Book Review: The Culture of Theology
John Webster will be known to many readers and is generally considered one of the most influential theologians of the past few decades. At the time of his death in 2016, Webster was working on a much anticipated multi-volume systematic theology. Since his death, several volumes have appeared on his theology, but this is the first posthumously published monograph.
The six chapters that comprise The Culture of Theology were initially delivered at the University of Otago in 1998 as the Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures and subsequently published in this journal (Stimulus) in 1998 (lectures 1–3) and 1999 (lectures 4–6). The contents of the addresses in the present book are mostly unchanged except for minor stylistic changes and the adoption of US spelling. Where any alterations to the initially published text have been made, they are indicated by the editors with square brackets in the footnotes. With access to Webster’s original typescript for the lectures, several corrections have been made, and a missing part of the text in lecture six has been added, providing more sense to that part of the work.
In the extended introduction to the work (1–42), Ivor Davidson offers a penetrating and insightful examination of the lectures which follow before providing an overview of Webster’s life and work. Davidson has previously written two extensive and winsome biographical essays on Webster, and here he continues this genre of which he is becoming a master. Rather than merely repeating what he has written elsewhere, Davidson provides the cultural, theological, and personal context for the lectures and places them into conversation with contemporary voices and issues. This, on its own, is a tour de force. Davidson was a personal friend and colleague of Webster, and inhabits a similar theological orientation, what Webster famously called “theological theology.”
The six lectures or chapters of the work comprise Webster’s way of saying how theology is done and what it means to be doing theology. In opposition to many late-modern voices, Webster argues that Christian theology has its own culture and thus its own set of presuppositions and epistemological commitments. Theology works from what it receives in God’s self-revelation and, as such, is oriented toward God and God’s works. Webster was never afraid to challenge the theological establishment to get back to its primary calling—being attentive to the Word of God within the context of faith, the Church, and its eschatological fulfilment in God’s will.
In Chapter One, “Culture,” Webster defines the task of Christian theology and makes the case that it has its own culture. By “culture” Webster means that theology inhabits its own place with its own practices, all of which are defined by the “world of the gospel and the church” (44). This unusual use of the term “culture” shares similarities with Colin Gunton’s argument that the authentic culture for Christians is Christ. In Christ and the church, Christians are divinely summoned to think and act in specific ways. Webster calls us back to this central orientation and repeatedly, and delightfully, calls us to be continually amazed at the goodness and grace of God.
Pushing back against a Christianity that has lost confidence in Scripture, Chapter Two, “Texts,” reminds us that the primary bearer of Christian culture is found through Holy Scripture. Webster gives an early precis of a theological account of Scripture, something he would go on to devote an entire monograph and many essays to later in his career. Not content merely to study Scripture as an object, we must learn to indwell the Scriptures as an act of devotion.
Chapter Three, “Traditions,” is an eloquent account of what tradition means in Christian culture. While tradition does look back to what has preceded the present as the Holy Spirit has spoken to the church through generations, it is also teleological and Christological as the presence of the risen Christ continues to speak and draw the church into maturity. When tradition is seen as a negative or stultifying influence for many, this is a welcome counter-narrative.
Chapter Four, “Conversations,” has a specific focus, the place of theology within secular academic institutions, and by implication, how theology might change such institutions. Webster, characteristically, calls for theology to be itself in these contexts. Being itself for Webster means having confidence, developing robustness in the face of opposition, and exhibiting a determination not to be distracted from its central concerns. At the time of writing this lecture, Webster was a Professor at Oxford University, and growing dissatisfied with how theology was conducted in such contexts (he wrote more on this in his short work Holiness [Eerdmans, 2003], especially Chapter One).
To balance the previous lecture, Chapter Five, “Criticism,” speaks to Christian culture’s capacity for self-criticism. As his example, Webster takes the doctrine of revelation and illustrates how the culture of Christian theology must be critiqued by revelation and not merely turn to revelation as an epistemological category.
Finally, Chapter Six, “Habits,” is about ethics and the cultivation of Christian character, or what Webster calls “gospel character” (136). Scholarship and piety are not opposed to each other in the culture of Christian theology. Prayer, worship, and virtue are central ingredients to the culture of Christian theology, and when this is lost sight of, there is no Christian culture to speak of.
I have been using these lectures for over a decade and still find them to be timely, insightful, and penetrating analyses of theology and culture and the culture of theology. Webster has an inimitable way of writing theology that is at once economical and profound. New students require a guide when reading Webster, as much to navigate the elegant English prose as for the theological allusions they often miss. Still, when explained, they consistently find his work illuminating. I am indebted to Webster’s work, and I echo Davidson’s words in the Introduction, these lectures have “been relished by those in the know; it is high time for the beneficiaries to increase” (3).
Myk Habets is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Theology at Laidlaw College, and Senior Research Fellow, Australian College of Theology.