Ecclesial Exegesis and Ecclesial Authority: Childs, Fowl, and Aquinas

The Thomist 69 (2005): 407-67 ECCLESIAL EXEGESIS AND ECCLESIAL AUTHORI1Y: CHILDS, FOWL, AND AQUINAS MATIHEW LEVERING Ave Maria University Naples, Florida WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP between biblical interpretation and the various understandings of the kind of reality that the Church is? In exploring this question, this article will examine three exegetical models: Brevard Childs's Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: TheologicalReflectionon the Christian Bible, Stephen Fowl'sEngagingScripture: A Model for TheologicalInterpretation, and Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on the Gospel ofSt. John (on John 21). I will inquire into how the three authors' various understandings of the Church shape their biblical interpretation, and how their understanding of exegesis in turn shapes their view of the Church and ecclesial authority. In order to place these three approaches in dialogue, a significant portion of the article will be devoted to sketching their views in detail. Childs and Fowl are among the preeminent contemporary thinkers on the topic of the theological exegesis of Scripture, and comparing them with Aquinas finds justification in their own writings. Childs says of Aquinas, "one could hardly wish for a more serious and brilliant model for Biblical Theology on which a new generation can test its mettle."1 Similarly Fowl, concerned 1 Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 42; for a survey of the fate of Childs's guiding theme of "canon" in biblical studies (German- and English-speaking) over the past half-century, with attention to Jewish-Christian dialogue, see Childs, "Critique of Recent lntertextual Canonical Interpretations," Zeitscbrift {Ur die alttestamentliche 407 408 MATIHEW LEVERING about the institutionalized theological fragmentation that one finds in the contemporary academy, suggests thatAquinas's understanding of exegesis is in some respects an exemplar for his own: Thomas Aquinas, as well as his contemporaries, would have recognized that in writing his commentary on John's gospel he was engaged in a different sort of task than in writing his Summa Theologiae. Thomas, and his contemporaries, however, would have been puzzled by the notion that in writing one he was acting like a biblical scholar and in writing the other he was working as a systematic theologian. These tasks were all seen as parts of a more or less unified theological program of articulating, shaping, and embodying convictions about God, humanity, and the world.2 Wissenschaft 115 (2003): 173-84; and "The Canon in Recent Biblical Studies: Reflections on an Era," Pro &clesia 14 (2005): 26-45, which are especially valuable for their critique of James A. Sanders's approach to "canonical" biblical interpretation (e.g., Sanders, Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984)); see also the essays in The Canon Debate, ed. L. M. McDonald and J. A. Sanders (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2002), especially the essay by Fran~ois Bovon, "The Canonical Structure of the Gospel and Apostle," 516-27. In response to James Barr's thoroughgoing critique (found throughout Barr's corpus) of "biblical theology," see the pointed comments ofFrancisWatson in his Text and Truth: RedefiningBiblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997), 18-26; cf. Jon D. Levenson's critical review of Barr's The Concept ofBiblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999) in First Things 100 (February 2000): 59-63. As Watson points out, "The Christian Bible is the object of study for three distinct communities of interpreters. Each community has its own relatively autonomous disciplinary structures. Each has developed an extensive and ever-expanding secondary literature, with its great names ofpast and present, its monograph series and its journals. Each offers programmes of graduate training and career possibilities, thereby securing its own future. . • • [I]t therefore requires a conscious effort of the imagination to perceive the coexistence ofthree distinctcommunitiesofbiblical interpreters as the anomaly thatitactually is" (2). Watson goes on to observe (rightly) that while biblical scholars freely work in other fields (sociology, literary theory), they are discouraged from working with systematic theology: "at this point the disciplinary boundary has normative force. It does not merely represent a convenient division of labour; it claims the right to exercise a veto. Interdisciplinaryworkinvolvingbiblical studiesand systematic theologyis therefore a...