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the historia scripturae’ (p. 72). In other words, scriptural readers must recognize
their theological location as those addressed by the church’s Lord and handle the
biblical text as the instrument by which that Lord speaks. The ‘historical
naturalism of mainstream biblical scholarship’ is thus ruled as incompatible with
what the text of the Fourth Gospel is’ (p. 73).
But secondly, Webster argues that Barth does not neglect the ‘historical’
dimension of the text precisely because he explicates Scripture’s human character
as a dimension of its divine origin. The historical qualities of the Fourth Gospel,
which must be investigated, ‘only are what they are by virtue of the divine Word
which they serve, and are therefore only discernible in their historicity in relation
to the Word’. This, in turn, means that the biblical author’s ‘human historical
reality . . . requires direct language about God for its description’ (p. 74). This goes
some way toward answering the question of how contemporary theological
exegetes might learn from Webster’s (and Barth’s) dogmatic theology to approach
their task better. At minimum, one must say – to return to the example of the four
canonical Gospels – that any investigation of the preliterary testimony to the
historical Jesus which becomes deposited in the canonical texts must recognize its
character as an inquiry into a divinely superintended process which has as its goal
the proclamation of the Word and the formation of an obedient church.
The genre of a collection like The Domain of the Word is, perhaps, ill-suited
for showcasing theological exegesis. But given Webster’s desire for more theology
to be done in the form of commentary (p. 130), one might have hoped for more of
that here. (Webster has demonstrated elsewhere, for instance in an essay on
Hebrews 1 for the edited collection The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian
Theology, that he is interested in and abundantly capable of providing such
exegesis.) If Webster’s core thesis that binds all the essays here together – that
Scripture is best understood as ‘words of the Word, human words uttered as a
repetition of the divine Word, existing in the sphere of the divine Word’s authority,
effectiveness and promise’ (p. 8) – is to be persuasive to some of those who most
need its insight, namely, those engaged in close reading of the biblical texts, then it
will need to be shown as practicable and as genuinely productive of richer, deeper,
better readings when practiced.

Wesley Hill
Trinity School for Ministry
Ambridge, PA

Medi Ann Volpe, Rethinking Christian Identity: Doctrine and

Discipleship. Challenges in Contemporary Theology. Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2013, xii 1 263pp. £65.00 / $97.95
This book, which began life as a doctoral dissertation at Duke, is an integrative
project that fuses systematic theology and spiritual or pastoral theology. The task
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of the book is to probe several recent accounts of Christian identity, exposing their
lacunae in the process, and to retrieve Gregory of Nyssa as a resource for the task
of Christian identity formation today. It is written in an accessible, at times even
conversational, style, and provides glimpses into the author’s personal life.
Bookending the work are references to Volpe’s Down Syndrome daughter and the
experience of an Episcopal priest with bipolar disorder. The theology lying in
between these two bookends is lively, passionate and keen to stress theology’s
practicability.
The project opens by discussing the place of George Lindbeck’s The Nature of
Doctrine vis-a-vis the task of spiritual formation. According to Volpe, Lindbeck
recognizes the need for a model of Christian identity that avoids (at least) two
dangers: reducing that identity to adherence to certain propositional content or else
reducing it to a species of religion in general. For an account of Christian identity
that wishes to eschew both errors, the question becomes how Christian identity can
best be described and performed. Lindbeck’s ‘cultural-linguistic’ answer is well
known – doctrine is likened to a grammar, and as Christians are immersed in a
culture and set of practices, they are thereby formed as fluent speakers – but Volpe
describes Lindbeck’s project, and indicates its gaps, mainly by way of engaging
three critiques of it: in Kathryn Tanner, Rowan Williams and John Milbank.
For Tanner, Lindbeck’s model leaves itself vulnerable to takeovers from the
exercise of potentially repressive power. In place of a catechesis that emphasizes
the normativity of Christian practices, Tanner wants to expose the contestability of
those practices. She wants to attend to how the individual Christian makes ethical
decisions in the absence of fixed standards. Tanner is interested in a Christian
identity understood in terms of discipleship to Jesus, but she construes that identity
as a matter of being disciples of God alone, with ‘no demand to approximate’ the
conclusions of any magisterium or communal norms. This conclusion sits
uncomfortably alongside Tanner’s robust attention to the Christian tradition in her
constructive dogmatic work, Volpe suggests, but, nonetheless, it remains
unqualified. Although Tanner can see that the imitation of Christ is necessary for
Christian identity, her account does not reflect on the formation that would be
necessary to inculcate Christian identity in specific persons.
Turning to a discussion of Rowan Williams, Volpe contrasts Tanner’s
criticism of Lindbeck with Williams’s call for a recovery of a conception of the
‘soul’. Where Tanner does not consider the habits of formation needed to
enculturate individuals in the church and form their Christianity identity, Williams
does offer an awareness of the time that Christian discipleship requires. Identity,
for Christians, is always under negotiation, resisting closure and is in process of
being constructed for the duration of a life. The ‘making sense’ of one’s life in
Christ is the fruit of patient waiting, in ongoing conversation with the Christian
past and the contemporary secular world that, together, pose an ongoing challenge
to the meaning of Christian identity. Although Volpe considers Williams’s
emphases salutary, insofar as Williams gestures toward a more robust narrative of
Christian identity formation than Tanner’s account did, she also faults Williams for
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his failure to attend to the specific ways Christian identity is worked out in a given
life. What practices in particular might sustain the process, and what blockages
might it encounter? ‘Williams gives insufficient attention to sin’, Volpe concludes.
His call for the recovery of ‘the soul’ notwithstanding, Williams does not flesh out
the particular entailments of that call.
Finally, before her concluding turn to Gregory of Nyssa, Volpe outlines John
Milbank’s ontology of peace, participation and active reception in the Christian
life. Like Tanner and Williams, Milbank offers an account of Christian identity,
downwind of Lindbeck’s project, that is doctrinally coherent and robustly
christological. And yet, Milbank ‘has not given us much to go on when it comes to
figuring out how’ Christians perform that identity. To speak of peace, participation
in the divine life and active reception on the part of Christians is indeed to offer a
strong account of what Christian identity amounts to. But such a defensible
account of identity then raises with deeper urgency the question of how the
performance of that identity is learned and practiced. Furthermore, like Tanner and
Williams, Milbank leaves unaddressed the disruptive power of sin. Along with the
two previous accounts Volpe examined, Milbank’s account of Christian identity
does not render due attention to the way that sin prevents or hinders that identity
from appearing in individuals and communities.
Volpe argues that each of these formulations has something useful to
contribute to an account of Christian identity in the wake of Lindbeck, but each is
also lacking something crucial. To remedy the lack, Volpe seeks to retrieve
Gregory of Nyssa’s account of the soul’s formation in discipleship. Gregory
‘detail[s] the shape and formation of the Christian subject implied in the modern
account[s]’, and thus his discussion of formation (or a closely similar one) is
necessary if Tanner’s, Williams’ or Milbank’s account (or some combination of
the three) is to be fully persuasive. For Gregory, the soul is meant to reflect, like
the surface of a mirror and as the bearer of the image of God, the divine
perfections. So reflected, the divine perfections would be visible as virtues in the
human subject. But Gregory attends to why that reflection is marred. He recognizes
that sin has disfigured the ‘surface’ of the soul, and thus, in order rightly to reflect
the divine perfections, the soul must first be cleansed or purified. This happens,
Gregory thinks, through ascetic practice. Oriented by hope, the Christian disciple
fasts or renounces sex (say) in order to tilt his or her desire toward God as its
proper object. The soul thereby increasingly participates in the divine life.
This is a fine book that will appeal to pastors, spiritual directors, seminary
instructors and well-read lay people interested in spiritual formation and,
especially, those who are concerned for the interface between systematic theology
and practical theology. Its main weakness lies, perhaps, in its willingness to let
Lindbeck’s typology of the various ways of understanding doctrine set the agenda.
Gregory’s emphasis on, for instance, the trinitarian content of baptismal creeds sits
uneasily alongside Lindbeck’s emphasis that church practices are what give
doctrine their sense. For Gregory, it is equally, if not more, true that trinitarian
confession regulates the meaning of baptism than to say that baptism gives
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trinitarian confession its sense. Trinitarian doctrine will indeed remain abstract and
misunderstood without the concrete practice of baptism, but in order for baptism to
be truly baptism (rather than just a dip in the pool), it needs trinitarian doctrine. In
Gregory’s view, doctrine is the result of divine self-disclosure; doctrine is not to be
confused with corporate, sacramental practice as such, which is the response to the
divine self-disclosure. Volpe, then, might have used Gregory to register not simply
lacunae in Lindbeck’s project but rather to highlight more fundamental problems
in Lindbeck’s account. She might have then gone on to stress that Christian
identity formation, with its ascetic practices, is governed and shaped by doctrine
without being constitutive of it.
That worry aside, this is an engaged, spirited treatment of a neglected theme in
academic literature, and it deserves a wide readership.

Wesley Hill
Trinity School for Ministry
Ambridge, PA

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