A Review of John Webster's The Culture of Theology
“Christian faith, and therefore Christian theology, emerges out of the shock of the gospel…the comprehensive interruption of all things in Jesus Christ” (43). So begins the late Professor John Webster (1955-2016) in a series of six lectures given in 1998 at the University of Otago in New Zealand, recently republished as The Culture of Theology. Webster holds the conviction that theology is done within the Christian eschatological culture, a culture with an embodied way of living as Christ-followers, by God’s grace. According to Webster, it is in this culture that theology ought to be housed, mainly because theology can quickly leave its proper resources and responsibilities, as well as its object (the crucified and risen Lord Jesus), a dislocation that leaves it in disarray (44). In other words, for theology to be “theo-logical,” the focus of its content must be on God and all things in relation to God.
The Culture of Theology
John Webster was recognized as one of the world's leading systematic theologians before his death in 2016. In a series of lectures originally delivered at the University of Otago in New Zealand, he masterfully demonstrates why theology matters and how that task should rightly be pursued.
(Baker Academic, 2019)
In many ways, this makes theology perilous – how dare we underestimate speaking of God—and yet the “interruption” of the gospel is so arresting that we cannot help but understand the immense grace in feeling “overwhelmed and consumed yet remade and reestablished” in Christ, even as we speak of him (43). It is this “culture of theology”—where Christian faith and gospel confession grounds all talk of God—that Webster sees as the remedy. In the place where the eschatological good news of Jesus meets sinful humanity, theology thrives.
Cultivation and Formation in the Gospel
Too often, Webster notes, theology is abstracted to academic conversation apart from the lived experience of the church. He seeks to reintegrate the two. Theology practiced within the culture of faith requires both cultivation and formation—cultivation meaning primarily the habit of reading (both scripture and the classical texts of the Christian tradition), and formation meaning the development of persons shaped by a culture of Christian faith. The result is the growth of “persons with specific habits of mind and soul…[after all,] good theological practice depends on good theologians” (45).
After establishing this framework, Webster works to define the place of holy scripture and tradition. He focuses particularly on the faithful exegesis of scripture as “the controlling center” of theology (65), while also maintaining that it is tradition which enables us to “articulate how the originating event of Christianity relates to the activities in the present which we call Christian faith or discipleship” (86). In sum, as theology is reintegrated with the life of the church, the disciples of Jesus are further cultivated and formed.
Can theology actually be practiced like this? It must. Beginning with the role of theology in the university setting, Webster argues that “the more confident theology is to its native habits of thought and speech, the more savory will be its contribution to the world of higher learning” (113). In other words, the more Christian Christian theology is—the more it is concerned with God and all things in relation to God—the greater impact it will have. It is not by “conforming to the patterns of the world” but by being “transformed by the renewal of our minds” in the disrupting gospel of Christ that true theological impact occurs.
Furthermore, Webster argues that theology must be self-critical. All theology—“all forms of Christian apostolic life, thought, and speech”—must return and submit to “the revelation of God which projects them into being” (125). In other words, God’s self-revelation in the gospel message provides the standard by which theology is weighed, a self-critique that leads to self-reflection and, ultimately, repentance and humility. Webster speaks to this humility in the final lecture. Here, the “toll” of theology is expressed: by God’s grace, “Good theologians are those whose life and thought are caught up in the process of being slain and made alive by the gospel and of acquiring and exercising habits of mind and heart which take very seriously the gospel’s provocation” (133). Since all Christ-followers are indeed theologians, the “process of being slain and made alive by the gospel” is indeed the process of all within the culture of Christian faith. “Theological existence is existence in the theatre of grace, life under the determination of the self-giving presence of God the Holy Spirit” (143). It is not our own making. It is purely the work of God, meaning that the habits of the theologian who aims to speak of God (and all things in relation to him) are centered in dependence on God, or, in other words, prayer. It is with this call to prayer that Webster concludes the book.
The gospel of Jesus interrupts our lives. We are prone to wander, self-gazing, and devoid of habits that help us live for God; the gospel brings us face to face with the self-revealed God who makes us “overwhelmed and consumed yet remade and reestablished” in Christ. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, ESV). This is Webster’s constant reprise in The Culture of Theology. His tone and message throughout are at one and the same time comforting and challenging. What more difficult journey could we ever embark on, to be so very disrupted… and yet what more loving and wonderful Savior could we have to lead us in it, to be so very remade?
Good Shepherding Requires Good Shepherds
Diving into the culture of Christian faith and practice requires the gracious formation of minds and hearts to reflect the mind and heart of the Triune God. Truly, good theology requires good theologians. Or one could say that good shepherding requires good shepherds.
A seminary that reintegrates the academy with the church displays the belief that God uses theological education to cultivate the “native habits of thought and speech” that his under-shepherds need. Just as the object of theology can be lost when orthodoxy does not translate to doxology, so too can the faithful shepherding of local churches go by the wayside if the study of theology does not translate to the cultivation and formation of hearts that emerge from the “shock of the gospel” in Jesus. May the Lord form pastors, missionaries, and ultimately, disciples, whose lives are marked, as Webster might say, by continual disruption and reorientation to God and all things in relation to God.
Aaron Weber lives in Centennial, CO with his wife, Emma, and almost 1-year-old son, Leon. He serves as a pastor-elder at Calvary Summitview, and graduated from Denver Seminary with an M.Div. in 2018. He loves all types of music (especially pop punk), a good cup of coffee, and cooking fun meals for his friends and family. He will never back down from his belief that Captain America (or Iron Man, for that matter) would always beat Batman - period.