Knife of Canon

Webster ends his interesting Barthian discussion of the canon by noting that Christians should be grateful for the genealogies of modern thought that “trace the history, observe the corruptions of producers and their products, and so cast the mighty from their thrones.”  But in the end he advocates another response to the immantization of the canon: “to talk of the canon dogmatically as that means of grace through which the judgment of the apostolic gospel is set before the church.  If the canon is a function of God’s communicative fellowship with an unruly church, if it is part of the history of judgment and mercy, then it cannot simply be a stabilizing factor, a legitimating authority.  Rather, as the place where divine speech may be heard, it is – or ought to be – a knife at the church’s heart.”