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The God‐Intoxicated Theology of a Modern Theologian
Author(s) -
Sonderegger Katherine
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of systematic theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.149
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 1468-2400
pISSN - 1463-1652
DOI - 10.1111/ijst.12342
Subject(s) - doctrine , philosophy , protestantism , theology , predestination , theme (computing) , reactionary , religious studies , law , politics , computer science , political science , operating system
John Webster was a God‐intoxicated theologian. His remarkable doctrinal work profoundly shaped modern Protestant dogmatics, most especially in its Doctrine of God. Webster worked out of the whole tradition, drawing on the scholastics in both Catholic and Protestant forms, and touching on the Patristic legacy, giving primacy to Augustine. But this ready eye for the past did not make Webster's Doctrine of God a repristination of the past, nor reactionary in theme. In fact, Webster was a modern theologian in a distinctive mode: of ressourcement or retrieval. He viewed his task in this area as two‐fold, to diagnose disorder and timidity in modern treatments of God, and to set forth a positive doctrine, anchored in Scripture, and descriptive of the Lord disclosed in these Biblical events. Webster favored a particular form of Personalism in the Doctrine of God; he focused on who God is, not what Deity is. His Doctrine was a thorough‐going Trinitarianism, giving a wholly Triune account of the Divine Perfections, and offering the daring proposal that the Economy was included eternally in the Perfect Life of the Immanent God.