How the Bible Was Formed by Gregg Allison

Author:Gregg Allison [Allison, Gregg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310496144
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE CANON IN THE MODERN PERIOD

Generally speaking, this Protestant – Roman Catholic division of conviction as to what constitutes the canon of Scripture continues even to our day. Not to be overlooked, however, is their agreement that both the Old Testament and the New Testament compose the biblical canon. Occasionally in the early modern period, this agreement was challenged. For example, Friedrich Schleiermacher relegated the Old Testament to secondary status. He noted the common consensus among Christians that a great difference exists between the Old and New Testaments, and he denied that Christian maturity could be helped even by the Prophets and the Psalms. He asserted that when Christians give heed to the Old Testament, their Christianity is infected with legalism and they can find little support for Christian doctrines. Furthermore, Schleiermacher denied that the use of the Old Testament by Christ and the apostles was a precedent set by them for Christians to follow; indeed, he spoke of the “gradual retirement” of the Old Testament as the New Testament appeared and proposed that “the real meaning of the facts would be clearer if the Old Testament followed the New as an appendix.”71 Thus, for Schleiermacher, “the Old Testament Scriptures do not … share the normative dignity or the inspiration of the New.”72 This denial of the canonicity of the Old Testament was exceptional, not normative.

The greatest challenges to the church’s historical understanding of the canon began with haste and intensity as the modern period progressed. With the rise of historical criticism came a thoroughgoing suspicion of the authorship of most biblical writings, leading to the demise of the traditional view of canonization. For example, Hugo Grotius doubted the authorship of 2 Peter by the apostle Peter and the authorship of Ecclesiastes by Solomon. Similarly, Baruch Spinoza (followed by Jean LeClerc and many others) argued against Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Also, the (alleged) division between the Bible and the Word of God, another key tenet of historical criticism, wreaked havoc with the traditional consensus. In his important work Treatise on the Free Investigation of the Canon (1771–75), Johann Salomo Semler explained: “Holy Scripture and the Word of God are clearly to be distinguished, for we know the difference.… To Holy Scripture (using the particular historical expression that originated among the Jews) belong Ruth, Esther, the Song of Songs, etc., but not all the books that are called holy belong to the Word of God, which at all times makes all men wise unto salvation.”73

As historical criticism drove scholars in the direction of treating the Bible just like any other human book, the notion of the canonization of the biblical writings came to be viewed as a completely human action with a denial of any divine superintendence of the process. The seminal work in this regard was the Introduction to the Old Testament by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn.74 Bemoaning the fact that the term canon had ever been used, Eichhorn approached the process of collecting the various writings of the Old Testament as a purely historical development.

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