Abstract
What makes theology theological rather than just another discourse among a myriad of others within the modern university? Does theology work within its own culture, and what is this culture? What are its authoritative texts? How do we know when and – perhaps more importantly – how do we ensure that the politics, criticism and ethics of theology are truly theological?
These are the chief questions John Webster considered in his 1998 Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures, which he delivered at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, now given afresh and newly edited as The Culture of Theology. The book provides a glimpse into Webster’s concerns as he understood and articulated them at the middle point of his career, setting forth in digestible and reflective form ideas and concerns that were to occupy his thought for the remainder of his life and career. As always, it is the question of theological theology – what makes theology distinctly theological, particularly in the academy – that is his greatest concern. Indeed, there is perhaps no better phrase to signify Webster’s chief theological aim and concern than theological theology.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of this work is that it provides readers with a holistic introduction to Webster on his own terms. This is wonderfully supplemented by Ivor Davidson’s thorough introduction, which situates these lectures within the wider context and development of Webster’s career. Thus it is with good reason that Davidson compares these lectures with Karl Barth’s Evangelical Theology. Following Barth, Webster situates the question of theology, and academic theology in particular, as more than anything else a question posed to the theologian by the living God. And so for Webster theology is ineluctably eschatological. As with the whole of the Christian life, theology is a response to the divine summons that is the revelation of God in Christ in the power of the Spirit. This means that, for Webster, following nineteenth-century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard, theology cannot and must not exist in abstraction because Christ, through God’s revelation of Godself, is always contemporaneous with us. Through the Spirit we are given Christ in ways that pure historical inquiry cannot provide.
Webster would continue to reflect upon and further develop the central concerns elucidated in these lectures over the course of his career, and so this is not the place to find Webster at his most mature and nuanced; to do so would misplace the value and function of the work in his oeuvre. Rather, these lectures show us Webster posing to himself and to his readers questions he found especially pressing in a tone more conversational than is found in most theological works. Webster was not only an academic theologian, but also, if I may put it thus, a churchly one. The Culture of Theology is so welcome an addition to Webster’s oeuvre precisely because it shows so well Webster’s concern that theology should not forget its role in the life of the Church and of the individual believer.