The world lost the greatest theological mind whom most contemporaries have yet to discover when John Webster went to his eternal reward last week.
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It has long been my contention, asserted in several posts on this blog over the years, that there are two ways to do systematic theology: Either you approach it as a speculative discipline grounded in philosophy, or else you view it as a dogmatic discipline grounded in Scripture. Which of these approaches you take makes all the difference.
Most academic theologians over the past two centuries have taken the former course. I, along with theologians such as John Webster, chose the road less traveled. Choosing the latter course doesn’t mean that you ignore philosophy. Webster’s dissertation was on Eberhart Jungle, a philosophical theologian. My own dissertation was an orthodox critique of Process Theology–itself grounded in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead–and you don’t get any more philosophical than that.
But the difference comes in where you see theology as being grounded and what you see as its source of authority. It makes all the difference in your methodology and the conclusions to which you come.