What are canonical approaches?

Canonical criticism is a faith-based approach. It involves the Bible as sacred scripture, which means that the Bible has special authority and a special role in the community of faith. These communities of faith try to think of the text as a whole, they do not fragment what they read. They see the voices in one part of the text as having meaning in another part. This means people who use the canonical approach cannot justify just throwing out a certain section of scripture because it may not agree with their situation. The Bible is the authority to hear and discern God’s will. If you throw out a part of it, then you could be stifling what God wants for your life.

Since the Bible has such authority for canonical approaches, it has special expectations. The Bible is to help with faith, to edify and/or correct a person’s way of living. Since the Bible is to aid in faith, then communities of faith are the best suited to interpret scripture.

This approach is more than just studying the Bible closely. It has to do with revelation, and trying to discern God’s will. “The dependence of Christian theology on the alleged revelation of God in Jesus Christ is the key to its close relationship with the Bible” (Barton 115). There are so many different ways God chooses to reveal Godself to us. This can include tradition, experience, creation, and also the Bible. They are all important ways of seeing God work in the world. The Bible should be the basis of the revelations though. In the case of the Reformations, Luther saw in the Bible that indulgences were nowhere to be found. He challenged the traditions of the church based on scripture. It was a new interpretation, through a canonical approach, based on the fact that the Bible is a sacred scripture, and as such, it can reveal God’s will for our lives, if only we listen.