Sep 10
Canonical Writing as Sacramental Hearing
Debates about canon and canonicity continue and turn into one on the place of Scripture. John Hobbins lists his series in the left (bottom) sidebar of Ancient Hebrew Poetry. Many of my responses to John can be found (in reverse order) through this link. Both of us refer to other blogs and resources, though John’s series is far more exhaustive. Now Kevin Edgecomb has provoked a new response from John, and some of the conversation is continuing in the comments on John’s post.
Kevin’s point that there is a difference in emphasis between referring to canonical books and a canon of books is well-taken. The term canon does shift from the “rule of faith” to the collection of books, but exactly when is hard to tell. Kevin claims that McDonald locates it in 1768 with David Ruhnken, but this is not quite accurate. What McDonald actually says is:
In an annual Easter letter of 367 C.E. … Athanasius made use of the verbal form kanonizomenōn (”canonized”) in reference to a collection of sacred literature that he wanted to distinguish from a collection of apocryphal writings commonly read in the churches of Egypt and elsewhere. This is the earliest use of kanōn for a collection or listing of the church’s Scriptures.
The word canon was not regularly used in reference to a closed collection of writings until David Ruhnken used it this way in 1768.1
The point is that while there were rare precedents for the later regular use, the emphasis was on the books the church read as both exercising a salvific function (in the view of Athanasius) and being in accord with Christian life, faith and practice. The regular emergence of applying the term “canon” to a set collection is in my view less important for how scripture was and is treated than first the binding of this set collection between fixed covers, and then the making of that set collection easily available, so that “the Scriptures” (the holy writings) irrespective of whether the word “canon” is used, comes to both be replaced by and to mean “the Bible” (the holy book). It is the existence of scripture as a book, a particular sort of artefact, that not only allows false oppositions to be made between scripture and tradition, but leads some to believe that there is no holy tradition, because there is (in their mistaken view) immediate access to what lies behind it.
At the heart of John’s response lies this affirmation:
the Church is a creation of the Word proclaimed in its midst, and the Word proclaimed in its midst is identical to the scripture read when the Church assembles and after which, in many traditions, the words “This is the word of the Lord” are pronounced. (his emphasis)
Now there are ways of construing that emphasized word “identical” that I can agree with, and ways in which I couldn’t, in the same way that there are ways I can both agree and disagree with a statement like “the bread of the Eucharist is identical to the Body of Christ.” Before I say more about this sacramental parallel, however, I want to note Kevin’s most recent response:
So, while the biblical books have now become the primary literary expression within the Canon of Faith, they are only a part of that wider entity, and not exclusively its defining element. That lies with God among the people and in the whole, organic, holistic, inexplicable, inexhausible Canon of Faith, often referred to among my Orthodox folk as Tradition. It is God who gives faith, which is strengthened by all the parts of that Tradition, the Canon of Faith, of which the Bible is one glorious luminary.
There are two problems with that, I think. One is the way in which, as John points out, Scripture functions also in Orthodox churches in the Divine Liturgy. Its presence in the liturgy shows the church revering it and attending to it in ways no other writings are attended to. The second problem, which I think myself (as a Western Rite Christian influenced by the Reformation) is a problem for Orthodoxy. The conflation of the “rule of faith” with Holy Tradition, and the locating of Scripture as simply one (significant) part of Holy Tradition, when taken together lead to difficulties in hearing the Word of God as the word that can address the church ab extra, summoning, judging transforming and reforming.
But enough of being negative. I am tentatively beginning to explore whether some of these apparent opposites might be reconciled in considering scripture as sacrament. Most of this is not exactly thought through, but more like ideas to which I would like to return and explore more fully.
I find helpful the idea (which I think is Schillebeeckx’s – though I may use it differently) that Christ is the primordial sacrament. It is in Christ that the divine is fully present to us in the human, and the human is transformed into the divine. The church celebrates sacraments, and understands herself sacramentally, because of Christ in his incarnation and resurrection. From this bare summary I would suggest the following brief theses about scripture.
- The nature of scripture as human words is essential to their ability to convey divine words. It is understanding their full humanity as best we can that we will most fully be able to hear the divine Word.
- Scripture is primarily heard, not read, because the sacrament conveyed is hearing the Word of the Lord addressing humanity, ourselves as object, and not ourselves as subject discovering the Word of the Lord in a book.
- As Christ was full of the Spirit, and we pray the gift of the Spirit on the elements of bread, wine and water that they may be to us the Body and Blood of the Lord, and the washing away of sins, so it is the work of the Spirit to vivify the words of Scripture that they may become God’s Word for us.
- Scripture is primarily ecclesial: it belongs to the celebration of Christ’s risen life in the Church for the world. The hearing of the Word of the Lord belongs primarily with those who gather (better, are gathered) together in prayer, in the Spirit, and in encounter with God through Christ. Private reading of Scripture derives from this, and flows into this, but the word of the Lord creates a new people, not simply new persons. Private reading is, if you like, analogous to communion from the reserved sacrament.
- Scripture, as the sacrament of the Word, may properly have attributed to it the various attributes of God’s Word, communicatio idiomatum, and thus is to be heard as blessing, rebuking, calling, transforming and so on, and may itself be referred to as the Word of God.
- The Word is properly Christ, and so the Scriptures are fundamentally a vehicle for Christ. The liturgy reflects this in the particular honour it gives to the Gospel as that part of scripture which mediates the incarnate Christ most directly in narratives of his earthly life. The liturgy further testifies to it in the way in which it is completed in the personal encounter with the Lord through his Body in the Holy Communion, the sacrament of his complete self-gift, and in communion with his Body, the Church, the sacrament of his gift of peace, restoration and reconciliation. God does not simply stand over against us in addressing us, but enters our lives.
- The Word who is Christ, who is met and encountered in the words of scripture, is God’s Word to create and redeem, summoning both creation and new creation into being. So Scripture must be read and listened to for the Word that can make, unmake and remake the Church. The authority of Christ is truly conveyed through its words as the Church listens to them, and it is Christ’s authority which stands over all Church practice and theology, calls them to account, confirms their truthfulness and corrects their errors.
All this is,as I say, an early reflection, and still fairly inchoate, if not incoherent, in my own mind. I may be barking completely up the wrong tree, but it seemed a good time to chase a squirrel.
Notes- Lee Martin McDonald The Biblical Canon Hendrikson 2007 p51 – his italics, my bold emphasis [↩]
September 11th, 2007 at 2:28 am
Thanks Doug. Those are interesting points. On the usage of Scripture in Orthodox Liturgy, though, you’re seeing a difference with my perspective where none exists.
The Divine Liturgy is the premier expression of Tradition in Eastern Orthodoxy, built out of texts and practices and trappings coming from the past three millennia at least, all in the context of a living faith. To be sure, there is an iconic role for the Evangelarion (a book containing only the four Gospels), which is an icon of Christ, led into procession (the Little Entrance), but this does not exalt the book primarily, so much as the One Whose image it is. There is no full text of the Bible present in any Orthodox liturgy.
When I say that Scripture is a part of Tradition in Orthodoxy, the top part but still just a part, I mean it. The Bible cannot address the Church “ab extra” because the Church is greater than the Bible, being the Body of Christ with Him as its head, and the Bible is simply an expression of His interaction with the Church, in word and deed. Orthodox ecclesiology is vastly different from any Protestant one and quite different too from the Roman, so I suppose this may be one of those points where only mutual incomprehension will reign for a time. The Church, in fact, does have a greater authority than the Bible in Orthodoxy, shocking as that may seem.
To explain that: the Church of the Old and New Testaments produced the writings of the Bible through members inspired by God precisely for that purpose. The Church came first, then the Book, as a simple matter of history, but also of theology. And while these days, in our liturgies, we may be affected creatively by God speaking through the Bible, that book qua book, did not create the Church, does not create the people, and does not heal, strengthen, or edify. Only God does that, and it’s just a book otherwise. The line needs to be drawn more strongly than ever before, because bibliolatry is rampant.
I do go as far as seeing the whole Bible as an icon of Christ, but calling it a sacrament is too much for me. Others may disagree.
September 11th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Kevin, I have no qualms with the history in which the Church writes the Bible, nor with the Bible being the Church’s book. I also entirely agree with you in wishing to avoid bibliolatry.
I think I’m trying to find ways to press beyond that, however. The question of how Christ addresses the Church ab extra as its Lord is one I do think distinguishes Eastern and Western responses, and perhaps we do misunderstand each other. I do not see the orthodox position as being one that can easily resource the kind of self-criticism in which God might speak reforming words, and I do see a danger of complacency that has grown since around about the eighth century. I may be entirely wrong, and blinkered by what I admitted above is a Western perspective. How do you think Orthodoxy can be open to God-inspired self-criticism, or God’s Word (speaking) to be over against the church in prophetic calling?
September 11th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I think, Doug, that the solution to that lies in the active prayer life of the Orthodox. That is where we encounter God, in a mystical encounter, both personal and communal. It is personal because we are conforming ourselves more and more to the Divine (at least we should be!), as commanded “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”, and also communal because that perfection is revealed in the Body of Christ, partly, yes, through the Bible, but moreso within the entire context of the Church’s Tradition, the Apostolic Deposit, the Rule of Faith. That’s more the Orthodox approach, which also includes in our ecclesiology the component of indefectibility, that the Church does not err, although it’s members may. Even though a majority of us may go astray so that there are only a few who are correct, who give us the prophetic Voice of God for our correction (I think primarily of St Maximos the Confessor, here), that Voice doesn’t come primarily or exclusively from the Scriptures, but through direct interaction with the issues at hand. There is certainly recourse to the Bible as the primary expression of Tradition, but it is not the sole source of correction or doctrinal stability. These things have always existed outside of the text, which is only a partial but perfect subset. It is not only a possibility, but a certainty, that the Bible when used outside of the context of Tradition, the full life of the Body of Christ, can be misused and misinterpreted, as in the Iconoclast heresy, the last great heresy. We see proper interpretation of the Bible as only possible within the life of the Church, within the context of Tradition. In that sense, an authentic and genuine criticism of the Church, the Body of Christ (which is, of course, perfect, because it is Him), based in the Bible properly understood, is an impossibility. There is certainly the possibility for the correction of wayward members, but not for the Church itself. I don’t think I’m explaining this very well at all, frankly, but I hope that helps!
September 11th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Thanks, Kevin, and it does help. If you don’t mind me sharpening the question, however, can I put a very specific example question about it like this. I find myself disturbed at the ready nationalism and anti-Semitism currently resurgent in Russian Orthodoxy, and wonder how God’s speaking, whether through the Liturgy, Holy Tradition, Scripture or [prayer can address the church with that same sense of summons to be counter to an over-easy identification with the culture. In that sense, how does the Tradition, which contains rather more resources that could appear to justify anti-Semitism than either of us might be comfortable with, identify those passages of, say, Chrysostom, with a deformation of the regula fidei, rather than a part of it. How is that purifying dialectic of Tradition acted on either in theory or in practice?
September 12th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Doug, I think those things can certainly become a problem, and they’re recognized as problems by the authorities. Were we to see official statements from the Patriarchs affirming any kind of anti-Semitism, rather than some vocal laity, then I’d be more worried. St John Chrysostom wrote in a different age, one which had a complicated relationship with the Jewish communities in and around Antioch. He had just witnessed some brutality perpetrated by the Emperor Julian the Apostate with the collaboration of formerly friendly Jewish neighbors. With Julian gone, it took a while for tempers to cool. You’ll notice that St John still had to exhort his flock not to attend the synagogues, a habit that hadn’t been broken through all that had happened, so relations can’t have been that bad. I wouldn’t put it past him to be exaggerating for rhetorical effect, either, shocking as that may seem. The fact that anti-Semitism is in no way a part of our Tradition, that is, our Rule of Faith, and that we find it repugnant to suggest that the Lord and Church should be ashamed of his heritage, or that he was somehow faulty by birth, is more telling.
Aside from all that, there is no single Church Father whose every word and every writing is considered perfect. Every one of them had some errors. They would not disagree. The basis of the affirmation of Tradition are the canons of the Ecumenical Councils and those local councils which were sanctioned explicitly by them (which were quite numerous!). Within those canons and the creeds and statements produced by the councils is found both the juridical and the theological basis for Orthodoxy in its strictest sense: we are the conciliar Church. No one of her members is perfect, and no one of our hierachs has all of his writings accepted as perfectly reflective of Tradition (St Gregory Nazianzen is closest).
September 12th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Kevin, I accept what you say about this, but I’m still slightly baffled as to how the Church can actually do this clarifying of the tradition in response to God today about key issues, without in the end calling a Council, yet Councils now seem in the East to belong to the past.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Doug, it’s a matter of recognizing various modern issues in the heresies of the past. There’s a multitude of them, and most simply recur from time to time, including anti-Semitism, Arianism, abortion, sexual immorality, monotheletism, iconoclasm, docetism, and many others, just to think of a few “modern” problems. These things have already been dealt with by Ecumenical Councils and those councils and Fathers whose canons were approved by Ecumenical Council canons (see canon 2 of the Quinisext/Penthekte/Trullo Council for a long list of such approvals). There is a distinctly conservative approach in Eastern Orthodoxy in such matters. Where there is no need to call a Council, there is not going to be a Council called. There are, in fact, plans for a pan-Orthodox Council, to settle issues that have come up during the last century: old/revised Julian calendars, the jurisdictional mess in the USA, and other such things that are not so much issues of faith as discipline. But there’s no rush. The Faith itself is established. While Councils may seem to belong in the past, they are still alive and their canons are still in operation. In that sense they’re still as vividly alive as they were while they were each in session!