If the New Testament writings emerged in the course of a history and are the witnesses and documentation of this history, then we are faced with a question: why should our discipline be concerned just with these and no other writings? The normal answer is that only these belong to the canon. But that is not a satisfactory answer. Where the doctrine of inspiration has been discarded, it is impossible to continue to maintain the dogmatic conception of the canon.

No New Testament writing was born with the predicate ‘canonical’ attached. The statement that a writing is canonical signifies in the first place only that it was pronounced canonical afterwards by the authorities of the second- to fourth-century church, in some cases only after all kinds of hesitation and disagreement. The history of the canon is sufficiently instructive in this respect.

So anyone who accepts without question the idea of the canon places himself under the authority of the bishops and theologians of those centuries. Anyone who does not recognize their authority in other matters — and no Protestant theologian does — is being consistent if he questions it here, too. (70-71)

That last paragraph is particularly spicy.

Now Wrede is not interested in how the church reads the New Testament; he leaves that task to the dogmatic theologians. Rather Wrede’s interest is in the religion and theology of the first Christians. Since Childs there has been a resurgence of canon criticism and as a result a more nuanced view toward the canon has emerged, so unlike Wrede, I don’t think we should throw the baby out with the bath water. However, I still agree with Wrede’s point that as students we should be as inclusive as possible concerning the early Christian writings. Why not pay significant attention to texts such as the Didache, which actually predate some NT writings?

I could write more on this topic about how many of us approach the Bible from multiple angles. As students or scholars, we want to know as much as possible about the first Christians and find that the canonical restraint is unnecessary. We obviously care about the issues, but we don’t want our biases to interfere with our view of the text because that’s what being a good scholar is all about, right? But then some of us also view the text within the context of our religious history and topics like canon become very important. Of course it sounds like I’m rehearsing the old Jesus-of-history-versus-Christ-of-faith dichotomy, since that is usually where this road leads. This means that there’s not much a reason to traverse it, is there?

• Wrede, William. “The Task and Methods of ‘New Testament Theology.’” Pages 68-116. The Nature of New Testament Theology: The Contribution of William Wrede and Adolf Schlatter. Edited and Translated by R. Morgan. Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1973.