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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2020
In dialogue with John Webster and Karl Barth, this essay considers the intersection of divine aseity and holy scripture. I argue that the doctrine of holy scripture is constituted by a backward reference, namely, the plentiful life of the triune God. The doctrine of divine aseity denotes God's self-existent triune life, which anchors God's bestowal of life. Construed negatively, aseity establishes the incommensurability of God and creatures by distinguishing, without sundering, scripture and God's self-communicative presence. Construed positively, aseity constitutes scripture as ‘a field of divine activity’, the sphere of the life-giving missions of the Word and Spirit. The triune God who lives a se, elects the texts of scripture to serve as intermediaries of God's vivifying address.
1 Webster, John, ‘Christology, Theology, Economy: The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology’, in God and the Works of God, vol. 1 of God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), p. 52Google Scholar.
2 My reading of Barth follows Webster's reception of Barth as an exegetical, moral and Reformed theologian – a reading which likewise privileges Barth's teaching on divine aseity. This rendering of Barth's thought is prescriptive, forming a presupposition of the essay which, given its aim, is inconsequential. Accordingly, I do not interact with issues germane to the study of Karl Barth, including, for instance, the disputed genetic-historical development of Barth's doctrines of the Trinity and election.
3 The approach taken here closely follows that of Swain, Scott R., Trinity, Revelation, and Reading (London: T&T Clark International, 2011), p. 8Google Scholar: ‘The central thesis of this book is that we may best appreciate the theological significance of the Bible and biblical interpretation if we understand these two themes in a trinitarian, covenantal context’. Along similar lines, Stephen E. Fowl argues that ‘Scripture needs to be understood in light of a doctrine of revelation that itself flows from Christian convictions about God's triune life’. Fowl, Stephen E., Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009), p. 13Google Scholar.
4 The locution, ‘a field of divine activity’, is Webster's. See Webster, John, ‘The Dogmatic Location of the Canon’, in Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics, 2nd edn (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), p. 32Google Scholar; cf. John Webster, ‘Reading the Bible: The Example of Barth and Bonhoeffer’, in Word and Church, p. 56.
5 See Webster, John, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp. 31, 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 The term ‘pronobeity’, is from Asbill, Brian D., The Freedom of God for Us: Karl Barth's Doctrine of Divine Aseity (London: T&T Clark, 2015)Google Scholar. Webster uses a similar term, ‘proseity’, to denote God's being-for-us in John Webster, ‘Distinguishing between God and Man: Aspects of the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1982), p. 110.
7 The development and refinement of the doctrine of aseity in Barth and Webster lie beyond the scope of this essay. On the former, see Asbill, The Freedom of God for Us. On the latter, see Webster's remarks in Webster, John, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II, 2nd edn (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), pp. ix–xCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 John Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, in God and the Works of God, p. 15. The essay was first published, with slight modification, under the title, ‘God's Aseity’, in Scott, Michael and Moore, Andrew (eds), Realism and Religion: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 147–62Google Scholar.
9 According to Eberhard Busch, Barth's axiom, ‘“God is God” is nothing but a paraphrase of the name of God in Exodus 3:14: “I am that I am.”’ Busch, Eberhard, Die Anfänge des Theologen Karl Barth in Seinen Göttingen Jahren (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), p. 28Google Scholar.
10 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics [hereafter CD], 13 vols, ed. Bromiley, G. W. and Torrance, T. F. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–74), II/1, p. 289Google Scholar. See also Barth, Karl, The Göttingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. 1, ed. Reiffen, Hannelotte, trans. Bromiley, Geoffrey W. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), p. 109Google Scholar. John Webster writes, ‘One of the ways in which the Dogmatics can be construed is as a massively ramified reassertion of the aseity of God’. Webster, John, Barth's Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth's Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Webster's view, God's perfect life constitutes the centre of dogmatic theology: ‘God's immanent triune perfection is the first and last object of Christian theological reflection and governs all else’. Webster, John, ‘Providence’, in Allen, Michael and Swain, Scott R. (eds), Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2016), p. 150Google Scholar.
11 Torrance, Thomas F., The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), p. 235Google Scholar.
12 Isaak Dorner remarks, ‘God's self-existence … remains an eternal distinction between God and the creature, and a safeguard against the danger of confounding the two’. Dorner, Isaak, A System of Christian Doctrine, vol. 2, trans. Cave, Alfred (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1880), p. 17Google Scholar. See further Bavinck, Herman, God and Creation, vol. 2 of Reformed Dogmatics, ed. Bolt, John, trans. Vriend, John (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 151–3Google Scholar; Muller, Richard A., The Divine Essence and Attributes, vol. 3 of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), pp. 238–40Google Scholar.
13 Webster, John, ‘Theology and the Peace of the Church’, in The Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theological Reason (London: T&T Clark, 2012), p. 143CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See further Christopher Holmes, R. J., ‘The Aseity of God as a Material Evangelical Concern’, Journal of Reformed Theology 8/1 (2014), p. 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holmes, Christopher R. J., Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes: In Dialogue with Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel and Wolf Krötke (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), p. 44Google Scholar.
14 Barth, CD II/1, pp. 307–8.
15 Holmes, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes, p. 227.
16 Barth, CD II/1, p. 308.
17 Ibid., p. 347.
18 Asbill, The Freedom of God for Us, p. 137. Webster likewise discerns the significance of construing the doctrine of divine aseity positively: ‘First and foremost, aseity is a statement of the divine “I am”; only by derivation is it a statement that God is the groundless ground of contingency.’ He continues, ‘Aseity is not only the absence of external causation, but the eternal life which God in and of himself is.’ Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, pp. 19, 27.
19 Ibid., p. 13.
20 On the material priority of God's perfection, see John Webster, ‘Principles of Systematic Theology’, in The Domain of the Word, p. 143; Webster, Confessing God, p. 2.
21 See Stratis, Justin, ‘Speculating about Divinity? God's Immanent Life and Actualistic Ontology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12/1 (2010), p. 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It is in speaking positively of God's life in se that my use of Barth is most strained. In the foreword to the volume, Trinitarian Theology after Barth, Webster remarks, ‘Like the dogmatics in which it is arguably the driving force, Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is a magisterial but incomplete achievement’ (‘Foreword’, in Habets, Myk and Tolliday, Phillip W. (eds), Trinitarian Theology After Barth (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), p. xiGoogle Scholar). Webster identifies two shortcomings of Barth's trinitarian teaching: first, a partial reluctance to speak of the divine life in se; second, an enlargement of the material role and dogmatic function of christology. According to Webster, the doctrine of God's perfection serves to remedy both deficiencies. In contrast to Barth, then, Webster speaks more forthrightly of God absolutely, ‘that is, God in himself in his antecedent self-existent perfection, integrity, beatitude, and simplicity as Father, Son, and Spirit, prior to and apart from any relation to creatures’ (‘What Makes Theology Theological?’, in God and the Works of God, p. 213, emphasis added). Nonetheless, Barth also maintains, on certain occasions, that theology must speak ‘about God as such … even at the risk that we might be speaking “non-historically”’ (Barth, CD I/1, p. 426; cited in Webster, ‘Eternal Generation’, p. 40).
22 Webster, ‘God's Perfect Life’, p. 147.
23 See further Webster, John, ‘Trinity and Creation’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 12/1 (2010), p. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 Victorinus, Marius, ‘Against Arius’, in Fathers of the Church: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, ed. Dressler, Hermigild, trans. Clark, Mary T., reprint (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), p. 224Google Scholar.
25 Asbill, The Freedom of God for Us, pp. 142–6.
26 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 27.
27 Speaking of the divine glory of the Godhead, Barth writes, ‘It is clear that in this matter we have to do with a regular circle. It is the circle of the inner life of the Godhead’ (CD III/2, p. 64). See also Price, Robert B., Letters of the Divine Word: The Perfections of God in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 15Google Scholar.
28 See Michaels, J. Ramsey, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2010), p. 861Google Scholar. See further John Webster, ‘Eternal Generation’, in God and the Works of God, p. 37. On the doctrine of aseity in the Gospel of John, see Macaskill, Grant, ‘Name Christology, Divine Aseity, and the I Am Sayings in the Fourth Gospel’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 12/2 (2018), pp. 217–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Brown, Raymond E., The Gospel According to John (XIII–XXI): Introduction, Translation, and Notes (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 743Google Scholar.
30 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 19.
31 Webster writes, ‘The triune God is one simple indivisible essence in an irreducible threefold personal modification. That is, God's unity is characterized by modes of being in each of which the entire divine essence subsists in a particular way; this simultaneous, eternal existence in these three modes is the one divine essence.’ Webster, ‘Trinity and Creation’, p. 8.
32 Oakes, Kenneth, ‘Theology, Economy and Christology in John Webster's God without Measure and Some Earlier Works’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 19/4 (Oct. 2017), p. 500CrossRefGoogle Scholar; citing Webster, John, Eberhard Jüngel: An Introduction to His Theology (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), p. 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Oakes, ‘Theology, Economy and Christology’, p. 497. See Oakes, ‘On Evangelical Ecclesiology’, in Confessing God, p. 157; Webster, ‘God's Perfect Life’, pp. 143, 148; Webster, ‘“Love is Also a Lover of Life”: “Creatio ex Nihilo” and Creaturely Goodness’, in God and the Works of God, pp. 104, 107, 110; Webster, ‘Eternal Generation’, in God and the Works of God, p. 34.
34 Barth, CD II/1, p. 260; cited in John Webster, ‘Holiness and Love of God’, in Confessing God, pp. 114–15. Cf. Webster, John, Holiness (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2003), p. 45Google Scholar: ‘The holy God is who he is in his works’.
35 Barth, CD II/1, p. 345. See further Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), p. 98Google Scholar.
36 Webster, ‘On the Matter of Christian Theology’, p. 8.
37 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 19.
38 Holmes, Revisiting the Doctrine of the Divine Attributes, p. 45.
39 Barth, CD IV/1, p. 422.
40 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 24.
41 Macaskill, ‘Name Christology’, p. 223.
42 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 27.
43 Webster, John, ‘The Church and the Perfection of God’, in Husbands, Mark and Treier, Daniel J. (eds), The Community of the Word: Toward an Evangelical Ecclesiology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), p. 75Google Scholar.
44 Webster argues, ‘What ties together the realities of God in himself and God's economic presence is God's will directed to creatures as sovereign decision and determination in their favor.’ Webster, ‘Perfection and Participation’, p. 391. Webster first appeals to the notion of God's will in Webster, John, ‘God's Perfect Life’, in Volf, Miroslav and Welker, Michael (eds), God's Life in Trinity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006), 149Google Scholar.
45 Stratis, ‘Speculating about Divinity?’, p. 29.
46 Webster, ‘Holiness and Love of God’, p. 116.
47 Webster, ‘Christology, Theology, Economy’, p. 52.
48 Webster, John, ‘Perfection and Participation’, in White, Thomas Joseph (ed.), The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or Wisdom of God? (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2011), p. 394Google Scholar.
49 Webster, ‘Theology and the Peace of the Church’, p. 157. Elsewhere, Webster writes, ‘He is Emmanuel, the fulfilment of the free divine resolve and promise: I will be your God, you will be my people.’ Webster, John, ‘Evangelical Freedom’, in Hamilton, Catherine-Sider (ed.), The Homosexuality Debate: Faith Seeking Understanding (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2003), p. 118Google Scholar.
50 Webster, John, Barth's Ethics of Reconciliation (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), p. 3Google Scholar.
51 Barth, Karl, ‘The Proclamation of God's Free Grace’, in God Here and Now, trans. van Buren, Paul M. (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Webster, ‘What Makes Theology Theological?’, p. 223.
53 Yuen, Alfred H., Barth's Theological Ontology of Holy Scripture (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), p. 3Google Scholar.
54 Webster, Holy Scripture, p. 40.
55 Barth, CD I/1, p. 139.
56 Ibid., p. 178.
57 Ibid., p. 95.
58 Ibid., p. 121; emphasis added.
59 John Webster, ‘Verbum Mirificum: T. F. Torrance on Scripture and Hermeneutics’, in The Domain of the Word, p. 90.
60 Torrance, Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian, p. 89.
61 Webster, Holy Scripture, p. 72.
62 Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, p. 19.
63 Barth, Göttingen Dogmatics, p. 92. Elsewhere, Barth remarks, ‘Only the Living is God. Only the voice of the Living is God's voice’ (CD II/1, p. 263).
64 Webster, Karl Barth, p. 56.
65 Yuen, Barth's Theological Ontology of Holy Scripture, p. 106.
66 Webster, Karl Barth, p. 56.
67 Barth, CD I/1, p. 296.
68 Barth, CD II/2, p. 183.
69 See Webster, John, ‘Traditions: Theology and the Public Covenant’, Stimulus 6/1 (1998), p. 21Google Scholar. On the Holy Spirit as the primary divine agent in Hebrews 3:7–4:11, see Pierce, Madison N., ‘Hebrews 3.7–4.11 and the Spirit's Speech to the Community’, in Hockey, Katherine M., Pierce, Madison N., and Watson, Francis (eds), Muted Voices of the New Testament: Readings in the Catholic Epistles and Hebrews (London; New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017), pp. 175–84Google Scholar.
70 John Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’, in The Domain of the Word, p. 33. According to Webster, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead characterises God's being and thus is ‘part of the material definition of God's aseity: in and of himself, in free self-determination, God is and acts thus’ (Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’, p. 35). The Son is autotheos ‘not in respect of his person (which he has from the Father) but in respect of the common aseity which he has as a sharer in the one divine essence. The Father is a se in his person (as the principium of the triune life); the Son is a se only in his divine essence’ (Webster, ‘Eternal Generation’, p. 37; see further, Webster, ‘Life in and of Himself’, pp. 20–2). Elsewhere Webster refers to the ‘common aseity of the persons which is theirs by virtue of the one divine essence in which they all share from eternity’. Webster, John, ‘Webster's Response to Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness’, Scottish Journal of Theology 62/2 (2009), p. 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
71 See Webster, ‘Christology, Theology, Economy’, p. 52.
72 Barth, CD I/2, p. 533.
73 Webster, The Domain of the Word, p. 8.
74 Webster, ‘Christology, Theology, Economy’, p. 58.
75 Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’, p. 35.
76 See Allen, Michael, ‘Divine Attributes’, in Allen, Michael and Swain, Scott R. (eds), Christian Dogmatics: Reformed Theology for the Church Catholic (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), pp. 65–6Google Scholar.
77 Webster, ‘God's Perfect Life’, p. 150. See further East, Brad, ‘John Webster, Theologian Proper’, Anglican Theological Review 99/2 (2017), p. 342Google Scholar.
78 Torrance, Karl Barth: Biblical and Evangelical Theologian, pp. 87–8.
79 See Webster, ‘Resurrection and Scripture’, p. 32.
80 Webster, John, Confronted by Grace: Meditations of a Theologian (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015), p. 59Google Scholar; emphasis added.
81 Webster, The Domain of the Word, p. viii.
82 Webster, John, ‘Holy Scripture’, in Ngien, Dennis and Clements, Rob (eds), Between the Lectern and the Pulpit: Essays in Honor of Victor A. Shepherd (Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing, 2014), p. 178Google Scholar. Webster writes, ‘The entire process of the church's knowledge of God is God's own work, the work of the Father, Son and Spirit’. Webster, John, ‘Scripture, Reading and the Rhetoric of Theology in Hans Frei's Analysis of Texts’, in Olegovich, Giorgy (ed.), Ten Year Commemoration to the Life of Hans Frei 1922–1988 (New York: Semenenko Foundation, 1999), p. 46Google Scholar.
83 See Webster, The Domain of the Word, p. 19.
84 John Webster, ‘Biblical Reasoning’, in Ibid., pp. 121–2. Elsewhere, Webster explains, ‘The Spirit moves creatures, and in moving gives them their proper spontaneity and integrity, that is, their dignity as the active children of God.’ Webster, John, ‘On the Theology of the Intellectual Life’, in Virtue and Intellect, vol. 2 of God without Measure (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), p. 44Google Scholar.
85 Webster, John, ‘Communion with Christ: Mortification and Vivification’, in Eilers, Kent and Strobel, Kyle C. (eds), Sanctified by Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), p. 131Google Scholar.
86 Macaskill, ‘Name Christology’, p. 223.
87 John Webster, ‘One Who is Son’, in God and the Works of God, p. 60.
88 Webster, Confronted by Grace, p. 137; emphasis added.
89 Ibid., p. 59.
90 Webster, ‘Hermeneutics in Modern Theology’, p. 83.
91 Webster, ‘Holy Scripture’, p. 174.
92 Ibid.
93 John Webster, ‘Rector et Iudex Super Omnia Genera Doctrinarum? The Place of the Doctrine of Justification’, in God and the Works of God, p. 159.