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Ausgabe: | April/2023 |
Spalte: | 389-390 |
Kategorie: | Systematische Theologie: Dogmatik |
Autor/Hrsg.: | Senner, Jordan |
Titel/Untertitel: | John Webster. The Shape and Development of His Theology. |
Verlag: | London u. a.: Bloomsbury T & T Clark 2022. 216 S. = T & T Clark Studies in English Theology. Geb. £ 76,50. ISBN 9780567698834. |
Rezensent: | Daniel L. Nelson |
Jordan Senner has provided an excellent study in the development of John Webster’s theology, expertly bringing the whole of Webster’s thought into conversation. S. has produced a text that is worthy of the late theologian’s influence and legacy-clear, methodological, theological, and precise.
The study of Webster’s work is a growing field, with increasing edited collections of his essays and collections of essays on his thought. S. has produced the first systematic study of the development of Webster’s thought tracing the issue of the relationship between God and creatures and how that concern influenced all other issues for Webster. S.’s central thesis is that changes in Webster’s understanding of the God-creature relation result in changes in the emphasis, organization, and relation of other doctrines. As such, S.’s work will be significant in the future for all comprehensive studies of Webster’s thought and theology, and useful for reading Webster’s work itself. S.’s work limits itself to the realm of ideas, engaging with the Websterian corpus insofar as it assists in showing Webster’s theological development. Adding a further limitation, S. notes this is not primarily an evaluation of Webster’s theology, but a descriptive account of the »inner logic« of how Webster’s theology holds together and developed.
S. begins by establishing a »heuristic framework« that is employed to show the development of Webster’s theology. Significantly, S. uses the language of a »heuristic«, recognizing the limitations of his framework. He is well nuanced, letting the reader know where Webster’s writings may disrupt or problematize the »shortcut«, while also providing means for the reader to explore Webster’s works for oneself. Arguing that because Webster’s primary concern is understanding the God-creature relation, Webster seeks a foundation and a »material centre« for Christian theology. This center changes as Webster’s own thinking develops and one of the primary shifts is from a more Barthian conceptual toolkit to that of Aquinas. S. therefore seeks to map these changes to broad timeframes (early, middle, and mature works). In his early works, S. discusses Webster’s Christocentrism whereby Christology is the primary ordering doctrine. As Webster’s thought develops, a move is made to a more Trinitarian focus. S. argues that this shift due to several factors in terms of explanatory power and the avoidance of distortions within the God-creature relationship. First, positively, the doctrine of the Trinity provides more resources to discuss the nature of the God-creature relationship highlighting the economic missions (creation, reconciliation, and perfection), while preventing the two opposing errors of abstraction and immanentism. S. argues that the nature of the God-creature relationship highlights the distinction between God and creation emphasizing God’s agency by employing the doctrine of election and a theology of grace. The result, which S. argues that Webster recognizes, creates a tension between human agency and divine agency, problematizing the non-competitive nature of the relationship which Webster wishes to uphold. Due to these tensions, S. identifies the third shift of the »material centre« to a theocentric approach. S. is careful to specify what this designates: it is still trinitarian, but Webster shifts the emphasis from the economic trinity to the immanent trinity, focusing on the perfection of God in himself as opposed to God as known by his external works. The logic of this shift is to the immanent trinity is to uphold the grace of opus ad extra while maintaining the absolute qualitative distinction between God and his creation. S. then shows how this turn to the immanent trinity also places the doctrine of creation at the forefront for works of grace and how Webster makes material use of a number of conceptual resources of Aquinas’ thought. S. highlights three such aspects: divine perfection, mixed relations, and dual causality. While much can be said of these aspects, it is enough to note the way they are employed to make S.’s argument. By arguing that Webster’s mature theology employs these resources, S. makes the case that Webster uses the doctrine of divine perfection as the basis of an account of divine and human agency whereby God can and does relate to his creation in a »non-reciprocal« manner such that human agency is both real and not superseded by God.
In tracing the development of Webster’s theology, S. helpfully recognizes that Webster is concerned with matters at the heart of Christian theological thinking, indicating how Webster is deeply rooted in Christian tradition. S.’s argument that Webster moves from a Christological center to a center based on the life of the immanent trinity recalls difficulties in questions of epistemology and of metaphysics, precisely in terms of the order of priority and the position of the one who knows. This shift, as S. identifies it, to the aseity and perfection of God as prior (metaphysically) to creation will be of significant benefit to trinitarian discussions, especially in the context of social-trinitarianism and the relation of the economic to the immanent trinity.
Structurally, after S. provides a narrative of his heuristic framework, he shows its effectiveness by discussing the God-creature relationship in terms of four kinds of relation and how these relations affect particular doctrines in Webster’s thought. The examples make up the content of the following four chapters focusing on Christology and the hypostatic relation (ch. 2), ecclesiology and the redemptive relation (ch. 3), bibliology and the communicative relation (ch. 4), and theology itself and the rational relation (ch. 5). In each chapter, S. then traces this development from a Christological basis to a theocentric basis (focused on the immanent trinity) and thus offers an inclusive account of Webster’s theology.
Finally, the text is stylistically clear and well argued. S.’s writing is easy to read in the sense of clearly following the trajectory of his ideas. Materially, it is written for the academy. The footnotes provide ample support for continued engagement with both primary sources and other scholars with whom Webster has been in discussion. The breadth of engagement, in terms of both Webster’s theology and broader theological and dogmatic discussions is both impressive and well nuanced offering helpful criticism and »locating« Webster as a »theologian’s theologian«.