Gospeling Beyond Our Preferred Agendas

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The over­whelm­ing the­o­log­i­cal claim of the Bible in all its parts is that YHWH—

cre­ator of heaven and earth,
sav­ior and sov­er­eign of Israel,
fleshed in Jesus of Nazareth

—is true God, who loves and gov­erns all the world and to whom response is owed in praise, trust, and obe­di­ence. That mouth­ful of the­o­log­i­cal affir­ma­tions admits of no excep­tions; accep­tance of and response to it becomes the end­less task and end­less joy of a life of faith.

The Ten­sion Is Not New
Since the out­set, of course, women and men of faith have been busy sort­ing out which parts of that claim are most cru­cial and which parts are most com­modi­ous to our incli­na­tions, a sort­ing out that is, at its best, an act of inter­pre­ta­tion and, at its worst, idol­a­trous self-deception (see such sort­ing out in Mark 7:1–23; 12:28–34). Some of that sort­ing out comes under the cur­rent rubric of “evan­ge­lism and social action.”

With only a slight trans­po­si­tion of those two cat­e­gories, one may see this ten­sion, so alive now in the church, already vig­or­ously voiced in Old Tes­ta­ment tra­di­tions that are likely brought to “final form” in the midst of Israel’s sixth cen­tury B.C.E. exile. The book of Leviti­cus and its agenda of “holi­ness” could not quite be termed “evan­ge­lism,” but the agenda of that tra­di­tion is surely aimed at recruit­ing more per­sons to the prac­tice of a dis­ci­plined inter­nal life in God’s pres­ence and to the total dis­re­gard of life beyond that close community.

The Torah pro­vi­sions of Deuteron­omy could not quite be termed “social action,” but the agenda of that tra­di­tion con­cerned civic prac­tices of eco­nomic neigh­bor­li­ness. Thus Leviti­cus (the Priestly tra­di­tion) and Deuteron­omy (the Deutero­nomic tra­di­tion) exhibit early on a tension—deeply embed­ded in the struc­ture of the bib­li­cal canon—concerning what is most impor­tant in the life and prac­tice of faith.

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The great temp­ta­tion to the church—a temp­ta­tion largely embraced—was to cede pub­lic life to an amoral con­cern for power and wealth and, con­versely, to con­fine gospel con­cern to private-familial spheres where “reli­gious” claims could be kept more or less cred­i­ble.
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The con­tem­po­rary split of evan­ge­lism and social action is made acute by the eigh­teenth cen­tury Enlight­en­ment option of dual­ism that divided pub­lic life from per­sonal spheres of real­ity. In a world of con­fi­dent ratio­nal­ism, gospel claims in the pub­lic sphere became very dif­fi­cult to main­tain. As a con­se­quence, the great temp­ta­tion to the church—a temp­ta­tion largely embraced—was to cede pub­lic life to an amoral con­cern for power and wealth and, con­versely, to con­fine gospel con­cern to private-familial spheres where “reli­gious” claims could be kept more or less cred­i­ble. That split per­sists today, so much so that direct asser­tion of God’s gov­er­nance of the pub­lic realm sounds to our domes­ti­cated ears almost ludi­crous. It is more “rea­son­able” to imag­ine that the pub­lic sphere is autonomous and not account­able to the rule of God.

What was a deeply thought intel­lec­tual, philo­soph­i­cal dis­tinc­tion in the eigh­teenth cen­tury has now been trans­posed, in the early twenty-first cen­tury, into a deeply felt socioe­co­nomic, polit­i­cal, ide­o­log­i­cal ques­tion. That only means that our sev­eral vested inter­ests are more imme­di­ately at play in inter­pre­ta­tion but, nonethe­less, around the same issues that have for­ever haunted this faith tra­di­tion and reached intel­lec­tual respectabil­ity in the eigh­teenth century.

The Tra­di­tion of II Isa­iah
The ques­tion of rela­tion between evan­ge­lism and social action and the rel­a­tive impor­tance of each for faith is being rethought in cur­rent con­ver­sa­tion. The rethink­ing is urgent because the ten­sion is unsus­tain­able in any seri­ous the­ol­ogy, and because it threat­ens the coher­ence of the com­mu­nity of faith. The dichotomy, more­over, is now less cred­i­ble, given the ero­sion of con­fi­dence in Enlight­en­ment modes of auton­omy. If we view the Priestly and Deutero­nomic tra­di­tions of the Old Tes­ta­ment as par­ti­sans in the dis­pute, we may make appeal to the tra­di­tion of II Isa­iah (chap­ters 40–55),[i] an imag­i­na­tive voice of Israel in exile and a near-contemporary of the Priestly and Deutero­nomic tra­di­tions. It is the essen­tial bur­den of II Isa­iah to announce to exiled Jews in Baby­lon that the God of Israel is now act­ing (through Cyrus the Per­sian; see Isa. 44:28; 45:1) to seize the ini­tia­tive in the Baby­lon­ian empire in order to per­mit dis­placed Jews to return home to Jerusalem. In order to announce that eman­ci­pa­tory mes­sage, it was nec­es­sary (and pos­si­ble) to assert that YHWH, the God of Israel, has now reasserted sov­er­eignty over all of pub­lic life, includ­ing the pub­lic life of the Baby­lon­ian empire.

What inter­ests us is that II Isa­iah (com­monly dated 540 B.C.E.) is the first text in the Old Tes­ta­ment to use the term “gospel” (basar) inten­tion­ally as a the­o­log­i­cal term (Isa. 40:9; 41:27; 52:7). The “good news” pro­claimed in this lyri­cal poetry is that YHWH—and not the despised gods of Babylon—is the true power in the world who now wills and autho­rizes a home­com­ing for Jews. That is, the “gospel” is a sur­pris­ing announce­ment of God’s gov­er­nance, sur­pris­ing because the Baby­lon­ian pow­ers seemed still in con­trol. The gospel is a lib­er­at­ing autho­riza­tion to depart the world defined by empire, and to begin to act in free­dom under the new gov­er­nance made avail­able in this declaration.

This gospel asser­tion about the world com­ing under new gov­er­nance is used in II Isa­iah in order to artic­u­late what we have come to call both “evan­ge­lism” and “social action.” The evan­ge­lism of II Isa­iah is to recruit what must have been cul­tur­ally defined Jews in Baby­lon (not unlike cul­tur­ally defined Chris­tians in the U.S.) into the the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tion of YHWH’s sov­er­eignty. The deci­sion for a cul­tural Jew to become a the­o­log­i­cally trust­ing Jew must have been jar­ring and dis­plac­ing for many who had sub­mit­ted to Baby­lon­ian author­ity in the same way that many cul­tural Chris­tians have sub­mit­ted to sec­u­lar anti-life forced in the United States.

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The Isa­iah tra­di­tion refused to choose between the “evan­ge­lism” of the holi­ness tra­di­tion and the “social acts” of the Torah tra­di­tion, but insisted that the new rule of YHWH per­tains to all spheres, pub­lic and per­sonal, wor­ship and eco­nom­ics.
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To “evan­ge­lize” to the new real­ity of eman­ci­pa­tion and home­com­ing was a major task, as is evi­dent in the imper­a­tives addressed to exiles, imper­a­tives that assert at the same time a good news pos­si­bil­ity and a demand­ing sum­mons to receive that pos­si­bil­ity (see Isa. 51:7; 52:1, 11). The imper­a­tives bespeak urgency about a rad­i­cal either/or and surely hint at reluc­tance, if not resis­tance, on the part of exiled Jews to accept the news. Thus II Isa­iah is a pri­mal “evan­ge­list” who aims to recruit indi­vid­ual per­sons into the “new regime” in a way that will deci­sively impact their lives. The sum­mons of this evan­ge­list is surely not unlike our con­tem­po­rary evan­ge­lism that seeks to bring indi­vid­ual per­sons under new gov­er­nance that will deci­sively reshape their lives.

At the same time, there is no doubt that II Isaiah—to say it in any anachro­nis­tic way—is a social activist. His bur­den is “good news” that recruits Jews into a home­com­ing out­side the grip of Baby­lon­ian imag­i­na­tion. More than that, his poetry is a mes­sage of “jus­tice” that insists that YHWH’s rule of Baby­lon and “the isles” impacts them as much as it does dis­placed Jews. Thus in Isa­iah 42:1–4, the “ser­vant” (pre­sum­ably Israel) is to “bring forth jus­tice” to the nations, will faith­fully “bring forth jus­tice,” and will “estab­lish jus­tice” in the earth. The term “jus­tice,” used three times in this text, is not expli­cated here. The usage in the larger tra­di­tion, how­ever, makes it cer­tain that the term here bespeaks reordered social rela­tion­ships between the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor. It is ludi­crous to imag­ine that this God would recruit indi­vid­ual per­sons to new gov­er­nance and would not at the same time reorder social rela­tion­ships in the pub­lic sphere.

In Isa­iah 51:4–5, more­over, it is YHWH’s jus­tice that will be a “light to the peo­ples,” also termed “sal­va­tion, deliv­er­ance” in this text. The phrase “light to the nations” surely per­tains to pub­lic gov­er­nance as the term is also used in Isa­iah 42:6 and 49:6. In the hori­zon of this poet, every indi­vid­ual per­son counts, and every social, sys­temic rela­tion­ship is sub­ject to dras­tic reordering.

The New Rule of YHWH
It is clear that the large evan­gel­i­cal vision of II Isa­iah con­tin­ued to ener­gize (and vex) the exilic com­mu­nity upon its return home to Jerusalem. (I use the term “evan­gel­i­cal” in the way I judge to be proper, as an adjec­ti­val form of “gospel.”) In Isa­iah 56:1, imme­di­ately after II Isa­iah and the first verse of III Isa­iah (chap­ters 56–66), the first issue artic­u­lated is the prac­tice of jus­tice. In Isa­iah 56:3–8, more­over, the poetry voices what I would term an “evan­gel­i­cal” ques­tion about who gets into the com­mu­nity, who is to be recruited. The poem aston­ish­ingly urges that “evangelism”—admission to the com­mu­nity of worship—includes for­eign­ers and peo­ple with socially unsanc­tioned sex­ual his­tory (eunuchs), so that evan­ge­lism is related imme­di­ately to ques­tions of jus­tice. In Isa­iah 58:1–9, in par­al­lel fash­ion, wor­ship, in the midst of a sharp dis­pute, is dra­mat­i­cally rede­fined in terms of social action:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injus­tice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hun­gry,
and bring the home­less poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not hide your­self from your own kin? (Isa. 56:6–7)

To be sure, there were those who did not agree, or this dis­pu­ta­tious text would not voice such an urg­ing. It is clear that the Isa­iah tra­di­tion refused to choose between the “evan­ge­lism” of the holi­ness tra­di­tion and the “social acts” of the Torah tra­di­tion, but insisted that the new rule of YHWH per­tains to all spheres, pub­lic and per­sonal, wor­ship and economics.

An Urgent Ques­tion for the Church
The ques­tion of evan­ge­lism and social action is now before the church in an urgent way. This is, I sug­gest, a moment when the church is sum­moned to unlearn a lot of bad habits and cri­tique some long-held assump­tions. Much of the cur­rent con­flict in the church is inher­ited and surely not ger­mane to the place in which God has now set the church.

The party of “evan­ge­lism” might cri­tique and unlearn the pri­vatism of its vision, for most who do old-time evan­ge­lism (even in new elec­tronic modes) resist think­ing sys­tem­at­i­cally about God’s rule of sociopo­lit­i­cal, eco­nomic sys­tems. Such “indi­vid­u­al­ism” is a social inher­i­tance that comes from Enlight­en­ment think­ing about the pri­vate sphere and not at all from the Bible.

The party of “social action” might cri­tique and unlearn the auton­omy of its vision, for most old-line “social activists,” even in more urbane forms, still assume that “God has no hands but ours” and that the “mis­sion” of social action is our mis­sion and not the mis­sion of God. Such “act­ing” is a social inher­i­tance that comes from the Enlight­en­ment and not from the Bible.

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In this new vision, the “evan­ge­liz­ing party” might learn that God’s new rule is more demand­ing and more dan­ger­ous than “win­ning souls.” The “social action party” might learn that the mis­sion is not “ours,” and so be deliv­ered from a shrill (often self-serving) ide­o­log­i­cal tone.
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The unlearn­ing that must hap­pen can­not be done by either party alone. It must be ecu­meni­cal in the ser­vice of a com­mon cri­tique of pri­va­tiz­ing evan­ge­lism and autonomous social action, a shared rethink­ing about the char­ac­ter of God, God’s will for the world, and God’s way in the world. The strik­ing power of the poetry of II Isa­iah is that he refused to con­cede any­thing to the “pow­ers” of this age. He under­stood that YHWH’s newly asserted gov­er­nance imme­di­ately sub­verted every impe­ri­al­ism; at the same time, he con­ceded noth­ing to either the “holi­ness party” or the “Torah party,” draw­ing on both to fash­ion a new vision.

In that new vision, the “evan­ge­liz­ing party” might learn that God’s new rule is more demand­ing and more dan­ger­ous than “win­ning souls.” The “social action party” might learn that the mis­sion is not “ours,” and so be deliv­ered from a shrill (often self-serving) ide­o­log­i­cal tone. It would be unfortunate—not to say unfaithful—if these sev­eral “sects” in the church con­tin­ued to recy­cle old cat­e­gories and old con­flicts, so mes­mer­ized by the ancient quar­rel that we com­monly miss “the new thing” God is doing in the world (see Isa. 43:18–19).

I sug­gest that nei­ther party can dis­cern God’s cur­rent new­ness alone. It will require an ecu­meni­cal atten­tive­ness that holds together in com­mon trust par­ties from an old, obso­lete quar­rel. The peo­ple of God need no longer per­mit old quar­rels to dom­i­nate cur­rent obe­di­ence. That is good news among us, per­haps our equiv­a­lent to the fresh­ness of II Isa­iah, who used the “gospel” to recruit adher­ents to the new gov­er­nance and dis­patched them to wait­ing “isles” to enact jus­tice. That vision is older and deeper among us than our more recently learned and trea­sured dis­putes read­ily acknowledge.

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Notes
[i] The Old Tes­ta­ment book of Isa­iah is gen­er­ally accepted to be a col­lec­tion of writ­ings from three eras in Jew­ish his­tory, The prophet Isa­iah, acknowl­edged to be the author of chap­ters 1–39, lived dur­ing the time when the North­ern King­dom was taken by the Assyr­i­ans. II Isa­iah, chap­ters 40–55, comes from a later time, the fall of the South­ern King­dom, the Exile in Baby­lon, and Cyrus of Per­sia. The remain­ing chap­ters, 56–66, come from a time later yet when God’s peo­ple were deal­ing with life in the new, restored com­mu­nity in Palestine.

 

 

 

Wal­ter Bruegge­mann is William Mar­cel­lus McPheeters Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Old Tes­ta­ment at Colum­bia The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. He is a past pres­i­dent of the Soci­ety of Bib­li­cal Lit­er­a­ture and an ordained min­is­ter in the United Church of Christ. He has recently writ­ten Dis­rup­tive Grace (Fortress Press) and David and His The­olo­gian (Wipf and Stock).

 

 

 

Ban­ner Image by “Trounce.”

 

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