Journal of Reformed

Theology 18 (2024) 173–197

brill.com/jrt

“Life in the Divine Image and Likeness”

Toward a Websterian Theology of the Image of God

Robb Torseth | orcid: 0000-0001-7225-354X

New College, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
[email protected]

Received 19 January 2022 | Accepted 21 May 2024 |

Published online 12 June 2024

Abstract

In Michael Allen’s 2017 article, “Toward Theological Anthropology: Tracing the Anthro-
pological Principles of John Webster,” Allen draws attention to the peculiarity of the
absence of a formal doctrine of the imago Dei in Webster’s anthropology, noting that 1)
the doctrine is exegetically driven and ubiquitous in historical theology, and 2) it would
seem to fit well with Webster’s greater theological project. This article will attempt
to address both of these points in Webster’s thought, first by considering the ques-
tion of why the doctrine of the image of God in humanity is largely underdeveloped
in Webster’s theology, and second, by considering what Webster has said about the
image of God throughout his writings. The article will then analyze Webster’s article
“The Dignity of Creatures,” concluding by elaborating on concepts inherent in Web-
ster’s anthropology to approach an answer to the question, “What would a Websterian
doctrine of the image of God look like?”

Keywords

John Webster – image of God / imago Dei – human dignity – cosmology – theological
anthropology

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174 torseth

1 Introduction

In his 2007 article “The Dignity of Creatures,” John Webster, in characteristic

form, is careful to articulate the dogmatic placement of anthropology within
the body of divinity en toto, with particular attention to its relationship to the-
ology proper. Noting that human dignity must be considered dogmatically “sub
specie Dei,” he then pronounces: “In the matter of human dignity, there is no
absolutely original self-knowledge; creaturely self-knowledge is a creaturely
act, and therefore an act whose description requires talk of God the creator.”1
The significance of anthropology as a prominent locus of dogmatic inquiry is
thus ubiquitous in Webster’s thought, ranging from early engagements with the
anthropology of Eberhard Jüngel through his “anthropology of the theologian”
offered in his sketch, The Culture of Theology, and outlined in more mature
essays such as “The Dignity of Creatures.”2
On the one hand, a broader consideration of Webster’s theological method
—where ontology must always precede moral considerations and, likewise,
must bear reference to the Trinity as the principium essendi of Christian theol-
ogy—means that there are few surprises in Webster’s thought: ontological con-
siderations of the human person in relation to God must always precede and
constrain economic, social, and ethical conclusions.3 Hence, in his article “The

1 John Webster, God Without Measure, vol. 2: Virtue and Intellect, 2 vols. (London: Bloomsbury
T&T Clark, 2016), 31–33. Hereafter, gwm 1:2.
2 John Webster, “Justification, Analogy and Action: Passivity and Activity in Jüngel’s Anthro-
pology,” in John Webster, ed., The Possibilities of Theology: Essays on the Theology of Eberhard
Jüngel in his Sixtieth Year (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 106–142; Webster, “Habits: Cultivating
the Theologian’s Soul,” in The Culture of Theology, ed. Ivor J. Davidson and Alden C. McCray
(Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 131; Webster, “The Dignity of Creatures,” in gwm 1:29–
48. The middle work is particularly important for measuring a trajectory in Webster’s overall
project: published posthumously in 2019, the essays in The Culture of Theology were origi-
nally delivered during the Thomas Burns Memorial Lectures at the University of Otago in
1998, later published separately in the journal Stimulus between 1998 and 1999. These lectures
were intended as important methodological prolegomena, a “staging post” for “a multivolume
exposition of systematic theology” that never saw composition before Webster’s passing in
2016. Ivor Davidson thus considers it “a magisterial short treatment of what Christian theol-
ogy is all about” (The Culture of Theology, 2).
3 Webster, “Principles of Systematic Theology,” in Domain of the Word: Scripture and Theologi-
cal Reason (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2012), 135. Webster has articulated this as “the
rule that Christian moral theology ought not to exist in independence of Christian doctrine,”
going on to specify that “all Christian teaching, including teaching about the moral life, is an
extension of the doctrine of the Trinity …”—see Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian
Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 197; likewise, he will elsewhere note that, while “Chris-
tian moral theology has both ontological and deontological interests,” one must nonetheless

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 175

Human Person” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, Web-

ster summarizes his thought: “Christian anthropology is Trinitarian and there-
fore practical–ethical anthropology.”4 On the other hand, this also presents an
interesting surprise by way of omission in that, throughout Webster’s corpus of
articles and publications there is no extended analysis or articulation of what
is classically considered to be the focal point of a Christian theological anthro-
pology: the image of God in humanity.5 Indeed, such a lacuna will provide the
basis for what this article attempts to posit: namely, a ‘Websterian’ doctrine of
the imago Dei constructed from strains of Webster’s own thought that expand
upon his theology even as it departs from it.
Such theoretical room for expansion has been observed by Michael Allen.
In his article “Toward Theological Anthropology: Tracing the Anthropological
Principles of John Webster,” Allen observes the dearth of attention to this doc-
trine on both an exegetical and a dogmatic level. He writes there of how “…
teaching in Genesis 1:26–27 and elsewhere regarding human nature and the
‘image of God’ remains a concept about which Webster said virtually nothing
but which has grown to play a load-bearing role in the structures of so much
modern anthropology.”6 This absence is further elucidated on a level inter-
nal to Webster’s own thought, namely, by his own shift toward a teleological
protology-eschatology scheme of creation that prioritizes ontology. If Webster’s
project is, as Richard Brash has pointed out, a premodern retrieval aimed at the
problems of modernity and in response to postmodernity, then the question
remains as to why that project did not include an anthropology characterized
by the definitive premodern anthropological locus that was the image of God
in humanity.7

follow “an order to these inquiries: deontology follows ontology, because action follows being”
(gwm 2:87).
4 “The Human Person,” The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology ed. Kevin J. Van-
hoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 233.
5 For example, McGrath writes: “The Christian tradition, basing itself largely upon the accounts
of creation found in the book of Genesis, has insisted that humanity is the height of God’s
creation, set over and above the animal kingdom. The theological justification of this rests
largely upon the doctrine of creation in the image of God …”—Alister E. McGrath, Christian
Theology: An Introduction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 348.
6 Michael Allen, “Toward Theological Anthropology: Tracing the Anthropological Principles of
John Webster,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 19/1 (2017): 6–29, see esp. 28.
7 Richard F. Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur: The Eloquent God and Holy Scripture in the The-
ology of John Webster [PhD thesis: University of Edinburgh, 2019], 37. The shift of the dogmatic
location of theological anthropology from cosmology and protology to incarnate grace, escha-
tology, and finally to the Trinity is noted by David H. Kelsey, where the “traditional doctrinal
home of theological anthropology has been a doctrine of creation …”; “Theological anthro-

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176 torseth

The key here is both Webster’s emphasis on retrieval, which—in his own
words—seeks “to rehabilitate classical sources of Christian teaching and draw
attention to their potential furthering of the theology task,” as well as his pri-
oritization of cosmological questions.8 This is articulated by Allen, who notes
that a robust doctrine of the image of God “may well fit in with his more recent
emphasis upon the distributed and focal role played by the doctrine of creation
across the loci of theology” and that “such reflection upon the ‘image of God’
may jibe well with his insistence upon considering creation prior to incarna-
tional Christology (befitting the canonical presentation of the imago in Genesis
prior to Colossians).” As such, Allen posits that, although the doctrine could
fall prey to being “exegetically underdeveloped,” Webster’s attention to the
canonical and dogmatic orders of exposition would have ensured a substan-
tial treatment “in a way that has rarely been matched in modern christocentric
approaches.”9 Yet this stands as a moot and somewhat wishful observation in
relation to the incompleteness of Webster’s envisaged project. Although Allen
is correct that “questions must remain,” at the same time answers may still be
pursued.10
What this phrase from Allen suggests is that there is, so to speak, ‘dogmatic
space’ to be realized within Webster’s corpus. That is to say, although Webster
himself left a certain body of thought on theological anthropology, Allen has
highlighted a possible aporia or lacuna within Webster’s thought that may be
addressed with the tools of his own theological program. Indeed, Webster’s own
critique of the doctrine of the imago Dei as exegetically unviable or unbenefi-
cial begs the question and creates space for a further theological appraisal. It is
just this space to which Allen alludes and that furnishes a natural distinction
between what this author styles “Webster’s” doctrine of the imago Dei and a

pological claims were derived by applying the general account of creatureliness to human
creatures in particular, qualified by the claim that what distinguishes them as specifically
human is that God creates them in the ‘image of God’ ”—David H. Kelsey, “The Human
Creature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology eds. John Webster, Kathryn Tan-
ner, and Iain Torrance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 122.
8 Webster, “Theologies of Retrieval,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, 596.
9 Allen, “Toward Theological Anthropology,” 28–29. Allen’s comments concur with the
reflections of one of Webster’s students, Josh Malone, who recalled that Webster seemed
to think “the image of God is a wax-nose … he was worried how it was so malleable in the
tradition and thus skeptical of its use in theology. I found it odd that rather than accept
that as a problem which required a more theologically grounded account, he seemed to
prefer using other concepts to speak of human creatureliness ‘after God’ and avoid direct
explication of humans as the image of God”—private correspondence, April 27, 2021.
10 Allen, “Toward Theological Anthropology,” 27.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 177

more broadly ‘Websterian’ doctrine of the same, the latter of which will stand
as an independent constructive endeavor.
More directly: this article will attempt to posit a possible ‘Websterian’ doc-
trine of the imago Dei, with a cognizance of Webster’s own apprehensions
concerning the doctrine, as well as the trajectories in his thought. As such, it
is not an attempt to argue against Webster’s own criticisms of the doctrine.
Neither will the study attempt to assert the necessity of an imago Dei theol-
ogy to Webster’s broader corpus, something that would require more dogmatic
legwork than is possible here. Instead, it will assume the viability of the image
of God as a locus for theological anthropology. Certainly, some of these con-
cepts will need to be handled by way of necessity, but they will only be con-
sidered here as related to the main question addressed, which is, “What would
a Websterian doctrine of the image of God look like?” In other words, a dis-
tinction will be assumed between Webster’s own doctrine of the image of God
and a posited Websterian doctrine of the same. The study will build on three
foundations—Webster’s theological anthropology as exemplified in his 2007
article “The Dignity of Creatures,” his explicit writings on the imago Dei, and
trends in his theological development into his later years.

2 The Question of Why

One possible reason for Webster’s rejection of imago Dei theology could be,
perhaps somewhat contrarily, the very reason why its absence is so perplex-
ing: exegetical. The centrality placed on the exegetical work of the theologian
in relation to scripture as the first principle of theology is ubiquitous in Web-
ster’s thought. Think, for example, of The Culture of Theology, where Webster
states that “the theologian’s occupation is primarily exegetical” and then again
with unusually pointed force says that “[t]heologians should consider ceasing
to write systematic treatises and confine themselves to the work of exposition
of Scripture.”11 In Holiness, Webster remarks directly upon how the saturation
of imago Dei language within the scope of the Western tradition has seen it con-
flated with accounts of the human person as such. This, he says, may be due to
a fetishizing of the imago Dei language in scripture, which, according to Web-
ster, runs the risk of becoming “excessively static,” resulting in a reductionistic
or partitive view of the image as it relates to the human person.12 Instead, Web-

11 Webster, The Culture of Theology, 65, 80.

12 John Webster, Holiness (London: scm Press, 2003), 85.

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178 torseth

ster cites Col. 3:10 and focuses on the broad action of renewal contained in the
verb ἀνακαίνωσις–in the text, ἀνακαινούμενον: a present participle—attempting
to focus on divine action in renewal and thus away from structural issues; this,
he feels, will make a consideration of the image of God “as broad and as histor-
ical as possible,” defining the ἀνακαίνωσις as “our comprehensive reintegration
into the holy covenant by the mercy of the holy God.”13 The concern then could
be seen as a desire for something more exegetically driven and, subsequently,
more holistic than the partitive accounts debated throughout church history.
Elsewhere, and as a complement to the concerns stated in Holiness, Webster
expresses concerns that the doctrine of the image of God is both tradition-
ally undeveloped and contemporarily misused. In the article “The Dignity of
Creatures”—the subject of the next section of this essay—Webster considers
the lost and renewed dignity of humanity by drawing from the imago Dei the-
ology of Augustine and Calvin. Y et, once again, Webster himself is reticent
to implement image-of-God language in articulating concepts of humanity’s
moral rectitude. Webster directly states his concern in a revealing footnote
regarding the need for a discussion of reconciliation in determining the limits
of human dignity; quoting a pertinent section from Hans Ulrich’s Wie Geschöpfe
leben, he notes, “This soteriological element is commonly lacking in theologi-
cal accounts of human dignity oriented by a conception of being in the image
of God as a stable, pre-soteriological human condition,” before pointing to
R.P. Kraynak’s work In Defense of Human Dignity as representative of this diag-
nosis.14 Once again, the dogmatic emphasis is placed on the need to discuss
humanity in relation to God’s redemptive acts prior to doing so in relation to
his creative acts.
Particularly illuminating on this concept is Webster’s own review of Ulrich’s
work, published synchronously with “The Dignity of Creatures.” Perhaps ‘re-
view’ is too general a term, as Webster himself styled it as “dogmatic reflec-
tions.”15 Indeed, Webster believes Ulrich has struck key concepts regarding the

13 Emphasis on participation in covenant in a way that prioritizes renewal into the image
of Christ over cosmological concerns may reflect the Barthian influence in Webster’s
thought. For example, Webster himself notes of Barth’s theology that “creaturely medi-
ation seems to have been collapsed back into the risen Christ’s acts of self-mediation
and self-manifestation,” see John Webster, Barth (London: Continuum, 2000), 139. Barth
speaks of the image of God in distinctly covenantal and relational terms as bound up in
the “I/Thou” relationship between God and man in Church Dogmatics iii/2 ed. and trans.
G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–), § 45.
14 gwm 1:38 n. 18.
15 John Webster, “Wie Geschöpfe leben: Some Dogmatic Reflections,” in Studies in Christian
Ethics 2, no. 20 (2007): 273–285.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 179

relationship between dogmatics and ethics: where the tendency is to consider

moral ontology per ipsum, Ulrich’s emphasis on the economy of God and divine
creative activity as constitutive of human moral agency provides a helpful cor-
rective.16 Indeed, Webster admires Ulrich’s hesitance to place too much the-
ological weight on loci classici like Psalm 8, which are traditionally viewed as
speaking toward the concrete ontology of creatureliness: instead of viewing the
human creature as ‘de-historicized’ and bearing a ‘nature,’ Ulrich strives to view
such texts as set within the context of God’s historical story, emphasizing that
“creation is new creation.”17 Thus, although Webster’s review of Ulrich’s work is
not one of uncritical embrace, he nonetheless finds Ulrich’s ontological min-
imalism a helpful reorientation for dogmaticians in turning away from more
static ontological questions and toward those of a more integrative teleology,
questions that integrate God’s word and works into created purpose and ends.18
Here a brief word of historical context is at hand. The instinct just noted
may, consciously or subconsciously, be a remnant of the influence of Friedrich
Schleiermacher, whose account of the imago Dei is at best undefined and at
worst dismissive of the concept in its entirety.19 In The Christian Faith, Schleier-
macher is dismissive of protological and historical accounts of the creation
narrative of Gen. 1–3, referring to it as a “fable” that has an ultimately unde-
terminable historical value; as such, the image of God is recast psychologically
and emotively via an awareness of personal piety, imagined (or reimagined)
contemporarily in relation to humanity’s “own inner being.”20 This plays into
his overall move of placing christological considerations in an anterior mate-
rial position in his dogmatic: where any consideration of the image of God
must move toward the realization of the internal God-consciousness, the per-

16 “… [T]aken as a whole, Ulrich’s book is a reminder that over-confidence in the explanatory

and orientational power of moral ontology can radically mischaracterise how the Chris-
tian faith conceives of life with God in time, and so can resist the judgement, conversion
and hope which arise only in the specific episodes of the economy of God’s speech and
action towards us”—“Dogmatic Reflections,” 280.
17 “Dogmatic Reflections,” 276–277.
18 Citing passages from Isaiah 40, Webster writes of God, “This one, his existence, nature,
word and work, is the ‘law’ of creaturely being, that to which (the one to whom) creaturely
being must be conformed if it is to enact its nature and attain its end” (285).
19 “… [I]f we ask whether the designation, ‘image of God,’ … is in harmony with the concep-
tion we have set forth, we can only answer ‘yes’ with great caution”; “Here, then, is another
instance of the truth that Biblical expressions, especially when they do not occur in a
purely didactic context, can seldom be adopted in the terminology of Dogmatics without
more ado” (Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith ed. and trans., H.R. Mackintosh
and J.S. Stewart, reprint edition (London: T&T Clark, 2003), § 61).
20 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, §61.

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180 torseth

fect exemplar of such a realization is Christ, the originator of the community

through whom the members become conscious of their redemption.21 Thus, in
the era post-Schleiermacher, theological considerations of anthropology have
largely shied away from imago Dei language in a more classical ontological
capacity.
Again, Schleiermacher’s influence may only be subliminal here, an arti-
fact of the German theologian’s command over subsequent theological trends.
Indeed, Webster sparingly references Schleiermacher and, if he does so, his
appraisals are not always positive.22 This is not so much as to establish a genetic
relationship to Schleiermacher as it is one of the most general sorts. Much
more than Schleiermacher, the commanding influence of Eberhard Jüngel on
Webster’s thought may be felt here. Writing of Jüngel in the introduction to Jün-
gel’s Theological Essays, Webster notes his dependence on Karl Barth’s theology,
where the concept of relational propensity in the God-human relationship is a
key focus in anthropology.23 Indeed, as will be seen, Webster will also empha-
size relationality and fellowship in the few places where imago Dei language
is invoked in his own corpus. Jüngel himself, when adopting imago Dei con-
cepts, is quick to orient them in a christological and eschatological manner.
Thus, although Webster disagrees formally with Jüngel’s assumption of the cen-
trality of the doctrine of the imago Dei to theological anthropology, his own
conception of humanity’s relationship to God bears certain affinities with Jün-
gel that, in turn point to similar instincts regarding theological anthropology.24
This is particularly interesting in that, although Jüngel holds to a plenary view
of the imago Dei, including bodily form—he writes of how “our upright stance

21 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, §11. §83, on holiness, provides an excellent example
of Schleiermacher’s prioritization of Christology where, even with an essential and incom-
municable attribute (or “divine causality”), “we start from the assumption that redemp-
tion through Christ is ordained for the whole human race, and that all mankind are in the
state of needing redemption.” The prioritization of Christology and Schleiermacher’s con-
cept of redemption is explored in relation to his broader dogmatic structure and ontology
in Edwin Chr. Van Driel, “Schleiermacher’s Supralapsarian Christology,” Scottish Journal
of Theology 60, no. 3 (2007): 251–270: “… a decisive point [in Schleiermacher’s dogmatic]
is the non-reciprocity of humans’ relationship with God. If we are absolutely dependent
on God, God never responds to human actions. And if God does not respond to human
actions, the incarnation cannot be interpreted as a divine answer to the human problem
of sin. It has to be supralapsarian” (263).
22 See gwm 1:17, where Schleiermacher is criticized for an overly naturalized and abstract
conception of aseity.
23 John Webster, “Introductory Remarks,” in Eberhard Jüngel, Theological Essays (London:
T&T Clark, 1989), 1–16.
24 Jüngel, Theological Essays, 124–125.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 181

… expresses our being in the image of God … Only one who walks erect can bow
down deeply. This capacity belongs to our constitution as upright beings”—
in the introduction and conclusion of his essay he avoids such language, in
effect abstracting theological anthropology from imago Dei language by stating
instead that “[t]he specific task of theological anthropology, whose functions
we have tried to set out, can thus be defined as denying the divinity of humanity,”
and noting that “[t]he possibility of denying the divinity of humanity follows
from the humanity of God as it took place in Jesus Christ.”25
This consideration can extend into the present and the significant work per-
formed by Webster’s contemporaries—for example, David Kelsey, whose 2009
work Eccentric Existence stands as a paradigmatic example of the intentional
circumvention of image-of-God language in the construction of a theological
anthropology. Kelsey, who wrote within the Yale school of thought, would have
been well known to Webster, particularly by way of his contribution of the
chapter on anthropology in the Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, which
Webster edited. In Eccentric Theology, discussion of the imago Dei is relegated
to a set of codas nestled in the back of volume two, where Kelsey both apolo-
gizes for various uses of image-of-God theology, both past and present, and also
offers his own “alternative way” for approaching the relationship between theo-
logical anthropology and the theme of the image of God.26 Kelsey’s intentional
departure from the traditional dogmatic prioritizing of imago Dei language and
concepts is due to what he feels is an inflating of vague and secondary nar-
ratives, conflating anthropology and the discussion of human identity with a
concept that is not robust enough to sustain such an “anchorlike role” within
a developed dogmatic.27 In Kelsey’s view, this has led to a diversification of
conflicting yet reductive viewpoints regarding the definition of the image of
God that is unhelpful and also places the development of a fuller theologi-
cal anthropology in stasis.28 His alternative, what he coins as a “triple helix”

25 Jüngel, Theological Essays, 152.

26 David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westmin-
ster John Knox Press, 2009), 2:896.
27 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, 2:897, 900.
28 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, 2:922–923. As a brief critique, Kelsey’s demand for theologi-
cal consensus as a criterion for doctrinal validity would seem to invalidate the bulk of
claims to controversial doctrines even within the Western Christian tradition alone. It is
further interesting that, although Kelsey attempts to avoid reductionism and approach
certainty in his theological method by jettisoning imago Dei language in his theological
construction, he may have inadvertently done exactly what he has disavowed, introducing
a further degree of subjectivism that further begs the question of theological certainty and
methodological foundations (see Han-luen Kantzer Komline, “Reviewed Work: Eccentric

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182 torseth

model, revolves around a consideration of the three aspects of three key lines
of thought in his theological anthropology, that is, God’s creative relationship
to humanity, God’s eschatological relationship to humanity, and God’s recon-
ciling relationship to humanity, all of which are understood “in a Trinitarian
way” and are organized by acknowledgement of Christ as imago Dei.29 Thus,
Kelsey’s conceptualization of the imago Dei is arrived at inductively and, in the
technical sense, accidentally, after having first established an independent the-
ological anthropology.
Likewise, Rowan Williams, who had been Webster’s undergraduate disser-
tation supervisor at Cambridge, devotes little attention to imago Dei theology
in his published theological anthropology. In his 1989 lecture “On Being Crea-
tures,” Williams discusses concepts of the relationship between Creator and
creature, creaturely dependence, the “solidarity of creatureliness,” and even
the concept of “being-with” as “grounded in the eternal being-with of God
as trinity” without mentioning the image of God once.30 Furthermore, in his
2018 book Being Human, Williams covers topics related to theological anthro-
pology from human consciousness, personhood, psychosomatic unity, human
flourishing, and consummation in Christ without any mention of the image
of God.31 Although he has spoken of the image of God in humanity positively
as recently as a January 2020 interview with the Center for Public Christian-
ity, it would seem that its absence in Williams’s published corpus also indi-
cates a similar instinct to avoid the language of the imago Dei in theological
constructions in and after the twentieth century as well as a judgment that
such language is not necessary but merely optional in articulating theological
anthropology.32 Summarily, with special regard to two of his contemporaries,
Kelsey and Williams, Webster is hardly an outlier.

Existence: A Theological Anthropology by Kelsey, David,” in The Journal of Religion 91, no. 1
[2011], 120–122).
29 Here Kelsey seems to be assuming a distinction between the image of God as analogy
versus the unique conception of Christ as imago substantialis—see Eccentric Existence
1:10; 2:897, 911. By “triple helix,” Kelsey means to invoke an illustration from biochemistry
of a shape that is complex and open-ended, yet inseparably united as a “wholeness-in-
diversity” (see Kelsey, Eccentric Existence 2:897–900).
30 Rowan Williams, “On Being Creatures,” in On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000),
63–78.
31 Williams, Being Human: Bodies, Minds, Persons (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), passim.
32 Williams, “On Being Made in the Image of God,” interview, January 30, 2020, Center for
Public Christianity. It is interesting to note that, as will be discovered later with John Web-
ster, in this interview Williams will discuss human dignity as a correlate of the image of
God. Williams will also mention the phrase ‘image of God’ briefly in his 2018 book Christ:
The Heart of Creation, but it is a passing reference to Christ as the image of God in the the-

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 183

3 Webster’s Theological Development

Yet, and at the same time, Webster, in his emphasis on a ‘theological theol-
ogy’ and retrieval of premodern concepts, cannot be said simply to be a fol-
lower of the theological trends of his time. Indeed, in an article on theological
curiosity Webster criticizes novel and creative theological developments that
are abstracted from foundational theological principles, something he believes
is a form of pride contra theology as an endeavor of humble piety.33 Even with
regard to one of his most profound theological influences, as Richard Brash
has pointed out, “Webster never followed Barth slavishly.”34 This raises the fur-
ther question of Webster’s sources, which itself bears two component parts: the
periods of his intellectual development and the evidence available in the trail
of his footnotes. With regard to the former, it is as important with Webster, as
with any significant intellectual figure, to resist the urge to view his output in
a mono-synchronous way, that is to say, as though all of his works speak the
same thoughts. Richard Brash observes what he phrases the ‘scholastic turn’
in Webster’s thought, beginning around the mid-2000s with his own discovery
of the theology of mediating theologian Isaak Dorner (1809–1884), a profes-
sor of theology at the University of Königsberg. The resourcing of Dorner’s
theology led to a subtle shift in his doctrine of God away from Barth and
toward classical models—in Brash’s words, he preferred Dorner’s “formulation
of God’s self-preservation, and his self-communication, over Barth’s terminol-
ogy of God’s freedom and his love.”35 Later, Webster would implement classical
categories of archetypal/ectypal knowledge from French Calvinist Franciscus
Junius (1545–1602) for consideration of divine revelation and communicabil-
ity, which would lead to further exploration of the writings of puritans and
post-Reformation Reformed dogmaticians. This enters Webster into what has
been coined his “third phase” of methodological development: where Webster
had initially favored a confessionalism that implemented more act-based lan-
guage à la Barth’s system, even critiquing the theological method of Reformed
scholastics such as Johannes Wollebius in his 1995 lecture “Reading Theology,”
he is now seen drawing heavily upon scholastic theologians, with special atten-
tion always given to Thomas Aquinas, from whom he draws extensively after

ology of Maximus the Confessor—see Williams, Christ: The Heart of Creation (London:
Bloomsbury, 2018), 108.
33 See “Curiosity,” in Domain of the Word (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 193–202.
34 Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur, 103 n. 120. Also: “Webster certainly (and particularly
in his later years) blazed his own trail and cannot simply be typecast as ‘Barthian’ ” (32).
35 Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur, 104.

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184 torseth

the middle period of his career.36 Likewise, during this later, third period, occur-
ring somewhere toward the end of his life in the 2010s, numerous accounts
make mention of his favoring of the theology of Dutch neo-Calvinist Herman
Bavinck, although direct reliance on Bavinck is difficult to determine even in
his later corpus.37 However, in any such periodization, discontinuities should
not be overemphasized to the detriment of continuities: Webster’s approach
to theology, from first to last periods, could always be styled ‘eclectic,’ drawing
from a wide range of theological sources from patristic, modern, and postmod-
ern eras in order to expand on his overall project of articulating confessional,
‘theological’ theology into a postmodern context.38 Instead, such a periodiza-

36 This refers to Webster’s 1995 installation lecture as Ramsay Armitage Professor of System-
atic Theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto; the lecture was later republished as Webster,
“Reading Theology,” Toronto Journal of Theology 13 (1997): 53–63 (see 56, 57). A more posi-
tive interaction with Wollebius merely two years later may be found in his inaugural Lady
Margaret Professorship in Divinity lecture, “Theological Theology,” republished in Confess-
ing God, 25, 26. This version of Webster’s three phases was articulated first by Michael Allen
in his article “Toward a Theological Theology” and seems preferable to Kevin Vanhoozer’s
broader periodization; Brash summarizes: “first phase is linked to Webster’s inaugural
lectures in both Toronto and Oxford, and seems to date from about 1995 to 2003. His sec-
ond phase is analyzed with reference to two articles from Webster’s period of tenure at
Aberdeen, published in 2008 and 2009 respectively. His third phase is documented by
publications dating from after Webster’s move to St Andrews” (Brash, 23 n. 70). Note that
the article by Allen, complete with its periodization, has been republished as Michael
Allen, “Theological Theology: Webster’s Theological Project,” in A Companion to the The-
ology of John Webster, ed. Michael Allen and R. David Nelson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2021).
37 Bruce Pass quotes one of Webster’s colleagues, Ivor Davidson, in considering this turn in
his thought: “John was conscious of a need to emerge somewhat from Barth’s shadow,
and to find other theological resources on matters where he felt Barth was deficient,
not least on creation,” Bruce R. Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics: Christology and Christocen-
trism in Herman Bavinck (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020), 177; likewise, Garry
Williams, another one of Webster’s students, recounts the following regarding Bavinck:
“Over lunch in an Aberdeen restaurant on 31st October 2011, John Webster was asked the
following question by the external examiner of a doctoral thesis that he had been supervis-
ing [Williams]. ‘When you have a theological question, to whom do you first turn on your
shelves for help?’ Webster replied, ‘For many years it would have been Karl Barth, but now
I would say Herman Bavinck’” (Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics, 167). Interestingly, a syllabus
from Webster’s 2009–2010 class “Principles of Systematic Theology” includes a reading
from Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics in the week on the Trinity; the course also containing
two readings from Barth in the weeks on the person of Christ and the Holy Spirit (John
Webster, “dr5078 Principles of Systematic Theology Course Leaflet 2009–2010,” St. Mary’s
College, The University of Saint Andrews).
38 For example, dependence on Augustine and John Calvin are common themes from the
beginning on Webster’s writings into his late period. Brash warns: “Any ‘periodisation’ of

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 185

tion is simply a tool intended to aid in understanding trends and trajectories

of Webster’s broader theological project, without being rigid or determinative
of his organically unfolding project. At the risk of overstating the point: Web-
ster’s various “additions and extensions” serve as recapitulations on a lifelong
project of articulating a robust theological theology.39 In sum: Webster’s first
period was largely dominated by a favoring of Karl Barth and the subject of his
doctoral thesis, Eberhard Jüngel; his turn to the second period in the late 1990s /
early 2000s integrates Thomistic concepts along with Catholic theologians; and
his third phase is remarkable in that he “changed significantly his evaluation of
the Protestant scholastics, and engaged extensively with Aquinas,” occurring
sometime around his move to teach at St. Andrews in 2013 and occurring par-
allel with a growing preference for the works of Herman Bavinck.40 To be clear:
this is not to say that Webster’s own corpus becomes dominated by Bavinck in
this later period, as it is not; instead, Webster’s own sentiments and theological
tendencies indicate a favorability toward Bavinck that could indicate a stronger
Bavinckian presence if his project had eventually been realized, establishing
one potential trajectory for Websterian construction.
At this point, this author feels the need to stress what this periodization is not
trying to do. Then tendency may be to view Webster partitively, meaning based
on one source or another; instead, this periodization is meant simply to be a
helpful evaluative tool, enabling the scholar to weigh Webster’s contributions
and ideas based on their own merit in relation to his eclectic and perpetu-
ally expanding pool of influences. Webster’s more Barthian contributions and
thought may then be viewed helpfully within the immediate analysis of his own
thought, and the same can be said with Calvin, Aquinas, and Bavinck. Likewise,
this analysis helps to establish one particular trajectory of his thought: it is, of
course, also possible that Webster’s thought may have expanded in different
directions entirely. Again, although Webster can be seen moving through dif-
ferent cycles and preferences, he remains eclectic in his integration of varying
sources and authors from the beginning till the end of his career, a reality such
periodization is not intending to diminish. That said, the works in evaluation
in this article may be considered within this context, analyzed and valued from
within their setting in Webster’s lifelong theological development of recapitu-
lating “additions and extensions.”41

Webster’s career perhaps suffers from the weakness of creating the impression that his
development happened in fits and starts rather than incrementally” (29).
39 Allen, “Toward a Theological Theology.”
40 Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur, 28.
41 Allen, “Toward a Theological Theology.”

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186 torseth

Here, a consideration of the bibliographic trail between two kindred works

establishes the shift in Webster’s thought. In the 2003 publication Holy Scrip-
ture: A Dogmatic Sketch, the index lists seven entries for Barth and none for
Aquinas, Owen, Junius, Turretin, or any of the other scholastic theologians
upon whom he would later draw in his middle and final periods.42 In the 2012
collection of Webster’s articles entitled The Domain of the Word, Barth, indeed,
still bears prominent influence with seventeen index references but is now
dwarfed by Aquinas (twenty-three) and is joined by a host of scholastic the-
ologians, the likes of which include John Owen (nine) and Francis Turretin
(three).43
What has been the point of this digression on Webster’s influences? For one,
it helps paint a broad portrait of the expanding theological project he himself
had hoped to concretize in his unrealized dogmatic opus; more so, however, it
helps provide a sort of conceptual map of Webster’s thought that allows the
establishing of a loose trajectory by which he may be evaluated. This means
that, for present purposes, works from his middle or final period might be pre-
ferred to earlier works, especially when we consider concepts of ontology and
anthropology which Webster had found lacking in Barth’s account.
This brings the discussion back to the 2007 article, “The Dignity of Crea-
tures.” This article fits the criterion for a consideration of trajectories and
possibilities regarding a Websterian doctrine of the image of God on several
accounts: 1) it comes from around his middle period and his shift toward pre-
modern sources, with predominant consideration given to Aquinas, Augus-
tine, and Calvin; 2) it involves direct expositions of salient loci of scripture
traditionally associated with imago Dei theology; and 3) it is self-consciously
a constructive piece of cosmology and ontology, offering an “account of the
natures of God and God’s creatures, and a … teleology,” as opposed to his earlier
article “Eschatology, Anthropology, and Postmodernity” and his chapter “The
Human Person” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, which
both attempt to consider the human person either in relation to regenerated
nature—and thus posterior to soteriology and Christology—or in a further

42 Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2010), 143–144. There are two mentions of Bavinck in the index; however, these are not
citations, but rather mentions of Bavinck as an influence on G.K. Berkouwer (25) and a
passing note that James K.A. Smith was influenced by Kuyper and Dooyeweerd, but “not,
note, Bavinck!” (100).
43 Webster, Domain of the Word, 203–205. Again, similarities should be noted between the
two: Augustine is mentioned three times in the older volumes and twenty-seven times in
the more recent; John Calvin is mentioned ten times in the older and eleven times in the
newer.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 187

eschatological sense.44 What will be presented here may thus be considered a

sort of ‘dogmatic case study.’ By analyzing this particularly salient text, a possi-
ble conception of what a Websterian doctrine of the imago Dei would look like
will be proffered, with comparison to other pertinent writings and the effect
on his broader dogmatic, both with regard to its formal absence as a possible
deficiency in his thought, and to a potential presence as a solvent.

4 “The Dignity of Creatures”: An Analysis

“The Dignity of Creatures” stands as the earliest chapter in the second volume
of God Without Measure, a 2016 collection of Webster’s essays. Placed after an
article on the relationship between Christ and ethics (“Where Christ Is”), the
chapter functions as a segue into further discussion of human moral agency
and Christian virtue, being followed by chapters on mercy, sorrow, courage,
mortification and vivification, and speech. The chapter is by far the earliest
contribution to the volume; where most chapters were originally essays writ-
ten in the mid-2010s, this was originally written for a 2007 Festschrift entitled
The Love of God and Human Dignity: Essays in Honor of George M. Newlands.45
The essay exhibits the hallmarks of proceeding from Webster’s second, more
scholastic phase of thinking. Webster begins by establishing that the discussion
is a dogmatic inquiry into the nature of human dignity “arising from contem-
plation of the intrinsic and unsurpassable worth of God in se,” citing Rev. 4:11;
thus a discussion of human morality must be “governed by the church’s con-
fession that its Lord and God is indeed worthy and has created all things.”46
Human dignity in the field of dogmatics is thus to be considered “sub specie
Dei,” and “may properly be attributed to human creatures and is not finally con-
tingent on social affirmation.”47 In true Websterian form, the dogmatic location
of human dignity is then formally established within “the divine economy in
which creatures enact their nature by participating in God’s history with them.”
Here, the significant language used by Webster is that of creatureliness: “To
speak of human being as creatures is to indicate their absolute contingency of
origin and their specificity of nature. Made by God out of nothing, creaturely
being is particular being, and creaturely dignity is the particular dignity of those

44 Consideration of this essay is notably absent from the otherwise excellent article on Web-
ster’s anthropology by Allen.
45 gwm 2:vi has the title misprinted as “… The Love of God and Humanity Dignity …”
46 gwm 2:30.
47 gwm 2:30–31.

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188 torseth

destined to be children of God though Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5).”48 Already, then,
the discussion takes on a distinctly ontological, cosmological, and teleologi-
cal tone: discussion of human dignity is grounded in creation and humanity’s
relation to God the creator and re-creator. A key element in this scheme is the
emphasis on God’s creation ex nihilo as a ground for creaturely goodness; in a
2013 article on this specific theme, Webster clarifies: “God is utter plenitude and
sufficiency and so the cause of the entire substance of all things,” where crea-
tures do not properly have being, “but participate in goodness of being.”49 That
is to say, ex nihilo creation is an act related to God’s aseity, which binds discus-
sion of creatureliness to God proper, not to a concept of cosmology abstracted
therefrom.50 Likewise, the logic is similar to a sort of meta-summary of dogmat-
ics found in a later 2011 essay on the relationship between soteriology and the
doctrine of God, which may be drawn out in several stages: 1) “God’s boundless
immanent life is the ground of his communication of life”; 2) “In his free and
loving act of creation, God gives to creatures their several natures and ends. To
be a creature is to have a nature, to be a determined reality having its being
as this”; and 3) “Creatureliness is basic to being human. The nature and end
granted by God the creator, and the consent in which they are enacted, are what
it is to be human. Human being is being in fellowship.”51
Having established dogmatic parameters for the inquiry, Webster proceeds
to consider the radical case of fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance philoso-
pher Pico della Mirandola. Again, the discussion is grounded in cosmology,
where Mirandola discusses God’s address to Adam in the Genesis creation
narrative as “Pater architectus Deus, artifex, optimus opifex” and, accordingly,
relates dignity to Adam by way of Adam’s own “arbitria,” his “self-culture” and
“ ‘self-transforming nature.’”52 This view Webster finds deficient, as it divorces
creature from Creator as the only fount of blessing and, more importantly,
divorces the human flourishing from the gospel. Webster’s diagnosis is thus:
“What is required is a different account of the natures of God and God’s crea-
tures, and a different teleology. These the gospel furnishes.”53

48 gwm 2:31.
49 From “‘Love is also a lover of life’: Creation ex nihilo and Creaturely Goodness,” gwm 1:106.
50 This fits well with Brash’s observation of a shift from Barth’s act-act scheme for the Cre-
ator/creature relation to a being/act scheme (Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur, 104; cf.
n. 20).
51 From “It was the will of the Lord to bruise him: Soteriology and the Doctrine of God,” in
gwm 1:146.
52 gwm 1:32, at times quoting Mirandola.
53 gwm 1:33.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 189

From here Webster proceeds to the formal analysis of human dignity, stating
again his dogmatic assumption of the constitutive nature of human dignity as
it relates to God’s creatorship:

Human dignity is the dignity proper to creatures; creatures have their

being within the situation and history for which they have been made by
God and in which they are to discover and enact their lives. Dignity is not
a correlate of human indeterminacy [qua Mirandola] but precisely of our
limitation, of the special, life-bestowing form with which we are blessed
by God and to whose performance we are summoned.54

Here he articulates a governing, “fundamental rule in theological anthropol-

ogy,” namely that “creaturely being is and is available to be known and lived
out only within the grace of God’s relation to us,” further clarifying that “there
is no absolutely original self-knowledge; creaturely self-knowledge is a crea-
turely act, and therefore an act whose description requires talk of God the
creator.”55 This means, for Webster, such talk cannot proceed on bases exter-
nal to Christian revelation: “The cognitive force of this history is what is known
as ‘revelation.’ Revelation instructs us concerning our dignity.”56 Discussion of
human dignity must then be “well-ordered” and founded on the economy of
the triune God.57
From here Webster launches into a series of expositions of three theses
based around the triune economy. Once again, Webster grounds human dig-
nity in the created order: “Human dignity is the dignity of creatures.”58 This
means that creatureliness is holistic dependence upon God, as creatures are
“wholly originated.” This also means that “Formed by God, creaturely being
has a given nature,” which then implies a teleology: “to be a creature is to be
appointed by God the creator to a specific destiny or ends.”59 Webster has
three points of implication: a) God alone is “the principle and cause of their
[creatures’] worth,” a point that he draws from Aquinas and thus reveals the
Thomistic roots of his thought: God is “principiatum” and not “principium,” the

54 gwm 1:33.
55 gwm 1:33.
56 gwm 1:33.
57 gwm 1:33–34.
58 The full thesis is more extensive: “1. Human dignity has its basis in the loving act of God the
creator who brings creatures into being ex nihilo, bestowing life upon them, ordering their
nature and determining their destiny by calling them to enact their being in fellowship with
himself ” (gwm 1:34).
59 gwm 1:34.

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190 torseth

discussion proceeding again to ex nihilo creation and God as life-giver and thus
dignity-giver.60 Subsequently, human dignity is not a dignity of autonomy, but
of what Webster calls “an anthropological extrinsicism,” resulting from dignity
as “alien,” given by “the creator’s moving presence.” As such: b) “in creating, God
dignifies creatures by acknowledging and approving creaturely life,” and c) “The
verdict of the creator—that is, the creator’s judgment whereby creatures are
declared to be the subject of his regard—is his alone.”61
For the purposes of this analysis, everything up to this point has been stage-
setting. For it is in the second premise—“God the reconciler defeats creatures’
trespass upon their own dignity, restoring them to fellowship with himself and
re-establishing their destiny”—where Webster more directly implements texts
both biblical and historical pertaining to imago Dei language.62 Here Webster
restates his concern for a conception of humanity that is Christ-focused, if not
Christ-deduced, “bound by the gospel” and thus not divorced from the work of
reconciliation in the triune economy. The discussion turns to a lengthy quote
by Augustine:

“The true honour of man,” Augustine writes, “is the image and likeness of
God, which is not preserved except it be in relation to him by whom it is
impressed.” He continued: “The less therefore that one loves what is one’s
own, the more one cleaves to God. But through the desire of making trial
of his own power, man by his own bidding falls down to himself as to a
sort of intermediate grade. And so, while he wishes to be as God is, under
no one, he is thrust on, even from his own middle grade, by way of pun-
ishment, to that which is lowest, that is, to those things in which beasts
delight: and thus, while his honour is the likeness of God, but his dishon-
our is the likeness of the beast, ‘Man being in honour abideth not: he is
compared to the beasts that are foolish, and is made like unto them.’ ”63

This quotation is particularly salient to the project at hand, as it weds the

concept of human dignity with imago Dei language. This is observed by Web-
ster who, in summarizing Augustine’s view, notes the connection: “The ‘true

60 gwm 1:34, citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1975), ii.6.1. Webster supplements Aquinas by quoting Barth, Church
Dogmatics iii/3, reinforcing his continued regard for Barth, although the Barth quote is
simply added by way of summary, not contributing new substance to the conversation.
61 gwm 1:37.
62 gwm 1:38.
63 gwm 1:39. The quotation is from On the Trinity (npnf 1.3), xii.11.16.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 191

honour’ of creatures—life in the divine image and likeness—is not so much

an unchanging property of humankind but the history of a relation between
God the creator and his creatures; and this relation is repudiated by creatures,
who thereby fall away from their given dignity.”64 Thus, sin disrupts this fel-
lowship, which speaks to the need of reconciliation “identical with the person
and mission of God the Son in its entire scope.”65 Hereafter emphasis is placed
on the need for restoration in Christ; after quoting Isaiah 50:5 f. in relation to
the atoning work of the Son, it is interesting that Webster then moves to con-
sider Calvin’s comments on Psalm 8, which he believes will adequately “sum
up” his thoughts on human dignity to that point: “To be crowned with glory
and honour pertains, Calvin suggests, ‘properly to the first beginning of the
creation, when man’s nature was whole and sound.’ But in Adam, all fell from
this original nature, defacing the divine image so that ‘we were brought from
most high excellency, to sorrowful and loathsome neediness,’” Webster going
on to quote Calvin’s Christological conclusion that Christ “ ‘is the lively image
of God, according to which we must be amended, upon which all other things
depend.’”66 Of course, even outside of direct quotation Webster is paraphras-
ing Calvin, but it is instructive that this musing on Calvin’s ‘image of God / fall
of image / restoration of image’ motif is what Webster sees to be valuable in
summarizing his own thought on human dignity.
Thereafter, in the third and final thesis, the focus then shifts to the appli-
cation of Christ’s restored human dignity, which finds its proper dogmatic
location in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.67 Here, again, Webster notes, “Crea-
turely dignity is an ontological and moral relation to God,” one which, within
the divine purpose and telos, is brought to its completion by Spirit as “the life-
giver, one who generates, sustains and purifies obedience and active consent
on the part of the creatures in whom he is at work.”68 This leads Webster to a
discussion of human rights, fellowship, the communion of saints, and what he
calls “the inescapable horizontal dimension” of fellowship in love of neighbor,
concluding with a quote from Chrysostom emphasizing the common life and
dignity of the children of God.69

64 gwm 1:39.
65 gwm 1:40.
66 gwm 1:43–44. The quotation is from John Calvin, A Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 1 (Lon-
don: James Clark, 1965), 93–94.
67 “3. God the perfecter completes the dignity of creatures, gathering them into the fellowship
of the saints and empowering them actively to testify to God’s protection of human dignity”
(gwm 1:44).
68 gwm 1:44.
69 gwm 1:44–47.

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192 torseth

5 Further Dogmatic Reflections

What can be said of this conception of human dignity and its relation to Web-
ster’s comments on the image of God? First, it is abundantly clear that, despite
his reticence over ontological and cosmological considerations of the image of
God in humanity, Webster seems to equate human dignity with what is said
in the writings of Augustine and Calvin on the image of God in humanity.
This means that, lying dormant, as it were, in his thought on human dignity is
the groundwork for a broader imago Dei theology, allowing the dogmatician to
approach the question of a potential ‘Websterian’ doctrine of the image of God.
Second, and related to the first, this indicates a shift back toward cosmology
in a Websterian doctrine of the imago Dei, one that prioritizes a christologi-
cal emphasis without giving itself over to an absolute Christocentricism that
reverses traditional dogmatic order—a particular concern of Webster’s in his
later works.70 Third, this also means that the relational component of the image
of God seen, for example, in the work Holiness, could be better articulated
within Webster’s own turn to the scholastics into his middle and late periods,
as demonstrated here in his prominent recourse to Thomistic categories.71

70 See n. 13. Webster’s concern for the correct location and material order of considering
Christology is discussed throughout the 2015 essay “Christology, Theology, Economy. The
Place of Christology in Systematic Theology,” in gwm 1:43–57. Here Webster casts Chris-
tology as a “distributed doctrine,” similar to what he wrote on providence in gwm 1:128.
After elaborating on his own principles of systematic theology, Webster notes that the two
domains of Christology—theology and economy—must be rooted properly in a doctrine
of God and the works of God, meaning that, while “[n]o element in a system of theol-
ogy is unrelated to Christology,” at the time, this is “not to occasion over-intensification of
one indispensable element of Christology and attenuation of the way in which that ele-
ment directs attention to God’s inner life,” where God must remain “the formal object of
each Christian doctrine” (gwm 1:57). A broader engagement with Webster’s thought on
Christocentrism in dialogue with Herman Bavinck may be found throughout the section
“A Websterian touchstone,” in Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics, 177–187.
71 See especially Brash, Ex Humano Templo Loquitur, 205–214, discussing this turn as involv-
ing the discussion around the relation between nature and grace: “In summary, the under-
lying shift was from a broadly Barthian view, according to which grace is fundamental and
nature is in some way secondary or derivative, to a more Thomistic view, according to
which nature is fundamental” (214). This is demonstrable in Webster’s own gloss on the
citation of Aquinas in question: “God the creator gives life, and the gift of life includes the
bestowal of inalienable and inviolable dignity. The fact that we have our being ex nihilo
does not signify absence of value but the exact opposite: the irrevocable establishment of
the worth of created being. This worth has its need, not in order to furnish himself with
inferior subjects, but from limitless generosity as one who, being in himself entirely happy
and having no need, communicates being and worth by causing other beings to be” (gwm
2:35).

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 193

This warrants comparison with Webster’s brief exegetical note on the imago
Dei in Holiness. As noted earlier, the key word for Webster in that text is ἀνα-
καίνωσις, which he glossed “our comprehensive reintegration into the holy
covenant by the mercy of the holy God.”72 There, Webster had warned against
partitive and reductive views of the imago Dei that were, consequently, “static”;
instead, a broader account should be given that respects history and covenant.
This comment is helpfully extended here and bolstered by Webster’s decision
to make ontological concerns a matter of priority: creatureliness is givenness,
constitutive, and thus directed by God toward an end that is fellowship. As such,
the work of Christ, the ongoing reality of ἀνακαίνωσις, is not a purely soterio-
logical concept, although it is realized as such: instead, it is rooted in the fact
that “God the reconciler defeats creatures’ trespass upon their own dignity, restor-
ing them to fellowship with himself and re-establishing their destiny.”73 In other
words, “Human dignity is the dignity of creatures”; only when thus considered,
as resulting from createdness and humanity as “wholly originated,” can one
understand its postlapsarian reconstitution in Christ.74 Thus fellowship is tied
to the grace of being, where “God wills to be God with creatures and so honours
creatures by electing them to be those with whom he wills to be.”75 The ἀνακαί-
νωσις, as a sort of keyword for Webster’s view of the image of God, can then be
compared to his summary of Augustine’s section on human dignity: “The ‘true
honour’ of creatures—life in the divine image and likeness—is not so much an
unchanging property of humankind but the history of a relation between God
the Creator and his creatures.”76
In sum, for Webster, the imago Dei as ἀνακαίνωσις can be viewed in three his-
torical acts—creation, fall, and restoration—and pertains to the whole of the
creature’s createdness as grounds for fellowship with God in Christ, as eluci-
dated by his own “sum” of his thought by the reference to Calvin’s comments
on Psalm 8.77 This, in turn, assumes a dogmatic grounding for the imago Dei

72 See n. 13.
73 gwm 2:38.
74 gwm 2:33.
75 gwm 2:37.
76 gwm 2:39.
77 gwm 2:43–44. The pathology and phenomenology of this relational concept of the image
of God may be further considered as one that operates on the basis of the orientation of
the affections, something similar to Augustine’s “rightly ordered” love. Note the empha-
sis on the notion of loving God less and loving self more as the grounds for the loss
of the dignity of creatures in the lengthy quotation from Augustine. The same vein of
thought is conspicuous in the pastoral emphasis on the affections found in his sermons,
where often principles of love are extrapolated upon as the basis for fellowship with God

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194 torseth

in the relationality of the Trinity, as seen in the progression of his three theses
from Father to Son to Holy Spirit and in keeping with his own dogmatic princi-
ples.
Once more, pause at this point is warranted. The question from the out-
set has not been, “What was Webster’s doctrine of the imago Dei?,” but rather,
“What would a Websterian doctrine of the image of God look like?” This means
that the constructive burden is then on one’s own a posteriori reflections on
Webster’s theological anthropology. Indeed, even within Webster’s own corpus
there exists a gap between his fragmentary comments on the image of God
in Holiness—originally delivered as the 2002 Day-Higginbotham lectures at
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary—and “The Dignity of Creatures,”
where the latter exhibits many more elements of his latter turn toward scholas-
tic modes of theology. As such, this essay distinguished between Webster and
Websterian theology and is aimed at considering the latter.
Here a cue should be taken from trends in Webster’s own views of cosmol-
ogy and ontology in his later life. In this sense, a Websterian imago Dei theology
may further emphasize the ontic and created nature of human givenness on a
structural level, a development that would have been parallel to a similar turn
seen in his view of scripture and owing in part to the influence of Herman
Bavinck. Indeed, as early as the 2000’s Webster can be seen voicing discontent
with act-based ontologies such as those found in Barth, and in his later years
he advocates Bavinck over Barth.78 More concretely, his 2016 article “Ὑπὸ Πνεύ-
ματος Ἁγίου Φερόμενοι Ἐλάλησαν Πὸ Θεοῦ Ἄνθρωποι: On the Inspiration of Holy
Scripture,” Webster notes a break from Barth’s concern that allocating too much
conceptual weight to divine revelation abstracts scripture from its indirectness;
Webster then replies that these fears are “misplaced,” moving to directly cite

via restored human nature; for example, in “A Reawakened Affection,” Webster states,
“Sin means alienation from God, and alienation from God means the detachment of
the affections from their proper objects. Our desiring and loving become disordered”;
“Our affections no longer follow the truth; they become chaotic; they are a sign of the
breakdown of our lives as creature”; “Like everything else about us, the affections must
be judged and condemned, exposed in all their falsehood and malice and vanity, and
they must be recreated by the power of God’s Spirit” (Christ Our Salvation: Expositions
& Proclamations [Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020], ed. Daniel Bush, 7–8). A sim-
ilar interchange can be found in the later 2014 article, “Mortification and Vivification,”
well into his scholastic period: in sin, “The creature’s appetites and affections are thrown
into chaos, grossly over-extended towards temporal things and incapable of sustained
desire for God or good”; “Regeneration sets an end to this old nature and course” (gwm
2:106).
78 See above.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 195

Bavinck’s organic motif as an important element in articulating verbal inspi-

ration.79 If a parallel turn can be implemented in Websterian anthropology, it
would then look similar to Bavinck’s own account of the image of God as holis-
tic and hypostatic, pertaining to the whole person and definitive of anthropol-
ogy as a way of calling attention to the unique relationship between humanity
and God.80 This fits well with Webster’s concern that accounts of the image of
God are often too reductive or “static” as articulated in traditional theology. For
Bavinck’s own account of the imago Dei is one of being and becoming, respect-
ing also the social and relational aspects of humankind in toto including those
that account for the future reality of a redeemed—the reality of humanity as
an “organism,” operating in its fullness by reflecting Christ as prophet, priest,
and king as a “finished image.”81 In other words, if Webster thought Bavinck’s
organic conception of inspiration helpful, this same view of the relationship
between Creator and creature could then be extended into a Websterian doc-
trine of the imago Dei.
Where does this leave the question at hand? Although Webster’s own view of
the imago Dei—as fragmentary as it is minimalist, held tentatively in his own
corpus and weighed against his own concerns about imago Dei language—is
articulated along the lines of the constitutive relationship between the tri-
une God and humanity restored in Christ in the process of ἀνακαίνωσις, a
broader Websterian doctrine of the imago Dei could be said to include the
transitive concepts from Augustine and Calvin noted in “The Dignity of Crea-
tures,” which include elements of creation, fall, and restoration. Furthermore,
the nod toward renewal language would seem to place more of an emphasis
on the importance of ontological questions; implementing Bavinck’s organic
conception of the relationship between God and humanity in creation would
then tend toward a more holistic view of the human person as created in God’s
image. This resourcing of a Bavinckian doctrine of the imago Dei would then
be a potential solution to the problems Webster articulates regarding classi-
cal deficiencies of the doctrine as it relates to soteriology, and it would also fit
into his greater project of articulating an anthropology into the postmodern
discussion of humanity and eschatology from someone with similar premod-

79 Webster, “Ὑπὸ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου Φερόμενοι Ἐλάλησαν Πὸ Θεοῦ Ἄνθρωποι: On the Inspira-
tion of Holy Scripture,” in Conception, Reception, and the Spirit: Essays in Honor of Andrew
T. Lincoln, ed. Gordon J. McConville and Lloyd K. Pietersen (Cambridge: James Clark & Co.,
2016). This citation and its use by Webster is discussed by Pass, The Heart of Dogmatics,
181–182.
80 See Bavinck, rd 2:554–562.
81 Bavinck, rd 2:577.

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196 torseth

ern commitment and aims.82 In this capacity, a Websterian doctrine of the

imago Dei would then look similar to Jüngel’s doctrine as noted above: recti-
tude of body and spirit in correspondent fellowship with God in Christ. Such
a tendency helps accentuate and reinforce Webster’s robust account of cre-
ation in his later period and also gives greater specificity to humanity’s unique
relationship with God, distinguishing it from the rest of creation while allow-
ing it to remain a creature. This might in fact resemble something of his work
in the 2013 article “On the Theology of the Intellectual Life,” where he notes
the original wholeness and rectitude of humanity in relation to God’s perfect
intelligence, its deterioration with sin, and its regeneration by the Spirit, dis-
cussing it along the lines of being a capacity “which differentiates humans
from beasts, and which is intrinsic to all our dealings with reality.”83 Such an
account may also circumvent—or even answer—a fear Webster himself artic-
ulates in his writings: namely, the abstraction of anthropology from theology
proper, where the former is a related dogmatic locus of the latter, sub specie
Dei.84
As a final element of consideration, this can be compared to the writings
of Webster’s contemporaries, David Kelsey and Rowan Williams. Where both
those authors demonstrate a hesitancy to adopt the traditional language of
imago Dei in articulating either human ontology or the relationship of the
human creature to the Creator, a Websterian doctrine of the image of God in
humanity would be able to bridge the gap between classical accounts of the
human person and the concerns of modernity and postmodernity in a way
that accounts for concerns over a lack of theological concreteness (as in the
case of Kelsey) and that integrates imago Dei language into the construction of
theological anthropology in an organic way that compensates for what would
otherwise be a simple omission (Williams). Furthermore, it is difficult to see
how the dogmatic prioritization of a robust trinitarian and ontological concep-
tion of the imago Dei could not aid in Kelsey’s attempt to project a “triple helix”
conception thereof—indeed, a Websterian doctrine of the image of God that
includes the organicism present in Bavinck’s own thought would lend greater
systematic definition to Kelsey’s inductive approach, one that would be both
homogenous with Kelsey’s approach toward the imago Dei as a “wholeness-in-
diversity”—a common theme in Bavinck’s corpus—as well as less open to the

82 Note Webster’s concern for this in “Eschatology in Anthropology,” Word and Church: Essays
in Christian Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2016), 263–286.
83 gwm 2:145.
84 gwm 2:29.

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“life in the divine image and likeness” 197

critique of methodological regress, arbitrariness, or subjectivism.85 This more

concrete envisaging of imago Dei theology could likewise lend weight to dis-
cussions of creatureliness and human flourishing found in Williams’s writings
in much the same way as more formal articulation would in Webster’s as noted
above: where humanity must relate to God as dependent creatures, this is all
the more pertinent relationally and ethically due to humankind’s distinct cos-
mological role as imaging God and seeking to image Christ.
Where to go from here? Proposing a Websterian doctrine of the imago Dei
helps to lend shape to Webster’s anthropology while also helping to improve
our understanding of Webster’s greater theological project of speaking pre-
modern concepts into a postmodern context. Considering a Websterian doc-
trine of the image of God in this manner allows for further theological extrap-
olations on his own corpus of thought, especially with regard to his focus on
the relationship and distinction between Creator and creature, while at the
same time providing room for discussion of any of its potential dogmatic defi-
ciencies. In turn, this allows for a greater constructive discussion of the role of
image of God theology in contemporary theologies as theologians continue to
appraise the relationship between theology, modernism, and postmodernism.

85 Kelsey, Eccentric Existence, 2:898; see the critique of Han-luen Kantzer Komline, “Re-
viewed Work: Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology by Kelsey, David,” 121.

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