Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 59:1 (NA 2008)
Article: Old Testament Theology And The Canon
Author: John Goldingay

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TynBull 59:1 (2008) p. 1

Old Testament Theology And The Canon1

John Goldingay

Summary

The article argues that Old Testament theology considers the insight that emerges from the form of the Old Testament canon, that it focuses on the canon of the Old Testament itself not the history of Israel, that it lets the canon itself be the canon, that it nevertheless recognises a canon within the canon, that it treats the first part of the twofold canon as of significance in its own right, but that it expects to find that the two parts of this canon illumine each other.

Introduction

My title is somewhat tautologous; by definition, the Old Testament is a canon, so Old Testament theology is bound to be canon-related. Yet the way we speak about Old Testament theology and about the canon indicates that actually the interrelationship of Old Testament theology and the canon can be quite complex.

We owe to Brevard Childs an emphasis on the juxtaposition of the two expressions2 though I find helpful Paul House’s definition of ‘canonical’ in terms of ‘analysis that is God-centered, intertextually oriented, authority-conscious, historically sensitive and devoted to the pursuit of the wholeness of the Old Testament message’.3 And I find helpful William Abraham’s emphasis that in origin ‘canon’ designates scripture not as a rule or a criterion for truth but as a means of grace, something designed ‘to bring people to salvation, to make people holy,

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to make proficient disciples of Jesus Christ, and the like’ (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16).4 As canon, scripture is a norm, but it is first a resource.5 It is formative as well as normative (Moshe Halbertal).6

I have six comments to make on the interrelationship of Old Testament theology and the canon.

1. Old Testament Theology Considers The Insight That Emerges From The Form Of The Old Testament Canon

Old Testament theology takes account of the form of the canon. There are at least three senses in which it might do so. One of Childs’s theses is that the individual books of the Old Testament have been ‘shaped to function as canon’.7 His examples vary in forcefulness. Perhaps paradoxically, they are particularly illuminating in connection with the ...

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