Monday, 20 July 2015

Canon & Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism,
James A. Sanders, Wipf and Stock, 2000, page 52

Sanders explains that canonical criticism tries to discover the traditions are present in a given passage and attempts to find a hermeneutic that enables the tradutions to function in that text.

The interest was in whatG-d was doing in and throught the givens of the situation described and what G-d might do again. G-d is presented as Creator, Sustainer, Judge, Redeemer and Re-Creator. Insofar as we can discern, the interest was never anthropocentric or primarily sociological or political - not in the way the various accounts are presented canonically. The interest was in what G-d as Creator could do with with the social conditions or the political situation.

There is a difference betweem moralising and theologising and application is, as usual, key:

To theologise in reading a text is to focus on what G-d can do withh the likes of the reader mirrored in the text.

So here's the question for today: what might G-d do with you?