Did the Church create the Bible, or the Bible create the Church?

Kevin Edgecomb continues to think about canon. Here are a few of his comments:

“[T]here is no “the” canon at all, but several canons, depending upon various traditions, which situation becomes even more complex if one looks at historical documentation concerning which books various ancient writers thought should be considered part of the Bible.

“[B]ooks are canonical to particular groups because they were considered to reflect their regula fidei . . . [their] values and mores . . . [their] tradition.”

 

It is undoubtedly the case that certain books and not others, through a non-linear process, came to be viewed as foundational to a larger tradition in rabbinic Judaism and a number of historic Christian traditions in Greco-Roman antiquity. Lists were drawn up and came to be contained in an authoritative body of literature such as the Talmud or the Apostolic Constitutions. On occasion, in the West in particular, a list was officially sanctioned by a series of deliberative assemblies. Multiple lists were preserved in a number of traditions, all of them valued, none of them necessarily reflecting actual use in every detail.

There were indeed many canons of scriptures in antiquity, both de facto and de jure. I discuss the matter in detail in my “Thinking about the Canon” series (see the left sidebar for links).

Kevin concludes his post by repeating an oft-heard sentiment:

It is important to remember that, as some wag put it, “The Church wrote the Bible; the Bible didn’t create the Church.”

The truth of the statement is undeniable, but nevertheless fails to capture the church's own understanding of her relationship to the word of God proclaimed in her midst through the reading of it in public assembly and meditation on it in other contexts.

As Jesús Castellano Cervera puts it in an online publication of Agenzia Fides, an expression of the Vatican agency known as the Congregation for the Evangelization of the Peoples:

La Chiesa nasce prima di tutto dalla Parola; è "creatura Verbi" nel soffio vivificante dello Spirito. La Chiesa, infatti, inizia ad essere ecclesia, comunità dei convocati attraverso la Parola dell'Evangelo; è formata dalla parola proclamata, accolta con fede, continuamente predicata, come ci insegnano gli Atti degli Apostoli ( Cfr. At 2, 42 ss)

Castellano appropriates a definition of the church that is dear to the churches of the Reformation, the truth of which has never been denied in ecumenical dialogue. It is good to see it lifted up in a Catholic context. Here is a translation of Castellano’s comment:

The Church is born of the Word in the first instance; it is a creation of the Word [creatura Verbi] in the life-giving breath of the Spirit. The Church in fact begins to be the church, a community called together, by means of the Word of the Gospel; it is formed by the word proclaimed, received in faith, continually preached, as the Acts of the Apostles teach us (cf. Acts 2:42 and following).

This truth is also undeniable, and of far more interest than the one that affirms the opposite: 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.

It bears repeating: the Word from which the Church is born is not, in the first instance, a word of the church, according to the church’s own understanding of the matter. The word from which the Church is born is a word from above, nothing less than the word of God.

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets; in these last days, he spoke to us through a son whom he appointed heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:1-2).

God-speech, according to the church’s own understanding of the matter, is mediated to her in the context of a relationship with the One who is the reflection of the divine glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. A relationship with God is one of faith, and faith, ultimately, is the operative word.

But as Paul said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The word of Christ is a way of describing the preaching of the gospel.

The gospel, to be sure, is not to be understood in a restrictive sense, as is clear from Paul’s own tusslings with scripture as he knew it. No less than Paul, Luther and all the Church fathers knew that the gospel is to be found everywhere in scripture.

The Word of God is also imparted to the faithful in sacraments like baptism and the eucharist, ex opere operato, that is, quite apart from the dignity or indignity of the one who administers or presides.

Furthermore, according to scripture, the very heavens proclaim the glory of God. God speaks with unique clarity in the scriptures vouchsafed to the church, but God also speaks in countless other ways. The voice of God can be heard in the thunder, but is not identical to the thunder. God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind. To this day, God so speaks, for the one who has ears to hear.

The church fathers often spoke of the “rule of faith,” the rule of truth,” or the “rule of the church.” They employed these expressions in reference to everything from a summary of the faith identical or nearly so with the Apostles’ Creed, to the entire canonical heritage of which the church is heir: oral apostolic tradition guaranteed by an unbroken episcopal succession; holy scripture; the rites of baptism and the eucharist; traditions relating to the order and conduct of worship; canons of councils; canon law; the canonical life; a specific iconographic tradition; and tradition and teaching associated with specific “fathers” in Paul’s sense of word (1 Cor 4:15), that is, teachers who not only instructed, but in Christ Jesus through the gospel “begot” the church.[1]

Analogues to nearly every one of these items achieved canonical status in rabbinic Judaism through a long, non-linear process. The development of tradition within antique Christianity and Judaism proceeded along parallel lines and not without reciprocal influences. The historian does well to study the development of tradition of the one against the background of development in the other.

And what, ultimately, does faith beget? Here the circle is completed. As Luther said, quoted approvingly by Newman,

Hoc [tribuere Deo gloriam] ratio non facit, sed fides ea consummat divinitatem, et, ut ita dicam, creatrix est divinitatis, non in substantia Dei, sed in nobis ... Ideoque illam gloriam posse tribuere Deo, est sapientia sapientiarum, justitia justitiarum, religio religionum, et sacrificium sacrificiorum. Ex hoc intelligi potest, quanta justitia sit fides, et per antithesin quantum peccatum incredulitas. — In Gal. iii. 6.

In short, faith creates the divinity, not in itself, but in us. A regula fidei - a creed, a Bible, or a more inclusive rule embracing a wider set of traditions – is at the service of that event, or it is nothing.

An analogous understanding in Judaism does not come to mind, but I would be surprised if one did not exist.

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[1] I summarize and rework a portion of William Abraham’s insightful discussion of “The Emergence of the Canonical Heritage of the Church,” in idem, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology from the Fathers to Feminism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 27-56; 37-38.

Comments

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

Thank you for the interaction, John. It was a more "off the beaten path" post than usual, but I'm glad you caught the spirit of it.

I wouldn't and I don't think anyone can really exclude the Bible as an element, a particularly vital element, of enlivening the Church within liturgical or catechetical settings. That said, it most strongly needs to be emphasized that a book does nothing, our belief in a book does nothing, and a book doesn't create anything. Only God. In the end, it is only God. A book has no power to even keep itself from falling off the shelf, any more than an idol can keep itself from burning. As we well know, in many circles, that particular book, the Bible of whatever dimensions, is most certainly an idol. Rather than being seen as the icon of the living Word of God, the Son of God, it is seen as some kind of book of magic spells whose reading and recitation and "belief in" accomplishes things that are rightly reserved to the Divine. "I believe the Bible" is something one hears quite often, or "The Bible changed me." Pagan garbage.

The Bible cannot stand alone as its own canon/rule. It exists as part of a group of texts created by various people who adhered to the Rule of Faith. It is Tradition in each group which includes the Bible within its written authorities. Though at the top of the list, it is not alone. Other writings may not share the same gravitas, but they are still also normative, and there are no degrees or levels in such authority. Yet, too, hardly any of them are directly dependent on the Bible, aside from quotations or allusions, though all are dependent upon the content and worldview of the living Faith. Even the Apostolic Fathers, overlapping the creation of the last books of the New Testament, show their origins as being from within living contexts of a Tradition, a Faith vivified by the Divine, not just picking at the corpse of a book, like so many academic vultures.

So, while it is certainly the case that the Bible has a place in both Liturgy and Tradition, understood both literally and metaphorically, it only exists insomuch as it is part of Tradition, in that it is a piece of the living Faith and a reflection of God. In that sense, with that emphasis, I would agree with everything you've written.

I'll be writing more on the subject soon. The McDonald project has led to many interesting thoughts and notes!

[JohnFH]

Kevin,

I agree with everything you write as well.

Perhaps what you have to say needs to be heard especially among evangelicals, and what I have to say especially among the Orthodox.

Bibliolatry is a real problem among evangelicals, and more especially, among those who self-identify as fundamentalists. As a friend once described it - he was raised as one - fundamentalists don't know what's in the Bible, but they believe every d- word of it.

I look forward to following future posts of yours on the subject of canon.

I would be especially pleased if McDonald decided to engage those of us online who continue to debate the subject matter. He would come out ahead, I think, in terms of the writing he is doing now.

[Doug Chaplin]

John and Kevin, this is an enlightening exchange. I (again) find myself wondering whether an exploration of scripture as sacrament gives a model for reconciling both emphases?

[JohnFH]

Doug,

You might want to flesh that notion out of scripture as sacrament. Perhaps you do somewhere at Metacatholic, but if so, I couldn't locate it.

[Kevin P. Edgecomb]

John, McDonald's way too busy right now. He's working hard writing more goodies for the rest of us. I'd rather he get his writing done during this sabbatical and let him jabber with us later.

I'm tending toward seeing this whole "canon" thing as primarily a classic case of anachronism. Here we are at the end of the road, with a pile of short books under one cover which we insist upon calling "the biblical canon." This definition of canon is extremely new, the coining of it placed by McDonald in 1768 with David Ruhnken in his Historia critica oratorum Graecorum. Prior to this, we find usage of "canonical" in referring to the books, with the connotation that they adhere to the Canon of Faith. This is an important difference in perspective, and one which I think is necessary for those investigating the issue need to pick up on. It clarifies the process of "canonization," which I would suggest means rather than "making a part of a canon of books" is "recognizing as reflective of the canon of faith." We're primarily interested in the list(s) because that's how we've understood "canon" for the last couple centuries and change, and this distorts our investigation of the actual historical process. We need to ask the questions: What did the ancients say when compiling such lists and describing the books? What is the motivation? What are the criteria? What is the terminology used? All of these point toward not a list of books to be considered the foundation of everything and divorced from everything else, but a list of books considered to represent the Canon of Faith authentically, as explicated by some of the luminaries of the Faith. Every one of the biblical books is only partial, with important context surrounding it which made each of the books only a snapshot of a face in a party, so to speak, with that face being a book, and the party being the Canon of Faith. Not only is a living faith reduced to words, and thus inadequate to vivify or even to explain itself to readers, but, like photographs for us, the books are meant as reminders, as guideposts in a vast countryside being traversed, not as holistic representations.

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. None of the elements is whole without the other. Just as there is no Church of one, there is no power in the Bible alone, as a leaf severed from its tree. It would be simply dead words on dead page, which the academics are quite familiar with, and which they are quite adamant about entitling as correct and ruthlessly guarding the corpse, drawing the curtains against views of the Faith, sealing the windows lest any draft or (Sartre forbid!) gust of Spirit get through, and the Apostles steal the body away!

[Doug Chaplin]

John,
I've had a tentaive stab at setting down some markers for what this understanding of scripture as sacrament might be, and also made some comments about this discussion.