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Frei's Christology and Lindbeck's Cultural-Linguistic Theory1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Mike Higton
Mike Higton
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40 Brampton Road Cambridge CB1 3HL
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Extract

George Lindbeck's book The Nature of Doctrin is often taken as a manifesto for a supposed ‘Yale school’, comprising Lindbeck himself, David Kelsey, Ronald Thiemann, Garrett Green and several others. The work of the late Hans Frei (1922–1988) is normally seen as central to this school, and his difficult writings are often explained by recourse to, and assumed to be adequately represented by, The Nature of Doctrine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , February 1997 , pp. 83 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1997

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References

2 Lindbeck, George, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (London: SPCK, 1984).Google Scholar

3 I also believe that Lindbeck on his own can be saved from the worst of these criticisms, but that is not an argument for this paper.

4 See The Nature of Doctrine, pp. 30–45.

5 Ibid., pp. 73–90.

6 Ibid., pp. 92–96.

7 Ibid., pp. 112–135.

8 In a fuller discussion of Lindbeck we would have to pay more attention to the analogical nature of his appropriation of the secular theory, the theological transformations which he worked on that theory as he appropriated it, and the theological method he illustrated by this very process of appropriation. A far more positive picture might be painted in that way.

9 Frei, Hans W., The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Types of Christian Theology, ed. Hunsinger, and Placher, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

10 See the Introduction, pp. 1–10. Presence is the subject of Part One of the book.

11 Part Two of the book deals with Identity.

12 Part Four of the book deals with the New Testament depiction of Jesus' identity.

13 See, e.g., pp. 145–6.

14 Ibid., p. ix.

15 Ibid., pp. 157–164.

16 Whilst Frei does emphasise the circularity of his presentation, he does not draw that circularity out in quite the way I have done here, and Part 5 of the book, dealing with the Spirit and the Church, does not explicitly tie in with the discussions of the introduction. Nevertheless, I do not believe that this reading of Frei trespasses too far from his text.

17 ‘The “Literal Reading” of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?’ reprinted in Frei, Hans W., Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays ed. Hunsinger, and Placher, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) p. 142fGoogle Scholar. This essay is an important source for Frei's ‘later theology’.