How to read the NT canon
"I suggest, Christians should learn to read the canon of the NT, not in search of an essential core or purified "canon within the canon"—not, in other words, within the frame of a single abstract principle—but in a living conversation with all the writings in all their diversity and divergence. Only in this way can they continue to speak"
Luke Timothy Johnson & T.C. Penner, The writings of the New Testament: An interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 613.
posted by Chris Tilling @ 10:12 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Johnson and Penner are dead wrong here: the NT canon derives its authority from the apostolic kerygma (which it preserves), and that kerygma *is* the canon within the canon. This modern notion of canon as a sort of superfluidized goop of meaning and authority, with no center anywhere, is at odds with the principle that gave rise to the NT canon in the first place.
NT scholarship needs to get back to Dodd!
Thanks, John, for your thoughts there. I hear what you are saying - a perspective I needed to be reminded of, actually. Thanks.
Post a Comment
<< Home