The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education

By Walter Brueggemann and Amy Erickson

Every faith community knows the challenges of inviting new members and the next generation into its shared life without falling into an arid traditionalism or a shallow relativism. Renowned scholar Walter Brueggemann finds a framework for education in the structure of the Hebrew Bible canon, with its assertion of center and limit (in the Torah), of challenge (in the Prophets), and of inquiry (in the Writings). Incorporating the best insights from his own career and from the fields of canonical criticism, Old Testament theology, and pedagogical theory, Brueggemann offers a vision of how the community can draw on the shape of Scripture to educate its members. First published in 1982, The Creative Word is now updated and introduced with a foreword by Amy Erickson of Iliff School of Theology.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781506400242

Walter Brueggemann

Walter Brueggemann is William Marcellus McPheeters Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, he is the author of dozens of books, including Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Interrupting Silence: God's Command to Speak Out, and Truth and Hope: Essays for a Perilous Age.

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Preface to the Second Edition

A great deal has happened since the publication of this book in 1982. In this revision its basic argument remains the same. I judge that its essential contention not only remains viable, but is even more pertinent and urgent than when first published.

In Old Testament study, I had argued for pedagogical attention to the shape of the canon in the Hebrew Bible. Since that time, canonical study of scripture has become even more important. The work of Brevard Childs, Ronald Clements, Rolf Rendtorff, and James Sanders has helped us move beyond historical-critical questions to the theological intentionality of the text. Historical-critical work continues to be important, but it is not an end in itself. It is plausible to suggest that the church has invested too much of its energy in historical questions. We are now able, in critical scripture, to speak more directly and confessionally about the theological nature and intentionality of the text that was shaped for and by the confessing communities of Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, historical questions are still being asked, but one has the impression that they no longer serve us very well, and mostly continue to be asked either by those who want to accommodate the Bible to Enlightenment rationality or by those who want vigorously to resist Enlightenment rationality by pulling the wagons into a circle. The work of the confessing community that shaped the canonical scripture did so for quite other reasons, and it is those reasons that are front and center in canonical study and in current pedagogy in confessional communities. While the threefold structure of the canon of the Hebrew Bible is settled, James Sanders has helped us by insisting on the flexible openness of the canon as a normative script that continues to evoke fresh and imaginative interpretation. That fresh evocation is behind a pedagogical consideration of the scripture as canon. Such a notion of canon yields a norming process that is in endless engagement with new contexts that evoke and require fresh formulation, exactly the work of education.

On the side of Christian education, I have no doubt that the argument made here is of immense importance. I have suggested a very rough correlation between the sequence of three canons in the Hebrew Bible and the maturation process of the narrative wonder of childhood, the oracular contrariness of adolescence, and the capacity for wisdom in the aging process. Such a correlation has no more than heuristic value. We have, however, learned enough about the biological substructure of learning capacities to know that maturation in faith is in part limited and made possible by maturation in biological processes and capacities. We learn when we are able to learn and not before. Thus some elements of faith education are particularly appropriate to moments in one’s maturation process. I believe this is a useful key to canonical education, so that the norming script has a word to speak wherever we are in our own exercise of maturity.

We have learned from the taxonomy of George Lindbeck about the cruciality of forming and maintaining a cultural-linguistic community that has staying power not only in what it claims to say but in how it makes that claim. The canonical norming process provides the materials out of which such a cultural-linguistic community may be formed, and surely the process of Church education is exactly to form such a community with a distinct identity and missional imperative. When we allow the notion of canonical to be linked to the notion of covenantal (most broadly construed), we begin to see that the center of this norming tradition is the capacity to take seriously the reality of the other in the life of the community. We have learned from the trajectory of Martin Buber and his I-Thou (by way of Emmanuel Levinas) that the other is definitional to the practice of faith. Thus love of God and love of neighbor are not options but constitute the defining materials of this tradition. It is inescapable, in making such claims, that the process of serious sustained socialization, nurture, and education should be deeply and practically dialogical, making reference to the other (the wholly other) central to the work. Church educators have always known this. But the canonical process makes clear not only that the dialogue is important but makes equally clear what the dialogue is about.

This way of articulating the scriptural, the biological, and the social as a dialogical enterprise is crucial to the task of canonical-covenantal education. It is now clear that the dominant ideology of our culture (that I have elsewhere termed military consumerism) is a map of social death in its adamant refusal of the dialogical. The inventory of social pathologies is obvious to us—concerning the economy, the environment, and the social infrastructure—making clear that our society is mindlessly committed to self-destruction. It is clear that this ideology, mostly uncriticized among us, cannot and does not make us either safe or happy. This suggests that canonical-covenantal education in a dialogical mode has as its task nothing less than the evocation of an alternative world of neighborliness, and the nurturing of persons to live in, participate, and contribute to that alternative world. Such a practice of education is inherently subversive, reflective of the inherent subversiveness of canonical testimony.

In our context of military consumerism, to which so much of Christianity has signed on with ready accommodation, it is no wonder that the percentage of nones, those who subscribe to no faith, has grown exponentially. It is likewise no wonder that many have taken refuge in the mantra of spiritual but not religious that means to avoid all claims of tradition and community. It is no wonder indeed. In the midst of faith that is hugely misunderstood and misrepresented and therefore rejected, making fresh sense out of the canonical tradition is an urgent task. It is our bet that such fresh sense from old texts will have great appeal to many who have thought they had no such option. The force of empire that depends on an expansive military, that summons always to buy and consume, that proposes endless technical fixes to human issues, leaves folk exhausted with heavy burdens of production and consumption (Matt. 11:28-30). In a yearning for a light burden and an easy yoke, the offer of this canonical-covenantal tradition is worth serious and sustained consideration.

Because I judge this argument to be an important one in our vexed context, I am delighted that the book is now offered in a revised edition. I am grateful to Amy Erickson of the faculty of Iliff School of Theology (and my former student) for completing the revision; she is fully up on new emergents in both scripture study and educational theory and practice. I am equally grateful to Neil Elliott at Fortress Press for seeing this revision to its publication. I continue to remember the happy time at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary when I first presented the Caldwell Lectures that have eventuated in this book. While not a new argument, the book anticipates a major opportunity for fresh energy and courage for the educational task of the church. I am mindful that Jesus, according to Matthew, designated his disciples as scribes who have been trained for the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 13:51-52). That is a generative image for our work in church education. Such scribes that served the new coming regime, he said, must bring forth from the treasure what is old and what is new. That is exactly how good biblical interpretation works, old traditions with new interpretations. Such education is an act of imagination that is formed and shaped for response to yearnings that are all around us. I am glad if this book serves that large vocation.

I write this on the day of the release of the US Senate study on the Torture Program of the CIA. Whatever may be made of the report and all sorts of political posturing that it will evoke, the report at least requires us to ask, What has happened to us? The answer is that we have forgotten our identity and our grounding, and are consequently in a freefall of fear and anxiety. It is a proper moment to mobilize the resources of the canonical tradition for such a time when we might remember, and therefore act and hope beyond our fears.

Walter Brueggemann

Columbia Theological Seminary

Preface to the 1982 edition

This book seeks to make a statement at the interface between two disciplines: my own discipline of Old Testament study and the discipline of education. Such a book is possible only when two risks are taken, and I have taken both. First, it is necessary to be somewhat synthetic and sweeping about one’s own discipline. I have tried to do that in judicious ways and intend not to be reductionist. Second, one must presuppose some things about the second discipline at the interface. I have made these presuppositions, which I hope are responsible, even if not fully informed.

The chapters of this book were first prepared for the Caldwell Lectures given at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in March 1981. Regarding that lectureship, I especially thank President Ellis Nelson and my host Craig Dykstra for their kind hospitality. Along the way, portions of this material were also given as the J. Clyde Wheeler lectures on ministry at Phillips University School of Religion and at Ewert College in Toronto. In those places as well, I was kindly hosted and graciously received, even if not uniformly agreed with.

This book has been long in the brooding stages. Initially the topic formed for me in response to an invitation from Larry Kalp of the United Church of Christ. Near the end of the process my colleague, Ruby Schroeder, read the manuscript and provided helpful suggestions. Moreover, I have especially to thank several of my colleagues, my students for bearing with some exploration, and a host of friends who operate in the educational network of the church. Matty Ebersbach helped prepare the manuscript. And supremely, the two Marys in my life have been involved all along the way. My secretary, Mary Waters, presides over my special form of written communication. Mary, my wife, attends critically and supportively to hints that even fall short of that mode of writing. To finish the manuscript is to be grateful to them.

1

Canon and the Educational Repertoire

Every community that wants to last beyond a single generation must concern itself with education. Education has to do with the maintenance of a community through the generations. This maintenance must assure enough continuity of vision, value, and perception so that the community sustains its self-identity. At the same time, such maintenance must assure enough freedom and novelty so that the community can survive in and be pertinent to new circumstances.[1] Thus, education must attend to processes of both continuity and discontinuity in order to avoid fossilizing into irrelevance on the one hand, and relativizing into disappearance on the other hand.

The Old Testament mirrors a community that intended to last over the generations. Therefore the Old Testament had to be concerned with education. To be sure, this concern is not very often explicit in the text; the Old Testament itself seldom addresses education frontally. But it is clearly a persistent and pervasive concern nonetheless, as the community struggled with continuity and discontinuity.[2]

There are two reasons why I have decided to take up these issues. First, I suspect we are at a time when there may be an important interface between Scripture study and education in the church. Church education has been intensely interested in the social sciences and has indeed learned much from them. Nothing said here is meant to detract from the positive attention to learning theory, learning process, developmental psychology, cultural anthropology, and critical sociology which have greatly influenced the awareness of the church. But in the midst of attention to the social sciences, I suggest that the biblical and theological disciplines have not been a full partner. The interface, therefore, has not been a very balanced one. Our concern here is to ask if Old Testament study can be a more effective partner in the dialogue about education, both constructively and critically. One can detect a move away from an uncritical embrace of the social sciences not only in education, but also in pastoral care and what we have come to call organizational development.

Second, approaches to church education are relatively clearly defined. Most of these approaches can be linked to one or more prominent leaders in the field. The enterprise is thus divided into camps revolving around certain agendas and methods, or we may say, certain ways of putting the question. It is convenient for study to have things stabilized in this way, even to the making of an inventory. And indeed, Jack L. Seymour helpfully offers such a summary list.[3] It includes:

1. Community and Prayer: Community-of-Faith Approach to Christian Education (in the tradition of John H. Westerhoff)

Scholars advocating for this approach stress the importance of Christian practices of faith and include C. Ellis Nelson, Maria Harris, Charles Foster, Diana Butler Bass, Dorothy Bass, and Craig Dykstra.

2. Study: Instructional Approach to Christian Education (in the traditions of James Michael Lee, James Groome, and James Fowler)

Many of the scholars working with this approach focus on teaching people to become competent interpreters of the tradition and connect it with daily life. Representative is the work of Elizabeth Caldwell, Sara Little, Dori Baker, and Anne Streaty Wimberly.

3. Service: Missional Approach to Christian Education

This approach focuses on living faith in the world and bringing about transformation and liberation. Scholars working in this stream include Katherine Turpin, Evelyn Parker, Daniel Schipani, Grant Shockley, and David White.

This may be a fair summary of where we are, though there are less prominent methods and approaches not included here. But that still leaves the unanswered question of where we go next. I am proposing that an interface with Scripture study might contribute to the next steps we need to take as colleagues in a common ministry. That is the external reason for addressing the issue. And by external I mean simply a motivation that lies outside my own discipline of Old Testament study.

The internal motivation for addressing this topic is that shifts in Old Testament study itself suggest possibilities for a fresh interface with education. Without completely abandoning the enterprise, Old Testament study has sought to move beyond historical-critical analysis into other perspectives and methods. It is clear that these moves are required and permitted by new interfaces with various social sciences. The enterprise which perhaps holds most promise for our subject is what is loosely called canon criticism. As we shall see, that general term is used to refer to a variety of things. Canon criticism rests in the awareness that how the biblical material reaches its present form (canonical process) and the present form that it has reached (canonical shape) are important theological matters that tell us about the intent of the biblical community. In other words, the Bible-shaping process cannot be viewed as a neutral or incidental process which can be studied with critical indifference. The shaping process is itself a confessional act. By studying that process and its end result, we can learn much about the community’s self-understanding and its intent for the coming generations. Thus the broad link I suggest is that canon is a clue to education, both as substance and as a process. One reason Scripture study of a historical-critical variety has been unable to address education as a biblical theme is because canon has been bracketed out as a secondary, irrelevant, or mechanical process that had nothing to do with educational claims or intentions. Still, if canon is neither an unexamined given nor an unintended accident, but an intentional transmitting process, then clearly it concerns education. The discussion I propose is simply this: attention to the process and shape of canon may tell us something about education in ancient Israel. In addition, it may provide clues for our own educational task, which I suggest is aiding communities and their members in the ongoing task of canon construction and canon criticism.

Our beginning, therefore, is with canon criticism, even though there is no agreement about the meaning of the phrase.

1. Canon criticism clearly has roots in tradition criticism, especially as articulated by Gerhard von Rad.[4] As is well known, von Rad identified certain texts, specifically Deut. 6:20-24; 26:5-9; and Josh. 24:1-13, as the summary of Israel’s faith.[5] These summaries he called creeds or credos, but he might well have called them the preliminary canon.[6] That is, these summaries became the normative expression of the community faith. To be sure, von Rad located these normative expressions in the liturgy. But it is clear, especially in Deut. 6:20-24[7] and in the credos generally, that, liturgic or otherwise, these served an educational function. Von Rad has helped us see that the community, in its liturgy and elsewhere, did attend to the educational, nurturing, socializing agenda. And von Rad’s understanding of these credos shows that they were both continuous in repeating the same data and discontinuous in receiving new data and extending the statement toward new contemporaneity.[8] So already the argument is that if the community of faith is serious about education, it must attend to the canonical, credal process.[9]

2. Brevard Childs has most fully addressed the concerns of canon.[10] As I understand him, his agenda is to find a way into the Bible that moves beyond the historical-critical tendency to relativize. That is, a method must be found to respect the judgment of the community that these texts are normative and enduring, true and reliable, and not to be explained away by criticism. Childs’s way of argumentation is to address the canonical shape of each book of the Old Testament, to argue that the way the book now stands, regardless of the process, is in itself a theological statement of a normative kind.

Childs’s program and achievement are staggering. But it is not clear how it will help us in our enterprise for two reasons.[11] First, Childs is not interested in the process of canon, but only in its final shape. While such a focus is surely legitimate, it does not advance our investigation very far because it brackets out the dynamic to which we must attend. And indeed, Childs must bracket it out to make his point about the claim of the text beyond criticism. Second, Childs approaches biblical books one at a time. That is problematic because one never gets a sense of the whole of the Bible or of the whole of the Old Testament. As I hope to show, that may be our most helpful clue.

3. A much more usable approach is that of James Sanders who, in contrast to Childs, attends to the canonical process, that is, to the dynamic by which these materials function to become and to continue as normative. In his book on the subject,[12] Sanders pays attention to the tripartite order of the Old Testament and sees that there are different degrees and kinds of authority, that each has a distinct role to play, and that this threefold character admits an important dynamic in the development of a sure authority.

Sanders has shown that canon, in order to maintain its authority, must be both stable and flexible; it must partake of both continuity and discontinuity.[13] In ancient Israel the tripartite canon (law, prophets, writings) permitted and articulated this requirement. It is important that Israel formed and valued all three parts of the canon, kept them in relation to each other, was relatively clear about the function and place of each, and never tried to make one of them substitute for another. Sanders’s principle of stability and flexibility, while not simply to be overlaid upon the three parts of the canon, does tell us what to look for. It permits us to notice that over a period of time the emergence of subsequent parts of the canon (prophets and then writings) continues the principle of flexibility. The core of the canon, Torah, becomes increasingly removed not only in time, but also in its mode of shaping the issues.

4. Canon criticism as a way of discerning a process is closely related to redaction criticism. Here we should recognize especially the work of Ronald Clements,[14] Joseph Blenkinsopp,[15] Gerald Sheppard,[16] and Rolf Rendtorff. Redaction criticism is, among other things, a study of the way the Bible uses and reinterprets the Bible, claiming and restating it in a new form for a new day. The relationship between old text and new expression is dialectical and delicate. It clearly is a traditioning process that both honors and takes the old text seriously (thus stability); at the same time, however, it gives freedom for a