Prominent Progressive Bible Scholar Walter Brueggemann Has Passed Away
Influential Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann passed away peacefully in his sleep on June 5th at the age of 92.
The author of over 60 books, he is perhaps best known for Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (1997) and The Prophetic Imagination (1978), the latter of which his website describes as “a voice that called the Church to speak truth in the face of empire, to imagine alternative realities rooted in the justice and mercy of God.”
Ordained in the United Church of Christ, he was a well-known fixture at Eden Theological Seminary and then later at Columbia Theological Seminary.
He was also a wild progressive who denied the inerrancy of scripture and twisted it into his own strange endeavors. Phillip Brown of Holy Joys explains:
His theology is neo-orthodox (i.e., uses orthodox words with heterodox meanings). His hermeneutics are post-modern (i.e., truth is relative). At the root of his version of Christianity is the conviction that Scripture is “ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent” (his words). In his view, the Old Testament is incorrigibly self-contradictory, in part because it was written “by many committees” and “because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say [again, his words], in violence.”
Brueggermann was also known to be a vocal advocate for LGBTQ acceptance in the church, writing in Outreach (run by prominent Roman Catholic priest James Martin)
“The gospel is not to be confused with or identified with the Bible…. The full acceptance and embrace of LGBTQ persons follows as a clear mandate of the gospel in our time. Claims to the contrary are contradictions of the truth of the gospel….”
About Author
The lower the view of Scripture, the more likely a person will shift with the spirit of the age, conform to the world, accept sin and depravity, ardently oppose biblical Christianity, and be highly adversarial toward biblical Christians. Not only that, they will call that love and true Christianity. (Is 5:20)
Now he knows what he believed was error – he’s heard it from the Ultimate Authority.
He’s about to find out he doesn’t make the rules.