I haven’t used the term ‘canon’ before, but the issue I want to look at is usually referred to as ‘A canon within the Canon’.

• ‘Canon’ means ‘rule’ and the ‘Canon of Scripture’, the biblical canon, is the approved collection of writings that form the Bible, according to the rule of the Church. The canon of Scripture differs a bit between Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles.
• To write of a ‘canon within the canon’ means that some writings are more important than others, and biblical teaching is shaped by the prior commitment to the message of these favoured writings.
• Most obviously, Christians value Jesus’ life and teaching more than anything else in the Bible, so that would be a canon within the canon. Jesus’ life and teaching becomes the lens, or the spectacles, through which we see the whole Bible. Those spectacles will, to some extent, include all we learn about faith in Jesus from the rest of the New Testament.
• We will still need to do our best to listen to and understand Old Testament writings in their original context first – bringing to bear everything we know about the situation they address, the human reasons why that word was spoken and written and reflecting on what may have been God’s reason for including it at that time and for later generations.  Then we should look at it through the spectacles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and see what difference that makes.
• Some would say that Martin Luther and the reformation made Paul’s teaching about ‘justification by faith’ as the lens through which we see the whole Bible landscape.
• Liberation Theology, which arose out of poor communities in Latin America, takes the Exodus as its canon with the canon, stressing the liberation that God brought to Israel in rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. That liberation then becomes a model for the liberation that Jesus brings – not just what one might call ‘spiritual’ liberation from personal sin, but structural, societal liberation that insists upon socio-economic change that is good news for the poor and the oppressed.
• You may have a favourite parable, or a portion of scripture which speaks powerfully to you and acts as your ‘canon within the canon’.
• Churches can stress evangelism, the Eucharist, social outreach, contemporary or traditional music, social justice and so on. All will have a justifiable biblical basis and this may influence everything else the Bible says.
• As a young Christian, it was a few years before I engaged with biblical teaching about the Holy Spirit. I discovered that some churches had decided that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were confined to the age of the apostles. For other churches, teaching about the Holy Spirit became their canon with the canon – as in Pentecostal churches, or the Charismatic movement and the Vineyard churches. Some churches stress the other persons in the Trinity: God the Father, or Jesus the Saviour. Bible readings, prayers and preaching very often favour one or the other, focusing on creation or salvation.
• A ‘canon within the Canon’ may be a bad thing as it may suppress other biblical teaching, and so be blinkered and perhaps prejudiced. But it may also give helpful focus in particular situations and might reflect God’s priorities in that time and place.
• The Bible itself contains teaching that varies in emphasis and sometimes substance according to the historic situation, which is no doubt why the Bible is particularly open to divergent teaching. Previous articles have addressed some of these divergencies in both Testaments.

The Church wants to keep control

I used to work overseas with the Church Mission Society, based in Sudan first and then Uganda. In many ways the spread of the Gospel in many African countries parallels the spread of the Gospel in the early Church. Certainly, rapid growth brought problems.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries mission agencies from ‘the West’ introduced the Christian faith to many African peoples (though ancient Coptic and Orthodox Churches had existed for centuries in Ethiopia and Egypt) chiefly in sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps inevitably, they brought many elements of their own culture which were either imposed or taken up by the African Church. For example, translations of the Book of Common Prayer, vestments and ‘My Lord Bishop’ are still common among Churches begun by Anglican mission agencies in Africa. 

Alongside this work, indigenous African Churches began to split off, many with a mix of traditional African culture and sometimes traditional religion alongside Christ and the Bible. It became increasingly important to offer the new churches clear guidance to ‘keep them in the fold’, faithful to the Gospel they received. Other independent churches simply developed their own unique theologies, many of which appear to thrive up to the present time. Some are relatively orthodox and some are distinctly ‘wacky’!

The early Church spread far from its roots and soon faced the problem of poor teaching and false teachers leading the new congregations astray. In Acts 20, Paul warns the elders in Ephesus that false teachers (“savage wolves”) would come among their flock and “distort the truth”.

We can see this happening if we compare Jesus’ teaching in John’s Gospel with the first letter of John. Both came from John the apostle and the community that followed him. His Gospel is significantly different in emphasis from the first three Gospels. One difference is the amount of space and significance he gives to the role of the Holy Spirit, notably in chapters 14-16. Jesus encourages his disciples with the promise that he will send them the Holy Spirit to be their guide, to be another advocate (Jesus was the first). The Spirit will be called alongside them to lead them into all truth once Jesus is no longer with them to do it. It’s optimistic.

The first letter of John comes from the same Johannine community but addresses the Church many years later. The Holy Spirit hardly features in the letter, except to discern between the competing spirits. “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” (1 John 4:2)

The letter writers have lost the sense of exciting freedom in the Spirit. Rather, they are concerned with countering the false teachers and the main purpose is to establish what is genuinely Christian. Its characteristic phrase is “This is how you know …”. The teachers and the Christian communities are judged on how loving they are (particularly towards fellow-Christians) and whether or not they believe the right things about Jesus.

For understandable, and sometimes good reasons, Church leadership usually wants to control and regulate what is taught in the Christian communities they have some responsibility for. This is understandable because otherwise they may lose the integrity of the Gospel as originally taught. But it is not acceptable if its prime motivation is preservation of the institution and its power structures. This can very much affect how the Bible is used or abused, but it inevitably tends towards institutional control rather than stressing the role of the Spirit and our freedom in Christ. This is as true for small independent churches as it is for the biggest church – the Roman Catholic Church.

We can turn to Liberation theology again as a good example. It generally believes that the Church has accumulated wealth and influence by ignoring much of Jesus’ message about wealth and poverty, siding with governments rather than challenging oppressive socio-economic structures.  Liberation theology tries to put the Bible back into the hands of the people to hear its radical message afresh. All churches can, and probably do, read and teach from the Bible selectively in ways that promote or preserve the status quo, “the way we do things here”. Genuine engagement with the Bible counteracts such damping down of spiritual fire and opens the way to engaging with our endlessly creative God, who is always remaking us and calling us forward into his future.