A Non Sequitur in the Argument for the Canonical Approach to Scripture

Revised: 05-Dec-2008

One approach to Scripture that has gained a strong following since its appearance in the early 1970’s is the so-called “canonical approach,” associated with Brevard Childs (†2007). This way of reading the Bible assumes that literary aspects of the Bible in its final form, including aspects not native to any of the individual writings, should have a bearing on what the Bible is said to mean. Although this approach appeals to many of the more pious habits of thought that Christians have concerning the Bible, I am convinced that it represents a huge step away from the approach of the early Church.

Although I have long recognized the debt that Childs’ approach owes to a certain non sequitur, it is only recently, while watching an online lecture by Childs’ student Christopher Seitz, that I came to see just how central this non sequitur is for this approach. In some respects, of course, referring to Childs’ argument as a “shell game” is unfair, as it is obvious that Childs was not doing anything dishonest with his arguments about “meaning,” while those who work real shell games (like those I have personally witnessed on 52nd Street in New York) know fully well what they are doing. I say this as more than just an admission that my rhetoric, in this respect, is not trimmed to fit Childs’ true intentions, but also to make the important point that many (like Childs himself?) are attracted to the canonical approach for pious-sounding but misguided reasons.

What is the “canonical approach,” and in what respect is its main supporting argument a “shell game”? Simply put, the “canonical approach” is a way of reading Scripture in which those aspects of the biblical canon that postdate the work of the individual authors (e.g., the ordering of the books within the canon, the addition of a spurious ending to Mark, etc.) are viewed as aspects of what the Bible “means.” “Scripture” is construed, on this view, not as a collection of writings to be interpreted according to what its authors mean, but in a corporate sense as well, as if the arrangement of the whole were itself “authored.”

• ^[1] Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), 16. ↩
• ^[2] On what the Reformed approach to Scripture includes, see Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, Vol. 2: Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003); Henk van den Belt, The Authority of Scripture in Reformed Theology: Truth and Trust (Studies in Reformed Theology 17; Leiden: Brill, 2008). ↩
• ^[3] The same move is made in the title of a volume edited by Peter Ochs: The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Postcritical Scriptural Interpretation (Theological Inquiries; New York: Paulist, 1993). See further: John C. Poirier, “The Canonical Approach and the Idea of ‘Scripture,’” Expository Times 116 (2005): 366-370. ↩
• ^[4] Theodore Letis, “Brevard Childs and the Protestant Dogmaticians: A Window to a New Paradigm of Biblical Interpretation,” Churchman 105 (1991): 261-277, esp. 265 (quoting Ninian Smart and Richard D. Hecht, Sacred Texts of the World: A Universal Anthology [New York: Crossroad, 1982], xiii-xiv). ↩
• ^[5] Letis, “Brevard Childs and the Protestant Dogmaticians,” 269, 270. ↩
• ^[6] There is not enough space to go into all of Childs’ rhetorical ploys, but it is worth Childs’ almost grueling propensity to paint his opponents as “liberals” without really listening to whether their objections are being made on the grounds of liberal commitments or presuppositions. This is most famously the case with Childs’ response to James Barr, who, on more than one occasion, showed that Childs’ argument involved him in a philosophical quandary. ↩
• ^[7] Christopher R. Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets (Studies in Theological Interpretation; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 8. ↩
• ^[8] Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 18. ↩
• ^[9] Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 99. Seitz writes that “[a] fascination with authorial intention is the legacy of naïve nineteenth-century understandings of prophetic personality at the center of religious foundational genius”(!). I suggest that the truly “naïve” are those who would swallow such a line. For the pre-Enlightenment history of intentionalism, see John C. Poirier, “Authorial Intention as Old as the Hills,” Stone-Campbell Journal 7 (2004): 59-72; Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Intention/Intentional Fallacy,” in Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible (ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 327-330. ↩