gary@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (gary w buchholz) (10/22/85)
"Here is what we now know. We are a community of bemused acolytes
to Metaphor. We are celebrants of Misreading and inheritors of
indecipherable Scripture. Our commentary is devoted yet doubled,
Writing. We write the already written poems we read. We write
the history we make, the selves we are, and the criticism we
publish. To produce, to write, we promote discontinuity. Mediums
of metaphor and madness, we are not responsible, except for our
will to power over texts and for our presumption in writing. That
we justify the Text, Tradition, and Society in our work is not to
be misunderstood as acceptance of responsibility. To make such a
byproduct the necessary precondition of critical production is to
put late before early and thereby affirm, once more and inescapably,
the madness of metaphor......
(appropriately continued at end of this
posting.... )
I'd like to thank Jeffrey Gillette for his reply/explication/criticism
to my posting "Hunting Phantasma..." regarding the search for doctrinal
Truth in the Christian tradition.
Its obvious that Jeffrey and I are reading the same books. My posting
drew heavily on a newly purchased book "The New Testament as Canon" by
Brevard Childs of the Divinity School at Yale. Jeffs reply to me drew
heavily on that work also.
I've been following this debate between the "canon critics" and the
historical school for about two years now. Canon Criticism was
inaugurated into the academic world back in 1979 with the publication
of Childs Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. I had the
fortune/misfortune of using this text for class several years ago. It
was difficult reading for one whose prior education was steeped in
historical-critical method (since corrected) as Childs challenges some
very basic assumptions that historical-critical methodology takes as
"givens".
The prime exemplar of the most sustained criticism of Childs and the
Canonical approach is found in the person of James Barr. Barrs initial
reaction was favourable on the basis of Childs Biblical Theology in
Crisis(1970) with some reservations about the "absolutization of the
canon as an exegetical principle". Criticism appeared in JTS(Journal
of Theological Studies) in 1974; Journal of Religion (1975) and
JSOT(Journal for the Study of the Old Testament).
More recently, Barr published Holy Scripture: Canon Authority Criticism
(1983) in which he devotes almost half the book to the explication and
criticism of the "canonical approach". This "general" criticism is
followed by a 40 page appendix where Barr takes Childs (et al) to task on
a number of specific technical points. The judgement of Barr on Childs
upon reading Introduction to the OT as Scripture "...was to convince me
that the program of canonical criticism was essentially confused and
self-contradictory in its conceptual formulation" (Scripture.. p132).
Barr then goes on for 40 pages to show how this is the case.
Childs continues to refine his methodology and find new applications.
Witness is the most recent The New Testament as Canon (1985) which
Jeffrey (obviously) and I have just read. This will of course provide
fresh "meat" for further criticism from the historical school.
We'll leave the traditional historical school (Barr et al) and the new
Canon Critics (Childs et al as the "deja vu" or recussitation of the
Biblical Theology Movement- (obituary filed in 1960)) to fight it out.
In my estimation, they have not the proper tools whereby the whole
question may be eliminated and this "elimination" to the point of
dissolution I take to be the only proper answer.
A proper resolution can only come from "outside" the (religious /
theological / biblical) tradition. The "answer" to Barr is the
Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas whereby Barrs valorization of
Church history will be eliminated. The "answer" to Childs is Secular
Literary Criticism in the form of the obituary of "New Criticism" which
shadows Childs canonical approach. "New Criticism" and "Canonical
methodology" are one and the same - Childs writes NTAC with a corpse on
his back.
The first sustained critique I have found of Childs from a specifically
secular literary critical perspective is John Bartons Reading the Old
Testament: Method in Biblical Study. Barton sets Childs methodology in
the wider literary critical tradition showing how canonical methodology
can be equated with a 1940-50s movement called "New Criticism". Barton
then goes on to rehearse the eventual downfall of this movement and so
also, by association, the expected downfall of Canon Criticism. To
paraphrase Barton.... When Childs discovers that his *theological*
enterprise is in the end purely literary he will find himself in the
company of some strange bedfellows indeed - most notably, the Yale
School of Deconstruction and the Post-modern A/theology of Mark Taylor
and his following in AAR(American Academy of Religion).
I'm sure all this is of no interest to the "believers" in this file
whose faith is secure in their obliviousness to any and all theological
questions. So here is where I will stop having outlined the basic contours
of this academic debate. If Jeff is willing to take up the case for
Childs (which he says he finds convincing) then I would be most happy
continue this at a more technical level.
For now, I'd like to formulate an answer to the criticism to Best, Dunn,
Koester et al given by Childs (in NTAC) cited by Jeff in his last
posting.
> Subject: Re: Hunting Phantasma in the Christian Tradition
> Recently Brevard Childs of Yale has registered two very powerful (to my
> mind at least) criticisms of the Dunn / Best view of Scripture.
> First, Childs argues that Best wants to anchor the meaning of the
> text too firmly in a "historicist reading" - that the meaning of a
> parable is what Jesus meant when he told it, or what the Evangelist
> meant when he wrote it down. In fact, the many levels of material
> in the text (e.g. what Jesus said, what the early Church passed on,
> what the Evangelist wrote down, what latter editors may have
> reworked) shows the church involved in the exact opposite of the
> "freezing" process. The process of the canon is a process by which
> the believing community attempted to "loosen the text from any one
> given historical setting, and to transcend the original addressee",
> while still remaining faithful to the fact that the Word of God came
> in time and history.
I think that we are talking about two slightly different things. The
redaction of the gospels is one thing and the formation of the canon is
another. I do not think that Childs is historically correct when he
gives this reason for the formation of the canon. I have the standard
two volume collection of apocrypha which, as background, cites all
relevant extant ancient documents pertaining to canonical selection.
There is not a single (extant) ancient author that can give a "reason"
for the the specific contents of the canon. As you know, there were a
number of different canonical lists that do not agree among themselves.
Canon only becomes officially defined and institutionally sanctioned in
about 400 AD.
So, Childs is being true to his methodology. That is, history is
important but irrelevant. On this I can only say that Childs assertion
that the reason for the canon was to "loosen the text from any one
given historical setting, and to transcend the original addressee..."
is a flight of the imagination reading back into history a legitimation
for his own approach. I suppose, that history is "important" for
legitimation but becomes "irrelevant" when one can find no (historical)
"facts" to back it up.
Koester et al (the historical school) for whom history is important and
not irrelevant might want to say (historically) that the "reason" for
the institution of the canon (authoritative books) in the Roman Empire now
a Christian state with an officially sanctioned religion was for the
political purpose to quell diversity within the empire.
In other words, the reality would be that the canon far from being a
positive enterprise of "transcending" and "loosening" on the part of the
church may just be the opposite. Not an "transcending" and "loosening"
but rather a return to the primitive apostolic witness of the 1st
century church on the part of the church (now construed as
socio-political entity) in the face of intolerable diversity (esp the
Marconite church which *already* had a "canon").
One speaks quite rightly when one points to the 4th century as the time
that the canon was "closed". And this would imply just the opposite of
what Childs asserts as the "history" behind canon formation.
This brings us to the question of redaction. Childs would be quite
right that the affect of redaction would be to "loosen" the text from
its historical setting. But when one "removes" the text from history
then what do we have ?
In fact, the context for interpretation/exegesis for Childs is NOT
history nor is it the authors intention. The context for
interpretation is the Canon itself as text among texts. Here is where
Childs falls into the hands of the secular literary critics and the
successors to "New Criticism".
"New Criticism" takes the text to be an authorless, ahistorical,
autonomous self-contained self-referential entity. The text and the
things it relates are not be judged by a correspondence theory of
reality. The text is not a copy of the real world, the text is a world
complete and autonomous in itself.
The above is Childs approach in secular terms. Canon as context not
history. Correspondence to history is "irrelevant". What takes center
stage now is inter-textual coherence. It is Rabbinic Midrash reborn in
Christian terms.
We are now on our way to true "alchemy". We exegete "worlds" (literary
not historical) by the juxtaposition of texts (history is irrelevant).
In canonical juxtaposition we create(alchemize) a meaning that no
author/redactor of the text ever had. In gospel harmony we create a
5'th gospel that was never written. This literary "alchemy" of textual
and inter-textual weaving is limitless. The only constraint is
imagination.
Phantasms are conjured from the texts in the style of a Christian
Midrash. Specters appear at every point where text meets text, these
are primal cites of canonical conjuring. Exegesis becomes literary
legerdemain and the historical and literary worlds become confused.
Believers - Watch out ! Watch out ! - or you'll get "slimed".
Who you gonna call ???
( quote continued from above....
...Carnivalesque, our criticism should be entertaining and colorful:
we need haunted houses, rollercoaster rides, distended balloons,
seductive come-ons and promising gambles. To hustle is more
compelling and more captivating than to pester."
-Deconstructive Criticism: An
Advanced Introduction. p 267
Vincent Leitch
Gary (toasting a marshmellow in
"honor" of Brevard Childs)