Walter Brueggemann, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read the Bible.
Oxley, Simon
Walter Brueggemann, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read
the Bible, London, SCM Press, 2009, pp.155, GB16.99 [pounds sterling].
Engaging with the Bible together is, for me, an essential part of
the ecumenical process. That is not so much telling each other what we
already understand but a practice of mutual discernment. I see three
dangers in our use of the Bible in our ecumenical meetings,
consultations and assemblies. Bible study becomes an optional extra in
the programme--notice how the room fills up when the 'real'
business starts! It becomes a cloak of Christian respectability around a
basically secular discussion. The text is so dissected and analyzed that
it sits on the table as a pile of words and phrases stripped of their
creative and transforming collective dynamic. The title alone of Walter
Brueggemann's book, Redescribing Reality: What We Do When We Read
the Bible, indicates its importance for the ecumenical movement.
Brueggemann recognizes the dangers of both simplistic rationalism
and creedalism and explores a "responsible way of textual
interpretation that takes seriously both critical learning and
confessional passion but that is not so preoccupied as to be drawn away
from the text itself by methodological issues" (p.xi). There is
that in the text which is not susceptible to a forensic approach and
needs to be engaged intuitively. It takes us "beyond the reach of
criticism or the certitude of canon" (p.xxii). The reader has to be
open, as far as possible given social and religious conditioning, to
hear the alternative voice of the biblical text.
Brueggemann suggests that scripture offers us three significant
areas of insight. It clears the smokescreens we put up by calling things
by their right names and not supporting our self-serving distortions.
Scripture is not seduced by power and greed and therefore sees the world
within a different frame of reference. Scripture sees the world in
relationship to God rather than humanity's arrogance or despair.
Engaging with the biblical text is, therefore, a subversive process
because it challenges dominant readings of reality-redescribing the
world. This, it seems to me, is exactly what the ecumenical movement
should be about for both the church and the world. Brueggemann suggests
that engagement with the Bible may surprise, subvert and enliven the
church. I wonder whether churches, even those fully signed up to the
WCC, really want to be surprised, subverted or even enlivened. Perhaps
our reluctance to open ourselves seriously to the biblical text together
is out of fear of that happening.
There are, argues Brueggemann, two tendencies in tension within the
church. One is the desire for equilibrium, with an emphasis on order,
authority and discipline. The other is a desire for transformation which
emphasizes a new world order, liberation and distributive justice. There
is a different balance of attraction to these within each tradition. He
singles out sexuality and money, which the Bible indicates as ways
through which we signal and act out power and fidelity, as the two
issues currently occupying the churches in terms of equilibrium and
transformation. These should be addressed in a complementary fashion by
the churches, rather than as isolated issues. If Bible study cannot be
ad hoc for particular issues, neither can it be an undisciplined
ferment. It has to be sustained throughout the governance, worship and
mission of the church.
For Brueggemann, the two pervasive temptations in Bible study are
privatization and politicization. In the one, the text is seen only as a
guide to personal life, neglecting the communal dimension. In the other,
a preoccupation with the text as a mandate for social action leads to an
over-simple equating with contemporary issues and a neglect of the
transcendent mystery of God. Both the complexity of the text and of the
social reality from which we engage with it need to be fully recognized.
The church is an interpreting community, not simply receiving and
then applying. Churches cannot be isolated and individualistic
communities of interpretation. They need counter-interpretations from
inside and from the wider church. Brueggemann offers a real challenge to
us when he states (p.15): "When the church is genuinely ecumenical,
it is required to listen to widely different voices of interpretation,
thereby necessitating the modification of our best, preferred
interpreted judgments. The critical point is to remember that our
preferred interpretation, even if passionately held, is provisional and
penultimate." We need to be or become communities of imagination so
that we can image a world other than the one which appears to be the
reality. The artistry of the text requires a creative approach to enable
us to see, rather than be instructed, and respond.
To Brueggemann's charge that "we are all selective
fundamentalists who pick and choose a package of certitudes that will
sustain a particular stance of faith in action in the world"
(p.131) most of us would have to plead guilty. Are we able to
demonstrate our genuine ecumenicity, as Brueggemann defines it, by being
willing to see, through engagement with the Bible, our cherished
interpretations modified and as being provisional at best? If we are
not, I fear that the ecumenical movement becomes a respectable and
non-threatening way of maintaining the status quo when we should be
about, in the words of the book title, Redescribing Reality.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1758-6623.2009.00039.x
Simon Oxley
Simon Oxley is a former member of staff of the WCC and currently
pursuing research into the WCC's understanding of the development
of ecumenical consciousness.
