Are the Catholic Epistles a Canonically Significant Collection? A Status Quaestionis

Davids

Peter Davids has been a major contributor to the study of the CE. He has written major commentaries on James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter/Jude as well as numerous articles and chapters on these texts.

In an article considering how the CE provide a glimpse into the canonical formation of the Old and New Testaments, Davids reveals how he might read the CE as a collection in the context of the developing canon. The first sentence of his article outlines his understanding of canon:

When one uses the term canon . . . one usually means the collections of books originating among the Israelites . . . commonly referred to as the Old Testament, and the collections of books originating within the Jesus movement in the first century, commonly referred to as the New Testament. (2009: 403)

Thus Davids thinks of canon as a fixed list of texts or a standardized collection, rather than an authoritative rule or norm.

With this understanding of canon, he first looks back at the formation of the OT books through the lens of the CE and then reflects on the ways the CE shed light on the process of NT canonization. In his NT section, Davids considers David Nienhuis’s book, Not By Paul Alone, and Nienhuis’s thesis that the Epistle of James was composed in the late second century in the name of the Lord’s brother both in order to balance a misreading of Paul, and as a piece of intentional canon to introduce a CE collection. Davids finds Nienhuis’s thesis doubtful and offers a critique of his work. Davids concedes that

it is possible that Nienhuis is correct in arguing that James and Jude bracket the eventual order of the Catholic Epistles because they were both viewed as brothers of Jesus, which would explain the separation of Jude from 2 Peter. Furthermore, he may be correct that there was an attempt to get a ‘pillars’ collection of James, Peter, and John. . . . This, however, could indicate later reading of the letters in canonical context and so point to the history of hermeneutics rather than earlier composition. (2009: 412 n. 28, emphasis added)

For Davids, the central problem with Nienhuis’s observations is that they do not originate from historical exegesis of the text, but rather as hermeneutical observations derived from second-century reception history. Davids’s approach trends along the traditional historical-critical approach that relies on a historically reconstructed first-century context to play the primary role in determining the meaning of the text. Davids implicitly sets the historical composition of the text over against its later reception. As an example of this separation, Davids offers two potential explanations for the CE as a group based on historical probability:

two reasons for a collection of 7 [the CE] alongside the Pauline 12 or 13 and the gospels were likely that (1) it made the codices less bulky and (2) it allowed churches and rich individuals to purchase them in groups rather than having to come up with funds to purchase the whole NT (in whatever form it was at the time of purchase). (2009: 412 n. 28)

Though either of these situations may have played a role in the particular development of the CE as a collection, both seem historically reductionistic. Would the final form of Christian Scripture be shaped by such accidental concerns as how bulky a manuscript might become? What might this kind of pragmatism have done to the OT?

The strength of Davids’s approach is that he describes the individual stories of how each of the CE came into the canon, yet this is also a limitation because he does not move beyond this description. He concludes that the CE teach us that ‘the development of the canon was a messy process at best’ (2009: 415). This messy process really is the individual journey each of the seven letters took on their way into the NT canon list (which unfortunately overlooks the fact that most NT texts entered the canon as established collections). Davids notes that the CE

are windows into the state of the OT ‘canon’ in the first 50 to 100 years of church history. . . . They are also windows into the process of canonization of the NT, both in their references to the traditions and works that would eventually form the NT and in the reception that they themselves received. (2009: 416)

Clearly the window through which Davids looks is that of the historical development of a list of official books that would eventually be called canon in the early fourth century. Whereas further research into the individual histories of each of the seven letters of the CE is needed, the growth of the NT canon in collections of texts (e.g., Gospels, Pauline corpus) suggests exploring how the CE was included into the canon as a discrete collection—something Davids does not consider.

In summary, Davids works with a narrower view of canon as a fixed list, not an authoritative rule. He maintains a separation of first-century historical composition from second-century reception history, and follows the strategy of tracing the individual histories of each of the CE into the present NT canon. These three moves would likely characterize Davids’s approach if he were to pursue the question of the canonical significance of the CE collection in a fuller context.

Niebuhr

Among German scholars, the so-called ‘canonical approach’ has not been widely accepted. Except for a few Catholic scholars, the canonical context for interpreting Scripture has been overshadowed by more historical-critical concerns in Germany. A fact that leads Childs to lament in a footnote,

I find it both surprising and disheartening that a leading German New Testament scholar from Halle (the home of Tholuck, Kähler, and Schniewind!) could confidently assert that the emphasis on the exegetical function of the final form of the canonical New Testament text has been fully overcome by 250 years of historical critical research. (Childs 2008: 253 n. 2, with reference to Udo Schnelle)

Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr is an exception to this situation. Niebuhr has written extensively on the Letter of James and, more recently, has focused on the influence of the Christian canon on New Testament interpretation in general and the CE particularly. Whereas, like Davids, Niebuhr operates within the framework of historical criticism, his openness to the insights of reception history allow him to find more room to incorporate the insights of canon formation and reception into his findings. In two chapter-length contributions, Niebuhr offers an outline for his reading the CE in canonical context (Niebuhr 2003, 2009). Several insights surface in these two publications.

First, a controlling concern for Niebuhr is the ‘reception process’ itself. This process includes the reading, collecting, editing, and final canonizing of the texts in the NT. He accesses the ‘reception process’ through the lens of the readers. Yet, rather than defining the readers of the text in purely historical-critical terms, Niebuhr argues that ‘Not only the first readers . . . are to be understood as [the text’s] readers, in the sense of an interpretation that is focused on the reception process and its theological value.’ Thus alongside the first readers, the perspective of later readers sheds light on the reception process and theological significance of these texts. He continues, ‘The only access we have to those first readers is via the text. . . . That they did not remain the only readers is proved by the history of [the text’s] transmission and influence’ (2009: 51). Here the sheer fact of a later canon forces the insight that in addition to the first readers, subsequent readers found Scripture speaking a direct word to them and shed light on the reception process itself.

Focusing on readers as defined by the ‘reception process’ highlights the function of the New Testament as an authoritative rule, not just a fixed list of books. Niebuhr argues,

We want to restrict ourselves, in our contribution, to the realization of the shape of the canon as it stood holistically before the readers or copyists of the Bible and as it, in principle, still stands to this day. In this respect our approach differs from that of the description of the history of canon. (2003: 561, translations of this work are my own)

While Davids’s approach could be characterized as the description of the history of canon—the description of how individual texts came to be part of the NT canon—Niebuhr aims to strike a balance between historical description and theological reception. He is interested in the process of canonization, yet without reducing this process to merely giving an account of the individual trajectories each text followed into the canon. Rather, he views the text through the eyes of readers within the reception process itself, attending to how these texts functioned as a norming standard, not just how they became fixed in an authoritative list.

For Niebuhr, there are hermeneutically significant clues derived from this reception process. Traces left by these readers of reception history are discernable as ‘reading instructions’ in the final form of the text as suggested by the prescripts affixed to the NT letters themselves (see the similar idea in Trobisch 2000: 45-54). He argues that these

reading instructions [Leseanweisungen] that arise from the letter prescripts of the Pauline and the Catholic Epistles are more clear. The naming of authors allows [the letters’] ordering to be known by the recipients, which, as we have seen, is largely determined by the narrative representations [of the authors] in the Gospels and Acts. Moreover, the accompanying characterizations of the authors and the addressees in the letters, through a number of cross-references, are important for the coherent [zusammenhängende] reading of the New Testament letter collections. (2003: 575)

Here we find two further important elements in Niebuhr’s approach, which are dependent upon each other: (1) reading the CE in light of the narrative framework provided by the Gospels, and especially Acts, which in turn (2) draws together what Niebuhr calls ‘the continuity of personalities between canonical sections’ (die Personenkontinuität zwischen den Kanonteilen).

The naming of each of the authors of the CE via each letter’s prescript intentionally refers back to the narrative introduction and development of the same characters in the Gospels and Acts. And through these narratival connections ‘all information about the authors from the Gospels and Acts appears as guidelines for reading their letters. One of Acts’ decisive guidelines that arises from the readers of the canon is the apostles’ community with each other’ (2009: 51). In this way, the book of Acts serves as ‘a hinge’ for the entire NT canon: ‘It allows the inclusion of all apostolic writings into a single narrative context’ (2003: 583).

Furthermore, the cohesive narrative context created by reading the epistles through the canonical lens of Acts creates a kind of apostolic harmony. Niebuhr argues that the interactions between the apostles in Acts serve ‘as model cases to resolve conflicts among themselves and [serve] as models of unity’ (2003: 583). Even conflict between Paul and James is resolved by the narrative structure of Acts.

Readers of the canon learn that the conflict in Antioch could not permanently destroy the community of the Apostles from some references to Peter and James in Paul, but especially from the remaining apostolic epistles. There was no hint of a conflict between the apostles in them, not even in the Epistle of James. Instead, the letters of the apostles are now the protagonists themselves, together peacefully joining hands in the canon as in Gal 2:9. (2003: 574)

Thus, for Niebuhr, an outworking of focusing on the readers of the reception process is to follow traces of their ‘reading instructions’ left in the canon. Such guided reading leads to a narrative coherence of the entire NT marked especially by Acts. This narrative continuity leads to an ‘untarnished image of the apostolic community as it is pictured in the book of Acts. Conflicts between apostles, as they are seen in Paul’s letters, are in this way “canonically resolved”’ (2003: 584).

While concerned for a final canonical form that provides hermeneutical prompts for reading the NT, Niebuhr is clearly concerned for how such prompts developed in the canonized text by means of the historical reception process. For Niebuhr, history is key in building up an image of the (‘canonical’) reader within reception history. He accepts second-century evidence into the process of interpreting texts composed in the first century (unlike Davids), yet his emphasis upon the reception history of the audience of the NT remains meaningfully connected to historical sensibilities. Niebuhr finds canonically significant prompts for reading the CE as a canonical collection from the reception process in the history between composition and canonization, unlike Nienhuis and Wall.

Nienhuis and Wall

In their recent book, Reading the Epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude: The Shaping and Shape of a Canonical Collection, David Nienhuis and Robert Wall offer the first monograph-length argument for the canonical function of the CE collection. Rather than viewing the CE from a historical-critical point of view that understands the discontinuity and difference between the letters as a symptom of their historical and cultural points of origin, their work ‘inclines the angle of approach toward the CE differently, admitting into evidence new findings from the canonical period when these seven books were formed into a second collection of letters’ (Nienhuis and Wall 2013: 10).

They argue

that the canonical collection of four witnesses, James, Peter, John and Jude (‘the Pillars of Jerusalem’), be read together as the interpenetrating parts of a coherent theological whole. The historical process that formed them into a collection can also help guide the church’s present use of its sevenfold Epistle as Scripture for spiritual wisdom and moral guidance. (2013: 10)

This ‘historical process’, which helps ‘guide the church’s present use’ of Scripture, is comprised of the following convictions.

First, the point of canonization is hermeneutically more important than the point of composition. In contrast to the majority of modern approaches to the CE that look to the historical circumstances of composition for understanding their meaning, Nienhuis and Wall focus on the texts’ ‘formation and final form as a discrete canonical collection. We contend that this is their real point of origin as Scripture’ (2013: 9, emphasis original). And thus their ‘project places significant historical interest in the canonization of biblical texts (and not their composition) as their real “point of origin” as the church’s Scripture’ (2013: 11, emphasis original). It is at the point of canonization where the text ‘displays the aesthetic that is maximally effective for understanding the authorized roles of a biblical canon’ (2013: 12).

Second, in highlighting the moment of canonization over composition, Nienhuis and Wall offer Nicholas Wolterstorff’s concept of ‘aesthetic excellence’ as shorthand for understanding this important move. Whereas Wolterstorff argues that people are drawn to art that inspires and is recognizably excellent, Nienhuis and Wall see the same characteristics as true of the canon in three specific ways. (1) The early church ‘discerned when the Bible had become shaped into that particular literary form which would more effectively enable the Spirit to use it in performing those religious roles that form a holy people who know and serve God’ (2013: 15). The usefulness of the text in forming a community of faith is the criterion for ‘excellence’ here. Therefore, they note that the ‘church’s decisions . . . were rational and based upon solid evidence of a text’s spiritual utility. . . . Scripture is a beautiful thing because it performs its public roles well’ (2013: 15). (2) The early church was able to recognize and receive texts into the canon because ‘there are literary properties inherent to the biblical canon that might naturally draw readers to its wisdom or into its narrative world as a story of higher quality’ (2013: 15). The canon is excellent because it bears superior literary and artistic qualities that commend it to the church. Especially as the diversity of individually composed texts now stand together in a coherent whole, the church receives Scripture as something ‘aesthetically excellent’ and narratively whole. (3) Nienhuis and Wall argue that,

Like the artist who changes the wording of a poem or a line of a panting because it makes the poem better or the painting’s image more arresting, the indwelling Spirit forms a community’s capacity to recognize which particular bits and what form are necessary in constructing a single biblical canon that is most effective in accomplishing its holy purposes. (2013: 16)

This ‘aesthetic excellence’ entails both a shift away from authorial intent, and from Niebuhr’s audience of reception history, to the believing community’s use of the text as the moment of authorization. Whereas Niebuhr’s readers of the reception process are historically constructed and derive from within the space between composition and canonization, the readers for Nienhuis and Wall are any believing community that receives and is shaped by the text. Because it is the moment at which the church recognizes the biblical canon that these texts function as Scripture, it is ultimately use that is determinative of the text’s ‘aesthetic excellence’ and, therefore, its authority.

Using the idea of ‘aesthetic excellence’ allows Nienhuis and Wall to suggest another important element in their approach. They note ‘Scripture’s formation into a textual analogue of the apostolic Rule of Faith’ (2013: 13, emphasis original). From Tertullian’s version of the rule of faith, Nienhuis and Wall isolate five key theological elements: God the creator, Christ Jesus the redeemer, the community of the Spirit, Christian discipleship, and consummation and new creation (see 2013: 72-73). Because these loci become key theological convictions of the church, Nienhuis and Wall read them has hermeneutical prompts that guide a canonical reading of the CE. Rather than seeing these later theological developments as disconnected and irrelevant to the CE, they actually shape the theological coherence of the CE (see Lockett 2015 for fuller assessment). Nienhuis and Wall read each of the CE through the theological prism of these five theological loci. They use the rule of faith as a maximal rather than minimal tool for theological reflection, a point to which I will return below.

Finally, as implied in the quotations above, the church’s reception and use of the text is key in their canonical approach.

Our version of the canonical approach is a species of theological interpretation that is vitally interested in a careful reconstruction of the canonical process as a deep reservoir of important interpretive clues for using Scripture to inform the witness and form the faith of today’s church. The church’s discernment of the Spirit’s leading role in the production of the biblical canon is not predicated on the identity of a text’s author but on its effect in forming a congregation that is wise for salvation and mature for good works. (2013: 12)

Again, it is the process of canonization that provides ecclesial prompts and hermeneutical guidance for the church’s use of the text—a process that becomes the focus of exegesis for Nienhuis and Wall.

In summary, like Niebuhr, Nienhuis and Wall refuse to bracket out second-century reception history from reading the CE. They insist, however, that the point of canonization is hermeneutically more important than the moment of historical composition. It is as the believing community recognizes a text’s ‘aesthetic excellence’ and in turn uses that text to shape the community’s beliefs and morals that the final form of the text finds its authority. Here we see how Nienhuis and Wall move beyond Niebuhr’s notion of readers constructed via reception history. Rather than reception readers, it is the theological apparatus of the rule of faith that is the definitive hermeneutical guide. Because the church’s reception plays such a key role in the canonical approach they are able to use Tertullian’s version of the rule of faith as a constructive template for discovering the theological coherence of the CE.

Newman

At the international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in St. Andrews, Carey C. Newman offered his own version of reading the CE as a canonical collection. His contribution focuses on isolating a particular ‘apostolic theology’ shared across the CE, which in turn indicates how the collection, read along with Acts, functioned as a second collection of canonical letters alongside of the Pauline collection.

First, Newman argues that there are particular ‘places where the CE make coded references to an identifiable and accepted summary of apostolic theology’, namely to ‘an already established, known, and accepted apostolic teaching’ (Newman 2013). James refers to the ‘word of truth’ (1:18), 1 Peter speaks of the ‘living and abiding word of God’ (1:23), ‘the word which was preached to you’ (1:24), ‘the gospel’ (4:17), the ‘true grace’ (5:12), and 1 John contains repeated references to ‘the truth’ (1:6, 8; 2:4, 21; 3:18, 19), all of which, for Newman, point to a common apostolic teaching. Second John 4 also refers to ‘the truth’ and warns those who do not abide ‘in the teaching of Christ’ (2 John 9). Newman understands these as references to the ‘tradition about Christ, handed down by the apostles, that is foundational for constituting the community of the faithful (2 John 10). This is the apostolic teaching that has been taught “from the very beginning” (2 John 5) and which must be confessed by the church’ (2013). Noting as well the shared precious ‘faith’ in 2 Peter 1:1 and Jude’s command to ‘contend for the faith’, Newman concludes: ‘That such apostolic teaching could be invoked without further commentary demonstrates the likelihood that, early on, this teaching had (i) reached some sort of recognizable critical mass and (ii) obtained something of a common acceptance’ (2013).

Newman discovers a second form of evidence in the references to ‘creedal/hymnic/confessional formulations fossilized in the CE themselves’ (2013). Here he is careful to head off a number of unhelpful trajectories in analyzing the CE with respect to these underlying elements. ‘The central issues’, Newman argues,

are not whether this or that text is or is not a creedal fragment; how to determine where the fragment starts or stops; who originally penned the confession; whether the polarity of the original, so far as it can be recovered, is being reversed th[r]ough subsequent incorporation; whether the various stages of a specific confession’s development and life setting can be determined; or, even, whether the preformed tradition is best labeled confession, creed or hymn. . . . [Rather, the] primary concern here is how these numerous creeds, hymns and confessions functioned in the CE and, as a theological trope, point to the canonical role of the CE. (2013)

1 John records numerous positive and negative commands to confess ‘Jesus as the Christ’, that Christ has ‘come in the flesh’, and that ‘Jesus is the Son of God’ (1:22, 23; 4:2, 15; 5:1, 5 and 2 John 7). Whereas this basic confession about Christ may be understood narrowly as referring to the incarnation of Jesus, Newman argues for a more expansive function for these confessions. He notes that

an alternative—and preferable—way to understand these confessions is as short hand for the full story of Jesus (incarnation, life, death, exaltation). It is often assumed that the short confessions ‘Jesus is the Christ’ and ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ over time grew longer and more elaborate. However, it might well be that just the opposite is the case: ‘Jesus is the Christ’ is an intentional (and later) condensation of a longer narrative. However one decides the issue, these short confessions, when read in light of the sermons in Acts (and other confessions in the CE as well), do invoke the larger narrative of Jesus and, most importantly, the cross and resurrection. (2013)

Further, Newman highlights the opening of 1 Peter where blessing is pronounced ‘through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1:3), and climatically, in 1 Peter 3:18-22 where believers are called to hope in the victory of Christ over all spiritual power as the new narrative in which they must endure suffering. Here again, for Newman, is clear evidence of commonly accepted apostolic theology. Drawing from this evidence he argues that these creedal elements in the CE are ‘distillations of commonly accepted apostolic teaching’, which ‘are the best resource for unpacking the theological, communal, and behavioral implications of the earliest shared set of convictions in the earliest church’. And as such, these elements ‘lay enormous and scandalous stress upon the cross and resurrection of Jesus as the topical sequence for a story world’ and thus ‘are thus the best index for determining the critical mass of an common apostolic theology’ especially ‘for . . . showing how the CE collectively gave literary witness to a fundamental set of claims whose reassertion was central to the flourishing of earliest Christianity’ (2013, emphasis original).

In a final section Newman argues for the particular ways in which each of the seven letters is joined together in how they begin and end, especially through the repeated terms ‘truth’ and/or ‘faith.’ He argues that ‘each of seven letters rhetorically bind their beginnings and endings together under the catholic faith they reprise’ (2013). In attempting to demonstrate the overarching literary connection of the seven CE and the hermeneutical function of the Letter of James, Newman attempts to show how the participle διακρινομένους in Jude 22 should be translated ‘doubt’ because of the guiding influence of the use of the same term in James 1:6. In other words, he argues that ‘the tradition works to clarify the meaning of the [διακρινομένους], bringing it in line with James 1:6’, and ‘thereby explicitly linking at the literary level the beginning and ending of the collection of the epistoloi katholikai’ (2013). This move is rather unconvincing.

Newman’s contribution, similar to Nienhuis and Wall in allowing for the influence of reception history, offers two specific avenues into discovering the degree of theological coherence and unity in the CE by means of isolating elements of received ‘apostolic theology’ and creedal elements in the texts themselves. These elements, which are embedded in the literature itself, are stronger resources for discovering the canonical shape and function of the CE than attempting to isolate a canonical process behind the text, or limiting the canonical force of the CE to its reception by later, multiple communities of believers. Newman’s approach is agreeable with Niebuhr’s move to identify the reception of the text by early readers within this process and perhaps gives further textual tools to discover more about this process. Furthermore, a common element shared by Niebuhr, Nienhuis and Wall, and Newman is the key role of Acts, which functions as a narrative framework within which the CE are understood. As will be apparent, the role of Acts is similarly important even in Childs’s distinct approach, to which we now turn.

Childs

Brevard Childs has been the most prolific and vocal proponent of reading the Old and New Testaments in canonical context. However, Childs never explicitly argued for reading the CE as a canonically significant collection. Even more, Nienhuis and Wall think that Childs denied the possibility of such a reading. Considering whether the final form of the CE indicates intentional shaping as a collection, Nienhuis insists that ‘Childs himself doesn’t think so’ (Nienhuis 2007: 8 n. 2). And now Nienhuis and Wall together argue that, ‘Even Brevard Childs, whose work has set the standard for canonical approaches to the NT, saw no compelling reason to read the [CE] together as a singular canonical witness’ (Nienhuis and Wall 2013: 5).

As evidence, they appeal to Childs’s brief discussion of the CE in his New Testament as Canon. In this two-page précis, Childs notes in ‘distinction from the collection of the four Gospels and the epistles of Paul . . . there was a third collection of New Testament writings which acquired the collective terminology of the “catholic epistles”’. Specifically discussing the function of the term ‘catholic epistles’, Childs notes that there is ‘general agreement that the term was initially a formal one designating a letter addressed to a general or wide circle of readers’ (Childs 1984: 494-95). In a final paragraph Childs concludes,

In sum, the term remains a useful one to designate a collection of New Testament writings which is distinct from the Gospels and the Pauline corpus. It is neither a precise canonical nor a modern genre classification. Its usage has no great theological significance other than to reflect the church’s growing concern that the New Testament letters be understood as universal, even when, in their original form they often carry a specific addressee (cf. II and III John). (Childs 1984: 495, emphasis added)

Nienhuis and Wall conclude from this final paragraph that Childs did not regard the discrete collection of seven letters as canonically significant. However, this is a misreading of Childs’s central point.

When Childs argues that ‘it is neither a precise canonical nor a modern genre classification’, the pronoun ‘it’ refers back to ‘the term’ in the first sentence: ‘the term remains a useful one to designate a collection’. Childs’s entire discussion focuses on the term ‘catholic epistles’ (καθαλικαὶ ἐπιστολαί). He concludes that the title ‘catholic epistles’ does designate a collection of New Testament writings, yet, because of its range of meaning, the term is not a precise classification of the ‘catholic’ (=canonical) status of these particular letters. Thus, it is the term itself (‘catholic epistles’) that fails to bear canonical weight. Childs was concerned with the term’s later use; namely, that the CE not be considered somehow more canonical than Paul’s letters by Western Catholic interpreters.

This is all the more clear when considering the paragraph immediately preceding the one quoted above. This paragraph opens with a few brief comments regarding the internal ordering of the seven letters: though the order varies some, the arrangement of James, Peter, John, Jude appears in Eusebius, Cyril, and Athanasius, which is then fixed in the Vulgate by Jerome. The second half of the paragraph considers the importance of the placement of this ‘collection’ within the NT canon. Childs notes that

Of perhaps more significance was the canonical ordering of the catholic epistles. The order which placed them immediately after the book of Acts was very ancient. Tischendorff and also Westcott and Hort attempted to restore this order in their editions of the Greek New Testament. However, the influence of Jerome through the Vulgate has been dominant; there the catholic epistles follow the Pauline. (1984: 495)

Why would Childs contend in one paragraph that the collection’s placement within the NT canon is of superior significance to their internal ordering only to conclude in the following paragraph that such a collection of letters has no precise canonical significance? His claim is that the term ‘catholic epistles’ is an imprecise label for an otherwise canonically significant group of letters. Because the term ‘catholic’ epistles took on the notion of ‘canonical’ (of which there is an example in the Western tradition), Childs seems most concerned to deny that such a title elevated the canonical importance of these letters over those of Paul. Though Childs never fully develops an argument for viewing the CE as a canonically significant collection, this passage certainly does not deny he thought such a reading was possible.

Childs’s voice, however, is not completely silent on the canonical context of the CE. Throughout his final book, The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul, he refers to the sub-corpora of the NT as the Gospels, Pauline corpus and the CE, and remarks, ‘With the growing development of a written New Testament, the Pauline letters took their place as a fixed corpus along with the other literary units: Gospels, Acts, General Epistles, and Revelation’ (2008: 7). Clearly Childs was open to reading the CE as a canonical collection alongside the canonical collection of Paul’s letters. With this appreciation of Childs’s project in mind, what follows are a few observations from Childs that are suggestive for the present survey.

First, Childs’s view of canon is broader than Davids’s. Along with Nienhuis and Wall, Childs argues that

Canon is not just a listing of received books, but involves the process by which the [texts] were received, collected, transmitted, and shaped by the early apostolic church. . . . The recognition of this context . . . provides a hermeneutical guide toward an understanding of the whole corpus as Scripture. (Childs 2008: 253-54)

But here is where Childs parts ways with Nienhuis and Wall. Rather than insisting canonical interpretation is most concerned with the point of canonization at the expense of historical composition, Childs insists that canon refers to

the process by which the collection arose which led up to its final stage of literary and textual stabilization, that is, canonization proper. Emphasis was placed on the process to demonstrate that the concept of canon was not a late, ecclesiastical ordering which was basically foreign to the material itself, but that canon-consciousness lay deep within the formation of the literature. The term also serves to focus attention on the theological forces at work in its composition . . . [The] modern theological function of canon lies in the literature itself as it has been treasured, transmitted and transformed. (2002: 39-40)

While focusing on the canonical context for theological insight, Childs never regards the historical setting as irrelevant and thus would not emphasize canonization at the expense of composition—the two belong together.

Furthermore, Childs forcefully argues that

the function of canon is to privilege a particular reading of the biblical text, which the tradents of the evangelical tradition designated as the apostolic witness. This move thereby distinguished the form of the apostolic testimony from all later church tradition . . . [However, the] process of canonization did not remove the need for continuing interpretation, but it established a canonical context within which the ongoing exegetical activity functioned. (2008: 255)

Rather than the church’s use of the text at multiple later moments directed by the Spirit, he insists on an authoritative moment within the tradition as fixed for later readers. Childs himself notes the overall difference in approach: ‘I find Wall’s appropriation of James Sanders’s categories of “canonical criticism” . . . unhelpful, and that they reflect a very different understanding of the history of the New Testament canonization and its modern theological appropriation’ (2008: 222).

Another area of clear contrast between Childs and Newman, Nienhuis and Wall is the function of the rule of faith. As noted above, Nienhuis and Wall (along with Newman, though not explicitly mentioned above) argue for the maximal use of the rule of faith as a template for theological coherence in the CE. Though the canonical shaping did function like a rule of faith, Childs registers the problem with using the rule in such a maximalist way. Originally, Childs notes, the rule of faith had a much more discrete function: ‘It was a negative criterion that set certain parameters within which the material functioned, but largely left to exegesis the positive role of interpretation within the larger construal’ (2002: 41). Mark Elliott notes a central problem with this kind of over-emphasis on the rule of faith:

Those who think that ‘theological interpretation’ is salutary for any profitable reading of the Bible often make reference to Irenaeus and other patristic exegetes as employing a ‘rule of faith’. However, Irenaeus was in fact more concerned that texts did not get distorted by heretical leanings leading to a heavy ideological ‘spin’ than he was suggesting, positively, that scripture needed to be understood in terms of a creedal statement. In other words, any rule was used as a ‘shield’, not a ‘sword’. The term ‘regula fidei’ as such does not appear in Irenaeus, whose motto might more have been: let the scriptures speak for themselves. (Elliott 2012: 6-7)

The rule of faith is important for a canonical approach to the NT, but the line of differentiation between approaches is whether the rule forms the outer boundaries of canonical interpretation (maximally extending the text’s theological meaning) or the nonnegotiable center (focusing on the clear subject matter of the text).

Niebuhr, Nienhuis, Wall, and Childs emphasize the role of Acts as a key narrative guide for reading both the Pauline and CE letter collections in canonical context. The canonical function of Acts, more than anything else, suggests both Childs’s approval of the canonical function of the CE and a common element in all the approaches, except Davids’s. Childs notes that ‘at the beginning of the second century . . . the book of Acts served to establish the legitimacy of the Pauline interpretation of the gospel, along with the other apostles, as the truthful apostolic witness to the crucified and resurrected . . . Lord’ (Childs 2008: 226, emphasis added). Following Jens Schröter, Childs rejects Harnack’s view that Acts was part of the church’s political agenda at the end of the second century ‘to shape its traditions toward the goal of early Catholicism’. Rather, appreciating the Wirkungsgeschichte of Acts, ‘the Gospels and the Pauline letter corpus present two simultaneous stages of the development of the New Testament canon independently of each other, and each acknowledged early as authoritative’ (Childs 2008: 230). Thus, postulating a sharp conflict between Jewish and Gentile missionary movements is unnecessary. Furthermore,

none of the early Church Fathers assigned Acts the role of buttressing the authority of Paul that had long since been accepted. Rather, the expansion of Pauline tradition to all the apostles allows a combination of the Lukan Pauline traditions with the substantive contents of Acts to occur without a sense of undue friction. (2008: 230-31; see also Schröter 2013: 273-304)

The latter conclusion cannot be overstated. Rather than quelling a conflict between apostolic voices regarding the gospel, Acts endorses the equally authoritative witnesses of both canonical epistle collections without a sense of friction (Nienhuis and Wall, grounded upon a different set of concerns, likewise reject such open apostolic conflict; 2013: 61, 64, 66).

For Childs, Acts presented

the apostles as the legitimate guardians of the Jesus traditions, strengthened by the connection with the catholic letters of Peter, James, and John, and the portrait of Paul in Acts as in agreement with that of the letters. This orientation toward legitimating the apostolic proclamation is thus constitutive for an understanding of the New Testament canon . . . (Childs 2008: 231)

Thus, the canonical function of Acts draws attention to the existing harmony between the apostles and draws together the letter collections of the NT.

Whereas the approach of Nienhuis and Wall is similar to that of Childs, especially with respect to the hermeneutical significance of canon, it is Childs and, to a large degree, Niebuhr and Newman, who strikes a more satisfying balance between history and theology. Nienhuis and Wall note that their version of the ‘canonical approach presumes that biblical theology is a theological rather than historical enterprise . . . it is . . . religiously formative more than intellectually formative’ (2013: 63 n. 33). By contrast, Childs’s focus on the product of canonization and Niebuhr’s readers constructed from within the reception process have potential to account for the complexity of the historical and theological processes involved in the movement from composition to canonization. Newman’s emphasis on a discernable ‘apostolic theology’ and creedal fragments embedded in the text constitute fruitful areas of exploration of the text itself, which may, in turn, indicate the coherence and canonical function of the CE. Furthermore, Childs’s understanding of how the rule of faith functions as a negative criterion setting parameters against heretical innovation stands as a needed caution.