Content area
Full Text
Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch. By John Webster. Current Issues in Theology Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. vii + 144 pp. $19.00 (paper).
In Holy Scripture, John Wehster, professor of systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen, seeks to challenge commonplace treatments of the Christian biblical text by advocating for a shift away from emphases on interpretation, the role of the reader, and methodology, and towards the deployment of theological tropes such as "listening," "hearing," and "dogmatic order." Webster is a respected and influential Anglican systematician, schooled in the theologies of Jüngel, Barth, and Calvin, and it is from such a perspective that he argues that the primary theological task is not to establish foundational arguments for scriptural authority (be they epistemological, cultural, or ecclesiological); rather, he states that the task of theological reflection is chiefly exegesis.
Webster's engagement with Scripture does not intend to deny the fact of its historical and cultural production, but he does insist against reducing the text to cultural poetics. He dismisses analyses that describe the nature of Scripture by...