John Webster

Jordan Senner

• Verlag: T&T Clark
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567698865
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Teología y religión
• Thema: Teología

Jordan Senner captures the systematic shape, logic, and development of his thought from the vantage point of the God-creature relation. Webster's development is depicted in terms of three phases – Christocentric, Trinitarian, and Theocentric – culminating in a conceptual analysis of three key aspects of his mature theology: his doctrine of divine perfection, theory of mixed relations, and concept of dual causality. Senner illustrates this heuristic framework for interpreting Webster's theology through an exploration of different aspects of his account of the God-creature relation: Christology (hypostatic relation), ecclesiology (redemptive relation), bibliology (communicative relation), and theological theology (rational relation). This volume not only provides a dynamic introduction to Webster's theology as a whole, but it also includes fascinating forays into the complexities of Webster's engagement with Barth and Aquinas, raising interesting questions for constructive theological dialogue that is neither straightforwardly Protestant nor Catholic.

Chapter 1

ORDERING AND GROUNDING THE GOD-CREATURE RELATION

1.1 Introduction

This chapter is intended to function as an overture for the subsequent four chapters, sketching the significant points of development in Webster’s thought that shape his understanding of the relation between God and creatures. In particular, I will seek to convey the ways in which Webster’s evolving conception of the ‘material centre’ and ‘heuristic key’ of Christian theology shapes the way he grounds, contextualizes and depicts the relation-in-distinction between God and creatures. The narrative I lay out here will be broad, attempting to give a sense of the whole. It will be left to the subsequent four chapters to demonstrate the explanatory power of this developmental narrative as well as offer a more detailed and nuanced analysis of various aspects of Webster’s understanding of the God-creature relation. Hence, I will not attempt to defend the framework in Chapter 1 (beyond offering a few illustrative quotations); its defence will be the demonstration of its usefulness in Chapters 2–5.

The argument of this chapter will unfold in two parts. The first half (Sections 1.2–1.4) will briefly map the development of Webster’s thought in terms of three phases – Christocentric, Trinitarian and Theocentric – each of which is marked by a distinctive account of which doctrine(s) constitutes the ‘material centre’ and provides the ‘heuristic key’ for Christian theology as a whole and thereby orders thought about the God-creature relation. This threefold schema identifies two primary shifts in Webster’s thought that impact his understanding of the God-creature relation: (1) a shift from Christology to the doctrine of the Trinity as the cardinal Christian doctrine, and (2) a shift from the economic action of the Trinity to the immanent perfection of the Trinity as the material epicentre of Christian doctrine. There are other very significant developments – e.g. from an eschatological doctrine of grace to a Thomist doctrine of creation as that which provides the most basic context within which to talk about the God-creature relation – but they are corollaries of these primary shifts. The second half of the chapter (Section 1.5) will offer a conceptual analysis of three aspects of Webster’s mature theology – his doctrine of divine perfection, theory of mixed relations and concept of dual causality – that are pivotal to his mature way of framing and characterizing the relation-in-distinction between God and creatures. In this way, this chapter will lay out the developmental narrative and conceptual analysis that will function as a heuristic framework for interpreting Webster’s theology, particularly as it relates to the God-creature relation. We turn now to the first phase of his theological development.

1.2 Christocentric approach to the God-creature relation

From the early 1980s to roughly the mid-1990s, Webster’s thought can be described as broadly ‘Christocentric’ and ‘Christomorphic’.¹ Christology, especially the doctrine of the incarnation, is the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae.² Christ is the centre around which all thought about God, humanity and their relation is constructed; he is the origin and terminus of Christian theology.³

This material claim is indebted largely to the influence of Eberhard Jüngel and Karl Barth upon the young Webster. While taking aspects of Barth’s thought in a more Lutheran and existential direction, Jüngel did share Barth’s fundamental desire to ground all theological speech in the self-revelation of God in the human history of Jesus Christ, thereby emphasizing the identity and correspondence between God in se and pro nobis and resisting any notion of an abstract Deus absconditus behind Jesus of Nazareth.⁴ The way to achieve this goal was to construct a theological ontology from the ground up, beginning with the particularity of Jesus’ human history, especially, for Jüngel, his suffering and death. The result was a radical rethinking of the classical doctrine of God: God’s being is in ‘becoming’ or, as he states elsewhere, in ‘coming’, both in se and pro nobis.⁵ Hence, God cannot be known or spoken of abstractly apart from his relation to creatures in Christ, and creatures cannot be known or spoken of abstractly apart from their relation to God in Christ. With all of this, the early Webster is in whole-hearted agreement.

It is this claim about the material object of Christian theology that guides Webster’s formal organization of theology, especially his account of the God-creature relationship. A prime example of this can be seen in his first full-length book God Is Here: Believing in the Incarnation Today (1983). The book is structured in three parts, each of which answers a key theological question: Who is Jesus, who is God and who am I? Crucially, questions two and three (theology proper and anthropology) derive their material content from question one: ‘We can, that is, only answer the questions “who is God?” and “who am I?” by listening to the story of Jesus.’⁶ Thus, Christian theology is concerned with ‘thinking about God and man in the light of Jesus Christ’.⁷ One result of this Christomorphic ordering of theology is that God and creatures can never be spoken of in abstraction from one another. Even the distinction between God and the world is something revealed in and by their Christologically grounded and mediated relation. Rather than the radical distinction between God and creatures being the context within which to understand their relation (Webster’s mature thought), it is the Christological relation between God and creatures that serves as the theological context within which to understand their distinction (Webster’s early thought). In the words of Jüngel, ‘God differentiates himself from humanity precisely at the point at which he reveals himself to humanity.’⁸ Once again, this way of articulating the God-creature distinction is intended to mitigate against the thought that God in se is anything other than who he has revealed himself to be in the human history of Jesus Christ, namely God pro nobis. It is for this reason that Webster’s thought in the 1980s tends to avoid investing heavily in the use of metaphysical categories, preferring instead to operate within narratival and historical categories.⁹

As a result of this Christocentrism and Christomorphism, Webster’s early theology is marked by the way in which he employs the material resources and conceptual categories of Christology across a broad range of doctrinal loci: the doctrine of God, ecclesiology, anthropology, moral theology and the theology of grace. Christology functions as the ‘heuristic key’ to all other doctrines.¹⁰ While it will be left to later chapters to demonstrate the validity of this claim, here it is worth drawing attention to a broad shift in emphasis within Webster’s early Christology that has an impact on the way in which it grounds and governs his theology as a whole and especially his understanding of the God-creature relation.¹¹ The shift can be stated as follows: a movement from a focus on the human history of Jesus Christ as the eschatological event that grounds and evokes other human histories to a focus on the eschatological presence of the risen Christ as the ontological and moral field within which human thought and action occur.¹² This shift in emphasis seems to have been precipitated in part by the influence of Barth’s exposition of the munus propheticum Christi in CD IV/3. Webster expressed concern with the way Jüngel employed the existential and hermeneutical thought of Bultmann in an effort to bridge Lessing’s gap between the illic et tunc of Jesus Christ’s human history and the hic et nunc of our human histories, believing that Barth’s use of doctrinal material from within Christology to bridge the gap does a better job of registering the priority and gratuity of God’s action within the realms of soteriology, anthropology and ethics.¹³ Dovetailed with this emphasis on Christ’s self-mediating and self-revealing presence is an openness, beginning in the 1990s, to the project of developing a theological ontology, epistemology and anthropology out of the resources of Christology and eschatology – i.e. the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In so doing, Webster believes he can articulate the theological grounds for the necessity and indispensability of talk about divine agency and creativity for understanding human nature, agency and history.¹⁴

At this point, clarity is paramount for our reading of Webster’s early theology: although the differences between the aforementioned emphases are genuine, Webster’s approach remains thoroughly Christocentric and Christomorphic in both cases. It is a matter of which aspects of Christology bear more weight within Webster’s thought and for what theological purposes. In either case, it is still Christology (often cast in an eschatological register) that provides the material and conceptual resources through which to articulate the relation-in-distinction between God and creatures. It is only in the late 1990s and early 2000s that we see a discernible shift from Christology to the doctrine of the Trinity as the cardinal Christian doctrine, to which we now turn.¹⁵

1.3 Trinitarian approach to the God-creature relation

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, there is a discernible shift in the dogmatic order and proportion of Webster’s thought. The doctrine of the Trinity replaces Christology as the cardinal Christian doctrine from which all other doctrines derive and by which they are governed. And so, for example, Webster states, ‘Christian theology has a singular preoccupation: God, and everything else sub specie divinitatis. All other Christian doctrines are applications or corollaries of the one doctrine, the doctrine of the Trinity, in which the doctrine of the church, no less than the doctrine of revelation, has its proper home.’¹⁶ Quotes of a similar nature, highlighting the material and formal function of the doctrine of the Trinity, are made in relation to a host of other doctrinal topics: not only the church and revelation, but also Scripture and its readers, anthropology and ethics, as well as the divine attributes.¹⁷ The doctrine of the Trinity orders theological thought and speech about any topic, especially the relation between God and creatures.

Before we give further attention to Webster’s doctrine of the Trinity, it is worth asking about the substantive reasons for this shift from Christology to Trinity as the material epicentre and heuristic key of Christian theology. What precipitated this development? First, Webster recognizes the need to ground Christology in the doctrine of God in order to uphold the unsubstitutable identity of Jesus Christ in the face of German idealism and moralism. This will be discussed further in Chapter 2. Second, the doctrine of the Trinity provides Webster with the means by which to articulate the sovereign freedom of God and the gratuity of his action towards humanity. This will be exemplified in Chapter 3. Third, the doctrine of the Trinity enabled Webster to resist abstract theism by giving an account of God’s nature that was Christianly specific and biblically derived. Finally, and most importantly for our purposes, the doctrine of the Trinity gave Webster more capacious resources by which to articulate the nature of the God-creature relation and ward off distortions.

A particularly illuminating example of this last point can be found in Webster’s discussion of the impact of Trinitarian teaching on an account of the divine attribute of holiness. He states,

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us who God is on the basis of God’s works of creation, salvation and perfection. As such, it is a crucial blockage against a temptation to which all theologies are exposed, namely, that of cramping or truncating the scope of God’s relation to the world, and identifying God with only one mode of relation. On a trinitarian account of the matter, talk of the holiness of God indicates the relation of God to the world which we can discern in the full sweep of his works. Above all, the doctrine of the Trinity prevents abstract accounts of God’s holiness – ‘abstract’ in the sense of being developed apart from attention to the identity of God which is enacted i...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 ORDERING AND GROUNDING THE GOD-CREATURE RELATION
• Chapter 2 CHRISTOLOGY
• Chapter 3 ECCLESIOLOGY
• Chapter 4 BIBLIOLOGY
• Chapter 5 THEOLOGICAL THEOLOGY
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of names
• Index of subjects
• Imprint