The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy

by Walter Brueggemann; Conrad L. Kanagy

Publisher:

Fortress Press

, 2024

Overview

Understanding the gospel as emancipation has been central to Walter Brueggemann’s biblical interpretation. This book illustrates the theme's centrality, addressing the emancipation of God from our attempts to control, the emancipation of the church to be the people of an emancipated God, and the emancipation of the gospel to be a cultural prophecy.

This volume divides into three parts: “The Emancipation of God,” “The Emancipation of the Church,” and “The Emancipation of the Neighborhood.” What the three parts hold in common is the kingdom of God. In each chapter, Brueggemann grinds away at biblical texts that have been muffled, silenced, and disabled to free the text from its cultural entrapments so that that the liberated text can speak for an emancipated God and a liberated church to free the world.

Key Features

• Presents twenty-six essays on the topic of emancipation
• Divides volume into three parts: “The Emancipation of God,” “The Emancipation of the Church,” and “The Emancipation of the Neighborhood”
• Reveals Brueggemann’s recognition that true emancipation occurs at the interface of God, the church, and the neighborhood

Contents

Part I: The Emancipation of God

• The Emancipatory Work of Interpretation
• Some Dare Call It Treason
• Wir Sind Da!
• Watch Where You Go and How You Get There
• Two Farmers . . . Two Ways
• On the Way to Otherwise
• Biodiversity contra Babel
• An Iconic Act of Civil Disobedience

Part II: The Emancipation of the Church

• Saved in and through Weakness
• I Bet on You
• Start with Me Too
• The Results Men
• The Fundamental Dilemma
• The Advent of Agency
• On Gerrymandering Texts
• Elect from Every Nation Yet One o’er All the Earth

Part III: The Emancipation of the Neighborhood

• The Pathetic Imagination
• Hoe! Hoe! Hoe!
• Deserves to be Paid!
• Cities of Refuge?
• Take Twenty!
• The Hard Work of Exceptionalism
• The Ethical Dignity of the Other
• Profiles in Cowardice
• Imagine! Exterminatory Colonialism and Slave Labor!

Praise for The Emancipation of God

Newer approaches to biblical interpretation can address the multiple (and sometimes contradictory) biblical traditions, the significance of different communities of readers and their respective histories and contexts, interdisciplinary insights, and the theological implications of our interpretations, among other things. It is a daunting task, but in The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy, Walter Brueggemann uses these specific approaches to offer new insights on the Bible and its meaning for a life of faith amid today’s seemingly intractable divisions. This book is an important resource that will serve us well.

—Cheryl B. Anderson, professor emerita of Old Testament, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

This collection is a rare gift for all interpreters and proclaimers of biblical texts for church and culture. Walter Brueggemann continues to be the most significant biblical theologian speaking to church and culture in our day. The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy gives us all the revealing opportunity to see him at work; he clearly identifies his method and then illustrates it immediately in the first essay on the debate over the Bible and human sexuality. Brueggemann regularly shows tensions in biblical texts and how he navigates those tensions. In three parts he mingles pieces on the emancipation of God, the church, and the neighborhood. Don’t miss this jewel of delightful and remarkably crafted biblical interpretations.

—W. H. Bellinger Jr., professor emeritus of religion, Baylor University; author of Psalms as a Grammar for Faith and Introducing Old Testament Theology

Product Details

• Title: The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy
• Authors: Walter Brueggemann, Conrad L. Kanagy
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9781506498249, 1506498248
• Resource ID: LLS:MNCPTNGDCPRPHCY
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-18T21:26:30Z