“Interpretation was a matter of fitting the biblical story into another world with another story rather than incorporating that world into the biblical story.”149
In the course of its development, historicism also tended to disaggregate the texts of the Bible into what was considered to be authentic and inauthentic sources and, hence, introduced a hermeneutic of suspicion into the task of biblical interpretation.150 Furthermore, the idea of a canonical context for the study of the texts of the Bible was largely spurned by the tradents of historicism; they held that the texts of the Bible should be studied in their own right as independent texts freed from the “arbitrary constraints” imposed upon them by the Synagogue and the Church in the act of canonization.151 Failure to read the texts of the Bible in their canonical context negated Luther’s dictum that scriptura sacra sui ipsius intepres (sacred scripture is its own interpreter). This dictum, as noted above, meant that each text of Scripture should be interpreted in terms of the theology of the Bible as a whole.
The early part of the twentieth century saw the rise of a nuanced form of literary criticism, the new literary criticism, which, as Brevard Childs notes, “shifts biblical study away from historical referentiality.”152 As Gerald Bray observes, the new literary criticism “abandoned history as a model and insisted that works of art be judged primarily on aesthetic grounds.”153 Thus, the new literary approach tendentiously undermined the historical veracity of the biblical accounts. The new literary criticism also sought to break up the Christian canon by incorporating into its repertoire of texts extra-canonical epigraphic materials that were discovered in the course of the twentieth century. In particular, such epigraphic finds as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nagi Hammadi texts were read as though they were at par in meaning and theological value as the texts of the Christian canon.154 In some extreme cases, the new literary criticism went as far as attempting to emend the texts of the Christian canon in the light of the twentieth century epigraphic finds.155 Hence Peter deVilliers’ notion of attempts to “contaminate” the Christian canon.156 As deVilliers observes, the attempts to emend the texts of the Christian canon in the light of the recently discovered texts is, in effect, an attempt to revise the Christian canon.
Some versions of the new literary criticism, notably the ideologically-driven reader-response critical approaches, argue that meaning is not derived from the texts of the Bible; meaning is “created by the readers in the act of reading.”157 Thus, as historicism privileged a hypothetical extra-biblical world over the texts of the Bible, the new reader-response critical approaches have tended to privilege the extra-biblical world of the reader who searches for the meaning conveyed in the Bible’s texts. The implication of this ‘privileging’ is that the extra-biblical worlds impose their meaning upon biblical texts. The biblical-textual meanings derived therefrom are, hence, idiosyncratic and indeterminate.158 Stanley Fish, an ardent reader-response proponent, argues that “Since the locus of meaning has proved so elusive, perhaps we should entertain the possibility that there is no determinate meaning in the text to begin with . . . The text yields no meaning. The only option is to play with the text.”159 Little wonder that the contemporary discipline of biblical studies is, in the words of Brevard Childs, “in crisis.”160
By ignoring the canonical context of the texts of the Bible, both historicism and the new literary-critical approaches have attempted to “de-canonize” the texts of the Bible.161 Also, as already noted above, both historicism and the new literary-critical approaches have misused textual criticism (which is usually the first stage in their methodological processes) by rewriting the texts through unwarranted emendations.162 The Bible reader who comes to the biblical text to hear the Word of God is therefore ill-served by the extant historical-critical and the new literary-critical methods of biblical interpretation. Hence a continuing search is needed for hermeneutical paradigms that serve the needs of the communities of faith, both in the academy or in the church.
Echoes of Luther’s Hermeneutics in Canonical Criticism
Some recent developments in the canonical-critical approach to biblical interpretation have been billed, in some quarters of biblical scholarship, as constitutive of a hermeneutical paradigm that seeks to interpret the Bible, not as an antiquarian artifact studied for its literary artistry only, but as the Word of God. As explained below, some aspects of the novel canonical criticism, particularly in the works of the Yale University biblical scholar, Brevard Childs, resonate with Martin Luther’s Reformation hermeneutics.
The canonical approach to biblical interpretation is often viewed as having had its modern provenance in the early twentieth century Anglo-American biblical theology movement. The movement appears to have been a reaction against the historicism of European theological liberalism, which, as noted above, tended to ‘de-canonize’ the Bible and atomize it into hypothetical source components. Instead, the biblical theology movement advocated for a study of 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
