In his 'The Dogmatic Location of the Canon' (published in his Word and Church) and Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster unfolds some weighty thoughts on the doctrine of Scripture. Here are only a few of them:
1) The doctrines of God, revelation, and even salvation should inform our understanding of Holy Scripture. In other words, we need to affirm an overtly dogmatic (not merely historical or sociological) location for the Bible.
2) Even situating bibliology within ecclesiology won't get the job done for several reasons. (1) What God, not the church, is doing with the text is the central issue. (2) In ecclesiologically-driven descriptions of Scripture the church is often viewed from too sociological, too immanent an angle.
3) By speaking in Scripture God acts upon the church, making the process of canonization one of submission and recognition, not one of innovation.
4) 'Interpretation' might be a term too loaded down with psychological and philosophical freight to do justice to the activity of Christian reading of Scripture. Webster uses the term 'reading' to insist that, rather than generating meaning by interpreting the Bible, Christians are confronted by the meaning of the text and experience a conversion to its teaching.
Useful and provocative stuff!
1) The doctrines of God, revelation, and even salvation should inform our understanding of Holy Scripture. In other words, we need to affirm an overtly dogmatic (not merely historical or sociological) location for the Bible.
2) Even situating bibliology within ecclesiology won't get the job done for several reasons. (1) What God, not the church, is doing with the text is the central issue. (2) In ecclesiologically-driven descriptions of Scripture the church is often viewed from too sociological, too immanent an angle.
3) By speaking in Scripture God acts upon the church, making the process of canonization one of submission and recognition, not one of innovation.
4) 'Interpretation' might be a term too loaded down with psychological and philosophical freight to do justice to the activity of Christian reading of Scripture. Webster uses the term 'reading' to insist that, rather than generating meaning by interpreting the Bible, Christians are confronted by the meaning of the text and experience a conversion to its teaching.
Useful and provocative stuff!
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