T&T Clark Reader in John Webster

Michael Allen

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780567687500
• eBook ISBN: 9780567687524
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

This Reader charts John Webster's theology from its earliest development, guiding the reader through selective essays that represent his corpus. It is an excellent introduction to the breadth of his writings, which teaches students how to engage with his particular mode of theological argument. T&T Clark Reader in John Webster starts with a biographical, chronological and topical survey of Webster's theological development. It notes his shifting conversation partners and his abiding theological principles. The editor places the essays in context with short introductions, as well as editorial footnotes clarifying key terms, historical or exegetical arguments or polemical emphases. This is an essential introduction to Webster's work and his impact on classical and contemporary theology.

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Theological theology¹

EDITOR’S Introduction

‘Theological theology’ was delivered originally as an inaugural lecture as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford on 28 October 1997. John Webster begins by describing the way in which theology plays a marginal role in the modern university, for reasons external and internal to theology itself. Then he will offer a programmatic sketch of how theology might otherwise serve the university at large more fruitfully by tending to its theological task more faithfully.

To offer a brief anatomy of the situation in the university, he charts the development of a modern ‘anthropology of enquiry’ which prizes ‘inwardness’ rather than ‘participation in a particular tradition’, which undertakes the task of Wissenschaft (technical competence in science) rather than Bildung (moral formation), and which sits uncomfortably with ‘appeal to texts’ as a mode of intellectual discourse. But Webster does not rest satisfied sketching a genealogy of wider intellectual disorder; rather, he also speaks of problems within the house of divinity itself. ‘Far from ensuring the survival of Christian theology in the face of challenges to its plausibility, the relinquishment of specifically Christian doctrine in favour of generic theism in fact hastened its demise.’ He gives two case studies, showing how in the post-Reformation era, ‘construed epistemologically, revelation becomes predoctrinal, prolegomenal, the ground of doctrine which is itself explicable in relative isolation from (for example) Christology or pneumatology’. Secondly, he laments the shift of resurrection to an almost entirely apologetic frame of reference, whereby it ‘shifts from being an object of belief to being a ground of belief’.

Just so, Webster gives a textured account of the malaise of divinity in the modern university. However, he also goes on to note that the protocols of the university are being challenged by postmodern thinkers and critical theorists. ‘Oddly enough, then, the very high premium on critical activity in the university may make us insufficiently aware that the university is a customary institution as much as a reflective one: indeed, its critical practices are themselves customary in character.’ Webster raises the question, then, how may theology serve the university in such a situation where even critical thinking is being critiqued? He argues that theology needs to do more than provide moral motivation or a panged conscience, rather theology needs to speak of God and God’s actions.

Providing that distinctly theological frame of reference, Webster turns to Johannes Wollebius’s description of the principles of theology: ‘The principle of the being of theology is God; the principle by which it is known is the Word of God.’ He highlights the fact that God is not merely the object of enquiry but also the agent who makes himself known. As he parses this quotation, he shows that this involves theology in a determinate or bounded field of enquiry, seeking to know God specifically. Further, theology listens to the Word of God, what Webster calls the ‘eschatological self-presence of God in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit’.

Interestingly, this essay does argue by citation, though more so with regard to the genealogical accounts of modernity and the paradigmatic texts which he seeks to probe. A range of other essays and articles from this time period similarly manifest remarkable command of this literature (i.e. Eberhard Jüngel, Michael Buckley, Alasdair MacIntyre, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Taylor on the one hand and various postmoderns on the other hand, such as Calvin Schrag, Mark C. Taylor, Michel Foucault). He would soon begin working by citation and exposition, however, of classic Christian texts (i.e. biblical texts such as 2 Cor. 5.18 or patristic voices such as Clement of Alexandria); in this essay, such citation is meagre (limited to brief engagement of Johannes Wollebius’s textbook of Reformed dogmatics). A rather different rhetoric and set of resources marks his 2015 redux (entitled ‘What Makes Theology Theological’?).

Webster itemizes a range of topics which would need to be explored in vivifying intellectual life with a reinvigorated theological contribution to the university: ‘Filling out this picture of the academy would require us to say much more: about teaching as the engendering of the habits of man of particular traditions (including their habits of self-critique); about the role to be played by awed reading of classical texts; about the need to deregulate the genres of scholarship.’ In many ways his Burns Lectures on ‘The Culture of Theology’ in 1998 filled out these subthemes with greater texture and specificity. The renewed protocols, though, depend upon a new intellectual ontology and anthropology which is itself attentive to and disciplined by the definitive presence and activity of the triune God.

[W]hat is needed is a renewed ‘conflict of the faculties’, though not one driven by ‘the quest for commensuration’, but by a confident sense of the importance of non-conformity. And, crucially, what such conflict requires is not just a better epistemology, but a changed anthropology of enquiry and politics of intellectual exchange, so that differences can be seen not as a curse but as the given condition for the university’s life.

While ‘Theological theology’ was a manifesto delivered with verve, it was not yet a mirror depicting a fully formed Christian theologian. It continues to serve as a useful entryway to Webster’s working papers in Christian doctrine and is still likely his most widely known and broadly impactful essay.

Suggested readings

The Culture of Theology (ed. Ivor J. Davidson and Alden C. McCray; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019). Originally published as six articles in the journal Stimulus: ‘Culture: The Shape of Theological Practice’, Stimulus 6, no. 4 (1998): 2–9; ‘Texts: Scripture, Reading and the Rhetoric of Theology’, Stimulus 6, no. 4 (1998): 10–16; ‘Traditions: Theology and the Public Covenant’, Stimulus 6, no. 4 (1998): 17–23; ‘Conversations: Engaging Difference’, Stimulus 7, no. 1 (1999): 2–8; ‘Criticism: Revelation and Disturbance’, Stimulus 7, no. 1 (1999): 9–14; ‘Habits: Cultivating the Theologian’s Soul’, Stimulus 7, no. 1 (1999): 15–20. Ivor Davidson’s introduction (in the book form) is a stellar and incisive guide to the place of the lectures in Webster’s development.

‘What Makes Theology Theological?’, Journal of Analytic Theology 3 (May 2015) 17–28; repr. in GWM 1: 213–24.

‘Sub ratione Dei: Zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Universität’, Communio. Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift 42 (2013): 151–69 = ‘God, Theology, Universities’, in D. Nelson (ed.), Indicative of Grace – Imperative of Freedom. Essays in Honour of Eberhard Jüngel in his Eightieth Year (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 241–54; repr. in GWM 2: 157–72.

Martin Westerholm, ‘The University’, in A Companion to John Webster’s Theology (ed. Michael Allen and R. David Nelson; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming).

Michael Allen, ‘Toward Theological Theology: Tracing the Methodological Principles of John Webster’, Themelios 41, no. 2 (2016): 217–37; repr. in A Companion to John Webster’s Theology (ed. Michael Allen and R. David Nelson; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming).

Theological theology

One of the signs of the health of a university discipline is its ability to sustain lively self-critical disagreement about its intellectual processes. It is no doubt true that, in academia as much as in politics or marriage, endless procedural debate usually does nothing more than defer the hour of decision. But universities (like parliaments and marriages) are supposed to be places of contained conflict, conflict which unearths fundamental intellectual and spiritual ideals and holds them up for correction and reformulation. No less than others, theologians ought to be busy about this kind of dispute, both among themselves and in their extra-mural conversations. Among the many gifts which my immediate predecessor brought to the study of theology in Oxford and beyond was a conviction that theology is and ought to be disturbing, for at its heart lie those events in which, according to Christian faith, human life and thought are entirely transfigured. Rowan Williams’ intellectual temper – energetic and courteous at the same time, suspicious both of premature resolution and of mere ironic detachment, genuinely hospitable, above all, prayerful – sets an extraordinarily high standard for us, above all by its seemingly inexhaustible suggestiveness, its sheerly provocative effect. And so it is fitting that the new occupant of this ancient chair should continue to devote attention to the task of clarifying what the discipline of Christian theology is about, provoking the kind of disturbance of usual business which the recently arrived are permitted to make, if only for a little while.

That being said, it is worth bearing in mind that, in its very first years, the Lady Margaret professorship could hardly have been less provocative. The first of Margaret Beaufort’s divinity readers in Oxford was one Dr Wilsford, who gave a set of lectures in the first term on the entirely predictable topic of Duns Scotus’ Quaestiones Quodlibetales, at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning. We do not know what the good doctor told his audience at that early hour, but from the subject we may surmise that it was in keeping with the faculty conventions of the time, and hardly likely to kindle debate about the basic self-understanding of the discipline.² For something really provocative, one would have gone to hear John Colet, back in Oxford from Europe, lecturing on the Pauline epistles with startling originality and turning the discipline inside out.

But if nowadays one were to follow Colet’s lead and to try to reconfigure the discipline of Christian theology, the problem would be simply this: hardly anybody would notice. For Christian theology is not taken very seriously in modern Western universities: sometimes encouraged, occasionally attacked, it is most often treated with a benign indifference, so that if one day theology were simply to absent itself, the university’s pursuit of its ideals would in no way be imperilled. Above all, Christian theology is not a serious factor to contend with in thinking about the university’s intellectual agenda and its modes of enquiry. Why is this? Why is it that Christian theology has for at least two hundred years played so slender a role in establishing the intellectual culture of the modern research university? Two clusters of reasons come to mind. First, the history of the modern research university and its ethos of scholarship has had as one of its major corollaries the marginalization of moral and religious conviction, and thus the discouragement of theological enquiry. Second, most traditions of modern Christian theology in the West have very deeply internalized the models of enquiry which have become normative in modern academic institutions, and so have found themselves increasingly alienated from the subject matters and the cultural and intellectual processes of the Christian religion.^a This confluence of external and internal factors has had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it has meant that Christian theology has by and large retained its prestige in the university only by taking on the colouring of its environment – by becoming wissenschaftlich. On the other hand, it has meant that the more theology invokes theological doctrine to articulate its nature and procedures, the more precarious has been its tenure in the dominant institutions of intellectual enquiry. What is it about those institutions of intellectual enquiry which has rendered them a generally inhospitable environment for the practice of Christian theological reflection?

Universities work with conventions about what constitutes learning and what are appropriate methods of enquiry. Although we may not necessarily be reflectively aware of these conventions at all times, they are ubiquitous, constituting a shared set of assumptions about what responsible intellectual activity will look like, encouraging certain practices and disapproving of others. The routine invisibility of these conventions ought, of course, to alert us to their ideological potential; conventions which are not regularly subject to inspection and dispute quickly assume an air of necessity and their conventional character is eclipsed. This is not, of course, to suggest that the modern university’s conventions of enquiry are simply arbitrary, or that their prestige is merely social or political. Modern conventions of intellectual enquiry have acquired their prestige largely because, in a number of culturally dominant fields (notably natural and social science and,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Reading John Webster: An introduction
• 1 Theological theology1
• 2 Biblical reasoning
• 3 The immensity and ubiquity of God
• 4 The place of Christology in systematic theology
• 5 Non ex aequo: God’s relation to creatures
• 6 ‘It was the will of the Lord to bruise him’: Soteriology and the doctrine of God
• 7 Eschatology and anthropology
• 8 Christ, church and reconciliation
• 9 Evangelical freedom
• 10 Intellectual patience1
• John B. Webster – Chronology of publications
• Index
• Copyright Page