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the received textual corpus of the Bible as a canonical whole as well as a theological unity of the Old and New Testaments. As Brevard Childs notes, the task of the biblical theology movement had been “to engage in the continual activity of theological reflection which studies the canonical text in detailed exegesis, and seeks to do justice to the witness of both Testaments in the light of its subject matter who is Jesus Christ.”163
The term ‘canonical criticism’, at least in its modern usage, appears to have been popularized by James Sanders of Claremont School of Theology, California, with reference to the hermeneutical presuppositions of the compilers of the Hebrew Torah, and, in a more nuanced fashion, by Brevard Childs of Yale University.164 Sanders argued that the starting point of biblical interpretation is the received canon, that is, the final form of the texts of the Bible in their canonical context.165 Robert Carroll, in his critical review of Sanders’ canonical approach, remarks that:
This concentration on the final form of the literary units making up the Bible takes seriously the work of the editors and tradents who put together the various traditions and attempts to discern their intentions . . . it was the final product of their work which was canonized rather than the primary or original traditions, so the central issue for the theologian must be the canonical form of the work. Taking the canon seriously means treating the books of the Bible as they stand and relating them to the concerns of the community which gave them their canonical status166.
Thus, as Sanders goes on to argue, the texts of the Bible, taken separately, may not appear to present a univocal message. However, taken together, they bear witness to God’s manifold revelation of His character and will for His covenant people.167 This point is also reiterated by John Barton who remarks that biblical critics “were not wrong to identify detailed points of diversity and inconsistency, but they were in danger of not seeing the wood for the trees, ignoring the equal and greater volume of evidence that pointed to unity and singleness of purpose” in the canon of Scripture.168
Reading the texts of the Bible in their canonical context implies that the meaning of the text is not only informed by its literary and thematic designs but also by the canonical inter-textual context. The interpretation of any one text of the Bible must thus be cognizant of the overall message of the canon of Scripture. Moshe Halbertal makes a cogent observation that the canonization decision was, ipso facto, an interpretive act.169 The canonical meaning is, therefore, “the meaning the text has when it is read as part of the canon, with full allowance made for the other texts that also form part of the canon, in their overall coherent pattern.”170
The act of canonization has, however, as noted above, been viewed in some quarters of biblical scholarship as a subjection of the texts of Scripture to some external magisterium of the synagogue and the church, a “subjugation of Scripture to external authority.”171 Nonetheless, as Brevard Childs argues, “although historically the decision of the Church actually shaped the canon, the Church itself envisioned its task as acknowledging what God had given.”172 In other words, the act of canonization was simply the Church’s recognition and delineation of God’s revelation to the community of faith. The Church was simply the receptor and preserver of the divine revelation.173 The canon is, therefore, both a collection of divinely inspired authoritative texts as well as an authoritative compendium that is constitutive of the rule of faith for the community of believers. On the other hand, the canonical approach neither ignores apparent textual problems or peculiarities of individual texts of the canon nor does it overlook tensions among the texts of the canon. As John Peckham, commenting on the canonical approach, remarks, “Where apparent tensions arise, they should be properly acknowledged rather than glossed over. However, it should be recognized that apparent tensions do not necessarily rule out undergirding theological consistency, especially if consistency is not improperly conflated with simplistic univocity.”174
A further question that is often raised in biblical scholarship is: which canon is authoritative? For example, there are variants of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament), namely, the Hebrew Version (notably the Masoretic text) and the Greek Version (the ‘Septuagint’ or the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, often referred to as the ‘Alexandrian canon’). The two versions differ markedly in a number of texts; for example, the Septuagint edition of the book of Jeremiah is much shorter than the Hebrew version of the book and has a different ordering of its contents.175 There are also other collections of texts, the so-called deuterocanonical texts, notably the apocryphal texts, some of which are included in the canons of some Christian traditions but regarded as extra-canonical in other Christian traditions.176 Brevard Childs wades into the question of ‘which canon’ and argues that the Masoretic text (the Hebrew Bible version that was preserved by Jewish rabbinic scholars known as the Masoretes) should be the normative canon because it is what the Jews and Christians have in common.177 On the contrary, Albert Sundberg argues that the Greek canon (the Septuagint) has primacy over other Old Testament versions because it was the canon of the early church.178 The debate rages on, but as some critics have pointed out, the canonical controversy plausibly boils down to differences between inspired autographs and corrupt transmissions.179 Nonetheless, the Masoretic text, which was preserved by the Jewish rabbinic scholars, the Masoretes, has generally been accepted, both in the academy and the Church, as the canonical norm of the Hebrew Bible.180
Whereas Sanders’ canonical approach is essentially a holistic literary reading of the Bible in canonical context, Brevard Childs’ canonical approach is more nuanced and is, indeed, a canonical theology that harks back to Luther’s hermeneutica sacra. Childs readily embraces the historical-critical study of the texts of the Bible in a canonical context utilizing scientific exegetical tools. However, Childs’ canonical approach is more focused on the presuppositional-hermeneutical paradigm which guides the exegetical methods. His approach is, thus, not simply a technical method of biblical interpretation. Rather, it is a hermeneutical paradigm in which the Bible is read as the divinely inspired and authoritative Word of God. As Earle Ellis aptly points out, “Method is inherently a limited instrumentality, and, indeed, a secondary stage in the art of interpretation. More basic are the perspective and presuppositions with which the interpreter approaches the text.”181 Childs’ canonical approach is, indeed, hermeneutica sacra, or confessional hermeneutics. As he argues:
Biblical theology has, as its proper context, the canonical scriptures of the Christian Church . . . The Christian Church responded to this literature as the authoritative Word of God, and it remains existentially committed to an inquiry into its inner unity because of its confession of the one Gospel of Jesus Christ which it proclaims to the world. It was therefore a fatal methodological mistake when the nature of the Bible was described solely in categories of the history of religions.182
Childs’ confessional approach to biblical criticism is also noted by John Barton, who remarks that it “is currently the most influential” attempt to rescue biblical studies from “secular specialism.” John Barton goes on to observe that:
In the work of Brevard Childs (more properly called the canonical method or approach) it aims at a new, post-critical reading of the finished form of biblical texts; but unlike holistic literary readings with their addiction to modern literary theory, a ‘canonical’ reading is concerned with the religious meaning of the Bible. At the same time, it tries to help the critics themselves to be more theologically and religiously sensitive . . . It wants to bring the critics with their skills back into the fold of the Church; to enable them toshare with simpler believers the experience of finding again in the Bible the living word of God.183
Childs decries the historical-critical method’s tendency to disaggregate the texts of the Bible into hypothetical original or earlier sources, thus confining the Bible into the past. He also laments that the historical-critical methods not only fail to consider any dialectical relation between the biblical texts and their canonical context but also that, in their present form, the historical-critical methods fail to consider whether the canon of Scripture might have a coherent theological truth for the present community of faith, notwithstanding any biblical-textual tensions therein.184 As John Barton surmises, the apparent biblical-textual inconsistencies pointed out by the historical-critical scholars are plausibly subordinate to a higher unity. Barton grants