DOCTRINE AS CANONICAL EXEGESIS

Theo Simpson

1. “To Each Its Own Meaning”

A great variety of academic disciplines are now applied to

the study of scripture, and many different kinds of

spectacles are used to read the bible. From this

perspective, the emergence of what C .S. Lewis called

“Classic Christianity” may be appear to be no more than the

historical victory of one set of readings of the Bible over

other equally valid alternatives.

However, some still maintain that scripture has an overall

structure and meaning. Breuggemann, for example, speaks in

terms of the “primal narrative” or “credo” of scripture1.

1 Walter Breuggemann, The Bible Makes Sense, revised edition, St Mary’s

Press, Christian Brother Publications, Winona, Minnesota (1997), pp. 39 1

Canonical criticism also identifies core narratives at the heart

of scripture, and demonstrates the relationship between

scripture and the early forms of the tradition related to

such core narratives.

In its earliest form, tradition leaves open the possibility

that there are a variety of ‘primal traditions’. However,

first the canon, and then the creeds, narrow the variety and

range of the “acceptable” readings of scripture.

The American linguist Chomsky2 makes a distinction between

the “surface structure” and the “deep structure” of

language. Thus, for example, the active and passive forms of

the verb have different surface structures, but the same

deep structure, reflecting the operation of an agent upon an

object. In inviting us to acknowledge a primal narrative at the

– 43. Breuggmann acknowledges the pioneering work of Von Rad and C. H.

Dodd in regard to primal narratives in the Old and New Testament.

2 The most accessible account of these developments in linguistics is

still J. M. Y. Simpson’s A First Course in Linguistics, Edinburgh University

Press (1979), see especially pp. 131 – 146 and 216-22.2

heart of scripture, “Classic Christianity” invites us to

discover (what it takes to be) its “deep structure”, the

basic story which underlies the “surface” text and is

summarized in the creeds.

Chomsky’s work in linguistics led to the recognition of a

further level of structure, “semiotic structure” – the

structure at the level of meaning. It is the function of

doctrine to discern the semiotic structure, the deeper

significance of the Christian faith as it is reflected in

the creeds.

The best overall account of the various EditEditcritical

tools now in use for reading the bible is still To Each Its

Own Meaning: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and their Application3.

3 Mary C. Callaway, “Canonical Criticism”, (To Each Its Own Meaning: An

Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application, ed. Steven L. MacKenzie

and Stephen R. Haynes, Geoffrey Chapman, London(1993)) offers a useful

account of the seminal figures in canonical criticism, Brevard Childs

and James Sanders. Brevard Childs believed that canonical criticism

could counter the criticism brought against “biblical theology” that 3

The recognition that there are a variety of “biblical

criticisms” takes us into a postmodern world where

“scientific” study no longer attempts to secure final

“objective truth”, but to clarify the options available for

the disciplined study of the biblical text.

The titles of the three sections of To Each Its Own Meaning,

“Traditional Methods of Biblical Criticism”, “Expanding the

Tradition”, and “Overturning the Tradition”, reveal this

clearly enough.

The assumption shared by historians, source critics,

tradition-historical critics, form critics and redaction

critics, the “traditional” practitioners under discussion in

Part One, is indeed that their particular discipline offers a

highway to objective truth.

Part Two, introduces us to “Social Scientific Criticism”, scripture embraced too much diverse material to allow the

acknowledgement of a leading theme or central credo by demonstrating its

evolution within the community of faith.4

“Canonical Criticism” and “Rhetorical Criticism”. Scholars

in these disciplines have generally been more modest in

their claims.

When we move from “Expanding the Tradition” to “Overturning

the Tradition”, and to structural, narrative, reader-

response, poststructuralist and ideological criticisms in

Part Three, we have arrived in postmodernity.

In arguing that doctrine is an exploration of the canonical

reading of scripture from the perspective of classic Christianity, I

locate this discussion in postmodernity, in the culture of

differing world views and alternative realities. “Classic

Christianity” is not the only possible reading of scripture.

The study of doctrine equips us to understand and to weigh

its merits or demerits.

2. Canon and creed

For the next stage this discussion, I propose to take up

some points raised by Mary C. Callaway in “Canonical

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Criticism”, her contribution to To Each Its Own Meaning. She

begins with a description of the canonization of scripture

as the “formalization” of “an ancient phenomenon”, the

ongoing “contemporization” of “a core of traditions…for the

benefit of the community”. Hence canonical criticism

addresses “this dynamic quality of scripture in interactive

formation with believing communities” (p.121).

There are some further points that may be made about this.

Canonical criticism “analyzes the text as it was received in

its final form”. Thus it differs from source, form and

redaction criticism, which all deal with the text in the

various stages of its development. However, the emphasis may

be primarily on the fixed text, and its role in the first

communities to receive it; or it may be on the “process of

adaptation by which the community resignified earlier

traditions to function authoritatively in a new situation

and thereby produced the final text” (p. 122).

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In either case, canonical criticism draws attention to the

process of interaction evident at every stage in the process

by which the written text emerged4.

However, this raises the question as to whether the “process

of adaptation” stopped when the “fixed text” was

“published5. While the emergence of the canon eventually

4 The importance of seeing the scriptural texts as community documents

is now widely recognized. Even attempts to read the Bible historically can

be seen as attempts to uncover the public facts with which the believing

community is engaging. And alongside tradition-historical criticism, and

disciplines such as form criticism, source criticism and redaction criticism, we now

recognize the importance of social criticism and rhetorical criticism in

identifying the settings in which the oral, pre-canonical and canonical

literature took shape, and the stages of its development.

5 Even the concept of the “publication” of a “fixed text” has to be

questioned. Since every copy of the text was written by hand, it was

inevitable that unconscious (and possibly even deliberate) improvements

to the text would continue to be made even when it was “finished”. This

point is graphically illustrated by the on-going and unresolved debates

about the “Western” text of Acts. It is arguable that “Luke” himself

produced more than one version of some passages in Acts.7

left the texts in a (more or less) fixed and definitive

form, the process of interaction between community and text

did not cease at this point. Whereas earlier “commentary”

might have made its mark on the actual text, canonization

implied that the same process would now typically find

expression in extra-biblical texts, oral as in preaching or

teaching, or written as in the creeds

From very early times the Christian community constructed

brief summaries or recapitulations of the main points of its

belief, affirming the mighty acts of God which culminated in

the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the

Spirit. Such recapitulations of the saving events eventually

achieved definitive expression in the creeds, which selected

and summarized (what was taken to be) the central narrative

of the bible and thus offered a kind of commentary, not on

individual books, but on the whole of sacred scripture.

Christian doctrine emerged as the process by which such

creeds were developed and explained6.

6 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, Longman, 3rd edition 1972 is still 8

3. Canon, creed and creation

Mary Callaway concludes her article on canonical criticism

with a helpful discussion of the canonical treatment of

creation. We may use this as a kind of case study for the

position recommended in this article.

The Priestly tradition of Gen.1: 1 – 2:4a establishes the

framework within which what the bible has to say about

creation is understood. However, source criticism

demonstrates that the Yahwistic traditions in Gen. 2:4b-25

have a separate origin. Redaction criticism suggests that P

has subordinated the J tradition by setting it in the

framework established by Gen. 1. Hence the canonical

approach attempts to make sense of the text as it appears in

our bibles, while recognizing that it in fact consists of

two earlier traditions. As it stands, the creation narrative

now extends from Gen. 1:1 – Gen. 2:25, and J’s account is

the classic treatment of this subject.9

read as an elaboration of the central point of the P

account, the creation of humankind.

P’s account insists that God was alone at creation. However,

Gen. 1 also contains echoes of earlier creation legends also

found in the literature of Israel’s neighbours. Here

creation is portrayed as a battle between God and the

dragon-like waters of chaos. Such a picture of creation is

also found in the poetic traditions represented by Pss.

74:2-17; 89:5-11 and Job 38:8-21 and in Is.51: 9-11. The

theme of God’s victory at creation over the hostile powers

is taken into the predictions of the end time found in Is.

27:1 and Revelation 12.

Some biblical creation traditions portray God as a solitary

and majestic artist calling creation into being. Others draw

on the stock of images in which creation is portrayed as a

battle between God and chaos. Such images continue to haunt

even the P narrative of creation in the picture of the

uncreated waters and darkness which need to be bounded and

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contained in the first two days of creation.

Furthermore, Prov. 8:22-31 introduces Wisdom as “the first

of the works of YHWH” and his partner in creation. The idea

that God was not solitary in creation is extended much

further in passages such as John 1:1-3 and Col. 1:15-17

which introduce the role of the Logos in creation.

It is worth quoting Mary Callaway on the significance of

these observations about creation from the perspective of

canonical criticism:

In practice, by finding a hermeneutical key in the

final shape of the text, canonical criticism gives the

impression of offering at least the parameters of a

theologically definitive reading. The frequency of the

term “normative” in canonical criticism further

encourages the conclusion that the readings of

canonical criticism are somehow authoritative ones. The

variety of possible readings of Gen. 1 - 2 proposed

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above leads not to one normative reading but to a

variety of canonical possibilities in a text. Perhaps

the future of canonical criticism lies in the work of

staking out the parameters within which a multiplicity

of readings can function for the believing communities.

Certainly the canonical text of Gen. 1-2 leaves open the

possibility of a wide variety of interpretations of the

struggle between good and evil, including ontological

dualism (two eternal principles, one good, one evil),

eschatological dualism (a limited period of struggle between

good and evil climaxing in the ultimate triumph of good),

quasi-biological (Augustinian) theories of ‘original sin’

and the corruption of human nature, or ‘social’ theories of

evil based on the corrupting power of human cultures. God

may be thought of in monistic terms, as generating

difference within the divine unity and in the form of

creation, or even as transcending the difference between

good and evil.

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No doubt the various ‘sectional’ readings of scripture,

‘materialist’, liberationist and feminist, can find space

within the parameters of these readings of the canonical

text. However, the creeds serve to narrow these parameters.

Classic Christianity established its identity within the

religious consumerism of the classical world empires not

merely by its possession of the bible, but also in the

creeds. Not all the varieties of the various sectional

interpretations fit comfortably within these narrower

parameters.

4. Creeds and controversies

The creeds first set out, then explored, explicated and

elaborated three biblical themes, creation, incarnation and

trinity. Thus in the “Nicene” creed, God is the maker of

“all things visible and invisible”, and the implications of

the P creation narrative are further developed, and some

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possible readings of it rejected. Ontological dualism is not

an acceptable Christian position.

On the other hand, biblical hints of diversity and

complexity within the godhead are not only endorsed, but

elaborated. Creation involves the mutual collaboration of

the Creator, the Logos and the Spirit. The “Athanasian

creed” reveals the full development of this theme in all its

splendour.

It is worth asking why certain lines of development were

closed down during the ecumenical centuries, and why others

flourished.

A brief sketch of an answer to this question might, I think,

go something like this.

Perhaps surprisingly, out of the various cultural, social

and political influences which shaped the thinking of the

church in the early centuries there emerged a distinctive

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apprehension of God, God as personal being7.

However, human personhood offers a very inadequate model for

divinity. Everything that is distinctive about human

personhood, especially the ability of persons to initiate

change and to involve themselves in relationships with other

persons, is an expression, but a very inadequate expression

within the terms of limited physical existence, of the

divine personhood of God.

Our interaction with persons differs profoundly from our

interaction with things: a person can never be treated as

merely a means to an end. However, a moment’s reflection

reveals the extent to which we nevertheless “use” others to

fulfill our own needs. Emotionally and physically, we are

part of a network of giving and receiving, buying and

selling. Even the simplest monetary transaction like buying

a loaf of bread at the corner shop involves the purchase not

7 John Habgood, Being a Person: where faith and science meet, Hodder and

Stoughton, London, 1998, pp. 38-42.15

merely of an object but of the labour which went into

producing and distributing it. It is here that space opens

up to consider the degree of justice involved in our

transaction - but that is another story.

From the perspective of Classic Christianity, the God of the

bible is a God who always remains true to himself. We are

forbidden to transfer to our dealings with God the sort of

compromises and limitations of personhood which physical

existence appears to make almost inevitable as human persons

interact with one another8.

8 The point being made here does not depend on the adoption of a

philosophy of personalism, as represented e.g., by American pragmatism or

Maritain. It was Kant who said that we should always “act always to

treat humanity never only as a means but also as an end” in his second

formulation of the central moral imperative. John Macmurray in his

ground-breaking The Self as Agent (1957) rejected the assumption of Western

Philosophers from Descartes to Kant that philosophy had to start with

“The Self as Thinker”, but follows Kant (and Buber) in distinguishing

between impersonal abstract knowledge of others which treats them as

objects of study or as a means for our benefit, and personal knowledge

which involves interaction with the other as “You” (Buber’s “Thou”) and 16

Hence the God of the bible also requires of us mercy and

compassion for the alien, the orphan, the widow. Their

vulnerability to exploitation or neglect must not tempt us

to forget that they are persons, not merely things. To be

true to ourselves as persons, we have to acknowledge their

right to remain true to their own personhood without

becoming merely a means to our ends – or, worse still, a

as an agent. There is a useful discussion of Macmurray in Persons Divine

and Human (ed. Christoph Schwobel and Colin E. Gunton T & T Clark,

Edinburgh, 1991 in the Editorial Introduction and in the essay by John

Aves, “Persons in Relation”.

The God of the Bible and of the giants of the theological tradition

exemplifies radical personhood. We recognize his radical “otherness” not

in spite of his personhood, but precisely because he is truly personal

while we are only imperfectly and inadequately personal.

In the field of psychology, “narrative psychologists” such as Rom Harre

(The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood, Sage

Publications, London, 1998) and John McCleod, Narrative and Psychotherapy,

Sage Publications, London 1997) have attempted to explore the

implications of a vision of the person like Macmurray’s through the

prism of Wittgenstein ‘s Philosophical Investigations.

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useless object which can simply be discarded. Nor may we

seek to control or manipulate God to serve our own

advantage.

5. The doctrine of creation and the God of the bible

At this point I would like to return to creation, and more

narrowly to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

One of the preoccupations of Western theology since the

Enlightenment has been to make space for the autonomy and

integrity of the created order, and for the scientific

disciplines devoted to the study of it. This is a theme

which still remains prominent particularly in Colin Gunton’s

contributions to The Doctrine of Creation: Essays in Dogmatics, History

and Philosophy9.

The tradition looks rather different if we address this

9 The Doctrine of Creation, (ed) Colin E. Gunton, T & T Clark, Edinburgh,

1997.18

issue - as I suspect almost everyone did before the

Enlightenment – as a problem about the autonomy and

integrity, the personhood, of God.

During the first Christian centuries, the influence of Plato

on theology was substantial, and not always beneficial. One

unhelpful consequence of this was the tendency to view

creation hierarchically. The spiritual or rational world,

including the “forms”, is eternal. Though part of creation

(at least, in Philo and Origen, Augustine, et al.) the

spiritual/rational is nevertheless eternal. In this it is

contrasted with the material creation, which therefore

belongs to a lower order of being.

This hierarchical picture presents the spiritual and

rational as somewhat “closer” to God than the material. It

has the effect of filling in the ontological space between

the creator and his creation (Gunton, pp. 52 and 56). There

is something of a sliding scale between God and creature,

and this remains so even in Augustine even though the latter

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explicitly rules out the notion of an eternal creation of

the forms.

Hence, though the concept of “creation out of nothing” can

be found in Augustine, it does not play the kind of role

that it does in Aquinas.

Aquinas recognizes a profound difference between creature

and creator. God is ipse esse subsistens, he is the cause of his

own existence. Everything else exists by the creative power

of God, and also by reason of other causes which are

themselves caused, part of the created order.

Some argue that this makes the Father too remote from his

creation, and that God as actus purus can entertain no real

relation with his creatures. We may note however that Thomas

argues that such a relationship does exist in the Son, and by

virtue of God’s role as creator, so perhaps Colin Gunton’s

argument10 that Thomas fails to do justice to the

10 Op. cit. pp.68, 71 and 72. 20

involvement of the whole Trinity in creation would bear

further scrutiny. Gunton then argues that in Aquinas, due to

the inadequacy of the Trinitarian dimension, the “gap”

between creature and creator is too small, allowing the

creature insufficient “space” for its own autonomy and

integrity.

It is not easy to follow Gunton’s argument at this point,

but it is no doubt true that Thomas seems less concerned

with the autonomy of the created order, and more concerned

to “make space” for God. From his point of view, the

crucial thing is to establish the autonomy and integrity of God.

Aquinas believed that if creation involved uncreated matter,

then there would be another eternal reality standing

alongside God as a rival. He therefore allows the

possibility of rivalry to God emerging only with consent of

God: better the paradox of evil with the permission of God,

[word count 3982]21

than evil as a rival to God. Once God is seen as having a

rival, he ceases to be the personal God of the Bible.

Instead, he becomes one of a number of divinities

correlative to, and available for, the fulfillment of our

needs or desires.

Thus though the concepts in which Thomas’ apprehension of

God is expressed owe much to Aristotle, the radical autonomy

of the self-generating God of Aquinas is rooted in the

personal God and the classical understanding of the primal

narrative of the bible. In this, Thomas travels a path which

is followed, mutatis mutandis, by every major Christian

theologian over the centuries.

5. The mystical theology of the church

The conviction that there is the same unique apprehension of

God as personal at the heart of the Christian bible and

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Christian tradition is what fuels the creativity of

Christian theology. Theologians as they attempt to do

justice to this vision find themselves exploring a

bewildering variety of disciplines – not only the historical

study of the work of their predecessors, but the critical

study of the bible, and the philosophy, sociology and

psychology of their own and earlier ages. Many of these

disciplines can function effectively only in a university

setting. But none of these disciplines themselves actually

involve doing theology, engaging with the God at the heart of

Christian believing. Few universities today seem to want to

do this, and the church itself may now have to resource the

doing of theology.

On the other hand, the study of “confessional theology” in

denominational colleges may be equally irrelevant – or

worse. Much confusion arises when the faith basis of the

Evangelical Alliance, the Thirty Nine Articles or the

Summae of Aquinas are treated as the primal narrative of

Christianity. One merit of the traditional Anglican

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theological college is that it offers an opportunity to

study the doctrine of the creeds in the context of a

discipline of a common life framed by liturgical prayer, and

without other ideological commitments.

The vocation of students of theology, like that of all

Christians, is to seek to apprehend God. The recognition

that doctrine, the task of making sense of our relationship

with God, is rooted in a canonical reading of scripture in

the tradition of the Church is, I suggest, a helpful first

step in this pilgrimage.

Doing theology involves a progression from the surface

structures of the bible and the creeds to the deep structure of

the primal narrative, and finally to an engagement with the

deep logic of our faith, the “semiotic structure” where we

encounter the profound truth about the personal God at the

heart of living Christian faith.

Engagement with this God generates a disturbing sense of our

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own inadequacy, intellectual as well as moral. As Paul was

aware, we may try to apprehend, but as we do so we become

aware of the inadequacy, even the unhelpfulness, of our

striving to know and to master, as we are apprehended, known

and mastered, by the God who takes hold of us. This is

precisely why doctrine is best studied in the context of a

community which accepts the discipline of prayer.

The paradox of faith and works is as clearly evident in the

study of theology as elsewhere. The vision of God, in

traditional mystical theology, is to be sought through

purification and simplification of heart and mind. But in so

far as it is attained, it is also discovered to be a gift,

the mysterious experience of being filled with the love of

God and caught up into the divine life. The time has come to

return to an earlier tradition where no distinction was made

between theology and spirituality. All theology is mystical,

for theology is the business of bringing our minds into

subjection to God. We do so in the prayerful expectation

that the God we seek will come to meet us bearing the gift

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of his divine wisdom.

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