It was largely through the writings of Brevard Childs at Yale University in the 1980s that a new approach to Scripture developed. Then, as now, the Scriptures were often viewed through the lenses of redaction criticism, source criticism, form criticism and so on, but while such approaches might carry with them an aura of scholarship and intellectual rigor, they had little or no value for the Church. The community of faith largely could not benefit from these approaches to Scripture no matter how valid or invalid they are. Childs and others who recognised this, while not discarding the old critical methodology, chose to read the Scriptures in a different way. What they realised was that the Scriptures, as we have them today, are of value in their present form having been arranged and recorded for the edification of future generations of believers. This approach came to be known generally as canonical criticism and it emphasised the unity of the books of the Bible and indeed the entire Bible itself. Rather than reading the Bible atomistically, canonic critics read the Bible as a collection of carefully arranged books that carried a message not only to their original audiences, but to all future generations for whom the books had been collected and preserved.

It’s something that the evangelical community has recognised to an extent for a long time but I find that there are still important lessons that we can learn from canonical criticism. Put it this way, even to this day I can pick up books and commentaries that argue that some books of the Bible have little or no structure. The canon critic, due to his assumptions that the book has been carefully arranged and that it is a unity, will think twice before arriving at such a conclusion. Perhaps it is more a testimony to a writers ignorance of the structure of a Biblical text when he reaches the conclusion that it has little or no structure, than it is to anything else. Thus I find that the canon critics’ approach to Scriptures is one which we ought, perhaps, to consider carefully. Consider for example, the book of the Psalms. The introduction of form criticism (basically this is categorising literature into different types) of the Psalms by scholars such as Mowinckel, has led many scholars to treat the Psalms rather atomistically. Consider even Fee and Stuart’s comments on the Psalms in “How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth”. Stuart outlines how each of the different Psalms can be considered as a different types including Lament Psalms, Thanksgiving Psalms, Hymns of Praise, and so on and even though he warns that “the Psalms [i.e. the individual psalms] are to be treated as wholes, not atomized into single verses or thought of… as so many pearls on a string”, Stuart fails to treat the structure of the Psalter itself with any great significance. Rather, each Psalm is taken separately with little relationship to the other. But are there not some clear indications within the Psalter itself that it is a carefully organised book? Why does the book of Psalms have five divisions? Why does the Psalter open with a Psalm that functions almost like a prologue for the whole book? Psalm 1 opens with the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. The wicked will be destroyed by Yahweh while the righteous will be preserved by him. The second Psalm then introduces the Lord’s Son who stands as Yahweh’s representative on the earth. He is the epitome of the righteous man in Psalm 1 while the wicked are those who refuse to submit to God’s anointed king. And so, just as the way of the wicked will be destroyed in Psalm 1:6, the ways of those who refuse to kiss God’s son will be destroyed in Psalm 2:12. Psalm 2 introduced the theme of opposition to the Davidic king but Psalm 3 makes this more explicit when David cries out to help from Yahweh as he flees from his own son. I could continue on doing this and trying to link each of the Psalms together thematically as indicated by the repetition of both keys thoughts and expressions but I just want to illustrate that maybe the Psalms contain more than what commonly meets the eye. Maybe there is a structure to these Psalms that we have missed very often. Also, the titles of the Psalms? Stuart dismisses them as non-canonical but perhaps this is too hasty. The canon critic will respect these titles and will understand them to be a significant feature of the text that needs to be integrated into the understanding of the text.

While I am very fond of a more canonical approach to Scripture, there is always the charge of eisegesis (reading into the text our own ideas). At what stage does canonically reading Scripture cease to be a valid exegetical approach? Are some of these structures in the Biblical text more in the eye of the beholder than in the text itself? This is an important question and one that I find hard to answer. But overall, I think that the canonical approach to Scripture is one which ought to make us think more carefully about the structure and unity of the Biblical text than we frequently have.

If you’re interested, have a listen to Gordon Wenham’s lectures on the Psalms: 1) Reading the Psalms Ethically, 2) Reading the Psalms Messianically, and 3) Reading the Psalms Canonically. He talks quite a bit about the canonical approach in each of the lectures and I found them rather enlightening. Certainly, they have stimulated my thinking about this whole issue.

So what does everybody think about it all?

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