Brevard Childs’ Canon Criticism: An Example Of Post-Critical Naiveté -- By: Dale A. Brueggemann

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 32:3 (Sep 1989)
Article: Brevard Childs’ Canon Criticism: An Example Of Post-Critical Naiveté
Author: Dale A. Brueggemann


Brevard Childs’ Canon Criticism:
An Example Of Post-Critical Naiveté

Dale A. Brueggemann*

John Barton speaks of an unease with the historical-critical approach to Biblical interpretation. Each method, though it might shed helpful light on the text, always comes up short as a definitive tool for interpreting a text before us. He says that none of the methods—not even all of them taken together—constitute the one “valid” way of reading the text.’ With the rise of new criticism and structuralism it has become necessary to talk of something more than the addition of one more new method: One must speak of a paradigm shift, which has come about because of a dissatisfaction with the historical methods and their inadequacies for dealing with the texts in the canon.

One of these paradigm-shifting methods is Brevard Childs1 canonical approach. He himself speaks of it as something absolutely different from what went before, something beyond just another new method. In Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970) and Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979), Childs sets out his method. Enough time for thorough assessment has now passed, and the reactions to Childs have run the gamut of positive and negative comments. H. Cazelles praised it as profound and successful, calling it an “anthological style,” which he contrasted to the fragmenting approach of historical criticism.2 On the other end of the spectrum James Barr satirized Childs’ focus on the canonical context:

It is like the Book of Kings: for failure to remove the high places, read now failure to read in canonical context. Only very occasionally does one discern an element of cautious hesitation in this monolythic principle (e.g., p. 476). If only Childs had recognized the value of the word sometimes!… He leaves it in no doubt that the canon is a good thing. The expression “the curse of the canon” is not a part of his vocabulary. The book is an utterance of entire approval of the idea of canon: everything about canons, canonicity, canonical form is good. No one in the history of theology or of biblical interpretation has accorded so much centrality to the canon.3

Rather than “decanonizing” the text by taking away all the contours of its canonical shape, Childs wants consciously to read the text in its

* Dale Brueggemann is assistant professor of hermeneutics and Old Testament at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.

canonical context and shape, looking f...

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