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.