Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch

by John Webster
Review by Jordan Henricks

In an era of overwhelming relevancy and submission to philosophical reasoning which has so impacted the theological academy, John Webster provides a rich dogmatic account of the scriptures of the Bible that the church has long referred to as Holy Scripture. The thesis of his book, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, is that "revelation is the self-presentation of the triune God, the free work of sovereign mercy in which God wills, establishes and perfects saving fellowship with himself in which humankind comes to know, love and fear him above all things" (13). Webster begins this sketch by describing revelation as being “identical with God’s triune being in its active self-presence” (14). He describes God the Father as the origin of this self-presence, the Son as the one that actualizes this self-presence, and the Holy Spirit as the one who perfects that self-presence “by making it real and effective to an in the history of humankind” (14). The doctrine of the Trinity, for Webster, is essential for understanding the nature of Scripture. He writes, “a Christian theology of revelation becomes dysfunctional when its bonds to the doctrine of the Trinity disintegrate” (17). In other words, Webster believes that a person is only capable of coming to understand the nature of Scripture if he or she regards proper doctrine of the triune God as the cornerstone of the faith.

Webster begins this sketch by describing the nature of God’s self-presentation through revelation, sanctification, and inspiration. Webster undoubtedly seems to be pointing to the triune nature of God in his three-fold description. Revelation for Webster “denotes the communicative, fellowship-establishing trajectory of the acts of God in the election, creation, providential ordering, reconciliation, judgement and glorification of God’s creatures” (17). It is through and by the revelation of God that humanity is graced with a blessing of the possibility of sanctification. Webster describes sanctification as “the act of God the Holy Spirit in hallowing creaturely processes, employing them in the service of the taking form of revelation within the history of the creation” (17-18). It seems clear from his writing that Webster believes revelation to be necessitated by sanctification, but one might also suggest that he believes sanctification to be necessitated by revelation as well. Webster writes, “As the work of the Spirit, sanctification integrates communicative divine action and the creatureliness of those elements which are appointed to the service of God’s self-presentation” (27). Revelation and sanctification go hand-in-hand for Webster, and both are surely necessary for inspiration. Inspiration for Webster is simply the “specific textual application” of sanctification “as the hallowing of creaturely realities to serve revelation’s taking form” (30). It is through Scripture that God addresses the church with the gospel of salvation, and according to Webster, this is the self-presentation of God.

After placing Scripture at the heart of God’s work of self-presentation, in the next section Webster wants to make very clear that Scripture is not an object of the church. He writes, “Scripture is not the word of the church; the church is the church of the Word” (44). There is a temptation that exists among the community of the church to place Scripture under a magnifying glass as if to assert some power over the text. This is not only inappropriate for Webster, but also impossible. Now, it is important to note that we are not referring to the work of textual critics as inappropriate; that is not necessarily what we mean by putting the text under a magnifying glass. Rather we are referring here to those who attempt to assert power over the text as if it was clay to be molded and fashioned to a person’s liking. To do so would be to deny the very truth that Scripture itself forms the community of the church. This is what Webster means when he describes the church as the church of the Word. “[T]he church is created as the community of faith, that is, the congregation of those who have been afforded a steady knowledge of the saving love of God” (45). Thus, by necessity the church must be a hearing church, as Webster describes it. “Holy Scripture is the location of a struggle for the proper externality of the church, for true hearing of the viva vox Dei, for true attention to the sanctified and inspired servant through which God announces the judgement and promise of the gospel, above all, for faith as the end of defiance and false confidence and the beginning of humble listening” (47). Scripture finds its authority within the living stones of the community of the church because it is through its Word, the living Word of God, that those stones were formed and built on the cornerstone of God incarnate. Thus, what follows, according to Webster, is a dogmatic decision of the church, namely the canonisation of Scripture.

Given the attentiveness to detail with which Webster goes about sketching an account of Scripture as God’s self-presentation and as the necessary link in the formation of the church, it should come as no surprise that careful attention is given to reading Scripture as well. Webster writes, “Scripture is an auxiliary in the economy of salvation, and the end of that economy is fellowship” (70). However, Webster continues, “communicative fellowship cannot be healed on one side only; it must include the restoration of the human partner to a genuine participation in the knowledge of God” (70-71). In short, the church’s fellowship and reconciliation to God is hugely affected by its reading of Scripture. Thus, in the spirit of humility and self-renunciation, Webster demonstrates the very posture he intends to describe when reading Scripture by pointing to Jean Calvin and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as faithful readers of the Word. Webster quotes Bonhoeffer from his book Life Together when he writes, “Proper reading of Scripture is not a technical exercise that can be learned; it is something that grows or diminishes according to my spiritual condition” (84). When reading this quotation, it should come as no surprise that Webster favors the term ‘reading’ over ‘interpretation,’ as he describes reading to be “a more practical, low-level term, less overlain with the complexities of hermeneutical theory, less patent of exposition through a theory of the human subject, and less likely to be overwhelmed by psychological or philosophical abstraction” (86). Reading Scripture is about listening to the Word of God. Interpretation is about interacting and conversing with a text or environment. According philosophers like Gadamer, when a person interprets a text, that person is actually participating in giving the text meaning. However, Scripture is not just another text. If a person is too busy trying to interpret Scripture and give it meaning, he or she will be aloof to the voice of the living God. Webster even goes as far as to suggest that exegetical difficulties are “not the heart of the difficulty in reading Scripture,” but that “[t]he real problems lie elsewhere, in our defiance of grace” (106).

The final step that Webster outlines in his book is Scripture’s role in the theological academy. He takes a very strong stance, indeed, in the final chapter of this dogmatic sketch, asserting, “It is thus the office of theology in the church to serve the Word” (126). He goes on to state that “theology is awed testimony to the critical and consoling presence of God in the Spirit’s power, set before the church in Holy Scripture” (126). Webster’s stance is essentially that true theology can only operate within the community of the church. He writes, “Theology is thus more a process of moral and spiritual training and an exercise in the promotion of common life than it is a scholarly discipline” (116). His reasoning regarding this matter seems to be well founded, but his conclusion is most certainly controversial, namely that the theological school belongs in the church rather than in cahoots with schools of history, philosophy and social science.

In response to Webster’s thoughts in his final chapter, I wrestle with theology’s role in the larger realm of the academy. I absolutely understand and appreciate what he is saying, but I wrestle with its practical application. One reason for this would be because so much of scholarship and higher learning has grown out of the community of the church, most notably monasteries and colleges. For several hundreds of years, monasteries were the institutes of higher learning in Western Europe. The Enlightenment seemed to be born out of monasteries and the work of Christian theologians in parochial schools, i.e., Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, etc. Thus, I find it very difficult to severe ties completely with entire schools of thought that seemed to have blossomed from the church. One might argue against my line of thinking, but I still struggle with thinking about theology wholly abstracted from being a scholarly discipline. Considering all of the observations and advancements history and social sciences have made that seem to be invaluable to the church, I have a hard time not finding them useful within the framework of our theology. Do such archaeological finds like the Qumran Scrolls or philosophical tools like the syllogism seem to offer something to theology?

Then again, maybe what Webster is asking us to do is to rethink our concept of theology. He writes, “It is fatally easy to prefer the relatively clean lines of doctrine to the much less manageable, untheorised material of the Bible. But once we begin to do that, doctrine quickly becomes a way of easing ourselves of some permanently troubling tracts of Christian language…” (130). I could not agree more with Webster’s hesitancy to baptize theology as the answer to all of our exegetical problems. I think the number one mistake a theology student can make is enrolling in systematic theology classes at his or her institution prior to completing his or her biblical studies requirements. When a person reads the Bible through the lens of a given theological framework they are placing hearing protection in their ears, inhibiting God’s voice from being clearly heard. However, when a person reads the Bible with a reverence and desire to hear the Word of God afresh, theology blooms from the page as a tree planted near streams of water. This is the idea that seems to be motivating Webster and I must agree. However, we must make room for observations and the work of history, philosophy and the social sciences when we theologize because it allows our reading of Scripture to be relevant and meaningful to our culture. I believe the answer for this is for our lives to be characterized by discipline and humility, by faithfulness to the self-presentation of God through Christ Jesus and his Word. In other words, if we adopt a posture towards Scripture that mirrors that of Immanuel Kant, our reading will be undoubtedly cancerous, filled with tumors metastasizing rapidly. However, if we treat Scripture as having the authority of the living Word of God, I believe we will be able to incorporate the work of schools of history, philosophy and the social sciences in our theological framework.

One additional section that I found to be fascinating was Webster’s reflection on the authority of the church and the doctrine of sola scriptura. Webster writes, “the authority of the church is nothing other than its acknowledgment of the norm under which it stands” (63). Or in the words of Robert Jenson quoted in this book from his Systematic Theology, vol. I, “The church has exactly as much authority as it exercises obedience” (63). Taking into account Webster’s earlier remarks regarding the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification of both the church and texts that have become Scripture, we can postulate that through the church’s obedience, the gospels and epistles that were canonised were sanctified through the work of the Holy Spirit in the decisions of the community of the church. Thus, as Webster and Jenson both seem to point out, the slogan sola scriptura is actually an oxymoron because it was only through the witness of the apostles and the community of the church that Scripture came to be the Word of God. Thus, the concept of Scripture alone does not really make much sense on their account. The question that I would pose in response, however, is whether or not Scripture is solely authoritative presently? I concede that sola scriptura is nonsensical on the whole in the history of the church, but the intent of the doctrine is to regard Scripture with the same authoritativeness that Webster intends to ascribe to it. Thus, I understand Webster’s concern, but I think he comes off a little strong in his argument.

In all, Webster’s book is fantastic and a must read for every theologian, whether that person is a pastor, teacher, chaplain, professor, or the like. The up and coming generations put everything under a magnifying glass these days, and it can be so easy a tendency to regard Scripture as a mere compilation of texts. This book implores readers to treat the Word of God with reverence and awe, but not just because they are supposed to. Webster gives readers a solid dogmatic account of what makes these texts Scripture, and exactly why a participant in the community of the church should treat them as such. He even uses brilliant literary techniques, almost giving readers the impression that they are reading poetry rather than theological prose at times, when describing the triune God’s self-presentation through the threefold procession of revelation, sanctification, and inspiration. Similarly, to allow two of the most well respected reformation and modern church fathers to speak on his behalf in regards to regarding Scripture with humility displays Webster’s desire to listen attentively to witness of the saints as well as the Word of God. This book contains multiple layers of wisdom and teaching and should be read carefully so as not to miss out.