Canonical Criticism (Childs, Sanders)

Introduction

By the mid–twentieth century, historical-critical scholarship had yielded immense gains in our understanding of Scripture’s formation: sources were proposed, forms classified, redactional hands identified. Yet many readers felt that the Bible as the church actually reads it—a unified, bounded canon whose final form bears theological witness—had slipped from view. Exegesis, it seemed, could end on the operating table. Canonical criticism arose as a corrective. It does not despise historical work; rather, it re-situates that work within the horizon of the canon’s final form and within the community that confesses these writings as Scripture. Two names dominate the movement’s early articulation: Brevard S. Childs and James A. Sanders. Though often mentioned together, they are not identical. Childs developed what he called a “canonical approach,” directing exegesis toward the final form of the text within the Christian canon and its two-testament witness; Sanders pressed “canonical criticism” as the study of how texts become Scripture—how communities canonize, preserve, sequence, and authorize writings, and how that canonical process itself shapes meaning (Childs, 1979; Childs, 1992; Sanders, 1972; Sanders, 1987).

This lesson introduces the rationale and methods of canonical criticism, traces the distinct contributions of Childs and Sanders, and demonstrates the approach through case studies in the Psalter, Isaiah, the Book of the Twelve, the fourfold Gospel, Paul’s letter-collection, and the Pentateuch. Along the way, we will engage criticisms (e.g., charges of theological “flattening” or of privileging one canon over others), show how canonical readings coordinate with historical and literary insights, and conclude with assignments designed to train doctoral researchers in canonical exegesis that is historically responsible and theologically lucid.

From Historical Criticism to Canonical Consciousness

Canonical criticism is best read as a second-order reflection on the context of interpretation. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century historical criticism asked “How did this text come to be?” Canonical criticism adds, “In what form and configuration has the community received this text as Scripture, and how does that canonical form guide faithful reading?” The shift is not a retreat from history but a change in teleology. For Childs and Sanders, the telos of exegesis is not the most remote recoverable layer but the present, canonical form by which the church and synagogue live before God. This move also resists an atomized biblicism: “canon” is not merely a list of books but the complex, shaped whole—orders of books, superscriptions, framing passages, macrostructural seams—within which texts acquire intertextual resonance and normative force (Childs, 1979; Sanders, 1987).

The historical backdrop matters. After decades of scholarly fragmentation into sources and forms, theologians increasingly sought integrative readings that could serve ecclesial theology. At the same time, scholarship on the process of canonization—Jewish and Christian—was maturing, highlighting that canons are not accidental anthologies but the outcome of communal discernment and editorial shaping. Canonical criticism thus bridged history of religion and theological interpretation, asking both how texts became Scripture and how Scripture, as canon, should be read.

What Is “Canon”?

Childs and Sanders both insist that “canon” is more than a catalog. Canon is the received, bounded corpus of writings that functions as the church’s or synagogue’s norming norm, and it is also the form and shape of those writings as they stand. Sanders emphasizes canon as process and function—how communities came to treat certain texts as sacred and how those texts functioned normatively thereafter (Sanders, 1972, pp. 12–40; Sanders, 1987). Childs emphasizes canon as hermeneutical context—the final form of Scripture in the Christian Bible as the divinely provided arena in which God addresses the church, with the result that exegesis should be ordered toward that form, not past it (Childs, 1979, pp. 73–86; Childs, 1992, pp. 54–80). Where historical criticism asked after pre-canonical “traditions” behind texts, canonical criticism asks how canonical placement, sequence, and frame inform meaning.

Childs’s Canonical Approach

Childs’s program can be summarized under several theses. First, the literal sense is canonical: the sensus litteralis to which exegesis is ultimately answerable is not the hypothetical intention of an earlier source but the literary sense of the text as canonically framed (Childs, 1979, pp. 82–85). Second, final form matters theologically: titles, superscriptions, colophons, macro-structures, and intertextual linkages within the canon are not marginalia but part of Scripture’s communicative act. Third, two-testament unity: Christian exegesis reads the Old and New Testaments together, not by flattening differences, but by hearing their distinct witnesses within one canonical economy oriented to Christ (Childs, 1992). Fourth, historical work is subordinated, not discarded: philology, form, and redaction illuminate the canonical text’s features; they do not displace its primacy for theological reading. Finally, canon critiques method: methods that deliver only earlier “stages” without returning to the received text fail to serve Scripture’s scriptural function.

Childs’s Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (1979) exemplifies the approach: after reviewing critical scholarship on a book’s formation, he turns to “canonical shape,” attending to features like the framing role of Deuteronomy for the Former Prophets, the function of Psalm superscriptions, or the compositional unity of Isaiah as a canonical book even while recognizing diachronic growth. His later Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (1992) deepens the two-testament emphasis: the canon’s final form, he argues, gathers Israel’s Scripture and apostolic witness into a normative theological field in which the church hears God’s Word (Childs, 1992, pp. 707–739).

Sanders’s Canonical Criticism

Sanders’s early classic, Torah and Canon (1972), foregrounds the social process by which Scripture becomes Scripture. Canonization, he argues, is not a one-time moment but a long process in which stories become texts, texts are edited, and collections acquire authority in liturgy and teaching. Interpretation is canon-conscious insofar as texts are read within an emergent whole; thus, exegesis must attend to canonical contexts (e.g., the Torah’s framing of prophetic reading, or the role of Davidic ideology in Psalms) (Sanders, 1972, pp. 91–128). In From Sacred Story to Sacred Text (1987), he traces how Israel’s foundational stories were stabilized into texts and how communities re-contextualized those texts across time. His signature insistence is that the function of Scripture in a community is part of its meaning: a psalm’s role in worship, the Torah’s role in identity-formation, the Gospel’s role in kerygma are interpretive data.

Sanders’s difference from Childs is subtle but real. Sanders is less interested in prescribing a normative theological reading for the church than in describing how canonization and communal use produce contexts of meaning. He is therefore especially attuned to canonical sequences and corpora: the five-book structure of the Psalter, the Book of the Twelve as a single literary entity, the shape of the Christian Bible relative to the Jewish Tanakh. Yet Sanders, too, resists fragmenting the Bible into pre-texts and insists that final-form shape must be honored in exegesis (Sanders, 1987, pp. 59–97).

Convergences and Differences

Both thinkers critique the teleology of much historical criticism, which often stops at reconstructed sources. Both insist on reading the received text within its canonical frame. Both treat canonical shape as hermeneutically determinative—though Sanders accents process and communal function while Childs accents theological end and two-testament unity. Both acknowledge historical work as necessary, but subordinate its conclusions to the interpretive claims of the final form. Where they sometimes diverge is in normativity: Childs, writing self-consciously as a Christian theologian, frames canon for ecclesial reading; Sanders offers a description of how canon functions (often with Jewish as well as Christian canons in view), inviting readers to reckon with that function.

Case Studies

The Psalter: From Anthology to Framed Theology

Canonical critics have argued that the Psalter is not a random anthology but a shaped book with five books marked by doxologies (Pss 1–41; 42–72; 73–89; 90–106; 107–150), with Psalms 1–2 functioning as a canonical portal: Torah meditation and Davidic kingship together orient the reader to a life under instruction and promise (Wilson, 1985, pp. 69–88). Within this frame, Book III climaxes in Psalm 89’s crisis—Davidic promises appear to have failed—followed by Book IV’s Mosaic turn (Pss 90–106), which re-centers hope on YHWH’s kingship beyond any earthly monarch. This arc is not easily visible if psalms are read only as isolated cultic fragments. In canonical perspective, the Psalter narrates a theological journey: Torah and Messiah, crisis of kingship, re-anchoring in divine reign, and climactic praise (Pss 146–150). Childs reads this shape christologically within the two-testament canon: Davidic hope persists through judgment into eschatological praise in Christ. Sanders reads the same shape as evidence of how a liturgical anthology was edited to address post-exilic identity, thereby canonizing a theology of hope that governs interpretation (Childs, 1979, pp. 509–520; Sanders, 1987, pp. 147–175; Wilson, 1985).

Isaiah as a Canonical Book

Modern historical criticism commonly distinguishes First, Deutero-, and Trito-Isaiah on diachronic grounds. Canonical critics neither deny growth nor capitulate to dis-unity. Childs and later canonical interpreters emphasize the book’s final literary unity: recurring motifs—Zion, the Holy One of Israel, servant—and framing devices (e.g., superscriptions; the Hezekiah narratives in chs. 36–39 as hinge) invite readers to hear 1–66 as a single prophetic witness speaking across time (Childs, 1979, pp. 317–330). Christopher Seitz advances this insight, arguing that the canonical Isaiah allows multiple historical settings to be heard theologically continuous as one voice from God to Israel and the nations, and that Christian reading must take this book-level unity seriously as Christian Scripture (Seitz, 2011, pp. 106–140). Such a reading does not erase exile or post-exile; it claims that the final form is designed to build continuity through the disjunctions.

The Book of the Twelve

James Nogalski and others have argued that the so-called Minor Prophets are edited as a single book with programmatic seams (the end of one book echoing the beginning of the next), recurring Day of the LORD themes, and orchestrated lexical hooks (Nogalski, 1993). Joel’s placement is paradigmatic: his vision of the Spirit poured out (Joel 2) re-centers eschatological hope after judgment oracles; Malachi’s call to remember Moses and anticipate Elijah (Mal 4 [3 MT]) invites a canonical “look backward and forward,” binding Torah, Prophets, and Gospel. Canonically, then, the Twelve speak a symphonic message: sin, judgment, return, and promise. Here again Childs reads the unity in a two-testament field—e.g., Malachi’s Elijah promise as part of the Gospel’s horizon—while Sanders highlights how editorial joinery in the Twelve manifests canon-conscious redaction that guides readers to hear themes across scrolls (Childs, 1979, pp. 377–388; Sanders, 1987, pp. 97–121; Nogalski, 1993).

The Fourfold Gospel

Canonical criticism resists both harmonization and reduction to multiple inconsistent Jesuses. The Christian canon binds four Gospels together as the normative witness to the one Christ. The order (Matthew first, John last) and framing effects matter: Matthew opens with genealogy and fulfillment, signaling Torah-prophecy fulfillment; Mark’s urgent proclamation foregrounds kingdom and cross; Luke-Acts produces a two-volume salvation history; John closes the fourfold witness with high-Christology reflection and a stated telos for belief. Canonical reading receives the plurality as intentional plenitude: the church learns Christ by listening to four voices rather than by ironing them flat. Childs insists that theological exegesis should preserve this canonical plurality and read across Gospels canonically rather than harmonistically; Sanders underscores that the fourfold Gospel is itself a canonical decision by the early church, forming a matrix of meaning in which any pericope is heard (Childs, 1992, pp. 489–516).

Paul’s Letter Collection and Acts

Paul’s letters circulate in a canonically shaped corpus: ordered broadly by length, framed by Romans (programmatic theology) and the Pastorals (church order), and intersecting with Acts as narrative context. A canonical approach resists reading Paul solely through Acts, but it also recognizes that Acts—canonically placed—functions for many readers as a narrative frame that shapes expectations about Paul’s mission, suffering, and teaching. A canonical reader asks: what does Romans do as the first major epistle? How does the placement of the Pastorals at the end of the Pauline corpus cast a retrospective light on Pauline theology’s ecclesial implications? What does it mean that Hebrews stands outside the Pauline corpus in most modern canons, and how does the Catholic Epistles collection bear its own canonical logic? Questions like these press beyond individual letter exegesis into canonical hermeneutics of collections (Childs, 1992, pp. 317–350; Barton, 1996, pp. 73–95).

The Pentateuch and Deuteronomy’s Canonical Function

Even where one accepts complex compositional histories, a canonical approach asks how the final shape of the Pentateuch functions. Many have argued that Deuteronomy serves as a hermeneutical key, recapitulating and interpreting Israel’s story while orienting readers toward life “today” under Torah (Childs, 1979, pp. 192–214). The Pentateuch ends outside the land with Moses’s death—an editorial decision that theologizes delay: Israel must live by Torah in hope. That canonical arrangement frames the Former Prophets, such that Joshua’s entry reads as the outworking of Deuteronomic promise and warning. This canonical link shapes the way narratives of conquest, judges, and monarchy are heard—a different question than “Which source lies behind Deuteronomy?”

Method in Practice: How to Read Canonically

Canonical criticism offers neither a wooden rule nor a license for free association. Its discipline can be summarized as a sequence. The interpreter first establishes the text (philology, textual criticism), then performs close reading of the final literary form in its book-level context, giving priority to features of the canonical text that mark its shape (frames, superscriptions, macro-structures). Next, the interpreter locates the passage within canonical corpora (Torah, Prophets, Writings; Gospels, Pauline corpus, Catholic Epistles) and within the order and shape of those corpora. Only then does she range to broader canonical intertexts, allowing the canon to teach its own cross-references. Historical-critical insights may illuminate difficulties or enrich understanding, but the argument of the exegesis returns to the final form and the canonical field in which the passage functions. In Christian work, this includes attending to the two-testament relation: hearing the Old Testament in its integrity and as witness within the Christian canon to Christ, and hearing the New Testament as apostolic attestation that presupposes and rereads Israel’s Scripture.

Objections and Responses

Several criticisms recur. Some charge that canonical criticism ignores history, turning Scripture into a theological Rorschach. Childs anticipated this and insisted that historical work is necessary and often decisive; the dispute is about teleology, not necessity (Childs, 1979, pp. 79–86). Others worry that parenting “the canon” risks flattening internal diversity. Canonical critics reply that their very insistence on final form plurality—e.g., four Gospels—is a guard against flattening. The canon pluralizes within unity.

Another critique concerns canon plurality: Which canon? Jewish Tanakh? Catholic deuterocanon? Protestant two-Testament with different book order? Sanders embraces this diversity descriptively, arguing that each community’s canon functions as its matrix of meaning; scholarship should attend to these different shapes and learn from them (Sanders, 1987, pp. 3–12). Childs, writing as a Christian theologian, argues for the Christian Bible’s two-testament canon as the proper field of Christian theological exegesis while still learning from Jewish ordering (Childs, 1992, pp. 707–739). Critics like James Barr also queried whether Childs’s approach surreptitiously smuggled in dogmatics under the guise of canon (Barr, 1999, pp. 322–356). Childs answered that theology is unavoidable and must be done responsibly: canon constrains theology by the shape of Scripture, rather than theology re-shaping Scripture (Childs, 1992).

A further set of concerns arises from textual criticism. If “final form” rules, how do we adjudicate major variants like the longer ending of Mark or the Pericope Adulterae? Canonical critics generally insist that textual criticism remains prior: we must establish the most likely text. But they also observe that canonical reception has effects: the fourfold Gospel includes Mark that ends at 16:8 in earliest witnesses; the church nonetheless catechizes resurrection faith through the ensemble of four Gospels. Canonical exegesis, then, neither ignores the variant nor treats it as irrelevant; it reads Mark honestly where the evidence points, while recognizing that canonical intertext (Matthew, Luke, John) supplies what Mark’s open ending invites—the church’s resurrection proclamation (Barton, 1996, pp. 186–198).

Finally, postcolonial and feminist critiques worry that invoking “canon” can sanctify power, freezing patriarchal or imperial voices. Canonical critics should hear this admonition and respond in two ways. First, canonical shape often itself disrupts power, centering lament (Psalms), prophetic critique (Twelve), and cruciform wisdom (Gospels). Second, canonical reading must be ethical: it neither canonizes historical abuses nor silences marginalized voices; rather, it reads the canon’s internal critiques as resources for repentance and reform, a point Childs himself presses in his theological readings (Childs, 1992, pp. 740–758).

Canonical Criticism in Dialogue with Other Approaches

Canonical criticism is not a replacement for narrative or rhetorical criticism; it is a frame within which their insights become more, not less, theologically meaningful. Narrative critics show how Mark’s intercalations work; canonical critics add that those intercalations resonate across the fourfold Gospel and within the church’s canon. Rhetorical critics analyze Galatians as argument; canonical critics ask how the letter’s placement in the Pauline corpus and its interplay with Romans guide ecclesial hearing. Structural and literary analyses of Psalms gain theological depth when set within the Psalter’s five-book arc. The upshot for doctoral work is not method warfare but coordination: let canonical shape orient the use of diachronic and synchronic tools toward a theological reading of Scripture as Scripture.

Assignments

A first assignment invites you to write a canonical exegesis of Psalms 1–2 and Psalm 89 (3,500–4,000 words). Begin with close reading of each psalm’s final form, then analyze how Psalms 1–2 jointly frame the Psalter’s ethos (Torah and kingship) and how Psalm 89’s crisis functions within Book III. Conclude by showing how Books IV–V respond to that crisis canonically, and articulate how this arc informs Christian prayer and hope. Engage Wilson (1985), Childs (1979), and Sanders (1987).

A second assignment asks for a canonical commentary on Isaiah 40–55 (3,000–3,500 words). Without denying diachronic questions, focus on how the book-level unity of Isaiah frames these chapters. Discuss the function of the Hezekiah narratives (36–39) as hinge, the recurrence of “Holy One of Israel,” and the servant’s identity in light of earlier and later chapters. Conclude with reflections on how a canonical Isaiah shapes Christian use of these texts (Childs, 1979; Seitz, 2011).

A third assignment proposes a study of the Book of the Twelve (3,500–4,000 words). Map lexical and thematic seams (end/beginning links), trace the “Day of the LORD” motif across the sequence, and analyze Malachi’s closing exhortation to remember Moses and expect Elijah as a canonical bridge to the New Testament. Reflect on how this canonical unity should temper proof-texting from isolated minor prophets (Nogalski, 1993; Sanders, 1987).

A fourth assignment invites a methodological essay (3,000 words) comparing Childs’s canonical approach and Sanders’s canonical criticism. Clarify their convergences and differences regarding canon’s normativity, the role of the community, and two-testament theology. Engage a critic such as Barr or Barton, and articulate how your own dissertation will integrate canonical shape with historical and literary methods (Barr, 1999; Barton, 1996; Childs, 1992; Sanders, 1987).

Conclusion

Canonical criticism emerged to answer a felt need: to read the Bible as Scripture—not merely as a collection of historical artifacts—without abandoning the gains of modern scholarship. In Childs’s hands it became a robust theological proposal: exegesis should be ordered to the final form of the Christian canon, in which the Old and New Testaments together witness to God’s saving work culminating in Christ. In Sanders’s hands it became a historical-functional proposal: we must understand how canonization and communal use forge contexts of meaning and then read within those contexts. Both insist that canonical shape is hermeneutically determinative. Both resist a teleology that ends behind the text. Both invite us to listen to Scripture’s voice as a shaped whole.

For doctoral interpreters, canonical criticism is not an excuse to short-circuit difficult historical questions or to force tidy harmonies. It is a call to place every critical tool in service of hearing the canon’s symphonic witness: Torah and Prophets opening onto Gospel and Epistle; Psalms schooling desire across crisis and praise; Isaiah speaking judgment and comfort as one book; twelve prophets singing one long song; four evangelists announcing one Christ in four cadences; Paul’s letters forming a corpus that shapes the church’s life. To learn to read canonically is to learn to hear Scripture as Scripture—historically aware, literarily attentive, and theologically alive.

References

Barr, J. (1999). The concept of biblical theology: An Old Testament perspective. Fortress Press.

Barton, J. (1996). Reading the Old Testament: Method in biblical study (Rev. ed.). Westminster John Knox.

Childs, B. S. (1979). Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Fortress Press.

Childs, B. S. (1992). Biblical theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological reflection on the Christian Bible. Fortress Press.

Dempster, S. G. (2003). Dominion and dynasty: A theology of the Hebrew Bible. InterVarsity Press.

Nogalski, J. D. (1993). Literary precursors to the Book of the Twelve. de Gruyter.

Sanders, J. A. (1972). Torah and canon. Fortress Press.

Sanders, J. A. (1987). From sacred story to sacred text: Canon as paradigm. Fortress Press.

Seitz, C. R. (2011). The character of Christian Scripture: The significance of a two-testament Bible. Baker Academic.

Wilson, G. H. (1985). The editing of the Hebrew Psalter. Scholars Press.