Tuesday 2 December 2008

What are B.S. Childs' weaknesses?

This is the question I was recently asked by John Lyons of Reception of the Bible. Here's a provisional answer.

Childs is simultaneously the most stimulating and most frustrating Biblical scholar to read, especially when one first discovers him. The fact that, in my opinion, he is one of the most misunderstood scholars is not surprising, given both the content and the context of his work (he's often been associated with the wrong intellectual currents, e.g. French post-structuralism). I first started reading him properly about two years ago, with the intention of starting with the “grandfather” of “theological exegesis,” before moving on to more contemporary thinkers. I soon discovered that one cannot “just start” with Childs and then put him to the side. His thinking and influences are so comprehensive (umfassend), that you really need to read the whole before you can start appreciating the parts. In that sense, reading Childs' “canonical corpus” requires a similar hermeneutical stance to the one he proposes for the Bible! His later work provides an invaluable perspective by which to correlate everything which has gone before and, in my opinion, Karl Barth's approach to Scripture as “witness” provides the golden thread. One finds echoes of his earliest thoughts from the Sixties in his final publications, and when one pieces them together one can avoid the odd psychological theories that have been devised by his critics in order to make sense of a proposal only partially perceived (interestingly enough, his critics often apply a sort of “source critical analysis” to Childs' “canon,” dividing his books into different phases which are then judged to stand in no relation to each other. The result is a “schizophrenic” Childs [Brett] who “doesn't know his own mind” [Barr], divided into, e.g. "the authorial-intentional Childs" and "the post-structural Childs").

Given this integrated nature of his approach, I find it difficult to critique him. In the process of discovering him, there are all kinds of criticisms that come to mind: what about the diachronic dimension? Wait, how is that a “synchronic” reading? Isn't Childs' too “conceptual”? Wait, doesn't he focus too much on the particularity of the text? How can one affirm both the literal sense and the dogma of the church as exegetical context? How can one at times bracket out historical questions, and at other times let them be decisive? How can one abandon historical critical speculation and at the same time make one kind of critical construal constitutive for interpretation?

For me, every time I find something to criticise, Childs addresses the issue from another angle. My notes are full of cross-references and colour coding in an attempt to figure out what is going on. I'm amazed how easy it is to use “Childsian” exegetical categories to describe this process of reading his own work. In the process of Zusammensehen (syn-opsis, the term is Barth's), where each part is constantly compared with another, a fuller vision of the the subject matter (res) with which Childs himself wrestled and to which he wished to direction has slowly emerged. I've needed to read other works by Barth and Diem in order to understand some of Childs' basic assumptions (information about "reality," as Childs might put it), and now, near the end of the process, I find that my horizon has been expanded beyond what I could have hoped for and in directions I wasn't expecting.

In short, I'm still too involved in the process of figuring Childs out to be able to properly criticise him. It's ironic, given that he is one of the most controversial and heavily critiqued figures of the 20th century! But, as far as I have been able to ascertain, his critics have either not had the benefit of reading the parts in light of the whole (or have not wanted to: Barr et al ignore his Biblical Theology), or have been so repulsed by his proposals that they haven't been able to bring themselves to properly understand the arguments that he uses to get him there in the first place. As Daniel Driver has concluded in his recent doctoral dissertation, the Childs of the secondary literature is a “Frankenstein,” one who has almost nothing to do with the living scholar whose proposals are still waiting to be registered by a world ignorant of his actual work.

7 comments:

Juan said...

John,

What book would you recommend to start with Childs?

Phil Sumpter said...

Did you want John Lyon's or me, Phil?

It depends what you are most interested in. If you are into exegesis, then either his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture or perhaps his last commentary on Isaiah. If you are into Biblical Theology, his Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments is his magnum opus. I'd recommend starting with this last book, as it puts a lot of things into perspective and seems to be largely ignored by his critics.

Juan said...

Phil,

Thaks for the reply. I justed wanted guideance on where to start. I will start with the Biblical Theology book.

Thanks

Juan

Phil Sumpter said...

Well, if you have any comments, queries, or criticisms, feel free to get in touch.

John Lyons said...

Thanks for that, Phil.

It does mirror some of my own experience of reading Childs. If I were to answer Juan's question, I would suggest the little book Childs wrote as a proposal (which summarises most of the early chapters of the Biblical Theology and alongside that, his little essay on Barth from around 1968. I was always bemused when I read critics of Childs who failed to realise not only how Barthian (or Calvin-oriented maybe) he was and how early that happened. His first published essay from 1958 on, I think, Jonah already shows a deep Barthian influence.

I have already written a thesis on Childs (though I think it is now little read) but my own feeling is that his weaknesses primarily lie in his reformed theology (with its questionable assumption that its God is clearly good!), in his tendency to over-state his case at some points (e.g. in connection with Sanders), in his failure to provide really convincing examples of canonical exegesis, in his over-reliance on historical criticism in a piecemeal and non-systematic way, and finally, in his failure to provide a detailed blueprint as to how others should follow him in his work. This last reminds me of his comment about the theological brilliance of von Rad and the poorer work of von Rad's students. Childs had flashes of brilliance and on his day was a reformed theologican par excellence. I wonder if many of the problems we have with him are simply that we are either not reformed enough or that we are not theologically capable enough.

Thanks again for taking up the challenge.

Best,

John

Phil Sumpter said...

John,

once again, sorry for my delayed response. I wanted to briefly comment on each of the points you made, and so need to find the time to do so! I will let you know when.

By the way, I thought I recognized your name! Unfortunately, I haven't read your book as I have run out of time and my doctoral superivisor insists that I have done enough theory and ought to get on with my actual exegesis. My doctorate will have a similar structure to your book: canonical theory along with my own exegesis, this time of Psalm 24.

Phil Sumpter said...

John,

I've responded in a separate post. I thought I'd post here too. I'll simply post what i wrote in my post:

The following critiques of Brevard Childs' work were recently made in a comment on this blog. They are brief and elliptical. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good opportunity to clarify my thoughts further. Here they are, critique in italics and response beneath:

His weaknesses primarily lie ...

in his reformed theology (with its questionable assumption that its God is clearly good!)

I'm really not sure how Reformed Childs was. I'd like to know how ... He certainly was a great fan of Barth and Calvin, but his basic theological approach to Scripture was often very open to non-Protestant approaches, especially later in his career with his turn to allegory. He talked of the need to keep Word and Tradition in healthy tension, the need to take into account the dogmatic tradition of the church, the subordination of text to substance etc. He was inspired by Orthodox theologian Andrew Louth and said things that sound similar to recent statements by the current Pope.

As for the idea that God is always good, I would have thought that that is a basic tenet of Biblical and Christian faith …

... in his tendency to over-state his case at some points (e.g. in connection with Sanders)

I'm not sure what this means.

... in his failure to provide really convincing examples of canonical exegesis

That depends what “canonical exegesis” is. Childs' approach is consistently misunderstood, so that critiques of his work tend to miss the point. Some call him too synchronic, others too diachronic (e.g. Rendtorff). Childs has always said the key lies in maintaining the tension, keeping a proper sense of proportion, most significantly in relation to the text's theological subject matter (its res). In fact, Childs was so disturbed by what was passing for “canonical interpretation” that in his Isaiah commentary he tried to refrain from using the term altogether. Richard Schultz's article for the PTR (available online here) points out how diverse the term is just amongst Evangelicals. So again, what is the “canonical approach”?

...in his over-reliance on historical criticism in a piecemeal and non-systematic way

This comment is really interesting, especially as it relates to the former critique. A Childsian”canonical approach” is predicated on a historical-critical assumption and a commitment to the historical intentionality of Prophetic and Apostolic witnesses. This is his starting point, as I have argued in a recent paper I submitted to IJST. Once that is accepted, working out how he bridges the gap to “synchronic” interpretation is very interesting … but it doesn't have much to do with theories of speech, intertextuality, or reader-response. Something more like a commitment to ontology and the power of the Spirit. That, in my opinion, is the stance from which a critique of his use of historical-criticism needs to be made.

... in his failure to provide a detailed blueprint as to how others should follow him in his work.

This complaint has often been made (most recently by Georg Steins, in his own attempt at a kanonisch-intertextuelle Lektüre, see my critique here). I think the problem with this critique is that Childs never set out to develop a “method.” Rather, he wanted to articulate the hermeneutical implications of a certain stance vis-à-vis the text, which means taking into account his whole historical-critical, philosophical and most of all dogmatic assumptions. That is the reality out of which the canonical approach lives and breathes and has its being. The canonical approach is an “approach” and not a “method.”

I wonder if many of the problems we have with him are simply that we are either not reformed enough or that we are not theologically capable enough.

I think so. This emphasises the holistic dimension to Childs' work. See his statement of the significance of von Rad.

I'm more than happy to be corrected on any of these points!