The Covenanted Self: Exploration in Law and Covenant
Overview
Known as one of America’s best theologians and one of the world’s foremost scholars on the Old Testament, Walter Brueggemann has inspired young scholars and students and driven the discourse on theology with some of the biggest players in contemporary Bible scholarship.
These exciting studies on the first five books of the Bible cover a wide range of topics, challenging the reader to confront the issues of faithfulness, responsibility, and justice in an ever-changing world. Walter Brueggemann sets the issues of praise and lament, grace and duty, truth and power in new frames of reference that call for a response. He demonstrates that the Christian reader of the Bible can’t blithely pass over the Pentateuch as simply pre-Christian and without relevance. His creative use of metaphor and imagination invite the reader to encounter freshly in these biblical texts God’s call and the work of justice.
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
- Engages in the currents of contemporary life and thought
- Examines obedience as fulfilling the covenant between man and God
- Includes material perfect for pastors, professors, counselors, and Old Testament scholars
Contents
- “Othering” with Grace and Courage
- The Daily Voice of Faith: The Covenanted Self
- Duty as Delight and Desire: Preaching Obedience That Is Not Legalism
- Justice: The Earthly Form of God’s Holiness
- The Cunning Little Secret of Certitude: On the First Great Commandment
- Neighborliness and the Limits of Power in God’s Realm: On the Second Great Commandment
- Truth-Telling as Subversive Obedience
- “Placed” between Promise and Command
- The Truth of Abundance: Relearning Dayenu
Product Details
- Title: The Covenanted Self: Exploration in Law and Covenant
- Author: Walter Brueggemann
- Editor: Patrick D. Miller
- Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
- Publication Date: 1999
- Pages: 160
About the Author
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.
About the Editor
Patrick D. Miller is Charles T. Haley Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.
Top Highlights
“This bursting disclosure made clear that the human self is not an independent, autonomous agent but is always and necessarily preceded by a Thou, one radically other than us, who evokes, summons, authorizes, and ‘faiths’ us into existence as persons. This ‘other’ is endlessly inscrutable mystery and endlessly problematic to us, for we can neither escape from that other, nor are we able to seduce, capture, or possess that other who always stands free from and over against us.” (Page 1)
“The ongoing process of life is to come to terms with this other who will practice mutuality with us, but who at the same time stands in an incommensurate relation to us. It is the tension of mutuality and incommensurability that is the driving force of a biblical notion of life.” (Page 2)
“Thus I read the Psalter as a dialectic of self-assertion in complaint and self-abandonment in praise, just as the child must first claim self and only then notice mother. I have no doubt that theologically and emotionally, self-assertion precedes self-abandonment, for there is no self to abandon or to pledge loyalty unless that self has been claimed and valorized.” (Page 7)
“This process of scattering and gathering is threatening, hope-filled, and ongoing. We never finish with it. The process invites us to view the otherness of self as a friend to be welcomed, and not a threat to be resisted or denied. Thus the ‘othering’ process admits of no settled self, because the self is always reengaging self in an ongoing covenanting exercise.” (Page 15)
“Covenanting means self-abandonment, giving self up for the other, and requires the healthy capacity to move beyond self-concern to the unutterable graciousness and awesomeness of God. Israel’s Psalter ends in Psalm 150 with a lyrical outburst that is almost contentless in its exuberance.” (Page 7)
- Title: The Covenanted Self: Explorations in Law and Covenant
- Author: Walter Brueggemann
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Print Publication Date: 1999
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Era: era:Contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible. O.T. › Theology
- Resource ID: LLS:COVENANTDSELF
- Resource Type: text.monograph.biblical-theology
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-11T17:48:40Z