This is a very helpful little treatise that accomplishes its goal of providing a clear and orderly theological account of Holy Scripture. There are, in my opinion, too few of these kinds of serious and yet generally accessible books, and the author, John Webster, is a significant voice in contemporary theology. Webster is well aware that "dogmatics," or a systematically organized treatment of a controversial topic such as the nature and function of the Bible, is out of step with the majority of Anglo-American Protestant divinity. This is because what we believe about Scripture is a function of what we believe about God (a point Webster makes throughout)–neglect in one area will lead necessarily to poverty in the other. In stark contrast, Webster has a highly potent doctrine of God and God's divine initiative in revelation and so follows through with an engaging treatment of Scripture.
Evangelical readers should not prematurely dismiss Webster on Scripture because of his considerable expertise and extensive work on Karl Barth, a theologian whom confessional Protestant types are right to be wary of when it comes to affirming not just that the Bible becomes a special revelation from God but that it is the revelation of God. Rather, Webster calls Barth's theology of Scripture the "textual equivalent of adoptionism" (24) and offers in turn a careful and qualified treatment of the status of the Bible as revelation that is to be preferred over many liberal and even a host of evangelical formulations. In fact, Modern Reformation readers will be pleased to find that Webster (because of his doctrine of God and Augustinian theological anthropology) takes some so-called evangelical views of Scripture to task for being sub-Christian and the equivalent of "hermeneutical Pelagianism."
Several points come to mind in terms of the book's strengths. First, much can be learned from Webster's choice of terms and theological vocabulary in relation to divine inspiration. He makes all the right distinctions between divine inspiration (which concerns the Spirit-led authorship of Scripture) and illumination (which concerns the Spirit-led ongoing task of interpreting Scripture). Further, he wisely chooses "sanctification" as a more appropriate theological category for understanding the nature and character of the human authorship of the Bible. This is offered as an alternative to "incarnational" approaches that are common in evangelicalism and sometimes jeopardize the uniqueness of Christ. There is much food for thought here, and one can immediately recognize the explanatory power of this category. In my view, sanctification may be applied far more effectively than incarnation for explaining the divine-human co-authorship of Scripture in order to shore up the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy, although Webster stops short of making this argument himself. Second, unlike progressive evangelicals who frequently deliberate and come down on the wrong side of the question about the Bible's relationship to the church, Webster is rock solid on the fact that the Word always creates the church (42ff.). Finally, he provides a moving account of the reading and illumination of Scripture as the sovereign work of God in the economy of redemptive grace.
But the book is not without its weaknesses. Despite Webster's valuable criticism of Barth, there is still too much overlap on a number of points. For example, there are some telltale collapsed or at least blurred doctrinal distinctions, such as between revelation and soteriology (14-16). I would have to disagree when Webster states with little qualification that "revelation…is reconciliation, salvation, and therefore fellowship." A more sophisticated approach will want to be sensitive to the way in which revelation (a rather general concept) includes both law and gospel (the specific contents of what is revealed). These two things function differently so that "revelation" itself should not be exclusively linked to one or the other. In the case of the various uses of the law that are revealed both in nature and in Scripture, it is not the case that this revelation "is" reconciliation. But one suspects here that Webster is uneasy with the classic pan-Protestant law/gospel distinction. In sum, this correlation of revelation to salvation is also bound up with a deeper conviction of Webster's that revelation is not just the activity and effect of God's revealing agency in the world, but is always the "self-revelation" or the presentation of "God himself" in his revelation (14). This is a difficult position to critique in a short space, which means that it will have to suffice to waive a red flag on this point and indicate that the classical Protestant tradition has a somewhat different understanding of the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity, or the being of God and the work of God in creation.
One other frustration is with the vague references without citation to what one assumes must be older Protestant doctrines of inspiration. We occupy a time in Protestant history when defenders of orthodoxy are few and far between, which has yielded a tendency to caricature or ignore older formulations of the doctrine of Scripture without having actually done one's homework. This may or may not be the case with Webster–one suspects it isn't–but nonetheless therein lies the problem. True, there are a number of fundamentalist doctrines of Scripture, but there are also several highly sophisticated approaches that draw on older formulations by Herman Bavinck, B. B. Warfield, and Charles Hodge, to cite just a few more recent examples. Webster worries that older conservative doctrines separated the form and content of revelation, or turned to a "strident supernaturalism" and an "increasingly formalized" doctrine of inspiration. But the question is begged precisely as to whom he is criticizing. While we might agree if one cited certain evangelical fundamentalists, one would have to regard this as unfair if it was directed at Protestant orthodoxy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As such, it is difficult to evaluate the historical reflections in the book with so few named references.
