In response to John Hobbins’s “Thinking About Canon (Part One),” in which John wrote that “A writing is canonical if and only if passages from it can be appealed to for the purpose of establishing a point of doctrine,” Duane Smith wrote:

Not only is this a good working definition, it reflects the reality of the process of canonization. But why would anyone or any group want to do that? I don’t have answers, just questions. If there is an answer, I think it lies in the general neighborhood of the psychological basis for the persuasiveness of arguments from authority. A written authority, often, but not always, of obscure origin replaces a human authority. And it does it precisely in those areas of human thought where no human can be authoritative: religious doctrine.

I think that before this canonical roundtable is all over, I would like to come back to John’s “functional definition” and argue that a canon of religious writings can be meaningful in a different, or at least more nuanced way.
We’ll get back to that later. For the moment, I want to take a stab at answering Duane’s question, “[W]hy would anyone or any group want to do that?” Duane’s own answer, quoted above, relates to the establishment of a “superhuman” authority—but in order to achieve this, the canonical process must somehow obscure the very human origins of the scriptures, hence doctrines of inspiration. (That last part is mine, not Duane’s, though I think I know Duane well enough to know that he will agree.)

I do not wish to discount Duane’s explanation, but I would like to extend it by asking why a written authority of the type Duane describes is so appealing. In my opinion, some religious folk desire an authoritative written canon because affirming such a thing creates an “objective” touchstone for the religion. At least, that is why the leaders of the early Churches of Christ opted for biblicism: “Christians have many different creeds and customs,” they reasoned, “but all Christians receive the Bible as scripture.” Thus, canon can provide a touchstone of religious authority that transcends any “organization” or “institution” within that particular religion’s broadest frame of reference. Moreover, the degree of unity provided by the canon in this way—whether large or small—works both in any given “present” but also across time, linking past and future.

Please note that I am not claiming that only canon can do this. Ecclesiastical tradition can do it too; in the Roman Catholic church, much the same thing is achieved by the Papacy and the whole church hierarchy. However, prioritization of canon over ecclesiastical authority, as you find in groups such as my own Churches of Christ, “democratizes” ecclesiastical authority by giving each individual believer direct access to the source of authoritative doctrine, with no official intermediaries (cf. the Baptist concept of “soul competency”).

Well, more to come later. Nicholas is awake now, and we’re going to take him outside to play in the jungle before the jaguars come out to play after sundown. En la selva, la fuerte selva, el tigre duerme hoy …