"The Nature of Doctrine," originally published in 1984, is one of the most influential works of academic theology in the past fifty years. A true classic, this book sets forth the central tenets of a post-liberal approach to theology, emphasizing a cultural-linguistic approach to religion and a rule theory of doctrine.

In addition to his account of the nature of religion, George Lindbeck also addresses the relationship between Christianity and other religions, the resolution of historic doctrinal conflict among Christian communities, and the nature and task of theology itself. This is a work that all theologians and advanced students should know.

This twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes an English translation of the foreword to the German edition and a complete bibliography of Lindbeck's work.

Description: In this long-awaited edition of the late Robert Lowry Calhoun's lectures on the history of Christian doctrine, a powerful case is made for the scriptural basis of the ancient ecumenical creeds. The way Calhoun reads the patristic authors helps us see that the Trinitarian ""three-yet-one"" and Christological ""two-yet-one"" creedal formulations provide patterns for sorting out the highly diverse biblical ways of speaking of God and of the Messiah (Jesus) so that they are not contradictory. The implied lesson (all the more effective for many of Calhoun's students, just because he let them draw this conclusion by themselves) is that the creeds are not to be understood as deductions from scripture (which they are not in any straightforward way) but as templates for interpreting scripture. It is Trinitarian and Christological patterns of reading--which are implicitly operative for vast multitudes even in churches that profess to be creedless--that make it possible to treat the entire bible, Old and New Testaments together, as a unified and coherently authoritative whole. Endorsements: ""Calhoun's Lectures on the History of Christian Doctrinehave a mythic status, so thank God we finally have them in reality. No one had a command of theology across the centuries more determinatively than Robert Calhoun. Those reading these lectures cannot but receive the tradition from one of its most generous minds. We are in George Lindbeck's debt for the labor of love in editing these lectures."" --Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University About the Contributor(s): Robert L. Calhoun (1896-1983) was Sterling Professor of Historical Theology at Yale Divinity School. He taught at Yale from 1923 until his retirement in 1965. Among his well-known colleagues and students were Roland Bainton, Hans Frei, Jaroslav Pelikan, Robert Wilken, Stanley Hauerwas, James Gustafson, and George Lindbeck. George A. Lindbeck is Pitkin Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology, Yale University. He is author of several books, including The Church in a Postliberal Age (2003) and The Nature of Doctrine (1984).

George A. Lindbeck is one of the most influential and important postwar American theologians. His books and essays generate debate not only among his fellow Lutherans but also among many other Christians as well as Jews and students of religion in the academy more generally. This anthology presents key samples of Lindbeck's writing, especially for readers who may be unfamiliar with his books and articles.

For each of these fourteen essays, editor James J. Buckley provides an introduction that sets the selection in context and points readers to what is at stake. Buckley has also contributed a substantial introduction to the book as a whole. Characterizing Lindbeck's thought as at once evangelical, catholic, and postliberal, Buckley shows how Lindbeck's Christian theology of "the church in a postliberal age" can be read as a "radical tradition."

Enhanced by substantive endnotes and by a modern names index and a subject index, this timely volume provides a superb introduction both to Lindbeck's challenging thought and to the significant theological debates surrounding postliberalism.