If there were risks and consequences for the poet-prophet Isaiah, there are certainly also risks and consequences for the writer who today wishes to take the biblical literature seriously. No one-not even his strongest opponents-could accuse Brueggemann of not being 'capable of a firm persuasion of any thing' (Blake). On the contrary he has cared not for consequences but has written, boldly and with a passionate conviction that echoes Blake as well as Isaiah."

"Biblical testimony-and countertestimony-never admits to God who is 'above the fray. On the contrary, this God is always entan-gled in history, astonishingly transformative, and impinged upon by the voice of suffering. Biblical testimony yields a God who is 'in the fray and at risk."

"On the one hand, such a claim presents itself as a most out-landish threat to any theology, whether characteristically 'liberal' or 'conservative, that attributes a fundamental oneness and tran-scendence to the God attested in biblical literature; such a God could only be imagined as existing above the fray and never at risk. On the other hand, the claim that the God who moves in, with, and under the biblical literature is an embodiment of dis-junction may present itself as a powerful resource for speaking to human experiences of profound tension and ambivalence, whether in our world or in ourselves."

-From the Introduction