These essays cover “themes that have long occupied my thinking, and permit me to offer something of a summary of my work. The substance and action of the Old Testament (and consequently the entire Bible) consists in the reality of God, the agency of human persons, and the interaction between them amid the larger scope of all creation. Thus the first three sections of this book concern, in turn, God, the human agent, and the riddle of communication between them. . . . In the fourth and final section of the book I turn yet again to the book of Jeremiah in which I have, over time, invested much of my scholarly energy.” —from the Preface

(Edited and revised by Ronald B. Mayers) This reprint covers the basics of systematic theology in brief, easy-to-follow outline form.

The skepticism holding sway in our public society practically screams that one cannot be serious and also be Christian. This work exposes the lie to such skepticism. This book adopts the scientific method to demonstrate the underlying facts recorded in the Gospels. The arguments rely solely upon reason and objective criteria to substantiate their conclusions. This fast-paced work by a nuclear engineering executive with more than thirty-five years of experience will defy expectations. Rigorous and systematic, this apologetic work is curated with verve, energy, and wit. It will pique the interests of academics and lay audience alike by answering these questions: •Why is the resurrection a necessary but not sufficient condition for the rise of Christianity? •Who founded Christianity? Hint: it was not Saint Paul, as many suppose. •Why did the church retain all of the Hebrew Bible, even though only a small fraction pertains directly to the New Testament? •How does the church rectify the necessity of justice with the virtue of mercy? •Why did his first followers call Jesus the Christ while fully aware that he did not satisfy the expectations of the Christ in the Hebrew Bible? At the end of the book, readers will ask the same question about Jesus that Jesus asked of the apostles, “Who do you say that I am?”

Writing with the pastor and student in mind, Walter Brueggemann provides guidance for interpreting Old Testament texts. He offers both advice for the interpreter as well as examples of working with different sorts of passages: from narratives, prophecies, and Psalms. He also demonstrates how to work thematically, drawing together threads from different traditions. His goal is to work through the rhetoric of these passages to reach toward theological interpretation. These investigations indicate Brueggemann's conviction that the process of moving from text to interpretive outcome is an artistic enterprise that can be learned and practiced.

Real World Faith articulates a faith that is effectively linked to our real world, the world of our bodies and of the body politic. The real world of our bodies causes us to be largely preoccupied with our health, security, dignity, and sexuality, and causes concern for food and shelter for ourselves and for our neighbors. The real world of the body politic puts us in inescapable touch with issues of money, power, weapons, policies, treaties, taxes, and trade agreements. These are the matters that occupy us most of the time on most of our days. They are the proper agenda of our faith, because our faith consists in trust in the One who governs our bodily life in the world. Our interpretive work is to try to articulate the ways--albeit hidden ways--in which the agency and character of God make effective contact with our world. This is real-life faith.

Understanding the gospel as emancipation has been central to Walter Brueggemann's biblical interpretation. This book illustrates the theme's centrality, addressing the emancipation of God from our attempts to control, the emancipation of the church to be the people of an emancipated God, and the emancipation of the gospel to be a cultural prophecy. This volume divides into three parts: "The Emancipation of God," "The Emancipation of the Church," and "The Emancipation of the Neighborhood." What the three parts hold in common is the kingdom of God. In each chapter, Brueggemann grinds away at biblical texts that have been muffled, silenced, and disabled to free the text from its cultural entrapments so that that the liberated text can speak for an emancipated God and a liberated church to free the world.

These essays cover “themes that have long occupied my thinking, and permit me to offer something of a summary of my work. The substance and action of the Old Testament (and consequently the entire Bible) consists in the reality of God, the agency of human persons, and the interaction between them amid the larger scope of all creation. Thus the first three sections of this book concern, in turn, God, the human agent, and the riddle of communication between them. . . . In the fourth and final section of the book I turn yet again to the book of Jeremiah in which I have, over time, invested much of my scholarly energy.” —from the Preface

Ranks the Apostle Paul as "one of the most powerful and seminal minds of the first or any century," and argues that we can now sketch with confidence a new and more nuanced picture of Paul and the radical way in which his encounter with Jesus redefined his life, his mission and his expectations for a world made new in Christ. Reprint.