What I'm Reading - William J. Abraham's Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology

As I've noted, part of the focus of this blog is to focus on the intersection between (especially Orthodox) theology and history. Last week, I briefly discussed R. G. Collingwood's classic book The Idea of History in response to those theologians who tend to downplay the reality, much less the relevance, of historical knowledge. 

This week, I wanted to offer a brief excerpt from the other end of the spectrum. There is a tendency at times among biblical scholars to focus so much on a proper historical understanding of the scriptural text that they completely reject any type of ecclesial reading. When it is pointed out to such scholars that the books of the New Testament constitute a canon precisely because the Church of the fourth century canonized them, the response is often that they merely put their stamp of approval on books that were already accepted as being historically reliable. This is certainly true (contra Dan Brown) when it comes to gnostic works like the Gospel of Thomas, but it completely ignores works such as the Shepherd of Hermas that were in fact included in various canons prior to the fourth century, as well as the fact that books like Hebrews, 2 Peter, and Revelation were absent in some of these same canons.

An excellent book that deals with the problem of the canon of Scripture and how it is used by Christians is William J. Abraham's Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Here is an excerpt worth considering:

"Construing the canon of Scripture as a criterion [for ethics] may drastically diminish what it means to perceive Scripture as canonical. The impression given in this interpretation is that the provision of the canon of Scripture is the provision of a criterion to settle contested questions. Properly deployed, that is, in the context of a serious claim about diving revelation, it can indeed so be used...However, even in the field of morality, this use, if it is deployed exclusively, ignores important claims about the place of conscience in the moral life, about the connection between divine commands and human welfare, and about the relation between obedience and freedom." (p. 6)

He goes on elsewhere to discuss the important point that the Scriptures were never the only thing the early Church canonized. It also canonized an ecclesiastical calendar, iconography, liturgy, saints, canon laws, etc. I don't believe that we should interpret the Scriptures apart from the broader theological tradition of the Church; however, I don't see this to be necessarily at odds with a good historical reading of the text. 

What do you think?