Enriching Our Theological Diet

Photo by Wesual Click on Unsplash

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is what our respective grandmothers taught us. It is homespun proverbial wisdom and lacks the science behind the slogans popularized by nutritional guidelines in our home countries, “5 a Day” for Daniel in the UK, and a “My Plate” percentage for Tammie in the US, to eat fresh fruit. Honestly, we both think our grandmas had a catchier phrase. Still, regardless of who said it best, they all speak to the necessity that we should eat a varied and balanced diet in order to obtain all the protein, nutrients, and vitamins we need to flourish. 

The same principle is at the heart of the late Billy Abraham’s vision for a Canonical Theism (2008). Abraham’s thesis was relatively simple. He summarized his thesis from Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (1998) in an article in 2001 by saying that we “should expand the material identification of canon to take in more than scripture, so it can cover the whole canonical heritage of the early church.” Abraham’s proposal was based upon his longing for the renewal of the church. Just as a varied and balanced diet improves our physical health, Abraham believed that the early Church helpfully identified a list of resources for discipleship so as to equip the Church in its critical, yet delicate, task of immersing believers into the life of Christian faith. The canon of scripture is, of course, essential to that task. Today, we commonly refer to the canon of scripture as the 27 books of the New Testament and the 39 of the Old Testament. These books were informally agreed upon by the early Church during the life of St. Athanasius in the 4th century. For Abraham, scripture is part of a wider set of materials also produced in the first centuries of Christianity as Christians gathered together to worship God, to teach the faith to others, initiate persons into the church, celebrate the sacraments, and more generally be faithful disciples of Jesus by living out the Great Commandment to love God and neighbour. 

For Abraham, these creeds, rites of passage, liturgical traditions, persons (saints, mothers and fathers, teachers), and ecclesial regulations constitute a “canonical heritage.” In sum, he argues that in recognising these materials as ‘canons,’ the undivided church of antiquity—before East and West divided in 1054—judged them to be means of grace.

For good Protestants, given our historic emphasis on sola scriptura (the Bible alone), the above might raise eyebrows. Such a stance also appears to challenge the notion of prima scriptura, as Abraham might be interpreted to suggest that all the canons are on an equal epistemological footing. However, this would be a misreading of this precious vision for renewal.

There is, after all, a reason Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us our daily bread” (MT 6:11). We need it for sustenance. The local bakery may not be as prevalent in North America as the boulangerie or panaderia are, providing daily bread, in Europe and Latin America, but empty bread shelves in the supermarket are a sure indicator that storm preparations are being taken seriously. Bread is the stuff of life, the world over. Whether you refer to your bread as baguette, ciabatta, focaccia, injera, naan, pita, roti, or something else, that baked bit of flour—leavened or unleavened—is the basis of any culture’s diet. In the same way, we might think of the canon of scripture as a basic staple of the Christian life. Without it we cannot live. However, does that mean we should not eat any other foods? Must we only eat bread? Our grandmothers (and nutritionists on both sides of the pond ) certainly don’t think it is a good idea. In the same way, while the scriptures are an essential part of our spiritual diet, are we to ignore the creeds, the prayers, the liturgies, or the letters, writings, and testimonies of the early Church? Abraham would emphatically say, “No!” 

Quite simply, though sufficient for faith, scripture does not interpret itself. Our relational God, who Christians recognize as triune—existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in community with one another before Creation—asks us to be in communal relationship with one another. That communal relationship is not just with our contemporaries—but with the saints of the church who have gone before and have passed down the tradition that informs us. Indeed, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not contained in scripture but worked out in those very councils that give us the creeds. This explains why proposals such as Canonical Theism are so important for the sustained health of the church.

While he was a philosopher of the highest order, Abraham made a sharp distinction between the terms canon and criterion. Canons, for him, are those lists of varied materials used in the discipleship of persons to help believers know the love, glory, beauty, and majesty of our Lord and Savior. Abraham believed that the revelation of God was at work in the canonical decisions of the early church. An aspect of our faithful discipleship is to immerse ourselves in the depth and breadth of the things God has provided through the mediation of the Holy Spirit in order to reveal himself in the history and life of the Church. By immersing ourselves in scripture, and the creeds, and the catechisms, and the liturgies, and the testimonies, we do more than merely bathe ourselves. We drink in the riches of the Church and are formed by their fullness.

Criteria, for Abraham, refer to how those canonical lists were used as a rubric to evaluate theological understanding. He felt that over time, these canons—particularly the canon of scripture—were morphed by factions within the Church into epistemological norms (1998). This distortion led theologians to set different aspects of the canonical heritage into opposition. Instead of being materials designed to be used to build up the church as a whole, they were atomised and weaponised in theological debate. Over time, this has led different Christian traditions to prioritise different elements to the exclusion of others. In becoming holy hand grenades to be lobbed at one another, theological battlelines were drawn that inevitably led to division. As a result, the resources available for contemporary Christian discipleship have been significantly reduced. 

Billy lamented the way in which the canons of the Church became a cause for division instead of holistic formation in the lives of ordinary Christians. He did not see the canon of scripture, the creeds, or indeed any other part of the canonical heritage as a norm by which we evaluate theological proposals. On the contrary, he believed these materials were identified as being important for enabling our spiritual nourishment. He understood these precious materials to be means of grace, essential for the discipleship of all believers. They are sustaining resources to enrich us all as we grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus.

Billy’s argument for reclaiming a canonical heritage was not some thought experiment. He had passion for it and advocated for it by assigning reading that not only reached into the depths of Church history, but across the breadth of traditions rooted in the ancient Church. It’s because of Billy’s insistence on exploring the canonical heritage from across time that Tammie began to read more widely than she had in seminary. Who knows how long it would have taken her to discover the ancient and Orthodox texts accessible through publishers like St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press if she hadn’t attended a continuing ed event Billy taught when she was new clergy? And, when she began teaching Christian formation and discipleship at Wesley Seminary, Billy reminded her to have her students read Wesley’s sermons for their spiritually formative content and not for theological debate just to prove a point. 

Daniel was first introduced to Billy’s work as an undergraduate. Though they never met in person, Billy still threw Daniel a lifeline when he began his PhD studies and a colleague doing work in textual criticism and the New Testament abandoned his faith and became an atheist. Canonical Theism provided Daniel with the life raft he needed -- to drink in the wisdom of the early Church and its reception of the Scriptures -- that he could navigate this form of scepticism. Moreover, Billy's diagnosis of the ongoing captivity of the church to the latest epistemological craze broadened Daniel’s theological horizons, encouraging him to dig deep into the rich inheritance of the Christian tradition. He may have never met Billy, but he continues to imagine how his important proposal for renewal can be implemented.

If exploring the wealth of our canonical heritage is more prevalent today than it was a generation ago, it might be because of Billy’s influence. If you’ve read any of those works for the purpose of your spiritual formation rather than information, it very likely is because of Billy’s influence, whether you know it or not. Still, it is hard, 500 years after the Reformation, to reimagine our conception of scripture. However, if the canon of scripture is an essential part of a wider set of materials necessary for our spiritual development, it is important that we do not neglect a single part of our rich spiritual inheritance. Surely we should make use of all of the precious resources God has given to us so as to ensure all people can be fully immersed in the life of God. After all, a warm slice of fresh bread is fuel for the body, but fresh from the oven with a smear of butter and a drizzle of honey, it is a feast for the soul. 

Tammie Grimm is Assistant Professor of Congregational Formation at Wesley Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan University, in Marion, Indiana. She serves on the Editorial Board of Firebrand. 

Daniel Pratt Morris-Chapman is a Senior Tutor at Wesley House, Cambridge, and an ordained Presbyter in the British Methodist Church.