Webster On Scripture
Here is a short summary of John Webster’s chapter, “Revelation, Sanctification and Inspiration,” from his book Holy Scripture. In this chapter, Webster identifies a key problem with how Scripture has been handled and understood within recent history (say the past 200 years or so). He believes that the idea of what Scripture is has been isolated from the Doctrine of God—i.e., God as triune. In consequence, Scripture has been subjected to unnecessary qualifications to prove that it is indeed a text given to the church by God. The central issue, as he states it, is how to prove or even talk about how a human document can contain divine wisdom and divine self-disclosure with surety and integrity. What is at stake is how we live with Scripture as a trustworthy and authoritative text within the community of God.The solution to this problem, according to Webster, is to locate our thinking about Scripture within a dynamic trinitarian doctrine of God. He does this through the interrelating of three concepts: revelation, sanctification and inspiration. The most important of all of these concepts, if there is to be a kind of prioritizing, is ‘revelation’. Sanctification, however, takes a very close 2nd because it is through the agency of the Holy Spirit that God has consistently communicated (revealed) himself to humanity.[1] This self-communication (and self-presence) of God includes the writing, the preservation and the interpretation of the words of Scripture within the community of God. Thus, what is most important for Webster to set out in his doctrine of Scripture is not the veracity or the reliability of the words themselves (such as the concept of ‘inerrancy’) but, instead, the very presence of God with us. As he puts it,
Holy Scripture is dogmatically explicated in terms of its role in God’s self-communication, that is, the acts of Father, Son and Spirit which establish and maintain that saving fellowship with humankind in which God makes himself known to us and by us. The ‘sanctification’ of Scripture (its ‘holiness’) and its ‘inspiration’ (its proceeding from God) and aspects of the process whereby God employs creaturely reality in his service, for the attestation of his saving self-revelation… What Scripture is as sanctified and inspired is a function of divine revelatory activity, and divine revelatory activity is God’s triune being in its external orientation, its gracious and self-bestowing turn to the creation. (8-9)In essence, his claim is that scripture is telling the story of God’s presence within the created order, and this story is shaped through the trinitarian activity of God in and for the world.
Revelation
Webster’s central concept for scripture is ‘revelation’.1) “the self-presentation of the triune God”
2) “the free work of sovereign mercy”
3) the establishment and perfecting of “saving fellowship with himself” (cf. 13-17)First, revelation is the self-presentation of the triune God. This means that the content of the revelation is nothing less that God himself. Furthermore, God is the agent of revelation, which is what is meant by God’s ‘self-presentation.’ [2] Thus, Webster asserts that revelation is the real presence of God, freely given to us.
Second, revelation is the free work of sovereign mercy. This concept of freedom is a little more difficult to grasp. Webster talks of the spiritual presence of God, which is answerable only to itself because it has its own integrity and reality. This means that we must take revelation on its own terms, even as the mysterious presence of God. Hence, God is not contained within the pages or the words of Scripture, even though God is present and indeed revealed in the reading of those words.[3] So, God is free in relation to revelation because God is not limited by the boundaries set by scripture.
Third, revelation is the establishing and the perfecting of God’s saving fellowship. Last week we talked about the ‘koinonia’ of the Holy Spirit, well this is what we are talking about here. Revelation is intended to bring us into fellowship with God through the mediation or work of the Spirit. The text of revelation is not intended to bring us information about God so that by some special knowledge we can be saved. The intent is relationship through God’s presence, which brings about reconciliation and salvation. We are enabled through revelation to be in full fellowship with God.[4] Webster argues that the ‘end’ of revelation is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. (15-16)
Sanctification
Next, let’s look at Webster’s understanding of the ‘sanctification’ of the text. His concept of sanctification addresses the problem of how we comprehend the relationship between divine agency and creaturely processes. I believe that a more robust Pneumatology of scripture can solve the problem of this dualistic approach to the text. Webster argues that sanctification gives us the ability to assert that God can and does ‘make holy’ creaturely realities and processes, which helps us resist “the drift into dualism.” (26) Webster is deeply concerned with protecting a true and viable creaturely reality that is not subsumed or assimilated into God while simultaneous not dismissing certain passages as simply anthropological or creaturely. As he puts it,Sanctification is 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 salvation. (17-18)In this way, God honors the created order, and creaturely things and processes are imbued with the capacity to take a role in the self-presentation of God to the created order.[5]
One key problem that Webster identifies is the inheritance within Western culture of a strong dualism between the natural and the supernatural; transcendence and immanence; divine and human. This dualism sets up a strong competitive relationship between these concepts, meaning that they cannot really be held in tension. Instead, one or the other has to dominate over the other category.[6] He does not think that this competition between the divine and the creaturely in the text is necessary and Webster is deeply concerned with protecting a true and viable creaturely reality that is not subsumed or assimilated into God:
the rule is: sanctification establishes and does not abolish creatureliness. (30)[7]
Thus, it is the sanctification of and by the Spirit that is the means of preserving God’s self-presentation in the text while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of creaturely processes. This text has been sanctified, not only as a text but as the articulation of “the Spirit’s activity in the life of the people of God.” (29) So we see that this is his way of articulating God’s work and active presence within space and time. Along the way, creaturely reality is established, not abolished, by God’s presence.
Inspiration
Once we get to Webster’s concept of ‘inspiration’ our categories really should be shifted from the text as a means of knowledge to God’s agency as the Holy Spirit in the world. Inspiration is not about an outside, external or distant voice talking to an alien or unprepared person or people. Instead, the Holy Spirit is present and active. And it is within this context that we should understand Webster’s statement that inspiration is a “specific work of the Spirit of Christ with respect to the text.” (31) The text “proceeds from God.” (32 & 33)He sets out four requirements for his understanding of ‘inspiration’ based on 2 Peter 1:21: ‘Those moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God’:
1) First, inspiration of the text is ‘from God’. He argues that inspiration is “a divine movement and therefore a divine moving.” (36)
2) Second, inspiration is not a spontaneous creaturely activity. This means that the text does not originate with human creativity or agency. The authors of the text were ‘moved’ by God to produce the text.
3) Third, inspiration is the specific agency of the Holy Spirit. I love how he talks about this. The Holy Spirit moves God’s activity into the realm of creatureliness. (37) The Holy Spirit is active and present in “human communicative acts.” (37) The central argument is that the Spirit is active and present in how we communicate. God makes himself known within the confines and limits of human language and creativity. Webster is trying to maintain that creaturely reality is established by the Spirit, not abolished by it. Life and breath is found in this presence and I find hope in this.
4) Finally, “The Spirit generates language.” (37) This addresses the problem of how we are able to find the words to talk about God. Webster asserts (and I agree) that the Holy Spirit is actively working within human language to generate appropriate concepts and language in and through the text of scripture.
Overall, I would assert along with Webster that an appropriate doctrine of inspiration would never separate the activity of God from the text itself. The Bible is God’s self-presentation to humanity.
In the end, Webster wants a more robust pneumatology of Scripture: “It’s the Spirit, stupid!” But this is always found within a trinitarian framework of God's activity and self-presence in the text and in the world.
[1] Cf. Barth: Father as the Revealed; the Son as the Revealer; and the Spirit as the Revealing person.
[2] “To speak of ‘revelation’ is to say that God is one whose being is directed towards his creatures, and the goal of whose free self-movement is his presence with us.” (14); “Revelation…is identical with God’s triune being in its active self-presence.” (14)
[3] “Revelation is God’s presence; but because it is God’s presence, it is not direct and unambiguous openness such that henceforth God is plain.” (15)
[4] “ ‘Revelation’ 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)
[5] “[T]he biblical texts are creaturely realities set apart by the triune God to serve his self-presence.” (21)
[6] Webster names five different ways that the Protestant tradition has dealt (thought through) this dualist problem:
1) Accommodation: This means that God adopts or accommodates for his own purposes a human text. The consequence of this is a separation of form (creaturely reality) and content (God’s reality). The result is that the text itself remains external and separate from the content of Scripture.
2) Hypostatic Union (dual natures, fully human and fully divine in one text—this is Frances Young’s position): Webster finds this problematic because he does not believe that the Word and the word are equivalent realities. In general he does not agree with ‘incarnational’ concepts used for specific ministry styles. There was one incarnation and Jesus’ particular life and ministry should stand on its own as a theological category. He also is concerned that this position may divinize Scripture and lessen the fact that the Bible is a creaturely reality.
3) Prophetic and Apostolic Testimony (witness): This is the first of the categories that Webster finds helpful because it gives a way of articulating that scripture can both be itself and reveal the self-presence of God in the text. He argues “testimony is not about itself but is a reference beyond itself.” (23) However, testimony can appear to be arbitrary or accidental if not construed properly.
4) A ‘means of grace’: Webster also likes this category because it does not require the text to be divine in any way. This approach, like testimony, points beyond itself to the reality of God. He believes that scripture as a means of grace works only if it is partnered with a strong Christological and Pneumatological lens. It has to be fundamentally soteriological.
5) The ‘servant form’ of scripture: Webster also likes this category because it articulates that scripture is “the fitting creaturely servant of the divine act.” (25)
[7] “Ingredient within the idea of sanctification is thus an understanding of God which is neither deist nor dualist. As the Holy Spirit’s work, sanctification is a process in which, in the limitless freedom of God [NB: which simply means that God is not bound by the text itself nor by the limits of creaturely time and space], the creaturely element is give its own genuine reality as it is commanded and molded to enter into the divine service… As sanctified creature, the text is not a quasi-divine artifact: sanctification is not transubstantiation. Nor is it an exclusively natural product arbitrarily commandeered by a supernatural agent [adoptionism]. Sanctification is the Spirit’s act of ordering creaturely history and being to the end of acting as ancilla Domine [servant of the Lord]… It is as—not despite—the creaturely realities that they are that they serve God… The biblical text is Scripture; its being is defined, not simply by its membership of the class of texts, but by the fact that it is this text—sanctified, that is Spirit-generated and preserved—in this field of action—the communicative economy of God’s merciful friendship with his lost creatures.” (27-29)
In the end, Webster wants a more robust pneumatology of Scripture: “It’s the Spirit, stupid!” But this is always found within a trinitarian framework of God's activity and self-presence in the text and in the world.
[1] Cf. Barth: Father as the Revealed; the Son as the Revealer; and the Spirit as the Revealing person.
[2] “To speak of ‘revelation’ is to say that God is one whose being is directed towards his creatures, and the goal of whose free self-movement is his presence with us.” (14); “Revelation…is identical with God’s triune being in its active self-presence.” (14)
[3] “Revelation is God’s presence; but because it is God’s presence, it is not direct and unambiguous openness such that henceforth God is plain.” (15)
[4] “ ‘Revelation’ 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)
[5] “[T]he biblical texts are creaturely realities set apart by the triune God to serve his self-presence.” (21)
[6] Webster names five different ways that the Protestant tradition has dealt (thought through) this dualist problem:
1) Accommodation: This means that God adopts or accommodates for his own purposes a human text. The consequence of this is a separation of form (creaturely reality) and content (God’s reality). The result is that the text itself remains external and separate from the content of Scripture.
2) Hypostatic Union (dual natures, fully human and fully divine in one text—this is Frances Young’s position): Webster finds this problematic because he does not believe that the Word and the word are equivalent realities. In general he does not agree with ‘incarnational’ concepts used for specific ministry styles. There was one incarnation and Jesus’ particular life and ministry should stand on its own as a theological category. He also is concerned that this position may divinize Scripture and lessen the fact that the Bible is a creaturely reality.
3) Prophetic and Apostolic Testimony (witness): This is the first of the categories that Webster finds helpful because it gives a way of articulating that scripture can both be itself and reveal the self-presence of God in the text. He argues “testimony is not about itself but is a reference beyond itself.” (23) However, testimony can appear to be arbitrary or accidental if not construed properly.
4) A ‘means of grace’: Webster also likes this category because it does not require the text to be divine in any way. This approach, like testimony, points beyond itself to the reality of God. He believes that scripture as a means of grace works only if it is partnered with a strong Christological and Pneumatological lens. It has to be fundamentally soteriological.
5) The ‘servant form’ of scripture: Webster also likes this category because it articulates that scripture is “the fitting creaturely servant of the divine act.” (25)
[7] “Ingredient within the idea of sanctification is thus an understanding of God which is neither deist nor dualist. As the Holy Spirit’s work, sanctification is a process in which, in the limitless freedom of God [NB: which simply means that God is not bound by the text itself nor by the limits of creaturely time and space], the creaturely element is give its own genuine reality as it is commanded and molded to enter into the divine service… As sanctified creature, the text is not a quasi-divine artifact: sanctification is not transubstantiation. Nor is it an exclusively natural product arbitrarily commandeered by a supernatural agent [adoptionism]. Sanctification is the Spirit’s act of ordering creaturely history and being to the end of acting as ancilla Domine [servant of the Lord]… It is as—not despite—the creaturely realities that they are that they serve God… The biblical text is Scripture; its being is defined, not simply by its membership of the class of texts, but by the fact that it is this text—sanctified, that is Spirit-generated and preserved—in this field of action—the communicative economy of God’s merciful friendship with his lost creatures.” (27-29)
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