This is a quote from Webster’s ‘Word and Church’ concerning the freedom of the divine revelation. A fantastic collection of essays where not one word is wasted.
God’s self-communication is free, sovereign and spiritual. It is not called forth by acts undertaken by creatures, but as self-communication it is God’s freely-willed disclosure. It occurs in the majesty of his sovereignty, according to his own good purposes, with no origin beyond himself and no goal beyond those which he himself wills. Here God is inalienably subject: God’s Word is a free act, which itself sets the conditions for its own occurrence and reception and which so utterly transcends any stance we may adopt towards it. And so, as it is spiritual, unavailable for systematization, a reality which cannot be degraded into routines, creaturely configurations or conventional practices or habits of speech. In all these respects God is, as Barth puts in a strange phrase, ‘the Lord of the wording of His Word’; his communicative action is not restricted to providing an initial stimulus to human historical projects, but maintains its sovereign liberty in the whole sweep of its occurrence. In considering the Word of God, we never step outside the sphere of divine aseity.
Scott Kirkland
