Theology Today - Vol 50, No. 2 - July 1993 - CRITIC'S CORNER - Against the Stream: Brevard Childs's Biblical Theology

279 - Against the Stream: Brevard Childs's Biblical Theology

Against the Stream: Brevard Childs's Biblical Theology
By Walter Brueggemann

Since 1970, when he published Biblical Theology in Crisis, Brevard Childs has authored a series of important books, swimming upstream against the interpretive consensus of critical Scripture studies. He has been preoccupied with the canonical shape of the text, though in his several books, he has approached canonical matters from a variety of directions. Apparently, he has been exploring how best to articulate and respond to the interpretive crisis that has consistently preoccupied him. His latest book, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1993, 745 pp., $39.95), is the culmination of his long, reflective work. It is an achievement worthy of his passion, erudition, interpretive sensitivity, and courage. With almost no conversation partners in the twentieth century whom he regards as consistently reliable or worthy of consideration (with the decisive exception of Barth), Childs has staked out a position and vocation for biblical theology that is sure to reshape our common work and that will require intense engagement by any who dare take up the task.

Childs's focal point is to insist that "canonical" in Christian understanding means to see that both testaments of the Bible are "witnesses" to a single "reality," that is, "two distinct witnesses to a common subject matter who is Jesus Christ." With this definitional commitment, Childs is able to overcome quickly a host of interpretive problems, and so to clear the field for a single task. The problem he takes up is to see how these two witnesses share the task, while insisting that the two testaments are not to be coalesced but are to be kept clearly distinct from each other in character and function. Biblical theology, in this view, has no other work than to interpret around this single christological focus. A corollary of this commitment, everywhere evident but, I think, never explicitly stated, is that biblical theology is to move very far toward systematic-dogmatic theology (in Childs's case in the Reformed tradition), to shape the reading of texts for ready use in systematic categories.

As will be expected from Childs's previous books, his organization of

A frequent contributor to THEOLOGY TODAY and author of many books, most recently Old Testament Theology: Essays on Structure, Theme, and Text, Walter Brueggemann is Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia.

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material is overly complex, which makes for a good bit of repetition. Moreover, one is not always clear on the different functions intended for the several parts of the discussion. The "pay dirt" of the book is the last half, which takes up major theological themes in order to show how the two witnesses are derived from and directed toward the one reality of Jesus Christ. In each of these chapters, Childs regularly has sections on Old Testament witness, New Testament witness, "Biblical Theological Reflection," and "Dogmatic Theological Reflection." Occasionally, there is a special discussion of the Jewish dimension of the issue. Whereas the Old Testament discussion tends to be brief and with a unified statement, Childs spends much more time on the variegated evidence of the New Testament. In these chapters, Childs brings to bear his masterful theological sensitivity and his ready capacity for critical dismissal of views other than his own, which are often excessively either "biblicist" or "liberal." These chapters provide carefully honed material for more systematic reflection, though Childs often goes a good way on such reflection himself. Indeed, he regards such a move toward systematic reflection as a proper and essential element of doing biblical theology.

Preparation for this meaty and impressive final section of the book is made in several earlier sections. First, there is a review of recent approaches to biblical theology, all of which are found to be inadequate and wanting in important ways. This critical assessment of recent work is offset by a brief section considering six classical theological interpreters in the church, from Irenaeus to Calvin. Childs's strategy here, I take it, is to show how thin, unsure, and mistaken most recent work is when contrasted with the classical work, which is sure and focused in its tone, catholic in its scope, and unbothered by all sorts of problems (for example, history of religion, sociological analysis) that excessively vex recent interpretation and vitiate the theological nerve required for the work that needs to be done. The case is well made that our own work might better be modeled after these great teachers of the church.

Having set up this powerful and (perhaps inevitably) one-sided contrast between classical and modern, Childs then voices in some detail his own canonical view of the task of biblical theology. One aspect of his view is the insistence that, in doing theological interpretation, we deal not only with texts and with witnesses but finally with "the reality, the substance," that is, with the truth of God. In making this claim repeatedly, Childs surely means to overcome the relativizing of recent study that detracts from and is excessively nervous about an "innocent" acceptance of this truth. While I share such a view of the text and its witness to "reality," the echoing of the tone of early Barth on this point does not make the claim "more true" simply by its repeated and insistent assertion. It would be enough, in my judgment, to take the subject of the text as the text gives it, without a rather shrill

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affirmation to support it, for such shrillness adds nothing to the textual claim. It is sufficient that God is referenced in the text, without a loud insistence for the ontological claim beyond the specific assertion of the text. On this fundamental claim for the "reality" of God, Childs wants to override the very point in question in interpretive work. Even though I think such an accent unnecessary and unhelpful, such an insistence is necessary to his program.

After these matters of definition, Childs offers long sections on the "discrete witness" of the Old Testament and of the New. Here good use is made of Childs's vast critical learning. The outcome of these sections is rather routine and not exceptional, for what is exceptional is the author's brilliant and determined way of juxtaposing, interfacing, combining, and setting in tension what is commonly shared by interpreters about these texts. (Almost as an aside and without any orienting introduction, Childs offers two extended exegeses, which I assume are given as models for how canonical interpretation is to be done.)

Childs's proposal is magisterial in scope, depth, and power, and will provide "nerve" for all of us who seek to do church interpretation. (He of course has no interest in any other kind of interpretation.) When the dust settles, I suspect (as Childs no doubt anticipates) that it is his main claims, which mark the strength and distinctiveness of his work, that will also be the places of sharpest attack. His critics will likely judge his accent points to be points of question and vulnerability, because he dismisses by dictum problems that must indeed be faced. I imagine Childs will consider that he is criticized on these points (including in this review) because he has made clear that modern interpretation has missed the boat. I suspect that this will lead, yet one more time, to a critical impasse. In the meantime, however, Childs's book will be there as a powerful summons, invitation, and model for what the claims of the gospel are at root, and how we are to speak boldly about them.

In the midst of my enormous gratitude for the book, I suggest from my own reading three further talking points:

(1) Childs operates from very high ground. That is, the tone is impatiently "apodictic," (an accusation he makes against H. J. Kraus). Childs proceeds as though "canonical" were a self-evident reading that anyone can see, .because it is there in the text and stands in corrective opposition to all those views Childs regards as mistaken. Indeed, Childs allows for "reader response," but requires that "canonical restraints" be used and that "reader response be critically tested in light of different witnesses of the whole Bible." Fair enough. Except that it is of, course, Childs who will determine what is "canonical, so

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that the "reader response" of other readers is to be corrected by his "canonical." He seems unwilling or unable to acknowledge that his own "canonical" is also another form of "reader response," for he proceeds as if the "canonical" is simply there and involves no reader, not even Childs. Thus, for example, his "canonical" conclusion expressed in his repeated and acrimonious dismissal of "so-called liberation theology" is, in my judgment, simply his own contextual response. The outcome is a reading that has all sorts of socio-political implications, though Childs will not or cannot recognize these, for it would jeopardize his high ground.

(2) Childs proceeds with a heavy dose of hermeneutical innocence. I once heard Childs lecture on Barth's post-critical exegetical method and remarked to him that it sounded quite pre-critical as he explicated it. My impression of his presentation of Barth is roughly the same for Childs's own work here. It is not accidental, I take it, that Childs prefers Calvin above all and prefers to go behind the biblicalism of the eighteenth century, behind the developmentalism of the nineteenth century, and behind the inconvenience of socially conflicted readings of the twentieth century to a reading that is not intellectually impinged upon or disrupted by these cultural realities. I would wish for the same, as it would make our work easier and more readily compelling. I do not believe, however, that we can proceed as if suspicion is not among us in ways that require the argument to be made differently. And here, Childs does not help us much, for he will entertain no suspicions of his own interpretive certitude. I do not for a moment believe that the claims of the Bible are to be conceded to those eroding critical, epistemological categories of more recent time. But I also do not believe we can pretend they are not among us, and, therefore, a response in this kind of innocence is not without its own problems. My own sense is that our interpretive claims must be made more honestly in the fray of epistemological challenge rather than above it, as though the fray was not close at hand. In my judgment, any so-called canonical reading must be made as a competitor to other readings, as an advocacy among many advocacies.

Specifically, Childs regularly recognizes "diversity" in the witnesses but then works promptly and readily toward a unity of witness that is voiced in christological categories. While Childs acknowledges diversity in the witnesses, he insists that the text is stable, that it has a persistent, clear meaning. I submit that this is a reader response decision on Childs's part to which he is entitled, but it is not self-evident. The notion of the instability of the text, which would impede his ready cognitive closure, is not simply a post-modernist invention but has for a very long time been recognized by careful readers and interpreters. When one arrives at the stability of the text as quickly as does Childs, much of the power, energy, and, I dare say,

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truth of the text is lost in a kind of reductionism. The notion of instability is not an enemy of faith but, in fact, an honoring of the detail and nuance of the text that dogmatic closure does not easily entertain or allow. Childs's hermeneutical innocence is not only against our own interpretive context, but more important, against the very character of the text itself, which refuses to be so innocent.

(3) Biblical theology has long had a tense relation with dogmatic-systematic categories. The importance of Childs's project is that he draws biblical theology very close to dogmatic categories and seems to put biblical theology in the service of dogmatic claims. That intention, however, is not without problem, for it is half of a dialectic without the other half. That is, biblical theology lives not close to the history of religion but to the delicate, detailed rhetorical voice of the text and, therefore, at some distance from dogmatic categories, which notoriously do not honor such detailed voice. Childs's mode of biblical theology is flatly cognitive, as though the Bible were simply a set of ideas. Thus, he traces the witnesses in assertions that are large and, to my mind, "flattening and homogenizing" (again a criticism made of Kraus). On the one hand, such an approach fails to take seriously the detail of the text, which is not so flat or homogeneous. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how biblical theology can protest against or correct dogmatic claims (a role Reformed faith fully affirms) if it must proceed in such a fashion. In the end, the faith of the church in Jesus Christ is well served by such a procedure, but the liveliness of the biblical God and the unsettling work of the witnesses seem to me to be oddly muted.

III

Now I understand, of course, that Childs is not unaware of these issues. He has thought them through long and carefully, and has determined that the claims he wants to make are more important than any deterrence offered by these strictures. Indeed, given his own programmatic concerns, the issues I have raised fall outside what he terms "canonical," so that the criticisms themselves are only evidence of and symptomatic of what he regards as the problem of most contemporary interpretation. But that, of course, is the point in question, and the point to be further probed. "Canonical" is scarcely useful or faithful if it means to preclude all readings of the Bible save a dogmatic one on a text that clearly precludes such ideational clarity. But, of course, Childs's program means to combat exactly the weakening of sturdy, sure-voiced witnesses to a reality that these questions seem to invite.

Given these not inconsiderable wonderments, I have no doubt that, once again, Childs is the teacher of us all. He will move theologians, teachers, and preachers to greater nerve and passion, a nerve and

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passion not grounded in methodological cleverness or shrewdness but in nothing less than the truth, the "solid rock on which I stand." And even where one disagrees, we are mightily instructed, informed, and admonished. The late twentieth century is not an easy place for faithfulness. In a daring way, Childs has shown us what faithfulness might now mean. His reading is indeed "against the stream." He may, in the end, even reverse the flow of soft-minded, embarrassed theological accommodation, a hope I fully share with him.