Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism [Paperback]

William J. Abraham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0199250030 | ISBN-13: 978-0199250035

Standard accounts of canon reduce it to scripture and treat scripture as a criterion of truth. Scripture is then related in positive or negative ways to tradition, reason, and experience. Such projects mistakenly locate the canonical heritage of the church within epistemology, and Abraham charts the fatal consequences of this move, from the Fathers to modern feminist theology.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"While this book is aimed primarily at his fellow philosophers and theologians, it deserves a wider readership as well. It is elegantly written and marked by numerous memorable lines and striking turns of phrase."--Theology Today

"This is an unusually ambitious book ... a considerable achievement. It raises important issues, and affords many valuable insights in the course of its historical reflections."--Maurice Wiles, Journal of Theological Studies

"Every issue and thinker is expounded clearly and concisely, with attention always drawn to strengths as well as weaknesses. To this non-specialist the argument was always accessible and regularly persuasive."--The Expository Times

About the Author

William J. Abraham teaches philosophy and theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, where he is Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199250030
• ISBN-13: 978-0199250035
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,777,654 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book I Always Wanted To Read & Could Only Dream Of Writing, March 29, 2000

By 

John Stamps "the brittle technical writer" (Bay Area California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism (Hardcover)

Abraham is an Oxford-trained evangelical Methodist who teaches philosophy and theology at SMU.

After describing that "canon" in the patristic era was larger than Scripture alone and included other items like the rule of faith, the Creeds, the Fathers, iconography, the episcopacy, and so on, he describes what an incredibly huge mistake to think of canon(s) in epistemic terms. Whatever else canons were, they weren't designed to answer philosophical questions re: "what can we know and how can we know it?"

However, as Abraham goes on to argue, that's exactly what the question of canonicity become in Western theology of whatever stripe -- liberal, feminist, conservative, fundamentalist, whatever.

Abraham makes the somewhat startling claim that it was the Reformation that is responsible for the large-scale confusion AND obsession in the West with epistemology. He argues (to my mind plausibly) that the history of modern philosophy, especially our infatuation with the "what can I know and how can I know it? questions, began with Luther and Calvin fracturing St Thomas' synthesis (which had its own problems) and the inability of Catholics and Protestants to solve truth questions based on the current terms of the discussion. Descartes' quest for certitude only makes sense in the carnage left over from the religious wars of the 16th & 17th century.

There's more than a bit of irony when Christians in the West both Catholic and Protestant devised various criteria to define what is true (versus the positions of their opponents) then suddenly find the criteria they devised used against themselves, or turned in directions they hadn't anticipated (the law of unintended consequences).

That philosophical and theological quest for certainty took on a life of its own after the Protestant Reformation. Abraham is quite a good story-teller. After describing the nature of "canons" in the patristic era, he recites the break between East and West, the theological and philosophical synthesis of St Thomas, goes through the Reformers Calvin and Luther, on to Descartes and Locke, to the Princeton theologians Hodge, Alexander, and Warfield, to John Henry Newman, Karl Barth, and finally down to the present day with the current feminist rewrite of the very notion of "authority."

C.S. Lewis once said any book worth reading once was worth reading twice. (Some books aren't worth reading once!)

I'm in my second reading, despite its non-Lenten nature.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a discription is not a solution., December 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism (Hardcover)

Professor Abraham's account of how the idea of cannon became increasingly limited to an epistemic norm is superb. However, I couldn't help wondering if the tacit suggestion wasn't that, since the early Christians didn't employ canon as an epistemic norm, we should all just stop thinking about epistemic norms when it comes to Christianity. To recover the fullness of the canonical tradition and expose the ways that the notion changed through history is one thing....but what is the underlying point? Do we really avoid epistemic pitfalls by merely changing the subject from "norms" to "canon?" I guess the answer really rests on whether the questions raised most prominantly in the Enlightenment have a kind of independant legitimacy, or whether we can ignore them by identifying them as historical artifacts. Abraham doesn't really spell out an epistemic proposal in his book, which leaves us all to speculate about whether one is even possible given the problems he so carefully uncovers. The book is best seen as an historical archeology of the idea of canon rather than as a constructive solution to the profound problems it documents. One can't help thirsting for more!