The Canon and the Truth: Brevard Childs and James Barr on the Canon and the Historical-Critical Method I

Abstract

Brevard Childs recently proposed that 'the canon of the church is the most appropriate context from which to do biblical theology,' and has fleshed this proposal out in greater detail in his canonical introductions to the Old and New Testaments. In both, he underscores the hermeneutic priority of the canonical form of the text of scripture for exegesis serving the corporate life of the church, over against attempts to interpret scripture by either historicizing the text or by decontextualizing aspects of it (Le., by locating the hermeneutic key to the text in a history behind or in an experience in front of it). The 'canonical approach' is thus a hermeneutic proposal designating the final canonical form of the biblical text as the starting point for exegesis aimed at serving the communal life of the church. To appreciate the constraints under which Childs articulates this proposal it will be useful to observe, in the first place, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century historical-critical consensus on the development and significance of the canon, in contrast with which Childs makes his own 'canonical' proposal. In the second section of the paper I will examine James Barr's objections to Childs' canonical method. Here I note Barr's objections to, firstly, the apparent irrelevance that historical-critical reconstruction has for canonical exegesis and. secondly, the apparent severance between scriptural text and objective reality which is consequent on Childs' rejection of an extratextual hermeneutic datum. Finally, I want to explore Barr's objections in conversation with Childs' canonical proposal and other recent hermeneutic proposals. Barr's objections to Childs' canonical approach to scriptural exegesis represent a defence of the Enlightenment tradition of free critical reason and fails, for the most part, to take account of some recent theological/hermeneutic developments. Finally, I make a suggestion concerning one area in which Childs might more fully develop his canonical approach to exegesis and thus assuage the anxieties of some of his more friendly critics.