MetaCatholic

As expected, John Hobbins updates his blog with varied responses to his interblogutors (a neologism I expect I shall use again). A few random comments on some of those responses before moving to the nub indicated by this post’s title.

He picks up on Bob MacDonald’s point about the authority of scripture being tied to its power to transform, or in Bob’s term “to author” ways of living. It is one of those cases when etymological punning has a real point to it. In that context, I note that I’ve always read the theopneustos (inspired, or etymologically God-breathed) of 2 Tim 3:16 in the light of texts where God breathes life into things, as much as any concept of breathing out.

Despite the various options that Jim brings up in relation to the ongoing “What do we call it debate?”, I quite like First Testament for the Old Testament, while recognizing it’s unlikely to succeed, and I’d be tempted to partner it with Last Testament, to reflect the eschatological note of the New. Fat chance of that catching on!

But to the main point: I think I must have failed to express my view on the deutero-canonicals with sufficient clarity, since John misreads me. So, here it is for the sake of completeness:

• I note the classical Anglican position that makes them effectively a tertium quid, rather like Athanasius’ third category, and which quotes Jerome’s distinction between books to be read for “example of life and instruction of manners;” and those read to establish doctrine. This is similar to John’s proposal in acknowledging three categories.
• I find the particular distinction a little strange. Reading Esther, but not Wisdom, to establish doctrine, or taking Judith as an instruction of manners suggests a position as alien to the nature of the books under discussion as the classic Reformation distinction between moral and ceremonial laws. I am not sure that these kind of distinctions can be made in any case (shouldn’t good doctrine be about healthy living?) but I am sure they are distinctions foreign to the text.
• Nonetheless, I take from it the concept of a fuzzy edge to the Bible, and an acknowledgement of complexity in our reading, commentary and recognition of authority in a received canon. I extend that fuzzy edge, as I think John does, to passages like the woman taken in adultery, which have been received and read while being apparently dislocated texts. I extend it also to the different received versions and translations, and see no problem in Greek and Hebrew, or Dead Sea Scroll and Massoretic text, standing side by side in some kind of relationship that blurs the edge of the canon.
• So, like John, to give one example, I would expect to use Sirach to elucidate the Fourth Gospel. Put these texts side by side:

Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my fruits. For the memory of me is sweeter than honey, and the possession of me sweeter than the honeycomb. Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more. (Sirach 24:19-21, NRSV my emphasis)
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35 NRSV)

• I don’t know how to expound the second text doctrinally or spiritually without referring to the first. I’m not sure that this is to ascribe “derivative” (John’s term) authority to the deutero-canonicals. It seems to me that it is more than that, because in this case the canonically disputed text of Sirach has been caught up in the canonically undisputed text of John.

I think I would stick to my “fuzzy-edge” concept, which fits with John’s earlier distinction between core and periphery. In resisting a cut-and-dried canon we also resist a cut-and-dried authority, and perhaps that, in itself, gives more room for the authoring spirit to work within the living tradition which both transmits and takes shape from this core.