John Webster’s Oxford inaugural begins with praise for his predecessor in the chair, Rowan Williams. If the fact of praise is routine in such a lecture, the content may have raised eyebrows. Williams’s intellectual work is praised above all for being ‘prayerful’ (italics original), which is not a standard part of the Oxford lexicon of…

I came to know John Webster partly because I moved in the wide orbit of Barth studies, where he was an acknowledged master, and partly because I was his successor teaching theology at Wycliffe College. Even after his departure for Oxford John would return to Toronto from time to time to connect with friends, including…