The Goal of University Theology

Here is Don Carson summarizing John Webster. Webster’s words explicate his claim that exegesis is the primary theological endeavour:

Webster’s final chapter, "Scripture, Theology and the Theological School," takes its departure from interaction with Ursinus (who drafted the Heidelberg Catechism). In prestigious theological schools today, universal reason reigns, and divides (not to say fragments) the subject matter into the well-known fourfold division: biblical, historical, systematic, and practical theology. By contrast, Ursinus saw catechism and systematic theology as helping tools to enable the Christian more productively to read the Scriptures and thereby encounter God. In other words, the reading of Scripture is not the starting point for the creation of a reason-generated theological superstructure, but the end point, the telos of all the disciplines—the fruitful encounter with God in the Scriptures. Webster calls for major revision of the theological curriculum. "Christian theology is properly an undertaking of the speaking and hearing church of Jesus Christ" (123), and therefore can claim only marginal connection with the atmosphere in the university. If that means theology is squeezed to the periphery of university life, so be it: "In contexts committed to the sufficiency of natural reason (or at least to the unavailability of anything other than natural reason), theology will have something of the scandalous about it" (134).

Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (CUP, 2003)

Carson in Trinity Journal (latest issue) and at: http://www.reformation21.org/Past_Issues/May_2006/Shelf_Life/Shelf_Life/181/vobId__2926/pm__434/

Webster’s (Barthian) first lecture as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford is also worth a look (a small booklet published by Blackwells at a shockingly high price). He argues there that theology is of most service to the academy when it is at its most theological, its most distinctive, its least sold-out the agenda of the liberal secular university. One wonders how much these concerns were involved in Professor Webster’s move to Aberdeen? It feels to me like Scottish academic theology is a bit more churchy than in England?