Childs' Canonical Approach
A Critical Assessment
Summary
Childs’ Canonical Approach: A Critical Assessment provides a fresh study of Childs’ approach from the perspective of biblical studies. It makes two arguments that break new ground. Firstly, it argues that Childs’ approach consists of three main elements that were variously developed and implemented over time: the theory of canonical shaping; the prioritization of the canonical texts; and the search for the Bible’s subject matter. Secondly, it argues that, though rich and informed, these elements are ultimately unjustifiable and thus that the canonical approach is a failure.
This book provides an insightful contribution to the ongoing academic debate on Childs’ canonical approach. It is also an excellent primer for students interested in Childs, or who are generally considering how to read the Bible theologically.
The ‘canonical approach’ to the Bible pioneered by Brevard S. Childs appeals to many Christians who want to understand Scripture as a coherent and self-consistent work in the form it now has - however it came into being. In this dissenting examination of ‘canonical reading’ Robert Brown shows that it comes at too high a price, obscuring the diversity of Scripture and flattening it out. Those attracted by the approach, as a way of finding positive and constructive teaching in the Bible, will be forced to look critically at its possible drawbacks too. A clear and incisive critique of a much-lauded current fashion in biblical interpretation, seen by many as a way to ‘reclaim’ the Bible for the church.
—(John Barton, FBA, Emeritus Oriel & Laing Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow of Campion Hall, Oxford)
The task of reuniting biblical studies and theology is a crucial one for both disciplines, at least for those, like Robert Brown, who seek to understand how the scriptures speak to them of God. For many, the work of Brevard Childs has seemed to be the magic bullet, but his work is too often misunderstood by admirer and detractor alike. This careful study addresses these misunderstandings with clarity and precision, offers a much-needed analysis of the central concept of ‘canonical shaping’, and suggests ways forward that unite the synchronic and the historical-critical approaches. It is essential reading for anyone aspiring to do biblical theology in the 21st century.
—(Richard Ounsworth, Fellow and Tutor in Scripture at Blackfriars, Oxford)
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the author
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Contents
- Editor’s Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Foundations
- Career, Publications, and Beliefs
- Childs and Scholarship
- The Three Main Elements
- The Theory of Canonical Shaping
- The Prioritisation of the Canonical Texts
- The Search for the Bible’s Subject Matter
- Final Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index of Key Authors, Sources, and Subjects
Editor’s Foreword
More than ever the horizons in biblical literature are being expanded beyond that which is immediately imagined; important new methodological, theological, and hermeneutical directions are being explored, often resulting in significant contributions to the world of biblical scholarship. It is an exciting time for the academy as engagement in biblical studies continues to be heightened.
This series seeks to make available to scholars and institutions, scholarship of a high order, and which will make a significant contribution to the ongoing biblical discourse. This series includes established and innovative directions, covering general and particular areas in biblical study. For every volume considered for this series, we explore the question as to whether the study will push the horizons of biblical scholarship. The answer must be yes for inclusion.
In this volume, based on a revised version of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation, Robert Brown provides a copious critical assessment of Brevard Childs’ canonical approach. Brown establishes at the outset that Childs’ magisterial work is not only an academic proposal, but one which has theological implications for the Church. In his analysis, the author not only examines the work of Childs critically, but in the process seeks to dispel some of the misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Childs’ canonical approach. Brown provides a nuanced and thorough overview of Childs’ scholarship throughout his career. Brown notes that Childs’ work is both diachronic and synchronic; it is both descriptive and normative; it is confessional and non-confessional; it is human witness and divine reality. Brown argues that Childs has a pre-requisite for a proper theological reading namely faith as a human witness and seeing the Bible as a vehicle for knowing God. In this regard, Brown notes Childs’ three dialectics within the hermeneutical circle. 1) Movement from single text to whole witness; 2) movement from Old Testament to New Testament; 3) movement from human witness to divine reality. Brown argues for a reading and study that cannot be rigid and one dimensional as is so often the case.
This is an important and timely scholarly examination that will have significant implications for biblical scholarship and the Church. The result is a study that is certain to generate ongoing discourse, and will not only further expand the biblical horizon, but will do so in a direction that invites further conversation.
The horizon has been expanded.
Hemchand Gossai
Series Editor
Preface
I was first introduced to Brevard Childs in the final year of my undergraduate degree while writing an essay on biblical theology. I remember being awed by the scale of BTONT and, in particular, Childs’ understanding of the historical development of the canon. Yet I did not necessarily agree with his ideas and was by no means a follower of his canonical approach. Thus, at doctoral level, I did not intend to write a thesis on Childs; rather it was my intention to consider how the formation of the canon impacts Christian belief in the doctrine of divine inspiration. As happens to many doctoral students, one is required to significantly narrow the project which, for me, meant narrowing down the research I had already begun. As I had already undertaken a substantial amount of work on Childs, this meant instead focusing on his canonical approach. Early on it became clear to me that there were widespread misconceptions in biblical studies about what exactly Childs was up to. My plan, then, was to address these misconceptions by shedding light on exactly what Childs was doing and, in the process, judge whether he succeeded in what he was trying to do. After years of study, I now believe this project has been completed to a sufficient degree for it to contribute to the academic conversation. Of course, there is more that could be done, but there always is.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of those who have contributed in various ways to the writing of this book. Without their support it would not have been possible. I am extremely grateful to John Barton, my doctoral supervisor at the University of Oxford where I obtained a DPhil in Theology in 2021, on which this book is based. John has contributed so much to this book in its various iterations and provides a tremendous example of how one can hold in tension critical scholarship and religious belief. I am so privileged to have gleaned from his wisdom as his last accepted doctoral student. I am also grateful to my examiners, Walter Moberly (external) and Hywel Clifford (internal), whose critical comments substantially improved the content of my thesis and thus this book. They have helped me gain a deeper understanding of Childs’ ideas and thus have enabled me to produce a fairer and stronger evaluation of his approach. I am also thankful to those not already mentioned who have given their time to discuss my project: Paul Fiddes, Deborah Rooke, John Goldingay, and Darren Sarisky. Special thanks also go to Richard Ounsworth and Richard Finn at Blackfriars Hall.
I am also thankful to those organisations that have contributed financially to my research. I received no academic scholarships for my doctoral studies and thus had to raise all of the necessary funds. My sincerest thanks go to the King’s College London Theological Trust, the Squire Marriott Bursaries, the Crewdson Trust, Oxford’s Faculty of Theology and Religion, the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, the Edgar Milward Charity, and Blackfriars Hall. I am grateful to John Barton, Paul Joyce, Benjamin Williams, and Richard Ounsworth who have repeatedly provided references that led to grants; their willingness to undertake such a selfless task is extraordinary. I am also grateful to family members who have provided financial support for this project. My thanks go to, in no particular order, Michèle and Geoff Brown, Ian and Jancis Brown, Jennifer Bernard, Ian and Felicity Barnett, Ruth Crompton, and Neville and Janet Barnett. Also of note are Peter and Sue Haselhurst.
My final thanks go to my wife, Maddy. You accepted and supported the research student lifestyle over several years, which at times was exceptionally difficult. Despite this, you provided the means to continue this extraordinary journey. I am extremely grateful, thank you.
1 Introduction
1.1 This Book
How should the Bible be used as a resource in the Church? This is a perennial question of great importance to Christians around the world. A variety of answers have of course been given over time and Brevard Childs is one of the most notable contributions of the twentieth century. In Childs’ view, the Bible should be used as a vehicle to establish knowledge about God; in order to do this, one should employ his ‘canonical approach’. Childs’ approach is complex, incorporating multiple sub-disciplines of biblical studies and, indeed, draws these disciplines together with systematic theology. Despite this, his canonical approach can primarily be categorised as an approach to theological interpretation.1 It is ‘interpretation’ in the sense that it is concerned to understand the traditions contained in the Bible; it is ‘theological’ in the sense that it wishes to use those traditions as a means for knowing the Christian God in the present. It is an ‘approach’ (and not a rigid methodology) in the sense that it consists of loosely connected elements that can be drawn upon in various ways to fulfil the ultimate aim of using the Bible to know God.
The scale and complexity of the canonical approach means that it defies often-used categories: it is both descriptive (describing what the Bible says) and normative (having a concern for reality/truth); both diachronic (studying how the Bible developed over time) and synchronic (focusing on one particular form of the Bible – ‘the canonical text’). It is confessional (in the sense that one only practices it if one already believes that the Christian God exists), yet it also contains features which require no such conviction (e.g. Childs’ theory of canonical shaping). Furthermore, its fluidity over time makes it difficult to grasp.
With all this in mind, the aims of this book are twofold. Firstly, it aims to provide a descriptive guide for understanding Childs’ canonical approach so that its complexity can be better understood. Whilst there have been other publications devoted to this same aim, it is my conviction that none have sufficiently captured what Childs was up to. Secondly, it aims to evaluate whether the canonical approach is justifiable as a means for establishing knowledge about God using the Bible. In this sense, it aims to assess whether Childs met the goal he set for himself.
Importantly, this book does not seek to reconstruct Childs’ canonical approach, nor offer its own alternative approach to how the Bible should be used as a resource in Christianity; rather it is focused solely on the description and evaluation of Childs’ approach. Furthermore, Childs’ canonical approach has had a significant impact upon biblical studies (and, arguably, upon the interpretation of the Bible in Christianity generally). However, this book is not focused on the impact of Childs (e.g. the reception of Childs in the Catholic Church, or Brett and Noble’s attempts to reconstruct his approach), but rather solely on Childs’ canonical approach itself. I.e., this book is primarily a work of exegesis (of Childs), not reception history.
This book has a bipartite structure. Part I provides the intellectual foundations for understanding Childs; for example, his biography (§2.1), publications (§2.2), and scholarly influences (§3). By setting these foundations the reader is well-placed to better understand the canonical approach. Part II, then, is the main body which describes and evaluates what I am calling the three main elements of Childs’ canonical approach. Childs’ approach grew over time; he developed its elements across several publications and many academic contexts (such as the writing of a commentary, an Old Testament ‘Introduction’, and a book on biblical theology – see §2.2). Thus, it is incorrect to portray Childs’ canonical approach as a static entity with a clear methodology. Unfortunately, this makes Childs’ approach difficult to grasp, which is further complicated by the fact that Childs only ever once provided a precise methodology for one minor iteration of his approach2 which was soon superseded. This means that Childs’ readers are not given clear guidance on how his canonical approach is supposed to work, though it must be said that one is given many examples of the approach in practice and many scholars have still found his approach to be of great value. For a long time, this complexity hindered me. However, I eventually realised that Childs’s approach can be grasped if one reconceives the nature of the debate. Thus, rather than expecting the canonical approach to have a rigid method, this book recognises that it instead consists of a constellation of three main elements which were variously developed and implemented over time. The book ultimately closes by providing a final conclusion (§7).
1.2 Terminology
Before progressing, it is helpful to reflect briefly on terminology so that the reader can better follow the discussions throughout this book.
1.2.1 Canon
[…] I am using the term canon in a broader sense than is traditionally the practice in order to encompass the entire process by which the formation of the church’s sacred writings took place. I am including under the term not only the final stages of setting limits on the scope of the sacred writings – canonisation proper – but also that process by which authoritative tradition was collected, ordered, and transmitted in such a way as to enable it to function as sacred scripture for a community of faith and practice.3
To Childs, the term ‘canon’ is not restricted to a corpus or a list of books, but includes the ‘entire process’ of the Bible’s formation which concluded in what he calls ‘canonisation proper’.4 ‘Canon’ therefore serves ‘as a cipher to encompass the various and diverse factors involved in the formation of the literature’.5 Childs uses this definition because he wants to assert that the process which culminated in the canon ‘proper’ began long before decisions were made to finalise the Jewish and Christian Bibles.6 Whilst Childs’ definition is coherent with his theory of canonical shaping (§4.1), it is confusing since it conflicts with generally accepted definitions of ‘canon’ as either a fixed corpus or list of books in modern scholarship.7 Barr, as an expert in linguistics, found this particularly frustrating: ‘canonical criticism depends upon systematic confusion in the use of its favourite word’.8 Fortunately, though Childs is unclear when he discusses the terminology of canon, he is clear when he uses the term in practice.
1.2.2 Subject Matter
As will be elucidated later (§6), the concept of ‘subject matter’ is highly important to Childs’ canonical approach. In Childs’ view, the purpose of reading the Bible is to use it as a vehicle to know the subject matter to which it points (§2.3.1), hence why his approach includes a search for the subject matter as its final interpretative stage (§6). However, what does he mean by the term? Childs’ term ‘subject matter’ (which he also refers to as ‘reality’9 and ‘substance’10) is a translation of the German Sache and the Latin res, both of which are important terms in the history of Christian theology. Though ‘subject matter’ is used generally to refer to the topic dealt with by a work, in Childs’ context it refers to the God who is witnessed to by the Bible.11 Indeed, for Childs the subject matter of the Bible is not a ‘what’ but a ‘who’, hence why he (as a Christian) identifies Jesus as the ‘main subject matter’ (Hauptsache) of the Bible.12
1.2.3 History and Historiography
As I will explore in detail later (§6.4), when discussing the Bible’s portrayal of the past it is helpful to clarify the meaning of the term ‘history’. Following the guidance of Long, I use the term ‘history’ to mean the events that happened in the real past (what Childs refers to as ‘ostensive history’13). I then use the term ‘historiography’ to refer to the process of recounting history (e.g. text books, narratives, poetry, etc.). This distinction is helpfully expressed by Long as history (‘history-as-event’) and historiography (‘history-as-account’).14
1 Both Moberly and Seitz locate Childs’ approach within theological interpretation (R. W. L. Moberly, ‘What Is Theological Interpretation of Scripture’, Journal of Theological Interpretation, 3/2 (2009), 161–78 (173); Christopher R. Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: 2011), 27–8).
2 See Brevard S. Childs, ‘Interpretation in Faith: The Theological Responsibility of an Old Testament Commentary’, Interpretation, 18 (1964), 432–9.
3 Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (London: SCM Press, 1984), 25, see also 238 [NTC]. See also Brevard S. Childs, ‘The Exegetical Significance of Canon for the Study of the Old Testament’, in J. A. Emerton, William L. Holladay, A. Lemaire, et al. (eds), Congress Volume: Göttingen 1977, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, vol. 29 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 66–80 (67); Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (2nd edn, London: SCM Press, 1979), 58 [IOTS].
4 See also Brevard S. Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (London: SCM Press, 1985), 16–17 [OTTCC].
5 Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 70 [BTONT].
Details
- Pages
- XVIII, 232
- Year
- 2023
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781433197796
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781433197802
- ISBN (Hardcover)
- 9781433197789
- DOI
- 10.3726/b19766
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2023 (August)
- Keywords
- Brevard Childs canonical approach canonical criticism canon biblical theology theological interpretation biblical interpretation hermeneutics Childs’ Canonical Approach A Critical Assessment Robert G. Brown
- Published
- New York, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, Oxford, 2023. XVIII, 232 pp.
