Write a review of Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. 1500 words Included , a brief summary *DO NOT COPY* 1. Critiquing and Energising The role of a prophet is summed up in the description of Jeremiah’s mission (Jer 1:10): “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Reflecting this, Walter Brueggemann notes that the task of prophetic ministry is to create and nurture a consciousness alternative to the consciousness of the dominant culture, which in turn creates and nurtures an alternative community (the community of the People of God) This is done through:  Criticising – challenging the dominant culture and ways of thinking  Energizing – creating hope in new possibilities Prophetic Critique breaks through numbness so that there can be change.  Numbness = complacency or despair.  Grief = a waking up from the numbness Prophetic Energising gives hope for the future so that people can live differently in the present. It draws upon ...  The power of language to evoke new possibilities.  Trust in God  Memory of the past and hope for the future. Both critique and energising stress the freedom of God and call people to a bigger image of God and of what God can do.  Criticising: God cannot be domesticated (‘made tame’), not even by the most powerful in society. God cannot be made to support life as the royal consciousness wants it to be.  Energising: But God is also free to bring about surprising newness and to do amazing things. 2. The Alternative Community of Moses versus Royal Consciousness To understand the prophets, we need to remember Israel’s foundational story: The Exodus “The central conflict of the Exodus – between the domination system of pharaoh and the much more egalitarian social vision grounded in the character of God – is replicated in the conflict between royal ideology and prophetic theology within Israel itself.”1 Prophets preach the ‘alternative community’ of the Exodus over against the oppressive Empire. 1 Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time (New York NY: HarperOne 2001), 130. Ancient Domination Systems have the following characteristics (and there is still a lot of this in the world today!) ● Politically oppressive – Those with power organise society for their own advantage ● Economically exploitative – Wealth ‘flows upwards’ so that the marginalised are exploited and those at the centre accumulate wealth. ● Chronically violent – Violence (e.g. military) is used to keep the systems in place. ● Religiously legitimated – theology and liturgy is used to underline the ‘divine right’ of the rulers. God / the gods is presented as upholding the system. Against these domination systems – think ‘Pharaoh’ – the prophets assert the freedom of God. The characteristics of the Alternative Community: The God of the Bible is the God of the Exodus: ● I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery ... You shall have no other gods to rival me ...” (Exodus 20:2) ● Exodus: The God who hears the cry of the oppressed and who sets them free ● Sinai: the God who enters into covenant. “I will be your God and you will be my people.” The people who have been set free make up the alternative community of Moses: ● The Law given at Sinai tells the people how to live in freedom ● A community that lives out covenant faithfulness ○ Love God (= monotheism) and love neighbour (= social justice) ○ Shaped by the character of the God of Israel – holy, free, compassionate ○ Characterised by neighbourliness and social justice (e.g. Exodus 22:20-29) 3. Zion Theology Key elements: Temple and King God anoints David to be the righteous ruler of God’s people, to work justice and establish, maintain and restore shalom. Zion theology can be distorted as ‘divine legitimation’ independent of covenant faithfulness. But it is also available for energising – hope for the future