In 1984, Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck published The Nature of Doctrine. In this new book he admits that he had conceived the earlier book as a slim prolegomenon to a major work in comparative Christian dogmatics. What resulted, however, was the catalyst that crystalized a new and important "postliberal" theology. Lindbeck’s work has been extraordinarily influential and remains required reading. Although postliberal theology may not be the wave of the future, it is one of the major movements shaping theology today.

Lindbeck offers a "cultural-linguistic" approach to religious practice and belief (adapting the philosophy of Wittgenstein and the anthropology/ epistemology of Geertz). This account construes doctrines as neither propositions that require assent (as some "premodern" cognitivists such as fundamentalists and neo-Thomists did and do) nor as expressions of religious experiences or feelings. Rather, doctrines are rules that shape the life of a faith community and the language that gives sense to its practice. Religious doctrines are the grammar of religious faith.

For example, the doctrine of the Real Presence is neither a proposition about the transformed bread and wine nor an expression of a believer’s personal response to Communion. Rather, it is a rich, multifaceted rule that guides the way we regard and receive the Eucharist. For us, it shapes authentic Catholic practice.

James Buckley, who edited the volume, argues that this cultural-linguistic approach can incorporate the insights of "cognitivist" and "experiential expressive" approaches. This seems basically right to me. Proper participation in our religious practices as guided by doctrinal rules forms us in believing truly and feeling appropriately. In the context of participating in the liturgy, of engaging properly in that Catholic practice, the believer learns how to recognize the truth of "This is my body" and how to respond with that feeling expressed in the prayer, "O Lord, I am not worthy that thou should come to me."

Lindbeck’s work challenges Catholics to reflect on the priority of learning how to be Christian (generally) and Catholic (specifically). Beliefs and feelings are not the foundation of faith. Rather, they are developments of good practice, of learning how to be a Catholic Christian (or a Lutheran Christian or a Reformed Christian). This collection of essays explores some of the implications and applications of Lindbeck’s approach.

Some postmodern academic theology seems to be conceptual play for its own sake. Lindbeck, on the other hand, writes for the sake of the life of the church. His work can be highly conceptual, but it is always clear, even when he addresses neuralgic points.

Consider, for example, the concept of infallibility. Lindbeck assumes that theologians have the primary goal of trying to understand the tradition faithfully in the present, not simply to make it relevant to the world. The point, then, is not to explain infallibility or explain it away. Rather, Lindbeck finds that faithful analysis is the better approach. In this instance, he argues that doctrines of papal primacy and infallibility should be disentangled. Once that happens, some Protestants and some Catholics may find themselves more in harmony with each other than they are with their fellow religionists who would expand infallibility and exalt papal teaching authority, or reject infallibility and minimize papal teaching authority. Rather than engaging in theological polemics with representatives of any of these camps, Lindbeck works with classic understandings of the concept of infallibility to make his own proposal.

There are traces of Lindbeck’s abandoned project in comparative dogmatics in the present collection. Essays address issues regarding Lutheran and Roman Catholic understandings of justification by faith; the Lutheran and Reformed traditions’ contributions to ecumenism; and the early Christian use of "the Jesus prayer," arguing that it (and other forms of prayer) made major contributions in Christianizing Platonic (or neo-Platonic) philosophy that played an important role in the debates about God and Christ in the fourth and fifth centuries. Prayer is the context for understanding these theories-they do not somehow stand on their own, independent of Christian practice.

Lindbeck is clearly concerned with ecumenism, especially in his more recent work in ecclesiology. Key for Lindbeck is understanding that the church’s story is continuous with that of Israel. Both are elected communities with definite identities and defined by a mission "to witness to the God who judges and who saves, not to save those who would otherwise be damned (for God has not confined his saving work exclusively to the church’s ministrations)." The church must be both Catholic in its compass and evangelical in its witness.

Lindbeck rejects supersessionism: The church in no way succeeds or supplants Israel as God’s chosen people. Rather, the church witnesses to the God of Israel and perhaps can be construed as a community that "expands Israel to embrace Gentile believers." God’s covenant with Israel remains, but with Christianity, God’s covenant can include Gentiles. This "new Israel" is not a replacement for the old in any sense. The church, then, is to be understood "as part of Israel." To be God’s chosen people, a community of active witness elected by God, is a challenge-and one that real communities of Jews and Christians all too often fail to meet.

Another important strand of reflection is on salvation. Israel and the church are unique witnesses to salvation, but finally God alone saves. Amos 9:7 is cited to support a claim that "God may call other nations (and, by canonical extrapolation, other religions) to tasks independent of the elect people," but only the elect peoples are witnesses to the God who creates, redeems, and judges. Lindbeck rejects pluralistic theories of salvation, and ascribes "the possibility of a universal redemptive role" only to traditions of the biblical faith. He is not agnostic about salvation outside the church, except in the sense captured by a saying of Karl Rahner reported by Eugene Kennedy in 1979: "’An orthodox theologian,’ Rahner says dryly, ’is forbidden to teach that everybody will be saved. But we are allowed to hope that all will be saved. If I hope to be saved, it is necessary to hope that for all men as well. If you have reason to love one another, you can hope that all will be saved.’" Salvation is a matter of hope, not belief; theories of salvation are misplaced because they try to find foundations for believing in, rather than hoping for, universal salvation.

ublished in a series titled "Radical Traditions," The Church in a Postliberal Age displays obvious strengths: a sustained and radical rethinking of the place and role of the church with regard to the world; a strategy for overcoming liberal-conservative stalemates; a strong emphasis on Christian identity markers and community practices; fresh insights that crack hardened doctrinal positions; a serious encounter with the traditions of Christianity, especially that first, founding tradition of Scripture.

Scholars have found various weaknesses in postliberal theology. Perhaps the most profound is its "neo-Barthianism," not in the sense of being "conservative" (for it is not), but in the sense that the scriptural narrative is the story of the church and must absorb all other stories. Though there may be true statements and right rules in other traditions, the only Truth and Righteousness is found in the Christian story.

For Lindbeck’s version of postliberalism to make sense, this Christian story must also somehow float free above any and every inculturation. Despite the wild differences throughout global Christian communities over twenty centuries, the postliberal claim that all faithful communities have "the same" story requires either that-if the story is to be the story of each of them-the story be so minimal and thin as to be unable to sustain a communal tradition; or that all the thick, inculturated versions of the story that can sustain communities are, finally, confused or polluted versions of the true story.

I do not see how Lindbeck and some other postliberals can satisfactorily resolve this dilemma. Christian diversity is too rich and deep for one story to be the story. While our stories have family resemblances (we are all of the Christian family), they differ, even with regard to the ways in which the Scriptures become our tradition-giving narrative. No story can encompass both Teilhard and the literalist creationists, yet both are grand Christian narratives.

Scriptural interpretation for postliberals is fundamentally typological. When Martin Luther King Jr. said that he had been to the mountaintop and had seen the promised land, "though I might not get there with you," he was doing classic typology: understanding the shape of the present situation by narrating it as a biblical story, the story of the Exodus.

But the great typologists were the Donatists, the morally rigorous North African schismatic sect of the fourth century that held, among other things, the validity of the sacraments depended on the uprightness of the one ministering them. Did they or their "orthodox" opponents get it right? Using Lindbeck’s criteria, the Donatists’ account of Christian life and faith are a better fit than that of their main theological opponent, the Catholic Augustine. Following Lindbeck’s account of true Christianity (and, pace a disclaimer), the Donatists much more than Augustine allowed Scripture to structure their lives and absorb the world. They clearly told their story as "Israelites," while Augustine did not. The Donatistic temptations to strong communal identity markers, to absolute commitment to the biblical narrative, and to refusal to take others on their own terms rather than on our story’s terms, seem to me to be the temptations of postliberalism. Moreover, typological interpretation of Scripture can easily lead to tendentious controversy. (Who are the Exodus people today? Who are the contemporary Pharaohs? Did the opponents of Martin Luther King Jr. see themselves as "Pharaohs of the South," as he did? Will it help me be a better Christian if I am called a "contemporary Pharaoh"?)

Some radical reformers, in constructing a tradition that they, too, could inherit (in contrast to Catholic and magisterial reformation narratives), claimed the Donatists among their ancestors. Neither sixteenth-century nor twenty-first- century radicals were or are Donatists. Yet patterns from earlier heresies and orthodoxies frequently reappear in transformed ways in Christian theological debates. The differences between postliberals like Lindbeck and their friendly "revisionist" competitors like David Tracy remind one in some ways of the patterns of difference found in Donatists versus Catholics in Christian North Africa.

This is the challenge for radical traditions like postliberalism: How do we avoid succumbing to the Donatistic temptation? How can postliberal Christianity remain a church for sinners, rather than become a sect for saints? Or are we to be neo-Donatists in a hostile world?

Postliberal theology seeks a place of stability and fidelity for Christian traditions in a postmodern world where whirl reigns. By providing a contemporary option for doing theology, it performs a tremendous service, not the least of which is challenging revisionists. We will be paying George Lindbeck and his colleagues thanks for a long time. [end]