Postliberal Theology - Theological Platform

Theological Platform

Partly a reaction to the modern, individualist, rationalist and romantic trends of theological liberalism, important postliberal thinkers included George Lindbeck, Hans Wilhelm Frei, and Stanley Hauerwas; theologians in this camp were once concentrated at Yale Divinity School, but are now influential at a number of seminaries and divinity schools, notably Duke Divinity School (where Hauerwas teaches). This movement has provided much of the foundation for other movements, such as radical orthodoxy, Scriptural reasoning, paleo-orthodoxy, the emerging church movement, and postliberal expressions of Evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Its ecumenical spirit originates from George Lindbeck's work, which was partly animated by his involvement as a Lutheran observer at the Second Vatican Council.

In contrast to liberal individualism in theology, postliberal theology roots rationality not in the certainty of the individual thinking subject (cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am") but in the language and culture of a living tradition of communal life. The postliberals argue that the Christian faith be equated with neither the religious feelings of romanticism nor the propositions of a rationalist or fundamentalist approach to religion and theology. Rather, the Christian faith is understood as a culture and a language, in which doctrines are likened to a "depth grammar" for the first-order language and culture (practices, skills, habits) of the church that is historically shaped by the continuous, regulated reading of the scriptural narrative over time. Thus, in addition to a critique of theological liberalism, and an emphasis upon the Bible, there is also a stress upon tradition, and upon the language, culture and intelligibility intrinsic to the Christian community. As a result, postliberal theologies are often oriented around the scriptural narrative as a script to be performed, understand orthodox dogmas (esp. the creeds) as depth-grammars for Christian life, and see such scriptural and traditional grammars as a resource for both Christian self-critique and culture critique.

The early postliberals followed Karl Barth's view that the best apologetic is a good systematic, and as such believed that Christians should "not engage in systematic apologetics. Postliberal theologians will make ad hoc connections with the philosophy or art or miscellaneous experience of the cultures around them, but they do not believe that any non-Christian framework, philosophical or cultural, sets the context in which Christian claims must be defended." However, later postliberals have qualified this aversion, and have seriously tempered its initial concerns over both apologetics and metaphysics (e.g., Paul Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics, and Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe). In this way, postliberal theologies have largely replicated earlier 20th-century debates surrounding the notion of the "analogy of being" (cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth). Unlike the pluralistic liberal trend preceding it, postliberal theology also tends to stress the dissimilarities between religious worldviews, and will often strike out against dominant cultural trends.

Scriptural interpretation remains fundamental for postliberal theology. There are at least four key exegetical differences between liberal and postliberal theology. First, liberal interpretation of Scripture is done with a preoccupation with the historical context, whereas postliberal interpretation is "an act of imagination," interpreting the text with the needs of the reading sub-community in the forefront. Liberal theology deals with aiming to understand the text as it would have applied to the past. Using a non-foundationalist approach, postliberal interpretation aims to interpret the text as it should be applied now and in the future. Second, liberal theologians stress dependence on unbiased reason to ensure finding the objective meaning of the text. Postliberal theologians, however, recognize the impossibility of reading without imposing subjective interpretation of the text by the reader, where such a notion of objective reading disintegrates. Third, "we read texts as bodied interpreters fully situated in some body politic." That is, each and every meaning is, to a certain degree, relative to the reader and his own set of contexts. Finally, because reading is always done with a concern for the sub-community, postliberal interpretation always contains a normative element, encouraging an active response. Liberal interpretation, on the other hand, center around time- and situation-independent truths that do not necessarily impel the reader to act. More typical of postliberal theologies today, however, is a return to patristic and medieval hermeneutical models for reading scripture theologically, uniting historical-grammatical and spiritual-figurative-allegorical senses into a coherent and faithful understanding of Scripture. The Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible is one example of postliberal scriptural interpretation at work.