The Canonical Approach

[T.A.G.]

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed Waltke's text on OT Theology.

AMR

 

[MW]

If "canonical process approach" (CPA) is intended, there is no doubt that it is much better than the old text critical approaches, which would cut and slice the text to a point that it lacked any unified coherence. CPA's strength lies in its aim of learning the message of a book of Scripture as a literary unity. This has produced excellent results especially in the compositional nature of the Psalms and Proverbs. Its weakness comes in the failure to deal with historical issues. The interpreter might in fact still harbour unfounded beliefs as to the origin of the book. He is not obligated by a CPA to announce or defend those beliefs, and yet he is free to interpret the text in the light of them. Hence the reader is forced to deal with conclusions even though the premises are not explicitly stated or defended. The Psalms are a prime example of this, where compositional unity might be treated in terms of second temple Judaism, which takes in a period as broad as 520BC - 70AD. Further, the CPA might even speak of "developing" layers within a text's history. At this point the approach becomes highly subjective.