TJieodore W. Jennings, Jr. The Meaning of ... - Quarterly Review

location but about the way we relate to the two documents. One is
canonical Scripture for the Christian community that stretches across
the centuries and around the world, and the other is not. It is
unlikely that anyone else outside Fort Worth will ever quote from
the UCCCD letter to support or illustrate a point or read it for their
own spiritual growth or consider it an obstacle to what they really
want to do. But uncounted millions, for nineteen centuries, in
hundreds of languages, nations, and cultures, have turned to 1 Peter
for no other reason than that it is canonical.
What does it mean for a document to be canonical? Early
Christianity produced much literature interpreting the meaning of the
Christ event. The standard collection of "New Testament
apocrypha" lists sixty-three "Gospels," and a corresponding
plethora of "Acts," "Epistles," and "Apocalypses." 10
Over a period of some generations, the church read, listened, and
sorted out, and finally settled on twenty-seven documents (Gospels
and Letters) which in its collective judgment met two criteria: in
them it heard the authentic word of God that had been spoken in the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and in them they found
authentic witness to the meaning of the Christ event. The canonical
documents functioned as medium of address and arbiter of meaning.
When the original readers of 1 Peter read it, it was not canonical,
not part of their Bible. They read it as more than the message of one
individual, Simon Peter. They read it as the message of the Roman
church but not yet as Bible.
When we read it as part of our Bible, we read it as more than the
advice of one individual. We read it as a letter given to us not by the
Roman church alone but by the whole church. To call this or any
other document canonical means to say that it is to this collection of
texts to which we come back again and again to hear the word of
God, that we come here and not elsewhere in order to understand
what the Christian faith was for them and what it can be for us.
What does it mean for us in our time and place to approach a text
in this book? This is a very basic question, and one of the most
pressing questions before the church these days, even if it is often
not aware of it. I suggest that all the answers to this question can be
divided into two categories: using the Bible as opposed to listening
to the Bible.
INTERPRETING 1 PETER AS A LETTER 95