‘Word without Measure’: The (Ir)reducible History of Jesus Christ in John Webster

Abstract

AbstractJohn Webster's Christology bears a twofold character. First, Webster attends to the particular identity of the Son of God who is and acts in and as Jesus Christ. Second, Webster articulates, in increasing measure, the rootedness of the Word's assumption of the flesh in the Son's eternal relation to Father and the Holy Spirit. Both features of Jesus' history – namely its irreducible particularity and architectural traceability – establish God's self‐correspondence: the concrete history of God with us corresponds to God's eternal being and act. Webster's later work accords material priority to the Son's antecedent existence as the second person of the Holy Trinity. I locate the impetus for this shift in Webster's theological construal of history which serves, in turn, to inform and revise the dogmatic task of unfolding Jesus' history. No longer inhibited by a predominately modern view of human history, Webster more readily traces the history of Jesus Christ to the eternal procession of the Son of God.