Abstract
John Webster,
The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason
, T&T Clark: London, 2012; 240 pp.: 9780567212948, £65.00/$120.00 (hbk), 978056714252, £19.99/$34.95 (pbk)
John Webster is perhaps the leading dogmatic theologian of his generation in the world today. Anything he writes is always worth reading. The essays collected in this volume, which are no exception, seem to be sketches on the way towards his magnum opus, a multi-volume Dogmatics that should start to appear in the not too distant future.
The book at hand falls into two parts. The first concerns the nature and interpretation of Scripture, while the second, on ‘theological reason’, examines the nature and tasks of Christian theology. Much of the work in both parts has to do with ‘cartography’ (or, as Webster likes to say, ‘ontology’). That is to say, the author devotes himself to the drawing or redrawing of maps and to getting the true lay of the land. Theology and Church are not to be regarded as alien elements – ‘here be monsters’ – in an essentially secular or Enlightenment landscape. The trick is to de-centre the hegemony of the Enlightenment without losing its genuine strengths.
Webster makes it clear that the Enlightenment can no longer be allowed to dominate our field of vision, and he does so from the standpoint of a carefully modulated Reformed theology. The whole Enlightenment, he believes, must be re-contextualized by ‘the domain of the Word’ as opposed to the reverse strategy, familiar for so long, in which the Word is contextualized by the prevailing assumptions of modernity, and thereby truncated.
All relatively ‘local’ issues are traced back to their fundamental ground in Christ and the Trinity. Webster sets about remapping everything else from there. The results can be astonishing as we come to realize in whole new ways how accustomed we have become to letting secular assumptions set the agenda. After Webster, the world looks very different when systematically reframed by the doctrines of Christ and the Trinity. One example would be his fine essay on ‘Resurrection and Scripture’ (Ch. 2), which bears some notable affinities with the recent work of Christopher Seitz. It should be required reading, in my opinion, for all ministers and theology students.
It does come as a bit of a surprise, however, to read in Chapter 3 that the properties of Scripture are not imperfect but ‘perfect, that is wholly sufficient, having no lack or excess, entirely suitable for the ministry to which they are commissioned’ (p. 59). As in his book on Holy Scripture, Webster allows the doctrine of sanctification nearly to eclipse that of justification – especially the liberating idea of simul iustus et peccator – in his assessment of just what it is that makes Holy Scripture to be holy. Elsewhere it is allowed that Scripture contains limitations, imperfections, ambiguities and contradictions, but somehow even here it is thought that ‘the Word sanctifies them’ (p. 96). More light, it would seem, is needed here.
Part Two on ‘Theological Reason’ has much to commend it throughout. I would especially lift up ‘Principles of Systematic Theology’ (Ch. 7) as an essay that whets the appetite for many good things to come. No one could come away from this book without being theologically edified, encouraged and enriched.