Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
Overview
The Christian gospel, says Walter Brueggemann, is too easily preached and heard. Too often technical reason and excessive religious certitude reduce the gospel to coercive, debilitating pietisms that mask the text’s meaning and freeze the hearer’s heart.
With skill and imagination, Brueggemann demonstrates how the preacher can engage in daring speech—differently voiced and therefore differently heard. This speech, as suggested by the Bible itself, is “poetic” speech, enabling the preacher to forge communion in the midst of alienation, bring healing out of guilt, and empower the hearer for “missional imagination.”
As an alternative to theological/homiletical discourse that is moralistic, pietistic or scholastic, Brueggemann proposes preaching that is artistic, poetic, and dramatic. The basis for the 1989 Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School, Finally Comes the Poet is a unique and transforming guide for powerful preaching.
With the Logos Bible Software edition, you can journey through this volume with today’s most advanced tools for reading and studying God’s Word. All Scripture passages are linked to your library’s original language texts and English translations. Enhance your study with Logos’ advanced features—search by topic to find out what Brueggemann teaches on the Exodus, or find every mention of “Psalm 91” throughout his works.
Key Features
- Provides essential Old Testament scholarship from one of the most prominent living scholars
- Addresses the active truth of the gospel, and what effect that has on the life of the church member and preacher
- Includes material perfect for pastors, professors, counselors, and Old Testament scholars
Contents
- Numbness and Ache: The Strangeness of Healing
- Alienation and Rage: The Odd Invitation to Doxological Communion
- Restlessness and Greed: Obedience and Missional Imagination
- Resistance and Relinquishment: A Permit for Freedom
Praise for the Print Edition
Here we have what we have come to expect from Walter Brueggemann—a fired imagination, harnessed and disciplined. He always respects the integrity both of the biblical text and of the listeners, but he will not allow them to stay apart. He listens to the Scripture and the human condition, and then develops a conversation between the two. This conversation is not only theologically solid but also lively and vigorous. Brueggemann here offers what the gospel itself offers, and that is an alternative world in which to relate to others and in which to function.
—Fred B. Craddock, professor of preaching New Testament, Candler School of Theology
Product Details
- Title: Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
- Author: Walter Brueggemann
- Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
- Publication Date: 1989
- Pages: 184
About Walter Brueggemann
Walter Brueggemann through his teaching, lecturing, and writing, has effectively demonstrated the significance of the Old Testament for our fractured world today. Recognized as the preeminent interpreter of the ancient texts in relation to questions posed by a variety of academic disciplines, he has shown the way toward a compelling understanding of the major components of the faith and life of ancient Israel, especially its Psalms, the prophets, and the narratives. His award-winning Theology of the Old Testament quickly became a foundational work in the field.
Brueggemann, who holds a ThD from Union Seminary, New York, and a PhD from St. Louis University, is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. He was previously professor of Old Testament at Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis. His many Fortress Press books, including The Threat of Life: Sermons on Pain, Power, and Weakness, exhibit a fecund combination of imaginative power, sound scholarship, and a passion of justice and redemption.
Top Highlights
“The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat” (Page 1)
“In this book, then, I want to consider preaching as a poetic construal of an alternative world. The purpose of such preaching is to cherish the truth, to open the truth from its pervasive reductionism in our society, to break the fearful rationality that keeps the news from being new.” (Page 6)
“Preaching as an act of interpretation is in our time demanding, daring, and dangerous.” (Page ix)
“It is, rather, the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age.” (Page 3)
“prose-reductionism of the gospel has led our believing society to misappropriate the promise of the gospel.” (Page 141)
- Title: Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation
- Author: Walter Brueggemann
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Print Publication Date: 1989
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Era: era:Contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Preaching; Bible › Language, style
- Resource ID: LLS:FINCOMESPOET
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-12T03:14:24Z