The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus

by Brevard Childs

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2008

Overview

In The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul Brevard Childs turns his sharp scholarly eye to the works of the Apostle Paul and makes an unusual argument: the New Testament was canonically shaped, its formation a hermeneutical exercise in which its anonymous apostles and postapostolic editors collected, preserved, and theologically shaped the material in order for the evangelical traditions to serve successive generations of Christians.

Childs contends that within the New Testament the Pauline corpus stands as a unit bookended by Romans and the pastoral epistles. He assigns an introductory role to Romans, examining how it puts the contingencies of Paul’s earlier letters into context without sacrificing their particularity. At the other end, the pastoral epistles serve as a concluding valorization of Paul as the church’s doctrinal model. By considering Paul’s works as a whole, Childs offers a way to gain a fuller understanding of the individual letters.

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Key Features

• Argues that the New Testament was canonically shaped
• Discusses the Pauline corpus as a unit bookended by Romans and the pastoral epistles
• Offers a way to gain a fuller understanding of the individual letters

Contents

• The Search for Paul’s Theology
• Alternative Proposals for the Problem of Interpretation
• The Shaping of the Pauline Corpus
• Exegetical Probes: Introduction and Guidelines
• The Canonical Framing of the Pauline Corpus
• Theological Implications of the Pauline Corpus for Interpretation

Top Highlights

“The Christian canon is not a fixed deposit of traditions from the past, but a dynamic vehicle by which the risen Lord continues through the Holy Spirit to guide, instruct, and nourish his people.” (Page 26)

“Geschichte to designate another form of history with which he characterized the New Testament’s witness to Jesus Christ.” (Page 12)

“J. Louis Martyn’s magisterial commentary on Galatians” (Page 19)

Praise for the Print Edition

Here Brevard Childs offers his clearest statement of the continuities and differences between his canonical approach and historical criticism. The book has the character of a careful, probing conversation—punctuated by disagreement—that extends also to figural readings, postmodernism, and evangelical interpretation. His final gift is to demonstrate at length how central to all the church’s work is wide-ranging, critical scriptural exegesis, guided by the Spirit and disciplined by participation in the church’s life. This book will remain part of our conversation for years to come.

—Ellen F. Davis, Amos Ragan Kearns Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School

This is vintage Childs. Who else among modern Old or New Testament scholars turns so easily to and converses so effortlessly with the other Testament and its critical scholarship? From whom else would we expect so arresting an analysis of the historical development and theological significance of ‘the canonical Paul’? It is as if Childs has hit the reset button on Pauline studies—sometimes resurrecting interpretive issues long neglected, sometimes casting contemporary discussion in fresh light, always pressing for renewed discussion of the role of the canon for reading the wider Pauline corpus in and for the church.

—Joel B. Green, professor of New Testament Interpretation, Fuller Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: The Church’s Guide for Reading Paul: The Canonical Shaping of the Pauline Corpus
• Author: Brevard S. Childs
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Publication Date: 2008
• Pages: 288
• Christian Group: Evangelicals
• Resource Type: Monographs
• Topic: Pauline Studies

About Brevard Childs

Brevard S. Childs (1923–2007), Old Testament professor at Yale University from 1958 until he retired in 1999. Childs had a significant positive influence in biblical theology by insisting that interpreters should be Christians who view the text as Scripture and regard the final form of the canon as the norm for interpretation. However, he held to many liberal views about Scripture, denying that Moses wrote the Pentateuch and seeing elements of pagan mythology in the Bible.