The Order and Essence of Canon in Brevard Childs's Book on Paul

Brevard Childs's final book attempts to apply the canonical approach to the Pauline canon. In so doing, it exposes two problematic assumptions lying behind Childs's approach: (1) it assumes that the phenomenal is always intentional, and (2) it treats the intentional as always hermeneutically significant, regardless of whether the intention is that of the author or that of a compiler of the canon. The former of these assumptions manifests in a spectacular way in Childs's attempt to derive hermeneutical significance from the placement of Romans at the head of the Pauline canon.