Webster John - The Culture of Theology

Ivor J. Davidson

W HAT FOLLOWS IN THIS LITTLE VOLUME is a brief account of the nature and tasks of Christian theology. The theme absorbed its author for life; this particular expression of his thought has been a somewhat neglected jewel in his literary legacy.

John Webster was a theologians theologian. of his work in this period lacked nuance or required qualification; the underlying instincts could be expressed better, and with less risk of distortion, by bringing a number of other emphases to the fore, locating the practices of theology on a still more specific and yet grander scale. Some differences would emerge. But the argument in this text expounds a number of principles to which he remained strongly committed and presents a fundamental view of its subject from which he did not greatly depart; it gives indication of how those convictions had taken form at that stage in his career and of some of his key concerns at the time.

Though the scale of the work is relatively modest, it remains one of the fullest and most integrated examples of Websters thinking on how the practice of theology ought to be approached. He went on to write other studies that expand on several of the themes and qualify some of the investments. Those studies were envisaged as preliminary to a multivolume exposition of systematic theology in which he would set out his sense of the discipline at large, the culmination of a further two decades of reflection. His sudden death on May 25, 2016, deprived us of that: the completion of even the first part of the project was not to be. Webster thought of The Culture of Theology as a staging post; as things are, it stands as one of his more substantial endeavors to reflect holistically on the privileges, resources, and responsibilities of theological work. He considered the text inchoate: self-conscious, over-invested in the language of cultural practices, not yet clear enough on a doctrine of creation or history or on the abundance of Gods Godness as basis of Gods outer works, and thus as beginning and end of everything the theologian ever is or does. This had been an early and fairly brief venture on a vast matter; refinements were in order, and a number were adumbrated. Yet this little work sets much before us in a style that remained its authors own; in its elegance, coherence, and conceptual power it offers a magisterial short treatment of what Christian theology is all about, and what it means to take it seriously.

Webster wrote and presented the material as a series of six lectures, the Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, in mid-August 1998. The series contributed Their instruction has been relished by those in the know; it is high time for the beneficiaries to increase.

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Websters overarching argument is quite simple. Christian theologys principal setting is not, he proposes in his opening lecture, its intellectual or social context but the world which is brought into being by the staggering good news of Jesus Christ. Christian thought and speech about God and about all things else in relation to God are features of Christian culture : they take place, first and foremost, in an eschatological space, the sphere in which Christian faith and life have their existence by the miracle of Gods grace. Christian theology flourishes when its roots in that territory are deep; it withers when its tasks are pursued in detachment from the traditions of belief and practice in which alone its work can prosper. In late modernity, the practice of theology has been inhibited not so much by outward circumstancesthe challenges posed by an intellectual, social, or political environmentas by internal disorder. All too often, theology has become dislocated from its most fundamental context; it has lost sight of the resources, responsibilities, and prospects that situation affords. Remedy lies in the reintegration of Christian theology into the true culture of Christian faiththe church, its texts and traditionsand in the deployment of genuinely theological categories in the conception and practice of theological work. Whatever their historical setting may be, theologys practitioners need to cultivate habits of mind and soul befitting those for whom the gospel itself is the most important reality.