This book admirably meets the requirements of the series in which it appears, which aims to offer focused studies for upper-undergraduates and postgraduates penned by authors who question existing paradigms. In this case John Webster questions understanding Scripture as an instance of a general category of texts understood in terms of a generalised theory of textuality and reading, where Scripture's meaning is constituted by the human community that authorises those texts. This Webster does from a Barthian perspective, drawing on Calvin and classical Protestant divinity, as well as Bonhoeffer and Barth himself. He aims to sketch out a truly dogmatic account of what Holy Scripture is that can fulfil a modest function ancillary to the real business of exegesis, rooting this account in the free self-presentation of the Triune God rather than any general hermeneutical theory.
From a concept of revelation drawn out of the doctrine of God, Webster moves to attempt to explain what makes Scripture holy. This is God's sanctification of the creaturely processes of writing in the service of revelation. Webster refuses to bifurcate the transcendent God and creaturely texts so as to lead to a false dualism of a supernaturalism removed from historical contingency versus a naturalistic criticism that fails to understand the purpose of Scripture and instead attempts to reconstruct the matrices from which it emerged. Rather there is no competition between the transcendent and historical, but God annexes creaturely realities so that they serve his purposes precisely as creatures. ‘Inspiration’ is sanctification applied to the specific work of the Spirit with regard to texts, and Webster expounds inspiration in such a way that God's activity is neither objectified into a worldly entity nor spiritualised into the experiences of authors and readers. Inspiration is primarily a being moved by God to write, where the Spirit's moving is directly and not inversely proportional to human authorship.
Webster thus moves not from Church to Scripture, but from Revelation to Scripture to Church, the latter being formed not by religious common interest but as a creature of the Word, a hearing Church destabilised as well as made cohesive by the otherness of Scripture. The Church does not confer authority on Scripture, and canonisation is an extension of Christ's communicative presence through the Spirit such that the Church ‘approves’ Scripture in the sense of receiving and acknowledging rather than authorising. The human acts of canonisation refer back beyond themselves to divine revelation and sanctification. Though he is drawing largely on Calvin, Webster's thesis put me in mind of Vatican I's teaching that the Scriptures are to be held canonical not because they have been approved by the Church's authority, but because they are authored by God and have been handed down to the Church.
Unfortunately, Webster betrays no sense of Tradition as destabilising and as holy, a work of the Spirit who sanctifies creaturely participation in the transmission of the Word. How those Webster opposes treat Scripture seems to be how he himself treats Tradition, and one fears that, in bifurcating the divine and the human in regard to Tradition, Webster will espouse the human side of a false dualism. There is no rooting of Tradition in the doctrines of God and his self-revelation and in pneumatology. At best ‘tradition’ could be conceived as a passive hearing of the Word on the part of the Church, and Webster is concerned, among other things, not to reduce Holy Scripture to a human tradition.
All this may have something to do with the fact that Webster chooses to focus more on the reading of Scripture than on proclamation, on the passive reception of its teachings rather than on their active transmission. There is a fine chapter on reading, which stresses attentiveness to the Word and the mortification as well as vivification of the reader, clarity being not a quality of the text before use but a result of the Spirit's sanctifying of the reader, but there is no chapter on preaching. The chapter on theology's service of the Word, which functions as an example of attentive reading expressed in modest rhetoric, places theology firmly in the Church, more nearly allied to catechesis (and proclamation) than to secular disciplines. Theology is starkly left at odds with the contemporary university, its methods, genres, and subdivisions. Webster does not attempt a full explanation of how such a biblical-ecclesial theology should attempt its work in the academy in relation to other disciplines, as he likewise attempts no full explanation of how Scripture is related to Tradition and preaching, but it is part of the strength of what he does treat that it leaves one with questions and eager to search for answers.
