Fortress Press Walter Brueggemann Collection (27 vols.)

Walter Brueggemann declares that the necessary character of truly prophetic preaching today is “a contestation between narratives.” If the dominant narrative of our time promotes national self-sufficiency (through militarism) and personal self-sufficiency (through consumerism), it must be opposed by a different narrative. Prophetic preaching takes its stand in a world claimed by a God who is gracious, uncompromising—and real. Brueggemann writes here for leaders in faith communities who bear the responsibility of preaching. He describes the discipline of a prophetic imagination, in an unflinchingly realistic, unwaveringly candid manner.

This volume contains Walter Brueggemann’s most recent public sermons and prayers. With captivating and convicting messages for this rebellious age, Brueggemann nourishes the Christian spirit and challenges the fickle heart. With the deep theological scholarship one would expect of Brueggemann, and the surprising passion and dynamism of a youthful spirit, Inscribing the Text is full of the insight and passion readers are desperate to hear.

Preaching out of the book of Jeremiah presents natural problems and difficulties to pastors and ministers alike. Despite being one of the largest books in the Bible, Jeremiah is often overlooked in sermons and teaching. Taking on the task of making this challenging book more accessible to pastors and preachers, Walter Brueggemann discusses each aspect of Jeremiah as source material for prophetic teaching.

In the last several years, Walter Brueggemann’s writings have directly addressed the situation of Christian communities in today’s globalized context, with its consumerist lifestyles, vast inequalities, and near-imperial exercises of power. His insights, forged in rugged encounters with the texts of the Old Testament, are sharp, painful, and indispensable. In the people of Israel Brueggemann finds a model of an alternative community—anchored in YHWH, ever exploring new possibilities, and prophetically bent against empire.

Walter Brueggemann, in this collection of essays, engages with the Old Testament in a profound and significant way: discussing its authority, its theology, and its challenges and charm. These essays are a cornerstone in Old Testament theological exegesis, bringing key theological concepts to terms with the Old Testament and the God behind it all.

Walter Brueggemann has been one of the leading voices in Hebrew Bible interpretation for decades. His landmark works in Old Testament theology have inspired and informed a generation of students, scholars, and preachers. These chapters gather his recent never-before-published addresses and essays, drawing from all three parts of the Hebrew Bible—Torah, prophets, and writings—and addressing the role of the Hebrew canon in the life of the church.

Brueggemann turns his critical erudition to those practices—prophecy, lament, prayer, faithful imagination, and a holy economics—that alone may usher in a humane and peaceful future for our cities and our world, in defiance of the most ruthless aspects of capitalism, the arrogance of militarism, and the disciplines of the national security state.

In the pages of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Israel gave witness to its encounter with a profound and uncontrollable reality experienced through relationship. This book, drawn from the heart of foremost Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann’s Theology of the Old Testament, distills a career’s worth of insights into the core message of the Hebrew Bible. God is described there, Brueggemann observes, as engaging four “partners”—Israel, the nations, creation, and the human being—in the divine purpose. This volume presents Brueggemann at his most engaging, offering profound insights tailored especially for the beginning student of the Hebrew Bible.

Against the easy assurance of a too-enculturated religion, Walter Brueggemann refocuses the preaching task around the decentering, destabilizing, always risky word that confronts us in Scripture—if we have the courage to hear. These powerful essays, previously available only in journals, are here combined with a newly composed preface and introduction. Includes a foreword from the Reverend William H. Willimon.

In this foundational textbook, Walter Brueggemann moves the discussion of Old Testament theology beyond the dominant models of Walter Eichrodt in the 1930s and Gerhard von Rad in the 1950s. Brueggemann focuses on the metaphor and imagery of the courtroom trial in order to regard the theological substance of the Old Testament as a series of claims asserted for Yahweh, the God of Israel. This provides a context that attends to pluralism in every dimension of the interpretive process and suggests links to the plurality of voices in our time.

Walter Brueggemann’s magisterial and influential Theology of the Old Testament now contains a study guide prepared by Rebecca J. Kruger Guadino with chapter summaries, questions, and links to helpful material, along with the text of Brueggemann’s interpretive program, Texts under Negotiation. Brueggemann, one of today’s most respected Old Testament scholar’s, takes the study of the ancient Hebrew Bible to new and exciting levels with this incredible work.

This thoughtful collection of prayers emerged from Walter Brueggemann’s 35 years of teaching in seminaries. Full of reflection, faith, and dialogue, they reveal another side of this gifted author from what his many readers are accustomed to. These deeply felt and exquisitely articulated prayers reflect a wide range of life experiences. As readers, we are taken from the depths of pain and loss to the heights of joy and praise. The author takes on life in its fullest as he utters his praise and lament, petition and thanksgiving. Brueggemann’s prayers lead us to deeper commitment, deeper faith, and deeper reflection.

The volume also includes an index of biblical allusions that will be useful for preachers as well as the general reader looking for the biblical roots of these fears, hopes, struggles, and aspirations.

The land was one of the most vibrant symbols for the people of ancient Israel. In the land—gift, promise, and challenge—was found the physical source of Israel’s fertility and life, and a place for the gathering of the hopes of the covenant people. In this careful treatment, Walter Brueggemann follows the development of his theme through the major blocks of Israel’s traditions. The book provides a point of entrance both to the theology of the Old Testament and to aspects of the New Testament—even as it illuminates crucial issues of the contemporary scene. In this fully revised version, Brueggemann provides new insights, as well as updating the discussion, notes, and bibliography.

In this completely revised edition of a true classic, Walter Brueggemann thoughtfully examines four different sets of David narratives. Each narrative reflects a particular social context, a particular social hope, and a particular community. Thus these stories offer a distinctly different “mode of truth” concerning this pivotal biblical figure. The tribe, the family, the state, and the assembly each has a different agenda and thus draws a very different portrait of the one who helps define them and is defined by them.

The seasons of our lives change. Using a model of “orientation—disorientation—new orientation,” Walter Brueggemann explores how the genres of the Psalms can be viewed in terms of their function. This results in fresh readings of these ancient songs that illumine their spiritual depth. The voices of the Psalms come through in all their bold realism.

In this challenging and enlightening treatment, Walter Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Here he traces the broad sweep from Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus. He highlights that the prophetic vision and not only embraces the pain of the people but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing. In this new edition, Brueggemann has completely revised the text, updated the notes, and added a new preface.

These studies on a variety of biblical texts focus deftly on reading, listening to, and proclaiming the gospel in a broken, fragmented, and “post-Christendom” world. Walter Brueggemann explores how these traditions have the potential to continually resonate in our contemporary communities and individual lives.

These studies on the prophetic texts from the Hebrew 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 explores how these prophetic traditions have the potential to continually resonate in our contemporary communities and individual lives. Rather than “dead words” to kingdoms no longer in existence, the Israelite and Judean prophets have an enduring impact on how God challenges our values, our perspectives—and our very lives. Brueggemann has become well known for providing fresh perspective on ancient texts, always in conversation with great thinkers and people of faith.

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.

These 22 sermons from a master interpreter demonstrate how ancient texts can speak to the whole gamut of human experience even now. Included in Walter Brueggemann’s preview are keen observations about the timeless issues of human life, both personal and social: the pain we face, often inflicted on each other; the use and abuse of power; the weakness and fragility of life; the redemptive power of faith; and much more.

Walter Brueggemann’s unique gift of joining historical-exegetical insights to penetrating observations about the traumas and joys of contemporary life—both personal and social—is here forcefully displayed. Everyone who is familiar with his work knows the power of his speech about “doxological, polemical, political, subversive, evangelical faith” and about the ways such faith is enacted in the praise of ancient Israel and in the church.

Readers of this book will find fresh insight into the categories of the Psalms, the social context in which psalms were prayed and sung, the theology of the Psalms, the dialogical character of the Psalms, and so much more.

In this collection of essays, Walter Brueggemann raises a variety of intriguing, contemporary questions on the relation of society and text in the Old Testament, such as:

• The hidden agendas that underlie the making and reading of Scripture
• The conflict and tension in ancient Israel
• The cry to God of the oppressed and God’s response
• The political dimension of mercy
• Theodicy, violence, horses, and chariots

Brueggemann opens to a myriad of readers a compelling picture of subversive paradigm and social possibility in the Hebrew Bible.

Walter Brueggemann issues a passionate call for a bold restructuring of the imagination of faith in our “postmodern” context.

Old assumptions—rational, objectivist, absolutist—have for the most part given way to new outlooks, which can be grouped under the term “postmodern.” What does this new situation imply for the church and for Christian proclamation? Can one find in this new situation opportunity as well as dilemma? How can central biblical themes—self, world, and community—be interpreted and imagined creatively and concretely in this new context?

Our task, Brueggemann contends, is not to construct a full alternative world, but rather to fund—to provide the pieces, materials, and resources out of which a new world can be imagined. The place of liturgy and proclamation is “a place where people come to receive new materials, or old materials freshly voiced, which will fund, feed, nurture, nourish, legitimate, and authorize a conterimagination of the world.”

Six exegetical examples of such a new approach to the biblical text are included.

In these essays, Walter Brueggemann addresses the necessity for thinking about the shape and structure of Old Testament theology, and the impact such thinking can have on the larger issues of contemporary life.

Brueggemann draws on the work of persons from all disciplines and incorporates them in a seminal way in his theology. The work of persons in theology, psychology, the social sciences, politics, and the like often provides heuristic possibilities and even basic models for talking about the Old Testament. The Old Testament is seen to be something that has intelligible and significant worldly connections.

Drawing on specific texts that speak to cosmic hurt and personal possibility, Walter Brueggemann demonstrates the essential connection between faithful reading of the biblical text and faithful living in a world of banal, yet threatening values. He assesses the nature of obedience today in such areas as ministry, justice, the land, education, hospitality, and the contemporary imagination.

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.

“Praise is the duty and delight, the ultimate vocation of the human community; indeed of all creation. Yet, all life is aimed toward God and finally exists for the sake of God. Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are. Praise is not only a human requirement and a human need, it is also a human delight. We have a resilient hunger to move beyond self, to return our energy and worth to the One from whom it has been granted. In our return to that One, we find our deepest joy. That is what it means to glorify God and enjoy God forever.”—from the introduction

Israel’s Praise contends that, rightly practiced, the Psalms of Israel make available an evangelical world of Yahweh’s sovereignty—a world marked by justice, righteousness, mercy, peace, and compassion.

Professor Walter Brueggemann here examines the literature and experience of an era in which Israel’s prophets faced the pastoral responsibility of helping people to enter into exile, to be in exile, and to depart out of exile. He addresses three major prophetic traditions: Jeremiah (the pathos of God), Ezekiel (the holiness of God), and 2 Isaiah (the newness of God). This literature is seen to contain the theological resources for handling both brokenness and surprise—with freedom, courage, and imagination. Throughout, Brueggemann demonstrates how these resources offer vitality for ministry today.

Walter Brueggemann describes the human cries of anguish and the exultations of praise expressed in the Psalms. Particularly noteworthy is his approach to the Psalms from a counseling and pastoral perspective, providing commentary that walks with the reader in any season of life.