Scripture, Christian Canon, and Community: Rethinking Theological Interpretation Canonically

Abstract Traditional approaches that have dominated the landscape of biblical studies in recent centuries have directed the interpretive task to historical understandings of textual meaning. These approaches have informed interests regarding theology and a given biblical passage or book, so that scholarly treatments in recent decades have focused mostly on theology as something to be found behind or in that text. Although the biblical canon provides general boundaries and categories within which biblical scholarship has done its work, a theological understanding of Christian canon has had a limited role within the arena of biblical interpretation and, in particular, the theological interpretation of these biblical texts. This essay asserts that the notion of Christian canon has a substantive role in the theological interpretation of the Bible. The first part considers issues in what may be called the "hermeneutics" of Christian canon. The second part considers three ways that this theological notion of Christian canon defines the task of theological interpretation. First, the Christian canon creates a different literary and interpretive context for the interpretation of these individual biblical books—a context that provokes potential intertextual and intracanonical connections in addition to intertextual connections available within the original reception context(s). Second, Christian canon assumes the Christian faith community as the place where theological interpretation occurs. Third, the notion of Christian canon assumes that the objectives behind reading and interpreting the Bible in its ecclesial context includes how the faith community lives out her interpretations of biblical texts in faith and practice.