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PROFILE: THE LINDBECK/FREI SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

In The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Westminster John Knox, 1984) Yale University theologian George Lindbeck presses us to a new appreciation of religion as an external word. He encourages us to view the faith as a culture that shapes our individuality, our experience, and even our emotions. Religion, he argues, is not primarily a collection of true propositions or, as we so frequently hear, a deeply personal experience of the transcendent; rather, it is a language or culture that enables us to characterize the truth and empowers us to experience the Holy. Lindbeck gives us new categories for rethinking the mission of the church and the nature of its ministry.

Christianity as Culture: Christian Formation
Lindbeck’s central argument is really quite simple: the Christian religion can best be understood as a culture into which each believer must be initiated and trained. Christianity envelopes us in a strange, new world in which people speak and hear, think and understand, act and react in distinctive ways. He speaks of religion as “above all an external word...that molds and shapes the self and its world” (34). Therefore, becoming a Christian involves us in something far richer than expressing our “personal religion,” and becoming faithful involves more than finding words for some previous experiences.

This cultural model of religion stresses the degree to which our experience is shaped and molded by cultural and linguistic forms. Lindbeck reminds us, “There are numberless thoughts we cannot think, sentiments we cannot have, and realities we cannot perceive unless we learn to use the appropriate symbol systems” (34). He cites the cases of Helen Keller and of supposed wolf children to illustrate our dependence on language. Acquiring language enables us to realize our specifically human capacities for thought, action, and feeling. Similarly, so the argument goes, to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system of a given religion. To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one’s world on its terms (34). To say then that Christianity is a culture is to emphasize the power of the religion to shape and form our experience of ourselves and our world.

Lindbeck wants to emphasize the extent to which our inner experiences are derived from the external features of a religion. He wants us to understand how our sense of praise and humility, of compassion and gratitude, of justice and joy are shaped and formed by the stories, the teachings, and the practices of our faith. None of this is meant to suggest that Christianity should remain a formal or “external” thing; Lindbeck is not arguing that we can be nothing more than observers or “tourists” in this culture. He is encouraging us to see that in order to become acculturated—in order to make our faith something “internal”—we need to recognize the distinctiveness of our faith and the particular demands it makes upon us. “To become religious…is to interiorize a set of skills by practice and training. One learns how to feel, act, and think in conformity with a religious tradition that is, in its inner structure, far richer and more subtle than can be explicitly articulated…. Sometimes explicitly formulated statements of the beliefs or behavioral norms of a religion may be helpful in the learning process, but by no means always. Ritual, prayer, and example are normally much more important” (35).

Lindbeck is very much interested in how we internalize this culture of Christianity. Unless we are to remain tourists, we must be immersed in and trained by the distinctive features of the culture. The process of inculturation involves new patterns of behavior, new emotions, and a new language. These changes take place in the context of a shared history, a shared community, and a shared destiny. More specifically the process of becoming a Christian involves orienting one’s life in a new and distinctive way. “To become a Christian involves learning the story of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience one’s world in its terms” (34).

Christianity as Culture: Church Formation
The Nature of Doctrine does not pretend to be a sociological study of religion. And yet the persuasiveness of Lindbeck’s discussion of religion and doctrine may depend on our ability to share his perception of the social scene. Through his eyes we picture a church that perches precariously on the brink of banality; a church that, having accommodated itself to the prevailing culture, no longer has a distinctive voice; a church that seems to have lost the ability to shape and mold the character of individual believers.

The church, according to Lindbeck, suffers from the general impression that Christianity is anything but a distinctive culture. “The impossibility of effective catechesis in the present situation is partly the result of the implicit assumption that knowledge of a few tag ends of religious language is knowledge of the religion” (133). This is partly a general sociological observation. Lindbeck refers to studies indicating that many of the unchurched insist on the genuineness of their Christian faith even when they deny central Christian beliefs. “The experience and self-identity of even the unchurched masses remain deeply influenced by the religious past. They often insist to sociological investigators, for example, that they are just as genuinely Christian as the pious folk who go to church; and they sometimes make this claim, interestingly enough, even when they deny life after death and consider the existence of a creator God unlikely. Jesus Christ is not the Son of God for them, and their picture of him may be drastically unscriptural, but his name is part of their being” (133).

For Lindbeck the problem is more than a sociological matter; the church must also bear some responsibility for our difficulty in grasping the distinctiveness of Christianity. The church, he thinks, has been far too accommodating to the prevailing culture and has failed to assert itself in its uniqueness. “In the present situation, unlike periods of missionary expansion, the churches primarily accommodate to the prevailing culture rather than shape it. Presumably they cannot do otherwise. They continue to embrace in one fashion or another the majority of the population and must cater willy-nilly to majority trends” (133).

These general problems have both social and theological origins. The individualism of American culture underlies the resistance of many people to submit themselves to a distinctively religious form of life. Lindbeck argues that “the structures of modernity press individuals to meet God first in the depths of their souls and then, perhaps, if they find something personally congenial, they become part of a tradition or join a church” (22). In this day religions are seen as “multiple suppliers of different forms of a single commodity needed for transcendent self-expression and self-realization” (22). 
From a theological perspective, Lindbeck argues that we have only accommodated to these social tendencies by emphasizing the primacy of personal religious experience. Personal piety and modernism have joined hand-in-hand to undermine the importance of the Christian religion as a culture that shapes and forms the lives of its adherents. He criticizes the church in general for becoming a purveyor of “individual quests for symbols of transcendence” rather than communities that socialize their members into coherent and comprehensive religious outlooks and forms of life (126).

Christianity as Culture: Doctrine Formation
Out of his theme of Christianity as culture, Lindbeck develops a number of variations that speak directly to the church and to seminary curricula. He suggests, among other things, a new role for doctrine, for Scripture, and Christian education. Lindbeck encourages a renewed interest in church doctrine. According to him doctrine is not something the church can afford to ignore if we hope to maintain a sense of shared identity. Doctrines, as he describes them, are “communally authoritative teachings regarding beliefs and practices that are considered essential to the identity or welfare of the group in question. The doctrines, may be formally stated or informally operative, but in any case they indicate what constitutes faithful adherence to a community” (74). This is not to say that all religious communities must deny individual formulations of the faith. On the contrary, Lindbeck argues, within the framework of doctrinal agreement there can be a “wide variety of theological explanation, communication, and defense of the faith” (76). But it is to say that all religious communities have certain teachings that enable them to establish and retain their distinctive identity.

Despite the theological flexibility that doctrinal norms allow and even encourage, the modern mood is “antipathetic to the very notion of communal norms” (77). Lindbeck offers a variety of explanations. He adverts to sociological analysis when he observes, “When human beings are insistently exposed to conflicting and changing views, they tend to lose their confidence in any of them. Doctrines no longer represent objective realities and are instead experienced as expressions of personal preference” (77). So long as doctrines are understood to be expressions of personal preference their use will seem arbitrary and coercive. “The suggestion that communities have the right to insist on standards of belief and practice as conditions of membership is experienced as an intolerable infringement of the liberty of the self” (77).

Consequently, the community suffers. The present day aversion to doctrine invariably shakes the foundations of communal identity. “Inevitably in this kind of atmosphere, communal loyalties weaken and are replaced by an emphasis on individual freedom, autonomy, and authenticity” (77). In this context Lindbeck proposes a new way of understanding doctrine. Doctrines, he argues, have an important place in the establishment and regulation of the culture. In this capacity they function, not as expressive symbols or as truth claims, but as rules which guide our speech, our practices, and our attitudes. “The function of church doctrines that becomes most prominent in this perspective is their use, not as expressive symbols or as truth claims, but as communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude, and action” (18). In other words, doctrines actually help shape our identity as Christians. They assist us in our attempts to speak and think in accordance with the faith. They are no more expendable than the rule that directs drivers to drive on one side of the road and not the other. Without them our ability to live out the faith would be dramatically compromised.

Christianity as Culture: Scripture Formation
Like the Reformers, Lindbeck advocates a return to the authority of Scripture. The Scriptures are essential in shaping the outlook of Christian people. But here again he emphasizes the formal or external elements of the religion while attempting to avoid dogmatism and inflexibility. He speaks of the Scriptures as a “world” that “supplies the interpretive framework within which believers seek to live their lives and understand reality” (117). By immersing ourselves in the Scriptures we enter a new world. “This happens quite apart from formal theories.… The Scriptures themselves evoke a domain of meaning” (117). “For those who are steeped in them, no world is more real than the one they create” (117).

Scripture has a formative role. It gives us a way of understanding ourselves and the world. Lindbeck suggests that the central stories of the Old and New Testaments do more than reflect what we have already experienced; they point out to us who we are. “It does not suggest, as is often said in our day, that believers find their stories in the Bible, but rather that they make the story of the Bible their story. The cross should not be viewed as a figurative representation of suffering nor the messianic kingdom as a symbol of hope in the future; rather, suffering should be cruciform and hopes for the future messianic” (118). When the Bible is properly employed, it enables us to understand and interpret our own lives. The teachings and stories, laws and prophecies enable us to pick out the pattern in the fragments of our lives. Lindbeck wants to be certain that Scripture remains a means of inculturation and transformation, a word under which we live.

Christianity as Culture: Education Formation
Christian education takes on a renewed importance in Lindbeck’s vision of the church. He envisions the process of Christian education as one of initiation and immersion in the culture of Christianity. This means among other things that attempts to understand and explain the faith are most successful when they go together with learning the language of faith and the life of faithfulness. He looks back to the early days of the Christian church for a model of Christian training appropriate to the cultural-linguistic outlook. There, he observes, “Pagan converts to the catholic mainstream did not, for the most part, first understand the faith and then decide to become Christians; rather the process was reversed: they first decided and then they understood. More precisely, they were first attracted by the Christian community and form of life…. Only after they had acquired proficiency in the alien Christian language and form of life were they deemed intelligently to profess the faith, to be baptized” (132). The essential task of Christian education is not to communicate true propositions or to elicit the expression of religious experience. It is rather the diverse and complex task of forming the lives of the faithful after the pattern of faithfulness. These proposals engender a sense of the church as a community that in a very real sense identifies us, a church that takes our lives and forms them into Christian lives, a church that enables us to sustain our faith in the face of a rampant and aggressive individualism.

Lindbeck does not encourage us to retreat from society. But he does suggest that unless we find a way of retaining our religious distinctiveness, we may find ourselves without a faith to witness to. The church he envisions is set apart from but not outside of the mainstream of modern life. “Religious bodies that wish to maintain highly deviant convictions in an inhospitable environment must, it would seem, develop close-knit groups capable of sustaining an alien faith. These groups need not withdraw into sociological ghettoes in the fashion of the Amish or the Hasidic Jews, but can rather form cells like those of the early Christian movement,…or develop ecclesiolae in ecclesia—little churches within the church—similar to those of monasticism, early pietism, or some portions of the contemporary charismatic movement” (78). Whether or not the time for such renewal has come, Lindbeck gives us a glimpse at the shape it might take.

In the end, The Nature of Doctrine challenges every would-be pastor to envision a church that shapes the hearts and minds of Christian persons, a church through which the flame of the Holy Spirit might rush bright and strong.

By Mark Horst, Ph.D.,  John Wesley Fellow and Senior Minister of Park Avenue UMC, Minneapolis, MN.