The Prophetic Imagination

40th Anniversary Edition

By: Walter Brueggemann

Narrated by: Jim Denison

A classic book in biblical theology - still relevant for today and tomorrow.

In this 40th anniversary edition of the classic book from one of the most influential biblical scholars of our time, Walter Brueggemann, offers a theological and ethical reading of the Hebrew Bible. He finds there a vision for the community of God whose words and practices of lament, protest and complain give rise to an alternative social order that opposes the "totalism" of the day.

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. Linking Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus, he argues that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people, but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing.

This edition builds off the revised and updated 2001 edition and includes a new afterword by Brueggemann and a new foreword by Davis Hankins.

©2018 Fortress Press (P)2021 eChristian

Good description of prophetic scripture

An essential treatise on the role of prophetic ministry in Scripture. Offers encouragement for any Christian today. The updated version in this anniversary edition offers some digs at ma ga Xianity, but also points out the failures of liberal
Christianity who can only see Jesus as an inspiring example.

A genre redefining classic.

I have known of Walter Brueggemann for a very long time, but I have never read anything significant by him. I am sure I read an article or a profile at some point. But I don’t remember it. I picked up Prophetic Imagination years ago when it was on sale. But I didn’t start reading it until I heard of his passing and listened to an old podcast on the Bible For Normal People podcast and then a discussion of him on Homebrew Christianity with three people who knew and worked with him.

The original book is nearly 50 years old at this point. The ideas have been widely distributed and I can see a number of books that were sharing them, some with attribution and some without. At some point, ideas move from being in a book, to being in the ether and just known. I think the main idea that prophetic is not really about future telling, but about creating a vision for the world that exposes us to the ways justice is possible and also revealing where we are blind to injustice. In the essay at the end where he responds to the book 40 years later, he clarifies that while generally he thinks it is okay to use prophetic and social justice in a somewhat synonymous way, the biblical era understood prophetic as a adaptation of a earlier time to show imaginatively how God is judging the current era.

He walks through that by talking about the Dravidic and Solomonic kingdoms, then the later prophets and then finally two chapters on how Jesus, while not only a prophet, did fulfill that role and we are called to as well. The book ends with a summary of the ideas and then some thoughts on how to enact those ideas in the local church and local ministry.

This is a classic book and deserves its place. But in some ways, you may have encountered these ideas enough in others that you don’t need to read the original. However, the original is worth reading. The radical nature of the work of the church in response to centering on the person of Jesus, who was a Jewish man of the 1st century is never going to get old. There are those who challenge some of his ideas at being a bit of an over correction, but I even those who I heard push back, honored his work as changing the field.

He wrote or contributed to over 120 books. He worked up until near the end of his life dying at 96. He was not perfect, as none of are. But he did have influence.

Criticizing is good

Under the premise that prophetic ministry and prophetic imagination criticizes the evil empire, it ends with energy and passion for a new way of living under the king of freedom and justice.

This is an excellent work that further motivates and encourages me to stay at it by speaking boldly against the evil of our day while offering the Hope that Jesus brought with him at his first coming over 2000 years ago.

I will be purchasing the print version of this book so that I can focus on the insights, the contrasts, the plethora of Bible passages so that I can internalize this prophetic imagination with excellence.

This work vindicates how I already operate and think, and it is helpful in explaining to my wife why I am the way I am for the glory of our unseen king of freedom and Justice.

watchman

lLoved it. So needed today. Church needs to take heed . So encouraging to me.

All-Time favorite book.

Wow. Just read it and be filled with the rising of unconsciously-repressed prophetic imaginations for the areas of your daily life.

What a book. What an awakening of my heart.