviewer’s first exposure to the thought, work, and writing of Professor Brueggemann came in graduate school with his remarkable book, The Prophetic Immigration. That work opened up a very different and helpful angle in understanding the phenomenon of prophets, and as a result, there has always been a deep indebtedness to him. Likewise, the reader will remain grateful and indebted to Walter Brueggemann for the many insights provided by The God of All Flesh and Other Essays.
Clifford Chalmers Cain, in Reviews in Religion and Theology, Vol 25, Issue 1