As I read though Webster’s writings I may share some of my favorite sentences or paragraphs. The following quotes are taken from chapter one of The Culture of Theology.
“Christian Faith, and therefore Christian theology, emerges out of the shock of the gospel.” pg. 43
“There can be few things more necessary for the renewal of Christian theology than the promotion of awed reading of classical Christian texts, scriptural and other, precisely because a good deal of modern Christian thought has adopted habits of mind which have led to disenchantment with the biblical cannon and the traditions of paraphrase and commentary by which the culture of Christian faith has often been sustained.” pg. 45
“Good theological practice depends on good theologians; and good theologians are—among other things— those formed by graces which are the troubling, eschatological gifts of the Holy Spirit.” pg. 45-46
“Christian culture is the place where human life is caught up into the process of what the old Protestant dogmaticians called “continual” or “second” conversion, in which, the effectiveness of regeneration is brought to bear on human ruin. Continual conversion is the sanctification of human life through its mortification and vivification in Christ.” pg. 55
“Christian astonishment is the amazed realization that all human life and thought is undertaken in the presence of Easter, for Jesus the living one makes himself into out contemporary, startling us with the fact that he simply is. If Christian culture is a strange reality, it is because it seeks to live out that amazement; and if Christian theology is indeed to be “serious, fruitful and edifying,” if it is truly to live up to the little qualifier “Christian,” it cannot be a stranger to the disruption which amazement brings.” pg. 61
Nathaniel R. Martin 