Brueggemann and the Crisis of Covenant: A Torat Edom Response
Prophetic Imagination without Covenantal Anchoring
In The Practice of Prophetic Imagination, Brueggemann calls for preaching that disrupts consensus narratives and revives the unsettling voice of the prophets. His appeal to a “prophetic imagination” resonates with Torat Edom’s critique of religious systems that domesticate God or align themselves with empire. Like the prophets of Israel, Torat Edom insists on confronting theological distortions, particularly those that erase the wounded covenantal remnant—such as Edom, Ishmael, or the marginalized.
But Brueggemann’s theological posture often portrays God as radically unpredictable—an uncontrollable force beyond theological coherence. While this challenges domesticated religion, it flirts with an abstraction that dissolves the covenantal God of history. From a Torat Edom view, this is a crucial error: God’s transcendence cannot eclipse His self-binding fidelity. The God of Israel is not merely “wholly other” but is HaEl Ne’eman—the Faithful God—who binds Himself in relationship. Prophetic preaching, therefore, is not just an act of imaginative disruption; it is an act of covenantal loyalty (emunah) that calls Israel and the nations to faithful response.
Pluralism and the Integrity of Testimony
In Old Testament Theology: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Brueggemann develops a courtroom metaphor for interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures. This approach rightly honors the polyphonic nature of Tanakh, with its internal disputes, lament, protest, and praise. This method mirrors Torat Edom’s recognition that divine truth emerges through tension, wound, and confrontation—not through flattening the canon into doctrinal simplicity.
Yet again, the Torat Edom critique lies in what is absent: a theology of covenantal continuity. Brueggemann’s courtroom metaphor risks turning Israel’s testimony into literary performance rather than relational obligation. For Torat Edom, the plural voices of Scripture are not just theological arguments—they are covenantal witnesses. Torah is not merely a site of discourse but a living inheritance, with obligations that persist across time and include all nations invited into covenantal order (ger toshav).
Moreover, Brueggemann’s suspicion toward Christian readings of the Old Testament—especially those that affirm messianic fulfillment—reveals a post-liberal allergy to divine direction in history. While this is meant to resist Christian supersessionism, it sometimes collapses into a relativism that undermines the very covenant he wants to defend. By contrast, Torat Edom insists that the canon must be read with a telos: not in flattening messianism into ideology, but in recognizing the unfolding of divine justice through chesed (lovingkindness) and emet (truth), embodied most clearly in the faithful remnant.
Toward a Prophetic-Covenantal Healing
Ultimately, Torat Edom affirms Brueggemann’s resistance to religious domestication, his empathy with prophetic lament, and his exposure of theological ideology. But it presses further: prophecy without covenant becomes theater; plurality without emunah becomes chaos.
The healing word is not found in abstraction but in the scarred path of covenant. The prophetic imagination must be tethered to the redemptive memory of Avraham, the suffering of Edom, the intercession of Ishmael, and the fidelity of Jude—Jesus’ own brother as recorded in the Evangelion as call to repentence. These are not mere symbols, but covenantal realities.
Walter Brueggemann was among the most prolific Old Testament scholars of our time, whose theological imagination left a mark well beyond academia. Yet from a Torat Edom perspective, his legacy is as instructive in its blind spots as it is in its boldness.
Brueggemann challenged us to read the text with discomfort. Torat Edom answers: the discomfort must drive us not only to resistance, but to obedience.
