A Companion to the Theology of John Webster

“As someone who was John’s student from the age of seventeen in Oxford and then his colleague for several years as a professor in Aberdeen, I cannot begin to estimate the significance of his work on my own theological development. This collection of essays on his work offers for the first time a clear and helpful introduction to Webster’s theology in the hope that others, too, might benefit from his wisdom.

The authors are trustworthy guides to anyone wishing to become more f­ amiliar with the work of one of the greatest theologians of his generation.”

— Tom Greggs University of Aberdeen “What a wonderful volume! Like Webster himself, these essays bear a cheerful witness to the God of the Gospel and are unapologetic about ‘theological theology.’

Webster’s thought did develop through his career, and these essays helpfully take his ideas and mature proposals seriously, though not uncritically. There is much to learn from them, and more importantly, they point us in meaningful ways back to Webster’s corpus itself. The result will not simply be that we understand Webster better, but that our theology might become more faithful in the process.”

— Kelly M. Kapic Covenant College “With contributions from some of today’s finest theologians, this volume is a labor of love that honors the rich legacy of John Webster’s theology and points towards ways to further it. Those who already know his work will find much of value here, and those who are new to Webster will find an outstanding introduction to the breadth and development of his thought, along with the reminder that, in Webster’s own words, ‘positive Christian dogmatics is a wise, edifying, and joyful science.’”

— Suzanne McDonald Western Theological Seminary “John Webster’s work was wide-ranging, profound, and, owing to his untimely death, all too provisional. While we can only lament that he was unable to complete the comprehensive theological statement that his Systematic Theology would have been, this exquisitely crafted volume provides an indispensable vade mecum for understanding Webster’s tireless pursuit of a truly theological theology.”

— Ian A. McFarland Candler School of Theology and University of Cambridge “This is a superb introduction to a major, if still underappreciated, theologian whose reputation will only continue to grow. Webster’s constructive powers grew

out of careful and creative study of earlier modern Protestant systematicians, whose work he was able to reconfigure within broader catholic and evangelical perspectives, profoundly scriptural and Trinitarian. He produced one of the richest and most rigorous theological visions of our era. Allen and Nelson have assembled a group of theologians, significant in their own right, to provide a us with a well-lit entry into Webster’s sophisticated project. Helpfully ordered, crystal clear, yet also filled with appropriate detail, this volume will define the shape of future research on Webster and is indispensable for scholar and student alike.”

— Ephraim Radner Wycliffe College “This companion is a celebration of John Webster’s theology and a declaration of gratitude to John Webster the theologian. The contributions serve as an ideal travel companion, following the itinerary of John Webster’s theological thinking, carefully retracing his steps, and surveying the coordinates—the dogmatic loci— which provided orientation for his theology. The rich abundance of reflections on the true subject of theology is a most fitting tribute to a theologian who counted humility among the chief theological virtues and who had an acute sense of theology always being on the way, not yet having reached the ultimate destination of God’s plan with his creation.”

— Christoph Schwöbel University of St. Andrews “This collection is a fitting tribute to a theologian beloved by many of us. Yet these essays avoid fawning; they advance constructive, critical understanding of Webster’s thought. John would be pleased that ultimately this book celebrates the perfection and presence of the Triune God, not the imperfect testimony of a particular theologian, however insightful.”

— Daniel J. Treier Wheaton College “John Webster was probably the most creative and intellectually rigorous Protestant theologian in the English-speaking world in the last few decades, and his tragically early death robbed us of a uniquely joyful, insightful, and nourishing perspective on Christian revelation. This first-class collection of essays shows how his prolifically diverse writings converge toward a truly comprehensive and magisterial theological vision of apostolic faith for our generation.”

— Rowan Williams 104th Archbishop of Canterbury

A Companion to the Theology of

John Webster

Edited by Michael Allen and R. David Nelson

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 www.eerdmans.com © 2021 Michael Allen and R. David Nelson All rights reserved Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ISBN 978-0-8028-7674-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

For John

Contents

1.

Foreword by Kevin J. Vanhoozer

ix

Preface

xv

List of Abbreviations

xx

John Webster (1955–2016) Ivor J. Davidson

1

Part I: John Webster’s Theological Development 2.

Theological Theology: Webster’s Theological Project Michael Allen

21

3.

Webster on Eberhard Jüngel R. David Nelson

45

4.

Webster on Karl Barth Kenneth Oakes

69

5.

Webster on the Theology of the University Martin Westerholm

88

6.

Webster’s Theological Exegesis of Christian Scripture Matthew Levering

102

Part II: John Webster on the Theological Topics 7. Scripture Darren Sarisky

119

vii

Contents 8.

Reason Michael Allen

131

9.

The Triune God Fred Sanders

146

10.

The Perfection of God Christopher R. J. Holmes

159

11.

Creation Justin Stratis

170

12.

Anthropology Michael Allen

184

13.

Jesus Christ Katherine Sonderegger

208

14.

Salvation Ivor J. Davidson

223

15.

The Church Joseph L. Mangina

245

16.

Metaphysics Tyler R. Wittman

264

17.

Ethics Paul T. Nimmo

280

Epilogue: Courses Charted but Not Taken R. David Nelson

297

Bibliography of Published Works by John Webster

315

List of Contributors

331

Index

333

viii

Foreword Kevin J. Vanhoozer

John Webster was born for such a between-­the-­times as this. While many twentieth- and twenty-­first-­century theologians have feared to set sail because of the storm-­tossed waves of the modern academy or the prevailing winds of postmodern culture, John cheerfully waded into the dogmatic deep and bade us follow: “Come on in, the water’s fine!”

The contributors to the present volume are but the vanguard of many who are indeed following John into the deep waters of dogmatics. Thanks to his example, they are experiencing the joy of rediscovering the helpfulness and truthfulness of the Christian confession and the wine of theological theology.

The essays herein are a tribute to the man and his project, a work in progress cut tragically short by his premature entry into glory. Yet John was already on the way to glory before his death, as evidenced by the steady stream of essays that, like the jewels they are, refract in often breathtaking ways something of the perfections of the God who is light.

In many respects, John was only getting started—or rather restarted. Arguably, his chief contribution to the discipline of systematic theology was to put it on proper dogmatic footing. Having labored early on to satisfy his modern taskmasters, collecting various methodological straws in order to make doctrinal bricks, John eventually freed himself from bondage to untheological theology by retrieving Scripture and tradition. Persistent cheer and robust confidence mark his later essays, as well as scrupulous concern for tracing the external works of God back to the eternal Trinitarian processions that comprise God’s own perfect life. Beginning with the perfect life of the triune God in himself was perhaps John’s signature dogmatic move—call it his principle of “immanent domain.” By this I mean two things: first, that John believes theologians should meet contemporary challenges with the resources of dogmatics themselves—namely, the doctrinal and exegetical materials of the Christian tradition; second, that he “reduces” (traces back) the economic ix

Foreword missions of the Son and Spirit to their ground in the immanent Trinity. The second is an illustration of the first.

I was privileged to witness, sometimes at close range albeit a few steps behind, the three stages of John’s development. We first met in 1985 in England.

Both of us studied theology at Cambridge University, but he had just finished, and I was preparing to submit. John and I were encouraged by our Cambridge teachers to respond to the “problem of modernity” by finding the right language, method, and conceptual scheme for making God-­talk intelligible. He hitched his wagon to Eberhard Jüngel, I to Paul Ricœur. The need to justify theology’s place in the university (preferably with a “respectable” metaphysics or epistemology) weighed heavily on us both.

John’s teaching stint at Wycliffe College in Toronto, where he established himself as an expert in the theology of Karl Barth, also coincided with his transition to his middle period. Barth helped him see that theology’s starting point is God’s triune self-­communication, not some helping conceptual scheme drawn from philosophy or sociology or anywhere other than the gospel. It was Barth, the “theologian of freedom,” rather than Jürgen Moltmann, the liberation theologian, who led John out of the Egypt of critical philosophy that had held him in bondage.

John’s appointment to Oxford and subsequent return to England in 1996 marks the beginning of his late period. His inaugural lecture, “Theological Theology,” set the tone that would increasingly dominate his constructive work for the next twenty years. Alvin Plantinga’s inaugural lecture at the University of Notre Dame, “Advice to Christian Philosophers” (1984), encouraged Christian philosophers to have the self-­confidence to start from Christian belief and pursue their own agendas. Similarly, John advised Christian theologians to let theology be itself and approach their task with joy, humility, and confidence in Scripture and tradition, and to remember that doing theology only takes place because God acts upon the human intellect through his revelatory Word and redeeming Spirit.

It was during this late period that John (together with Colin Gunton) founded what would quickly become the premier journal of its discipline, the International Journal of Systematic Theology (IJST). He also edited The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (2007) and began to produce a series of seminal works including the monographs Holiness (2003) and Holy Scrip­ ture (2003) as well as several collections of groundbreaking essays: Word and Church (2001), Confessing God (2005), The Domain of the Word (2012), and the two-­volume work God without Measure (2015).

I reconnected with John in 1997 when we returned to our respective posts in Oxford and Edinburgh, at which point I joined the editorial board of IJST. John x

Foreword helped me realize my own exodus out of the desert of criticism—the methodological morass of modernity—and into the promised land of dogmatics and doxology, where I could use language to speak well of and praise God. His essay, “The Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” in which he restored Scripture to its magisterial place over the church, in contrast to postliberals who were in danger of collapsing Scripture into the tradition of its ecclesial use, was for me a breath of fresh air. I admired the boldness of the essay: its solid Trinitarian spine, lucid biblical reasoning, bracing multisyllabic prose, and firm theological grip. Here was the strong right arm of Protestant dogmatics for which I had been searching.

John’s approach reminded me of Plantinga’s advice to Christian philosophers, with one important difference: John was encouraging not philosophers but theologians to trust the resources of their own discipline—Scripture above all, but also the great dogmatic works of the past. Here was theological theology at work, looking to the subject matter and tradition of Christian theology itself for direction, rather than following the latest hermeneutical and epistemological fashions. In ridding the garden of certain invasive species (their name is Legion), John almost single-­handedly changed the theological landscape. His direction can be summed up by a Latin phrase (cited in his aforementioned canon essay) that would serve as the motto for his theological coat of arms: Theologia non est habitus demonstrativus, sed exhibitivus (“Theology is not a habit of proof, but of exhibition”). This sums up the turn from viewing theology as a critical problem to be solved (“demonstrated”) to viewing it as a subject matter to be exhibited in intelligent speech and loving action.

When the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding received funding for the Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology, I immediately suggested John Webster as the best person to launch the series. He accepted, and in 2007 he delivered six tightly argued talks on “Perfection and Presence: God with Us, According to the Christian Confession.” Here was John in fine fettle and the full flowering of his later period, rooting God’s life-­giving presence with his creatures in the perfection which is God’s own life in himself as Father, Son, and Spirit.

I last saw John in April 2011. He had come to Wheaton to read a paper, and it fell to me to introduce him and to conduct an hour-­long interview with him for the benefit of our theology students. Alluding to theology’s traditional but now tarnished role as queen of the sciences, I introduced John as “the queen’s foremost English prince.” I also had seventeen questions prepared. His answers were alternately profound and funny. An example of the latter answered the question: “Should dogmatic theologians engage with New Testament scholars over the quest for the historical Jesus?” His reply: “We don’t need a quest because we know where Jesus is—he’s not lost!” xi

Foreword WWJWD? What would John Webster do? I often find myself asking this question. It matters because it’s my conviction that if evangelical theology—the project of thinking and living in accordance with the gospel—is to flourish, it must do theology the way John Webster was beginning to do it, both in style and substance.

John’s brief autobiographical account, “Discovering Dogmatics,” relates how he found his theological voice. Like the early Webster, evangelicals have spent a good deal of time—too much!—clearing their throats (working on methodology) or coughing nervously and making comments about the weather (things everyone agrees on). Evangelicals have spent too much time in defensive or reactive postures, trying to win the battle with modernity and postmodernity by fighting them on their own critical terms and turf. Like Webster, theologians today need to learn to be less concerned about what others will think of them and more concerned with bearing cheerful and true witness to the gospel.

Webster learned “that positive Christian dogmatics is a wise, edifying, and joyful science.” Instead of clearing our throats (methodology) or explaining why we deserve a hearing (apologetics), evangelical theologians must get on with the serious task of explicating the gospel of God and the God of the gospel, and to do so with confidence, diligence, intelligence, and good cheer. In short: Evangelicals must engage in virtuous theological reasoning, “an exercise of the regenerate mind in the matter of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is at the heart of the Church’s existence and calling.”1 As to the substance of dogmatics, Webster insists that the main task of theology is to assume the truthfulness and helpfulness of the witness of not only Scripture but also the great Christian creeds and confessions. He eventually came to see that what was lacking in his early education was simply catechesis, formation in Christian doctrine. Theological theology is the joyful task of bearing witness to the truth of the gospel, “the norm of the Church’s praise, confession, and action . . . and of its understanding of nature and human reality.”

Nicholas Lash, my Cambridge doctoral supervisor (and coincidentally also the internal examiner for John’s dissertation on Jüngel), excelled in writing essays in the interrogative mood that deepened one’s appreciation for the mystery of God. By way of contrast, John learned to do theology in the indicative mood, an eventual necessity for speaking well of the God of the gospel. That God relates to and ultimately assumes humanity leads the theologian to make “astonished 1. John Webster, “Discovering Dogmatics,” in Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Con­ text and Methodology, ed. Darren C. Marks (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002), 134.

xii

Foreword indications”: statements about what the God who has perfect life in himself did when he was “with us” in Jesus Christ and died “for us” on the cross.

John has left us with a treasure trove of “astonished indications”—theological testimonies to the being and work of the only true God. I am profoundly grateful for so many exemplary essays that exhibit the loving, patient, and intelligent descriptions of God and the gospel to which all evangelical theologians should aspire. This handbook, published so soon after his passing, is probably as close as Protestants come to canonization.

In his “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart,” penned in 1955 for the occasion of the composer’s two hundredth birthday, Barth surmised: “When the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they play Mozart.”2 My letter of thanks to John Webster would no doubt express a similar sentiment: “When the theologians go about their task of teaching theology, they assign McGrath (or Migliore, Grudem—name your text). I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille, they read Webster.”

Reading Webster is what this Companion is all about. In An Experiment in Criticism, C. S. Lewis proposed that we judge a book’s quality by the kind of reading it invites. He also contrasts using a text to further our own purposes and agendas from receiving it. Good literature permits and invites good reading, and rereading. A good author’s writing “deserves, because it rewards, alert and disciplined reading.”3 Judged by this exacting criterion, and by the essays that make up the present volume, John Webster’s work indeed merits the sustained, critical, and grateful attention it here receives. In reading Webster—and those, like the present contributors, who read him well—we too become astonished witnesses of what is indicated by the gospel; and we are never more theological theologians than when we do.

2. Karl Barth, “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart,” in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 23.

3. C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), 114.

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Preface Michael Allen and R. David Nelson

During a career lasting over three decades, John Webster established himself as a leading Christian theologian and shaped a variety of theological conversations on topics as diverse as the doctrine of God, Holy Scripture, ecclesiology, and creation. At the time of his death on May 25, 2016, he was chair of divinity at the University of St Andrews. Previously he held distinguished positions at Wycliffe College (University of Toronto), the University of Oxford, and the University of Aberdeen. He supervised dozens of doctoral students, many of whom have become significant theologians in their own right. He founded the International Journal of Systematic Theology with Colin Gunton in 1999 and remained editor for two decades thereafter, giving shape to the editorial vision of the quarterly as it took its place in the front ranks of theological journalism.

With Kathryn Tanner and Iain Torrance, he edited The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology.1 He served a number of major monograph series and prestigious peer review journals in various editorial capacities: as series editor for T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, and also for Great Theologians and Barth Studies (both Ashgate); and as a member of the editorial boards of Scottish Journal of Theology, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge), Journal of Reformed Theology, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Baker Academic), and New Studies in Dogmatics (Zondervan Academic). In 2015, and on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Webster’s peers and students celebrated his influence with the publication of a Festschrift titled Theological Theology.2 Webster’s work began in the area of the reception of modern Protestant theology. He introduced the English-­speaking world to German Lutheran sys1. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds., The Oxford Handbook of System­ atic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

2. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis, eds., Theological Theology: Essays in Honour of John Webster (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

xv

Preface tematic theologian Eberhard Jüngel. He contributed an introductory survey of Jüngel’s theology that remains magisterial even after over three decades in print, two anthologies of Jüngel’s theological essays in English, and, as editor, a Festschrift for Jüngel containing papers written in response to his theology.3 Years later, he spearheaded a new translation of Jüngel’s seminal study of Karl Barth’s doctrines of Trinity and election, God’s Being Is in Becoming, and introduced Jüngel’s polemical treatise on justification for its release in English.4 His second phase of sustained work in the reception of modern Protestant theology focused on Barth. In Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation,5 Webster offered the first significant analysis of the fragmentary ethical conclusion to Church Dogmatics IV, showing how Barth extended the doctrine of reconciliation to moral theology and to the Christian life. He followed this work a few years later with Barth’s Moral Theology,6 a collection of essays surveying additional themes of Barth’s contribution to Christian ethics. Whereas the first book homed in on one relatively small section of Barth’s enormous project, the latter volume exhibited Webster’s grasp of the full scale of the theological and moral architecture of the Church Dogmatics. Webster also offered two volumes that continue to draw new readers to Barth: an introduction to Barth’s theology in Continuum’s Outstanding Christian Thinkers series and, as editor, the Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth.7 A few years later, he ventured additional close readings of particular texts by Barth, examining some of Barth’s earliest lecture cycles in Göttingen and exploring their formative role for his own theology as an exegetical and Reformed theologian. These essays were published as Barth’s Earlier Theology.8 3. John Webster, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays I, ed. and trans. John Webster, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991; repr., London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014); John Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in His 60th Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994); and Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays II, ed. John Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-­Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995; repr., London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

4. Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theol­ ogy of Karl Barth, ed. and trans. John Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001); John Webster, introduction to Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith, trans. Jeffrey F. Cayzer (London: T&T Clark, 2001), vii–xvii.

5. John Webster, Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

6. John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998).

7. John Webster, Barth (London: Continuum, 2000); John Webster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

8. John Webster, Barth’s Earlier Theology (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2005).

xvi

Preface During his final two decades, Webster supplemented his reputation as a leading analyst of texts from the modern period by turning his attention to constructive Christian dogmatics. He pulled together several anthologies of his own essays written over the course of his last fifteen years, gathering journal articles and papers for interested readers. Word and Church (2001) contains essays focused upon Holy Scripture, Christology, and ecclesiology.9 His short book Holiness (2003) gathers four papers originally delivered as the Day-­Higginbotham lectures at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on various dimensions of the theme of holiness: the holiness of theology, of God, of the church, and of the Christian.10 Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (2003) revises his Scottish Journal of Theology lectures at the University of Aberdeen for a broad readership.11 The book continues to find use as a textbook for students at a variety of levels, as it articulates in a short space a clear and convincing account of Scripture’s nature and interpretation. Another collection of essays, Confessing God, appeared in 2005 and addresses theology, God, ecclesiology, and ethics.12 The Domain of the Word (2012) gathers ten essays on Scripture and theological reason.13 Finally, the anthology God without Measure was released in two volumes in 2015, with the first volume addressing the topics of “God and the works of God,” and the second “virtue and intellect.”14 Webster was busy at work at the time of his death. He was supervising numerous doctoral students at St Andrews. He also was revising a volume of lectures on creation and providence, and revising his inaugural Kantzer Lectures in Revealed Theology, Perfection and Presence: God with Us according to the Christian Confession, delivered at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2007 and slated for publication by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. He was under contract to write a theological commentary on Ephesians for the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series. In addition, his magnum opus 9. John Webster, Word and Church, vol. 1 of Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh and New York: T&T Clark, 2001).

10. John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

11. John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

12. John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2005).

13. John Webster, The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London and New York: T&T Clark International, 2012).

14. John Webster, God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 1, God and the Works of God (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015); John Webster, God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, vol. 2, Virtue and Intellect (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016).

xvii

Preface was on the horizon: a projected Systematic Theology in five volumes, which he had begun in earnest.

Shortly after Colin Gunton’s unexpected death in 2003, Webster expressed the sense of loss his late friend’s passing had left upon the guild of Christian theology. Death had taken Gunton at the apogee of his theological career and just after he had embarked upon what surely would have been his signal theological achievement. For Gunton, Webster noted, “left behind a draft of the first volume of a projected systematic theology, which would have been the first complete account from an English theologian since John Macquarrie’s Prin­ ciples of Christian Theology from the mid-1960s.”15 At the same time, Webster insisted that the incompleteness of Gunton’s literary legacy did not diminish the quality and significance of his theological contribution. “Although his work was broken off before he gave a fully achieved account of his thought,” Webster remarked, “his independence of mind, restlessly probing intelligence, and his acute dogmatic judgment put him among the handful of British systematicians of the last century whose work is of enduring value.”16 Webster’s sudden passing similarly forestalled his publishing plans and robbed us of the chance to see his theological vision on full display in the form of his own systematic exposition of the faith. Still, the work he did leave behind is of the highest quality, has enduring value and significance, and is worthy of careful study. Moreover, Webster’s published output, though incomplete, touches on virtually every theological topic and reveals his keen insights into the contexts, sources, structure, principles, ends, and main emphases of systematic theology.

The editors and contributors offer this volume as a summary and assessment of Webster’s contribution to the discourse of Christian theology.17 We believe that the time is ripe to take stock of his theological work and literary legacy. The chapters here follow a deliberate order of exposition. Following Ivor Davidson’s biographical reflection, the chapters in the first unit offer readers analyses of several significant dimensions of Webster’s theological existence; that is, the origins and course of his academic career, the flourishing of his intellectual development, and the shape of his output. The chapters in the 15. John Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth: Jüngel, Jenson, and Gunton,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology Since 1918, ed. David F. Ford and Rachel Muers, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2005), 258.

16. Webster, “Systematic Theology after Barth,” 262.

17. For an introduction to his texts, see now Michael Allen, ed., T&T Clark Reader in John Webster (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2020).

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Preface second unit focus on eleven discrete regions of Christian teaching, showing how Webster contributed—and, indeed, continues to contribute—to theological discourse in these areas. The epilogue sketches Webster’s plans for the multivolume Systematic Theology and identifies how a cluster of short pieces written during his last decade anticipates the major statement that he planned but left unfulfilled.

“Good theology demands good theologians,” Webster declared in his Thomas Burns Memorial Lecture from 1998 on the theme of “Habits.”18 He went on in the series of lectures to highlight the intellectual, spiritual, and moral virtues necessary for becoming a good theologian who does good theological work.

But the lectures are both instructive and delightful not only for what Webster said about doing theology in the context of what he called theology’s “culture,” but also for the manner of his exposition of the theme. For Webster wrote here—as he wrote elsewhere—with earnest and conspicuous notes of joy in the theological vocation. It is perhaps above all just this characteristic of Webster’s life and work—an unquenchable joy in the labor of theology—that continues to inspire his readers. We hope that the following essays will encourage our own readers to turn to Webster’s writings anew, finding in them in an exceptional theologian busily at work doing enduring theology with great joy.

We thank James Ernest for his interest in and commitment to this project from the beginning, and the entire team at Eerdmans for their patience, diligence, and excellent work.

Decisions concerning the direction of this project and its contents have emerged over the course of many years and in the context of dozens of conversations with friends and colleagues. We especially wish to thank our ­contributors, all of whom have encouraged and supported our efforts along the way and have provided these splendid essays. The value of the volume arises from their diligence and insightful analyses. Justin Stratis compiled the bibliography; what appears here builds on his archival work. Thanks also to Josiah Armes for his help in formatting the bibliography and to John Muether for preparing the index.

18. See John Webster, The Culture of Theology, ed. Ivor J. Davidson and Alden M. McCray (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 131, 133.

xix

Abbreviations

Footnotes use the following abbreviations for John Webster’s major publications: Barth Barth. Outstanding Christian Thinkers. London & New York: Continuum, 2000.

BER Barth’s Ethics of Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

BET Barth’s Earlier Theology. London & New York: T&T Clark International, 2005.

BMT Barth’s Moral Theology. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.

CG Confessing God. Vol. 2 of Essays in Christian Dogmatics. London & New York: T&T Clark International, 2005. Second edition, 2016.

Culture The Culture of Theology. Edited by Ivor J. Davidson and Alden C. McCray. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019.

DW The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012.

GWM I God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology.

Vol. 1, God and the Works of God. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015.

GWM II God without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology.

Vol. 2, Virtue and Intellect. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016.

Holiness Holiness. London: SCM, 2003.

Jüngel Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Scripture Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

WC Word and Church. Vol. 1 of Essays in Christian Dogmatics. Edinburgh & New York: T&T Clark International, 2001. Second edition, 2016.

xx

Abbreviations The anthologies Confessing God, The Domain of the Word, God without Measure, and Word and Church collect many of Webster’s theological essays.

Footnotes refer to appearances of essays within these anthologies unless otherwise noted by the contributor. We are grateful to Bloomsbury T&T Clark for permission to cite at length from these collections.

Additional abbreviations in footnotes include the following: ChrCent CD

CTJ IJST JTS MoTh NBf ProEccl SJT Systematic Theology

Them TJT TynBul TZ

Christian Century Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols., ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley et al. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–1975). Reprint 2004.

Calvin Theological Journal International Journal of Systematic Theology Journal of Theological Studies Modern Theology New Blackfriars Pro Ecclesia Scottish Journal of Theology At the time of his death, Webster was writing the first volume of a five-­volume presentation of Christian dogmatics.

In the chapters below, we refer to this project by its anticipated title, Systematic Theology.

Themelios Toronto Journal of Theology Tyndale Bulletin Theologische Zeitschrift

Footnotes and the bibliography use SBL guidelines for abbreviations of periodicals and other major sources.

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Chapter 1

John Webster (1955–2016) Ivor J. Davidson

“The matter to which Christian theology is commanded to attend, and by which it is directed in all its operations, is the presence of the perfect God as it is announced in the gospel and confessed in the praises and testimonies of the communion of saints.”1 Most scholarly prose doesn’t sound like that. In John Webster’s, the idiom was standard issue, and deeply felt. If his work dazzles in its intellectual depth and style, its motivations were different from those that typically hold sway in the realms of academic culture.

To anyone who knew him, Webster was likely the most unassuming scholar ever met: firm in his convictions, crystal clear in presenting them; devoid of personal grandeur, suspicious of quests for scholarly prestige that jeopardized the uniqueness of theology’s vocation. As he saw it, all theological work occurs in the history of grace, its mandate and possibilities determined by the miracle of divine generosity. As such, theology can only go about its tasks in gratitude and humility, confessing with joy and wonder the God whose immensity meets us as unfathomable love. To those tasks it brings no gifts other than the ones this God gives, redeems, appoints, enables. Only in recognition of the divine abundance, enacted in freedom for our blessing, do we begin to think and speak and act aright.

Education and Career John Bainbridge Webster was born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, on June 20, 1955, and brought up in West Yorkshire. Converted in his teens from “watery 1. John Webster, CG, 1.

An earlier version of this chapter was published as Ivor J. Davidson, “John,” in Theological Theology: Essays in Honour of John Webster, ed. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 17–36. I am grateful to Bloomsbury T&T Clark for permission to reproduce that material here in revised form.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster suburban Methodism into a tough version of Calvinistic Christianity,”2 he received his education at Bradford Grammar School, nowadays a distinguished independent coeducational institution, at that time still an all-­boys’ direct grammar school.3 Specializing in languages and literature, he went up to Clare College, Cambridge as an Open Scholar in 1974. He read English initially but was glad to switch to Theology at the end of his first year. Gifted student as he was, his experience of literature at Cambridge was disappointing; the course seemed preoccupied with criticism in detachment from fundamental questions of moral practice. Theology was suggested as an alternative, and so it was to be—albeit supposedly “only because I could not think of anything else I wanted to do.”4 He would later claim he had been offered yet weirder academic options but had by a kindly providence declined.

While he flourished academically, gaining First Class Honours and the Burney Prize, he found himself a little frustrated by the dominant idioms of his environment. Drawn to systematic theology, especially of the modern period, he was finding his way in a discipline that had in the 1970s acquired a certain style in much English theology. Rather than treating Christian doctrine as a set of essentially positive confessional claims, determined by Scripture, molded by tradition, systematics in England (somewhat less so in Scotland) was heavily concerned with doctrinal criticism, the analysis of what it might be feasible for faith to say under the conditions of modernity. The approach seemed anxious in manner, limited in scope—preoccupied with the problems attaching to belief in general or with the necessary contemporary reformulation of individual loci at the expense of the grandeur and coherence of Christian teaching as a whole. Heavily focused on questions of method, sources, and context, the subject appeared to take its cues as much from other fields of inquiry (philosophy above all, but also history, social theory, and other disciplines) as from its own territory. Dogmatics in particular existed at a discount. There were exceptions, not least the example of Donald MacKinnon, Cambridge’s Norris-­Hulse Professor of Divinity, whose intense presence remained an intriguing force to persistent young minds. MacKinnon in particular refused to discredit the importance of dogmatics in grappling with philosophy’s toughest questions. On the whole, however, Cambridge offered fairly thin soil on which to cultivate an interest in doctrine.

2. John Webster, “Discovering Dogmatics,” in Shaping a Theological Mind: Theological Context and Methodology, ed. Darren C. Marks (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 129.

3. Bradford Grammar School has produced outstanding achievers in most walks of life. It is only right to admit that not all have been as distinguished as Webster: I went there myself, some years after him.

4. Webster, “Discovering Dogmatics,” 129.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) Webster embarked on graduate studies at Clare, a Beck Exhibitioner. Here he was drawn to a figure whose significance was not yet much appreciated in English-­language theology: Eberhard Jüngel. Studying Jüngel pushed Webster to reflect on the distinctiveness of Christian claims about God—the fundamental inability of Christian theology to proceed from any starting point other than divine revelation; the hopelessness of idealism’s assumptions that the knower takes priority over the known; the material integrity of Christian confession as established in the economy of God’s works. The particularity of Christological and Trinitarian teaching was vital—check upon the dangers of speculation, only sure basis for the differentiation of God and creatures for creatures’ good.

If Christian faith speaks of God, it does so on its own terms.

In all this, Webster was driven to take with increasing seriousness Jüngel’s chief modern inspiration: the grand old man of Basel. Karl Barth’s theology would ultimately affect Webster far more profoundly than Jüngel’s, but the influence of Jüngel was important in his discovery of Barth, and in the emphases in Barth which most commanded his attention. His PhD, its critical edges softened somewhat as the first monograph in English on Jüngel’s theology, marked him out as a scholar of exceptional promise.5 After a year’s research fellowship at the University of Sheffield, he was appointed in 1982 to teach systematics at St John’s College, Durham, where he remained for four years. It was a congenial environment; he was nurtured by kindly colleagues and taught some able students, both at St John’s and in Durham’s Department of Theology. Ordained as deacon in the Church of England in 1983 and as priest the following year, full-­time parish ministry seemed a distinct possibility; he served an assistant curacy in County Durham and as chaplain at St John’s.

Looking back on his teaching as it took shape over these years, he considered he was still struggling to break free of the habits of doctrinal criticism—still needing to discover what it might mean to tackle the big themes in overtly confessional fashion and to draw deeply on the church’s historic resources, uninhibited by the restrictive sensibilities of late modernity. It was obvious to anyone experiencing the young Webster’s teaching or reading his work (which included popular as well as scholarly material)6 that he was already a gifted communicator, but his determination to think in earnest about the office of the theologian— about what responsible theological instruction ought to be—attested his refusal to be satisfied with the conventional, and his desire for a tighter integration of theology’s scholarly activities with the interests of the church.

5. Webster, Jüngel.

6. E.g., John Webster, God Is Here! Believing in the Incarnation Today (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1983).

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster Married with a young son, he moved in 1986 to Canada, where he was to teach at Wycliffe College, Toronto, one of the founding schools in the later nineteenth-­century federation of church colleges that had evolved into the Toronto School of Theology. No longer restricted to teaching undergraduates, he had opportunity to pursue Christian doctrine at greater depth, offering more advanced text-­based courses to students for whom foundations had already been laid. The ecumenical context of the federation to which Wycliffe belonged also meant he encountered a wider range of traditions and intellectual influences than he had known in Cambridge or Durham; in these engagements he found that theological affinities and differences did not map denominational boundaries in straightforward ways.

He was influenced in particular by a Jesuit colleague, George Schner, with whom he came to work closely. Schner, who would die at just 54 in 2000, was professor of religion at Regis College, Toronto, and a stimulating dialogue partner to many from traditions other than his own. A philosophical theologian with interests in Hegel and Schleiermacher, he had been educated at Yale, and had imbibed much from the instincts of his “postliberal” teachers.

Highly suspicious of North American correlationist theologies, especially their Roman Catholic expressions, he challenged the supposition that theology was obliged to meet its modern challengers on their own ground, using the supposedly fancier resources of critical philosophy in preference to the logic of Christian doctrine. For Schner, it was crucial to recognize how profoundly the trajectories of nineteenth- and twentieth-­century theology had been affected by modern intellectual impulses and to ask about the legacies of those influences in the instincts of contemporary theological reasoning.

Sharing a regular graduate seminar, he and Webster would inch their way through texts theological and philosophical, pondering genealogies and discussing their implications for method in their own time.7 Webster would continue to treat the concerns of liberal theology with seriousness, but he became increasingly critical of late-­modern theology’s prejudices, which—besides the problems which attached to the readings of history and texts—appeared to offer little with which to edify the church. At the same time, he was, like others, dissatisfied with alternatives that seemed more reactionary than constructive—tame accommodations rather than meaningful responses to cultural pressures. As he had already been nudged firmly to do by Jüngel and Barth, 7. Some of Schner’s work can be sampled in Philip G. Ziegler and Mark Husbands, eds., George P. Schner: Essays Catholic and Critical (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).

See also John Webster’s introduction, “Philosophy and the Practices of Christianity,” on xi–xix.

Webster dedicated WC in memory of Schner in 2001.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) he kept on thinking about why it was that the really decisive movements in modern Protestant systematics had unfolded as they had, and pondering the work that doctrine ought to do. Should not the classical resources of Scripture, tradition, and creed—rather than obsession with context and its supposed imperatives—determine the substance of Christian confession?8 Powerful as their insights into modernity’s character had been, postliberal theologians had not paid enough attention to Barth’s insistence on the primacy of God and God’s acts. They had placed too much emphasis on theology as a practice of creatures, a form of social and religious life whose major features might, it seemed, be delineated as much by ethnography as by dogmatics.

The postcritical idiom had learned a good deal from Barth in its suspicions of the general and in its commitment to the plain sense of biblical narrative. It had not learned enough about Barth’s resolute commitment to God’s essential plenitude as necessary starting point for all things—including a due account of the integrity of creatures and their actions. Only with something akin to Barth’s sense of the antecedent freedom and abundance of the triune God in himself— God’s capacity to enact, but not realize, himself in the history of his creating, reconciling, and perfecting works as set forth in Holy Scripture—would theology begin to chart a responsible course. It would refuse modern forms of the illusion that human life might possibly know meaning or freedom as a way of being in merely symbolic relation with God; it would also—crucially—escape a drift into cultural anthropology, where talk of the gospel proceeded largely in the register of social and moral practices.

Only a positive dogmatics of God and his aseity would do. Pace enduring suspicions, that approach would not inhibit, but rather fund, a rich account of moral theology—the life to be lived by created, fallen, and reconciled creatures on the way to eschatological perfection. This was, Webster came to discern, just what had happened in Barth’s own work. It had found its moral and political density neither in the isolation of ethics from doctrine nor in the substitution of ethics for doctrine, but precisely in the recognition that human action is taken seriously when it is located in a substantive account of human moral ontology—created, fallen, restored—and so in terms for which Christian doctrine provides indispensable categories.

Webster advanced rapidly to full professorial status at Wycliffe in 1993 and became Ramsay Armitage Professor of Systematic Theology in 1995. From 1994, he also undertook adjunct teaching at McMaster Divinity College. He 8. A number of the critical issues are explored in John Webster and George Schner, eds., Theology after Liberalism: A Reader (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). See especially Webster’s essay, “Theology after Liberalism?,” 52–64.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster edited and introduced two volumes of Jüngel’s essays,9 opening up a number of key articles to a much wider readership, and assembled a stimulating Festschrift for Jüngel’s sixtieth birthday.10 More significantly, he produced a major monograph on Barth’s later ethics.11 A strikingly lucid analysis of the final sections of the Church Dogmatics (IV/4) and The Christian Life, the work presented a robust case that the fabric of Barth’s dogmatics was—contrary to its glib critics—ethical at its core, for its construal of agency, covenant, and reality underwrote a rich account of moral selfhood. Webster showed how this was worked out in Barth’s depictions of baptism, prayer, and creaturely agency as enclosed and governed by the creative, redemptive, and sanctifying work of God in Christ, present by the Holy Spirit’s power. The ethical and sacramental theology of Barth’s last period emerged from some of his most fundamental concerns. Other substantial essays on Barth’s ethics reached back into neglected territory in Barth’s lectures of the later 1920s, and looked additionally at the themes of original sin, hope, and freedom in the Church Dogmatics, exploring examples of Barth’s recurring presentation of grace as restorative of fallen agency to its intended creaturely shape.12 And so began to take form many of the enduring building blocks of Webster’s own thinking. While continuing to work on Jüngel and Barth, he increasingly devoted his attention to tracing out major areas of Christian doctrine and their relation to moral questions. The research and writing were wrought amid a busy life. Husband and father of now two sons, in addition to teaching and supervision he undertook various academic administrative roles, including director of advanced degree studies at Wycliffe and, for a two-­year period, chair of the Toronto School of Theology’s Department of Theology.

He continued to be energetic in service to the church, as an honorary assistant in parishes in Ontario and as a member of national and diocesan committees and working groups, including the Anglican Church of Canada’s Doctrine and Worship Committee and the Canadian Lutheran-­Anglican Dialogue group.

In 1996, he returned to the UK as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the 9. Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays, ed. and trans. John Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989; repr., London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014); Jüngel, Theological Essays, vol. 2, ed. John Webster, trans. Arnold Neufeldt-­Fast (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995; repr., London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014).

10. John Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology: Studies in the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel in His Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994).

11. John Webster, BER. 12. A number of these essays appeared in the Toronto Journal of Theology; they would be reissued along with other new material in Webster, BMT.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) University of Oxford. Among the most prestigious of the faculty’s historic chairs, the appointment was an obvious recognition of his abilities and an opportunity to teach and supervise the work of some of the best young minds on the UK theological scene. The chair brought a residentiary canonry of Christ Church; Webster’s gifts as a preacher found regular deployment in Oxford and well beyond. As in Canada, he also engaged in wider ecclesiastical service, serving on the Church of England’s Doctrine Commission and in the Faith and Order Advisory Group,13 which offered advice to the House of Bishops and the Council for Christian Unity on matters of ecumenical and theological significance.

At the same time, Oxford posed challenges. Webster faced once again the powerful impulses of theological revisionism in the British context and found himself rubbing shoulders with some who remained distinctly suspicious of what dogmatics in general, and Barth in particular, might have to contribute to the future of the Christian church in an increasingly secular and plural environment. He was working with gifted students and colleagues but ever more consciously engaged in a style of theology that was cross-­grained in its setting and thus prone to a measure of isolation.

The vision of “theological theology” articulated in his inaugural professorial lecture in 1997 was not to everyone’s taste.14 Unstinting in its critique of modern university theology’s alienation from its proper habits of thought on account of its captivation by wissenschaftlich ideals, it proposed a renewed confidence in the articulation of Christian difference—in theology’s own distinctive culture of faith and practice. That prospect necessarily entailed the parsing of dogmatic claims and the identification of their consequences for moral and intellectual activity. The substance stood as contrast to the fragmented worlds of the late-­modern academy, with its false disciplinary absolutisms, its mixed-­up anthropologies of inquiry, its bondages to special interests, its incapacity to render an integrated account of what human learning might, at the last, be for. But the quest for a theological theology also involved radical challenge for contemporary theology itself: the need to reconnect with classical roots; to cherish once more theology’s necessarily spiritual culture of reading, worship, and discipline; to resist the temptation to turn the discipline into something it could not legitimately become.

Webster later came to feel the position outlined in that lecture—and in some of his other work in the period—represented an unsatisfactory combination of 13. In 2010, the two groups were replaced by the Faith and Order Commission of the General Synod.

14. Webster, “Theological Theology,” in CG, 11–31.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster the reactionary and the defensive, in its own way still wanting in a thoroughly positive account of theology’s core concerns. Still overly invested in a critical discourse of cultural activities, he was even yet not saying enough about Trinity, creation, and redemption, still failing to set out sharply enough what it is that creaturely intelligence is doing—anywhere, anytime—when it thinks and speaks about God. He would come to place yet more emphasis on the work that doctrine (and a Trinitarian doctrine of creation and creatures in particular) must do, and give larger place to scriptural exegesis in describing the church’s practices.

These practices were not to be reduced to the visible patterns or habits of a social polity, somehow charged with the burden of mediating divine presence to the world. They were the witness of an assembly called into being to attest the matchless adequacy of the acts by which God makes himself known in the Word his gospel announces. To be ecclesial in the right way, and in turn moral in the right way, theology needed to recognize it was defined centrally not by its own practices and contexts but by the perfection of the God who has elected creatures to fellowship with himself—and so to holiness, and so to discipleship, and so to testimony. Creaturely testimony did not effect God’s presence or make it real; it pointed to the adequacy in which God has chosen to draw near to us, agent of his own self-­authenticating splendor.

These emphases would evolve through further studies of Barth, and through closer and more critical engagements with postliberal ecclesiology and ethics.

Firmly established as a leading interpreter of Barth, Webster gathered a strong cast of contributors for a Cambridge Companion, published in 2000.15 In the same year, he issued a short introduction to Barth’s thought, a splendidly accessible little book that encouraged students to read Barth for themselves and find real nurture in so doing.16 Three lectures delivered in Australia yielded a critical conversation between Barth and “postmodernism” that managed to be far sharper than some forays into related territory, showing the distinctiveness and centrality of Barth’s incarnational Christology for his version of an ontological grand récit.17 Webster also continued to be intrigued by Jüngel, not least as interpreter of Barth, translating and introducing Jüngel’s magisterial “paraphrase” of Barth’s doctrine of the Trinity, God’s Being Is in Becoming.18 15. John Webster, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

16. Webster, Barth.

17. John Webster, “Barth and Postmodern Theology: A Fruitful Confrontation?” in Karl Barth: A Future for Postmodern Theology?, ed. Geoff Thompson and Christiaan Mostert (Hindmarsh, SA: Australian Theological Forum, 2000), 1–69.

18. Eberhard Jüngel, God’s Being Is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth—A Paraphrase, trans. John Webster (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001).

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) More important in the end would be the production of Webster’s own serious exercises in constructive dogmatics, which continued to emerge in a steady stream, mainly in essay form.19 One of the increasing preoccupations of this work—his contributions to “the delightful activity in which the church praises God by ordering its thinking towards the gospel of Christ”20—would be the theology of Holy Scripture, its nature and interpretation. While welcoming contemporary endeavors to move beyond a ruinous bifurcation of systematics and biblical studies, he remained critical of the degree to which scholars had yet thought about the need for a doctrinal treatment of Scripture and the tasks of scriptural interpretation. Hermeneutical and literary theory, the sociology of texts, the practices of textual reception—these were still the dominant notes. Postcritical biblical exegesis, for all its concern to leave behind historicist reductionism, remained in thrall to the instinct to naturalize Scripture and its interpretation, or at any rate preoccupied with the situations of its human recipients. The antidote was a far more explicit focus on divine perfection and presence: on Scripture and its properties as instruments of the self-­communication of the triune God in all the sufficiency of his being.

To give doctrine its proper weight in this matter was, once again, to reorient theology to its location in the sphere of God’s grace, the place where God’s voice is heard in his word by his Spirit as God wills it to be so, and where he thus rules in mercy and judgment over his church. When it recognized things to be so ordered, theology would be delivered from burdens it was not called upon to bear—the impossible work of trying to hear the word better by means of hermeneutical sophistication—and also from complacency, the reduction of the word to so much cultural capital. Interpretative actions were, of course, vital, but over against their hyperinflation as human endeavors stood the living authority of divine speech.

The chief realm where God’s speech was to be heard was indeed the church, the creature of the word, but over against the church’s tendencies to domesticate that word stood the reality that the textual instrument of God’s speech, the canon of Holy Scripture—inspired, sanctified, perspicuous, sufficient for all that God intends—is, or ought to be, “a knife at the church’s heart.”21 Webster’s Oxford years saw him make many substantial contributions to the leadership of his discipline in the UK and much further afield. In 1999, together with Colin Gunton at King’s College, London, he launched the International Journal of Systematic Theology. It came to establish itself—remarkably quickly, in hindsight—as one of the leading English-­language outlets for academic 19. Some examples are collected in Webster, WC. 20. Webster, WC, 1.

21. Webster, “The Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” in WC, 46.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster work in Christian doctrine, and to its flourishing Webster devoted great care throughout the rest of his life. He also gave major lectures, conference papers, and lecture series in the UK, the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere. His Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures at the University of Otago, New Zealand, in 1998, on the culture of theology, stand as a magisterial statement of the theologian’s calling.22 His Scottish Journal of Theology lectures on Holy Scripture at Aberdeen in 2001 formed the basis of the remarkable monograph, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch.23 The Day-­Higginbotham Lectures at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Texas, in 2002 were published as Holiness, a lovely short account of its theme, striking not least for its opening celebration of the beauty of theology as an exercise of “holy reason.”24 In 2003, Webster was enticed to leave Oxford for a divinity chair in Scotland. Becoming professor of systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen, he continued to work at an outstanding pace. There was Barth still, of course, but hardly just that: Scripture and its interpretation, moral theology, the doctrine of God, Christology, reconciliation, creation, anthropology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and much else. The writing was pervasively marked by deep convictions concerning the nature, sources, and ends of theology as a discipline, and about the implications of such a vision for the theologian’s personal practices and the architecture of his studies.25 Firm themes would develop a good deal in nuance and extension: theology first, economy second; no relations of God and creatures “real” on God’s side as they are for creatures (God is already relationally replete in his essential triune life, his movements ad extra the magnificent, free overflow of his sheer goodness); no rendering of divine presence somehow subject to the possibilities of creaturely mediation. Over time these boundaries became clearer: None of it need imply—as some feared—any denigration of creatures or their history, but just the opposite; duly inflected, here lay better account of their dignity, moral enactment, and ends. Speaking well of divine perfection meant also speaking well of the presence of God with us, the temporal missions of Christ and the Spirit and their comprehensive consequences. Still: First the perfect God who has life in himself, then the creatures whose life is given, purposed, and redemptively secured by the free and majestic movement of this God’s fullness—in that wonder lying all the integrity, freedom, and fulfillment they could ever con22. Webster, Culture.

23. Webster, Scripture.

24. Webster, Holiness.

25. Some examples are collected in CG and DW.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) ceivably know. The order and proportions of major doctrines had to go on being re-­expounded and reconfigured accordingly.

During his early Aberdeen years, Webster undertook the demanding task of lead-­editing The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology.26 In 2007, he established with Ian McFarland and myself a new monograph series, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, which would help issue new constructive and historical doctrinal work. He also continued to give substantial disciplinary service in an array of other ventures—as an editor of Ashgate’s Great Theologians and Barth Studies series, on the editorial boards of the Scottish Journal of Theology and its monograph series, and in advisory work for the Journal of Reformed Theology, Ecclesiology, and other journals. He became an editorial advisor for Baker Academic’s Studies in Theological Interpretation series and for Zondervan Academic’s monograph series, launched in 2012, New Studies in Dogmatics. He also provided peer review and advisory services for a wide range of publishers, for the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and other bodies internationally.

Several of the publishing developments in which Webster busied himself provided important opportunities for the dissemination of the work of emergent scholars. He attracted more graduate students than he could readily take and distinguished himself as an exceptional mentor. He also played an important guiding role in appointments to his school. At Aberdeen in particular he was able to contribute a great deal to the nurturing of a vibrant community of scholarship and faith.

Early in 2013, after some pondering, he was persuaded to consider the possibility of a short move down the east coast of Scotland, to the School of Divinity at St Andrews. He was appointed professor of divinity that summer.

His coming held huge promise; his contributions were again, just as expected, entirely positive, gracious, and collegial. He continued to supervise a sizable cohort of doctoral students and ran an inspiring graduate seminar; he also taught at undergraduate level, contributed to conferences, and played generous part in other aspects of academic life. Things otherwise did not go exactly as planned on several fronts, but there were those for whom his company and his wisdom were a gift to be treasured, and lasting impressions were made.

Larger aspirations, alas, were not to be fulfilled. Webster died suddenly at his home in Aberdeenshire on May 25, 2016.

26. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Sys­ tematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster

Looking Back Webster’s published reflections on theology’s place in the modern research university remain astute not least because they were born of his own experiences in both church college and secular academy. He saw the benefits and dangers of both, and well knew there was no utopia. Theological education of an intellectually serious kind was vital for the church’s flourishing and its service to the world; theology had so much to offer the university, and things to gain from being there, but it could never settle down. The fundamental culture of the gospel—eschatological, established and overwhelmed at once by the judgment of divine self-­presence—forbade it. The principled isolation of theology from the university might well be perilous, a questionable pursuit of perfection through an intellectual fuga mundi; at the same time, theology faced inevitable challenges as well as opportunities in inhabiting a sphere where the operative metaphysics and morals of knowledge and its purposes were in general radically different. Webster was a dedicated servant and genial colleague in each of his academic institutions, and his professional path knew relatively few transitions, but a certain pragmatism, by turns restless as well as calm, tended to mark his approach.27 Like most of us, looking back, he knew more of a belonging in some places than in others.

Webster discerned academic vanity projects at some distance; he had his own words to say about failure of vision or fickleness of commitment. Wherever he was, he also evinced great forbearance, a capacity to press on quietly and cheerfully with what mattered whatever was happening around him. Assiduous in his own patterns, he could be remarkably long-­suffering with the irresolute and the disorderly; ever courteous and professional in his interactions, he maintained good humor and compassion when provoked. Strategic ineptitude was, of course, vexing; malice wounded; injustice angered; cowardice was matter for legitimate grief. But: divine wisdom and loving purpose, not the folly or gall of creatures, was ultimate. The steady-­mindedness with which Webster could recognize pointless intrigue or personal insecurities for what they were, and rise above them in pursuit of what counted, bore its own testimony. Theologians went on learning their calling—in continuing personal repentance and faith, and by prayer—amid the frustrations of broken systems.

Whatever their circumstances, they were first and foremost—as one of Webster’s last essays would say—in “the order of love”28—in the divine economy 27. On the possible intellectual principles for a “free, discriminating association” of theology and university, see especially Webster, “God, Theology, Universities,” in GWM II, 167–71.

28. John Webster, “Theology and the Order of Love,” in Rationalität im Gespräch: Philo­

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) of the regeneration of creatures, in the communion of those appointed to sanctification. Invited to devote themselves to the contemplation of the one in whom all true happiness is found, assured that their entire being and destiny lie in his hands, they should, in his Spirit’s power, give their minds chiefly to gratitude, generosity, and hope rather than lament.

To reckon with the Christian gospel was, for Webster, to be interested in all kinds of things, for there was no sphere of reality not encompassed by that gospel’s address. But, crucially, obedience to the gospel meant that our God-­given studiousness as creatures was rendered quite different from mere curiosity—that disorder of intellectual appetite in which we seek to know created realities in detachment from their creator.29 Baptism spelled the demise of curiosity’s reign, the commencement of a new intellectual life in which reason is regenerated and consecrated to its proper deployment in the pursuit of all true knowledge as centered on God. Theology needed to practice vigilance all the same: to keep submitting to divine instruction, to keep on hearing how creaturely science is as nothing unless it directs us to the Creator from whose bountiful goodness we have so received. This in turn meant resistance to mental indolence and restlessness alike, a refusal of the idols of putative intellectual fulfillment in something less than God himself. Theology could attain these ends only in confessed dependence and prayer, and by the sanctifying work of the Spirit.30 But, caught up in the great work of the divine refashioning of rational creaturely life, no small part of theology’s potential contribution to the realm of the academy was its vocation to model, on its own terms, intellectual patience.31 If people thought him too Barthian, or too Thomist, or too interested in strange characters like the Reformed orthodox, or too evangelical, or too whatever—it seemed not to bother him too much. In some, such an attitude might easily reflect conceit, a refusal to hear counterargument; in Webster, it was quite the opposite. He did not pursue independence for its own sake, and came to be increasingly conscious that theology must resist cultural isolations of the wrong sorts, commending its positum to the world by all the constructive means it can. Within church as well as academy, he was a gracious contributor, committed to charity and peace as well as truth. He listened attentively, respected his interlocutors, confessed when he did not know, changed his mind so­phische und theologische Perspektiven: Christoph Schwöbel zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Markus Mühling (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2016), 175–85.

29. “Theology is about everything; but it is not about everything about everything, but about everything in relation to God.” Webster, “On the Theology of the Intellectual Life,” in GWM II, 141.

30. Webster, “Curiosity,” in DW, 193–202.

31. Webster, “Intellectual Patience,” in GWM II, 173–87.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster when others persuaded. He undoubtedly had his strong dislikes and was not afraid to adduce them, but fierce polemic in his writing was fairly rare. Even the sharper exchanges focused on issues, not personalities. He was no retreatist scholastic, and remained alert to the dangers of being cast, as he once put it, as “a theological Ishmael” (Gen 16:12).32 He was just not interested in being popular or clever, or in gathering a party around him.

He was ever wary of trendy movements and of claims that his discipline’s future lay in the adoption of simple prescriptions, especially of a correlationist sort. “Conversations” as such were not the be-­all and end-­all, he would insist, and cultural prestige might be purchased at a heavy price; fidelity to the evangel was what mattered. This would inevitably mean a refusal of any proposed strategy in which the tasks of exegesis and dogmatics were less than central, and skepticism toward any diagnosis of contemporary disciplinary vigor where the signs of such life might be limited.

In hearing the word, there was, as Barth himself had insisted, no past in the church.33 As Webster worked his way steadily from modern to classical authorities, his deep sense of the riches of the tradition, and of their enduring potency as instruments of divine instruction in the understanding of Holy Scripture, became of course all the more acute. The great Thomas Aquinas and Augustine were but a fraction of it; John Calvin never stopped fascinating; John Owen, an early attraction, became a favorite in later years. Barth—contrary to some bizarre rumors—scarcely went away; one of Webster’s very last submitted pieces was on Barth’s Ephesians lectures at Göttingen in 1921–22.34 There were just so many giants from whom to learn, and contemporary fads generally had little to do with it. “What are you reading just now?” asked a visitor, possibly expecting (very naively) some fashionable monograph on ecclesial ethics or something trending on Amazon. “Wollebius,” came the reply, quite casually, as if all might (at least should) be doing so. “Stunning!” But ressourcement or retrieval also needed care: no idealizing—or demonizing—of epochs and their legacies; no drift of “tradition” into stasis or self-­satisfaction; no conflation of the revelatory authority of the Living One with the church’s proprietary stock.

Personal intellectual interests were wide-­ranging: literature, history, philosophy, critical theory, political ethics. He would, when the mood took him, chat away about knowledge or art or virtue in various registers, and he thought 32. Webster, WC, 6.

33. The theme is treated in Webster, “‘There is no past in the Church, so there is no past in theology’: Barth on the History of Modern Protestant Theology,” in BET, 91–117.

34. John Webster, “‘A Relation beyond All Relations’: God and Creatures in Barth’s Lectures on Ephesians, 1921–22,” in Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Ephesians, ed. R. David Nelson, trans.

Ross M. Wright (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 31–49.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) a fair bit about moral characterization in literatures new and old. “I’ve been enjoying Plutarch recently,” he would comment without notice as you drove along the main street. “Great fun!” None of it was meant to impress in the slightest, far less to be in or out of fashion, or (forfend) to subsume theology’s interests under some other rubric; much of it would register limited visible presence in his writing.35 It was just Webster being Webster, furnishing his mind as he did. He was invariably happy to ask for tips, prone to admit he wasn’t sure where to look for something; equally ready to dispense, low-­key as ever, generous suggestions from the considerable fund of his own reading, while probably suggesting he was a bit out of touch with half of it.

His writing—produced in longhand, in multiple, highly self-­critical, drafts—was invariably characterized by great precision and elegance. The essay remained his favorite form, and he was quite relaxed about issuing its fruits in multiple contexts; dissemination, not possession, was pedagogical virtue. Material was often tried and refined in seminars, symposia, or lecture series (larger conferences appealed to him less and less); he would labor hard at revising an already impressive text that was not yet to his taste. The 2007 inaugural Kantzer Lectures at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, “Perfection and Presence: God with Us, According to the Christian Confession,” offered a fine summary of several themes in his mature thinking about the order of God and creatures.36 His last collection of papers, the two-­volume God without Measure, is rich in polished jewels, yet like its predecessor essay volumes was intended as but a further set of preparatory exercises. A greater endeavor awaited: the vast (but evangelically necessary) attempt to offer a comprehensive account of the major elements of Christian doctrine in their essential interrelations, and to map that theology as an essentially moral and spiritual matter. En route, Webster continued to read and reflect extensively on the nature of theology and the theologian’s office: on the principles, resources, and ends of Christian intellectual activity, and on the relationship of 35. The intensifying quest for a consistently theological theology rendered the assets cited all the more tightly theological over time. There was, self-­consciously, less reference to the history of ideas (or to genealogy or polemic), more appeal to a fundamental history of God and creatures (and thus to the celebration of biblical reasoning and its classical champions).

Theological arguments ought to be made primarily in the specific language of sacra doctrina if in regenerate rational activity “hunger for divine instruction” replaced mere “intellectual greed” (Webster, “What Makes Theology Theological?,” in GWM I, 223). Still, discipline in reading and priority in idiom scarcely meant cultural insularity; all true science and art were indeed gifts of divine goodness.

36. Online: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/kantzer-­lectures-­in-­revealed-­theology/past​ -­lectures​-­publications​/john-­webster-­perfection-­presence/.

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster contemplative, ascetic, and moral practices in theological work. The ultimate synthesis was never to be; its loss is immense.

Webster makes demands of his readers—the quality and pace of his arguments, the range of reference, the splendidly unfashionable predilection for a fair bit of Latin (Euge, serve bone et fidelis!). But his work is also marked by directness, its instinctive grace carefully controlled. The textures are chosen not for display but in transparency to Scripture’s contours and furtherance of wonder at the beauty of the realities on which we are being invited to gaze. In that sense the prose typifies the ideals it seeks to commend, avoiding intellectual abstraction and self-­adornment, aiming unashamedly at delight in God. It is instructive to compare Webster’s scholarly writing with his preaching, some lovely examples of which have been published,37 or with his briefer expositions of scriptural themes.38 The academic material is self-­evidently a more formal affair, intended for peers; yet it too deploys—unashamedly—a great deal of “churchly” rhetoric, with particular modes of argument and appeal, particular norms of persuasion, and particular ends in Christian doxology.

Academic honors never greatly interested him. They came his way—distinguished chairs, prestigious invitations internationally, a Doctorate of Divinity honoris causa from Aberdeen in 2003, fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2005. Others were under consideration at the time of his death. But to Webster the real rewards were not to be found in those things.

To observe him in his element, you had to watch him in animated seminar discussion with a group of motivated students and colleagues. Webster was very good at recognizing how to introduce students in particular to big issues and currents of thought by choosing important texts, offering clear and balanced orientation to their aims and interests—and then encouraging learners to think for themselves through close and generous reading. The conversation would, at one level, be deadly serious—theology mattered more than anything else. Authors had to be shown respect, whatever they were saying; he had little patience with lazy judgments or cheap dismissals of nuanced arguments. There would be concern, too, that hesitant students were noticed, listened to with courtesy, affirmed as much as possible; insights would be valued whatever their source.

At the same time, a typical seminar with Webster was quite bereft of stuff37. John Webster, Confronted by Grace: Meditations of a Theologian, ed. Daniel Bush and Brannon Ellis (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015); previously published as Webster, The Grace of Truth (Farmington Hills, MI: Oil Lamp Books, 2011); John Webster, Christ Our Salva­ tion: Exploration and Proclamations, ed. Daniel J. Bush (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020).

38. E.g., the five-­part series of reflections, “The Fruit of the Spirit,” Reformation 21 (April– November 2015); or “Rise, Heart, Thy Lord is Risen,” Reformation 21 (March 2016). Both are available at https://www.reformation21.org/.

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Ivor J. Davidson / John Webster (1955–2016) iness or po-­faced sobriety, on the part of its leader, at least. As often as not, it was punctuated with much impromptu humor and irreverence of the best sort, all conveyed in a Yorkshire persona that cheerfully remained its understated self wherever it traveled. With Webster, cant and bluster were liable to be called for what they were, long-­winded or daft arguments met with earthy assessment. “That is quite a difficult case to sustain,” a senior scholar gently commented in response to a particularly odd conference paper where Webster was a sorely tried member of the audience. “It’s not difficult at all—it’s blasphemous!” opined Webster to those beside him, perhaps not entirely sotto voce—and proposed they adjourn forthwith for a pint.

The assessments of arrant nonsense were unlikely to miss the mark. To those who “got” things, or were sincerely trying to do so, Webster was a very supportive friend indeed. His consideration for students and colleagues was often exceptional—though never showy. The acts of generosity and pastoral care were carried out unobtrusively, sensitively and without fuss, as though they were nothing much, and just what anyone would do. Typically they ­reflected great thoughtfulness, an attention to matters and people often overlooked.

Webster’s investment in his graduate students in particular was outstanding; its counsel and professional support extended long after any standard obligations of professorial guidance might reasonably have been exceeded. He was delighted to be honored with a Festschrift lovingly conceived by a few of the grateful on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in 2015.39 The power of his thought and its expression was inevitably influential, but he relished serious engagement and did not seek to form his students after his image as some affect to do. He had his own views of youthful interpreters who appraised his work in lopsided or eagerly schematic fashion, or those who seemed to hint of themselves as its due conceptual curators. He found comfort and stimulus in authentically shared convictions; he would not have wished to have “heirs.”

Webster was, without doubt, a very modest and—for all his considerable sense of fun—a genuinely private man. But his approach to his calling was more than a matter of personal style; it reflected his understanding of the theologian’s life. Humility was, for him, an essential spiritual grace. Theology was authorized to be gloriously joyful and bold. It had reason to be frank in rejection of error and exposure of folly. It ought not, however, to be strident, totalizing, or oppressive of legitimate difference. It must resist vanity, the temptation to take itself with the wrong kind of seriousness, to foreclose on the infinity of the mystery set forth in the gospel. If dogmatics involved attentive 39. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis, eds., Theological Theology: Essays in Honour of John Webster (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).

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A Companion to the theology of John Webster listening, ongoing ascetic discipline was needed—consecration, repentance, petition, a repudiation of self-­importance, an enduring wonder at the inexhaustible goodness of divine self-­giving.

Webster drove himself hard and paid a price over the years. Personal challenges were faced with courage, dignity, and faith. He took quiet pride in his family, loved his garden, the arts, antiques, food and drink. Private as he was, he could be great company, and he had a finely developed sense of mischief.

He kept up an extensive correspondence, finding time to write to all kinds of folk in all kinds of places. Gentle pastoral wisdom, not least the gift of encouragement, was almost as much a part of his métier as scholarly advice. His death may have passed relatively unnoticed by secular media; the flood of personal tributes from around the world—as well as the attendance at the service of remembrance and thanksgiving conducted by Rowan Williams in St Andrews on August 27, 2016—attested a little of his impact on individual lives.

To me, he was an immensely generous and loyal friend, from whom I learned not enough, though vastly more than he was ever told. He was an astonishingly humble dialogue partner. Many of our conversations (not least in respect of his wit) I expect to remain with me for life. Looking back over a little of our correspondence in what turned out to be his final months, I am struck again by the combination of intellectual acuity and waspish observation, but also by the spiritual candor, the frequency of reference to faith, to prayer, and to Scripture’s counsel. His expression was ever deft, never trite. Our last conversation in person, a few days before he died, was on one of his favorite late themes: the knowledge of providence as gospel consolation, the learning of trust in the God who enacts his promise that his right hand will hold us fast—anywhere.

Webster knew his own heart and thus spoke well of the beauties of grace.

Webster’s modesty, his disciplined submission of his exceptional intellectual powers to theology’s calling, and—above all—his sheer delight in the God who thus announces himself in the gospel remain an enduring inspiration. If gratitude is indeed fundamental to faithful existence in the order of divine love, we should give thanks to God for him.

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