Having Your Cake

Recently our studies in Today’s Word have focused on the rabbinic techniques of halachah and haggadah. Paul uses these techniques in his letters.  We should not be surprised.  After all, Paul was trained as a Pharissaic rabbi.  What surprises most people is that halachah was always considered binding on the audience (since it was the direct application of the Torah – Law) but haggadah was always considered opinion, that is, not binding on the audience.  This implies that there are statements in Paul’s letters (and in the other writers of the New Testament documents) that are not intended to be universal principles for all subsequent audiences.  This implication bothers people.  Suddenly it seems that we are thrown into a world where we aren’t quite so sure what we should follow and what is simply opinion.  Something has to be done.

That “something” is what we call canonization.  The Bible (all of it) is the canon of  our faith.  That means it is the rule of practice, the standard by which we live.  We decide to make it so.  Did you get that?  It is not the canon because it comes to us and declares itself to be canonical.  It is the canon because we adopt it as our only rule of faith and practice.  That’s the same process that Muslims go through when they adopt the Quran as their canon.  It’s the book that they live by.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all canons are created equal.  God’s Word is not merely an arbitrary choice.  There are plenty of reasons to accept it as His Word, including evidence in the world, but that is a different topic.  What we need to understand for this small discussion is that canon is not the same as inspiration nor is it the same as sacred text.  We accept Paul’s letters as canon.  That is a choice based on a whole lot of things, only one of which is our idea of inspiration and sacred text.  But this does not imply that Paul considered his letters sacred text or even inspired.  We have decided to treat them that way.

What this means is that Paul was just writing letters about real problems to real people.  He employed all kinds of techniques, common to his time, to reach these people.  So, there are cultural, contextual and rabbinic elements in all his letters.  We must sort these out in order to understand what he meant, but we still hold his work (now) as canon.  

Of course, since we believe the whole Bible is canon, that means all of it is the only standard of faith and practice.  We are not free to ignore some parts and favor other parts.  If we want Corinthians as canon, we must also accept Deuteronomy as canon.  You can’t have it both ways – the proverbial cake problem.  So, since Paul accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as canon (and so do we), we would expect that Paul would never say or teach anything that would violate his canon.  And that’s where we run into exegetical difficulties (like 1 Corinthians 13).  If it is all canon, then one part can’t say something that another part denies.  We have to struggle with the text to show that it is consistent.  That’s the job of the interpreter.  

While we must never overlook the interaction of the Spirit in all this, it is not sufficient to simply say that the Spirit authored all the words and therefore they all have equal value.  They have equal value as canon, not necessarily as sacred, inspired text.  After all, Paul even says that some of his stuff is personal opinion.  Who are we to tell him otherwise?  He wrote it!

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