Webster and Inspiration - Verbal Inspiration

I found Webster's book Holy Scripture - A Dogmatic Sketch a very stimulating little book. He mounts a defence - or a restatement - even of the much maligned doctrine of verbal inspiration (chapter 1. p. 30ff.):

'Here we reach the particala veri (ie, limited truth) of the notion of verbal inspiration. Because verbal inspiration was routinely misconstrued (sometimes by its defenders and nearly always by its detractors) as entailing divine dictation, the notion of inspriation has been 'personalised' or 'de-verbalised' and redefined as authorial illumination. This distancing of inspiration from the verbal character of the text is considered to ease the difficulties of offering an account of inspiration by thinking of the words of the text as a purely human arena of activity, whether of authors, redactors or tradents. But the result is again docetic. The implied distinction between (inspired) content and creaturely form is awkward, and very easily makes authorial (or perhaps community) consciousness or experience the real substance of the text, of which the words are the external expressions. This is uncomfortably close to those styles of eucharistic theology in which the sacrament is considered to be a transaction between the gospel and the religious consciousness, to which visible forms are accidently attached. No less than consecration, inspiration concerns the relation of God's communication and specific creaturely forms;
inspiration, that is, involves words...' (p. 37-8)

(Is he thinking of Calvin's view of the Supper here? hmm...) He continues:

'Properly understood, 'verbal' inspiration does not extract words from their field of production or reception, does not make the text a less than historical entity, or make the text itself a divine agent. Nor does it entail neglect of the revelatory presence of God in favour of an account of originary inspiration. It simply indicates the inclusion of texts in the sanctifying work of the Spirit so that they may become fitting vessels of the treasure of the gospel.'
(p. 38)

This 'may become' is not just a case of the Scripture becoming the word of God as it is read by the church: he is definitely ascribing to the process of the text coming into being an inspiration by the Holy Spirit.

John Webster on philosophical theology

I breathe a sigh of relief when I read John Webster, because he is brave in defying the dominance of philosophical 'theology' with its mystifying speculations and its second-rate dabblings in fields far from the camp... as he puts it:

...the distinctiveness of a trinitarian dogmatics of the holiness of God will shown in its lack of interest in making use of religious phenomenology as a foundation for positive Christian teaching, or in correlating its findings with inquiries into the phenomena - cultural, anthropological and religious - of 'the holy'.

Trinitarian dogmatics will necessarily make ontotheological claims, though in its own particular way. When theology addresses the matter of God's attributes,

it is attempting a rich set of conceptual enlargements upon God's concrete simplicity, the rendition of his identity which God gives as the one who is.

Such a breath of fresh air to read in this city of dreary speculations!

The Holiness of Theology - or otherwise

In a recent discussion with friends, this passage from John Webster's Holiness book came under particular focus:

...talk of the sufficiency of Scripture is a warning against allowing theology's imagination to be enticed into giving attention to all manner of sources of fascination; for however enriching and fruitful they may present themsevles to , in the end they nearly always constitute a distraction. Theology cannot be and do and say everything; when theology does strive to relate itself to all kinds of other fields of intellectual and cultural activity, then - however much it may do so in good faith and with praiseworthy intentions - it risks losing its determincy, integrity and stability as the attempt to hear and repeat the one Word of God. (p. 21)

This comment was debated on the grounds that it allowed no room for prevenient or common grace (depending on whether you were a Wesleyan or a Calvinist!); and conceded far too much to secular disciplines such that it could not call them to account or be informed by them at all. We speculated as to what vices Webster was excoriating. What I think he has in mind is the Tillichian correlation of theology to culture, which of course within a decade becomes no more than a curiosity of history. Personally, I am stirred by Webster's vision here: I think theology's inattentivity to its own singular and decisive source - the Word of God - and its own task leaves it incapable of saying anything credible about these other disciplines in any case. At least I guess Milbank is trying: but I think he leaves far too much space for a philosophy which, like a cuckoo in the nest, soon ejects the true children and grows to become bigger than its 'parents' (see photo...)