Webb, Stephen H. The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004. Pg. 244. $24.99.

The biblical faith of Christians is rooted in the claim that God has a voice and that “the divine voice has a body in Jesus Christ.” Stephen Webb makes that assertion on page 36, and for another 203 pages of text he strikes up conversations with theologians, philosophers, rhetoricians, homileticians, performance-studies scholars, voice specialists, literary and aesthetic theorists, ethicists, historians, and others in an effort to get his readers to believe it. All the conversations are stimulating, and one comes away from them with fascinating insights aplenty to ponder, to agree with, or to question.

The heart of the book is to be found in the final four chapters, chapters 6 through 9. In chapter 6 Webb pairs Erasmus with Tracy, Luther with Niebuhr, Calvin with Hauerwas, including an appreciative critique of the thought of each so bringing theological perspectives of the reformation era and the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to bear upon what Webb calls “acoustemology,” systematic reflection on how Christians know what they know in worship.

Chapter 7, titled “The Sound of God,” is Webb's citation of Barth's contribution to Webb's project in acoustemology. Webb speaks of Barth as “the premier theologian-actor of the modern age” who with “radically dogmatic rhetoric” sought to return Protestantism to “its foundations in the drama of the spoken Word.” Webb finds Barth to be arguing for naturalness, honesty and directness in preaching. But these qualities must be developed for they are not instinctual and habitual. Each preacher's voice is meant to be an echo of the divine voice which may be heard in scripture. The Word scripture attests is “a particular person, not a general principle,” and this person, whose history is in fact the history of God, speaks a personal word to persons in context. Preachers therefore should do the same. Further, the sermon is a radically occasional genre, so there can be no general rule to govern sermon composition. God's voice is free but not unpredictable, for it can be identified as the voice of Jesus Christ.

In chapter 8, “Reading, Hearing, Acting: Toward a Christian Acoustemology,” Webb asks his readers to think about the Bible as an oral document. Reading should be slow and, when at all possible, should be done aloud. A sense of the author's voice and presence should be sought and, along with that voice, the voice of God. For Webb even silent reading done aright is a kind of embodied performance of the Word, covert perhaps, but nevertheless audible to the inner ear of the imagination. The Word is visible to the inner eye too and even capable of being touched as words spoken and heard may be said to touch people deeply. Scripture thus spoken and heard in worship might obviate the need for the theatrics customary in some “seeker services.” Such speaking and hearing of scripture, along with the Christ-embodied voice of God in preaching, also suggests that there may be no need to turn to power-point sermons or other video-assisted proclamations since, instead of enhancing the oral-aural, face-to-face eventfulness of preaching they may in fact impede it.

In chapter 9, “The Lasting Word,” Webb brings to the surface what all along is there to be felt as subtext for his work, namely that sound has a synesthetic destiny, that it implicates, enlivens, and transforms the operations of all the senses. This synesthetic destiny is grounded in the soundfulness of triune, divine life and is central to what lasting fellowship with that divine life entails. For sound and speech arise not out of silence but out of the vocality of the Eternal One whose Word is everlastingly an embodied Word. In fact divine silence itself arises from and is pregnant with the sound of the life that is life indeed, just as rests in music are in their own way audible and pregnant with what has come before and with what is aborning. In the reformation, Webb notes, sermons not only were heard but also felt, tasted and seen, all because of the synesthesia of the ear that is the gift of the Spirit. As breath carries the human voice, so the Spirit carries the voice of God, and human voices are truest to their nature when they echo the divine voice. So is heaven resonant with divine/human vocality.

Charles L. Bartow
Princeton Theological Seminary