THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

THE POLITICAL NATURE OFDOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF

LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENTSCHOLARSHIP

HUGH NICHOLSON

Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA

This article argues that the power of religion to shape experience presupposes themobilization of religious identity through social opposition. This thesis is developedthrough a critique of George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine. The article firstexamines Lindbeck’s thesis that religion shapes experience in light of Talal Asad’scritique of Geertz’s concept of religion. It argues that in order to understand how‘religion’ shapes experience we must look outside the immanent sphere of cultural-religious meaning that Lindbeck, following Geertz, identifies with ‘religion’. Religiousauthority ultimately derives from the recognition of a social group. Next, looking atthe nature of doctrine in light of Kathryn Tanner’s thesis that Christian identity isessentially relational, it argues that church doctrines function to mobilize groupidentity through social opposition. In this respect they resemble the mobilizingslogans of political discourse more than, as Lindbeck’s theory proposes, thegrammatical rules governing Wittgensteinian language games.

We might expect Talal Asad’s widely acclaimed critique of CliffordGeertz’s influential essay, ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, to shed freshcritical light on theological projects substantively influenced by Geertz’sunderstanding of religion. In this essay I examine one such project from a‘post-Geertzian’ critical perspective, namely, George Lindbeck’s post-liberal theology as set forth in his now classic The Nature of Doctrine.Asad’s critique of Geertz’s concept of religion reveals an ambiguousrelationship between Lindbeck’s postliberal theology and the liberaltradition of theology that it opposed. On the one hand, Lindbeck usesGeertz’s understanding of a religion as set of cultural patterns that shapesocial and psychological reality to challenge the experiential foundation-alism that he takes to be the defining feature of the liberal trajectory oftheology that runs from Schleiermacher to Tillich, Rahner, Tracy, et al.On the other hand, Lindbeck, no less than Schleiermacher and his heirs,apparently accepts as unproblematic the notion of an autonomousessence of religion that is presupposed in Geertz’s definition. Thissuggests that the ‘experiential-expressivism’ Lindbeck associates with a

r The author 2007. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2007. Published byBlackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ,UKand 350Main Street,Malden,MA 02148, USA.

HeyJ XLVIII (2007), pp. 858–877

particular strand of modern theology (‘liberal’ in a narrow sense) is only amore or less contingent manifestation of an ‘essentialist’ outlook that ismore basic (‘liberal’ in a broader sense).1 That ‘liberal’ theologianswriting in the 70’s and 80’s also embraced Geertz’s understanding ofreligion supports this thesis that a favorable response to Geertz serves as akind of index of this broader liberal orientation.2

Asad’s critique of Geertz thus opens up a perspective from which wecan inquire after the assumptions that Lindbeck shares with his liberaltheological colleagues, assumptions whose historical and culturalspecificity is perhaps more apparent now than it was fifteen to twentyyears ago. Asad’s essay suggests that what they share is an assumedseparation of religion from the domain of power and politics.3 But neitherthe concept of power nor an unspecified concept of the political is yetprecise enough to specify what postliberals and liberals exclude from thesphere of religion.4 One could argue, in fact, that an acknowledgment ofthe dimension of social power in religion is precisely what distinguishesLindbeck from his ‘experiential-expressivist’ opponents, for such anacknowledgment is implicit in the thesis that religion shapes experience.In order to characterize the essentialism that Lindbeck shares with hisliberal opponents with any precision, we must recognize a dimension ofthe political that Asad’s essay on Geertz leaves largely unthematized.This, I suggest, is the principle of social antagonism embodied in CarlSchmitt’s controversial ‘concept of the political’. The concept of thepolitical – that is, the tendency for human beings to group themselvesaccording to friend and enemy5 – forms the basis of Schmitt’s critique ofmodern liberal society. He interprets the history of modern liberalism as aseries of vain attempts to transcend the political, that is, to realize aneutral, conflict-free domain (Gebiet) of human interaction.6 I suggestthat we view the tradition of modern theology in the context of thisbroader effort within Western culture to neutralize and ‘de-politicize’social relations. Schmitt’s analysis and critique of modern liberal societythus suggests that we take as the founding motivation for the liberaltheological tradition a concern with dissociating religion from socialconflict.

In light of this interpretive hypothesis regarding the defining feature ofthe liberal tradition of theology – which, as a hypothesis, can only bejustified retrospectively by its illuminative power – I wish to make twopoints. First, Lindbeck’s theology, while it affirms the social dimension ofreligion as essential – thus distinguishing itself from cruder versions of‘expressivist’ theology – stops short of acknowledging ‘the political’ as aconstitutive dimension, and not merely a contingent concomitant, ofreligion.7 Second, this attempt to ‘deprivatize’ modern religion while stillmaintaining its separation from the political is arbitrary and thereforeunstable; deprivatization ultimately forces one to acknowledge anantagonistic, ‘political’ dimension of religion.8 For, as I shall argue

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below, the power of religion to shape individual and communalexperience is constituted in part by social antagonism. In other words,the social dimension of religion that Lindbeck affirms presupposes thepolitical dimension that he implicitly denies.

In the pages that follow, I develop this thesis that the religious shaping ofexperience presupposes ‘the political’ through an ‘immanent’ critique ofLindbeck’s text. In other words, I hope to show how certain tensions andelisions in that text reveal the political dimension of religion. My argumentconsists of two parts. In the first I examine Lindbeck’s theory of religion inlight of Asad’s critique ofGeertz. I argue that Lindbeck’s thesis that religionshapes experience presupposes the dynamics of power and authority rootedin the world of social relations. To be specific, the power of religiousnarratives and symbols to shape experience ultimately derives from therecognition of a social group. An understanding of the religious shaping ofexperience thus takes us outside the immanent sphere of cultural-religiousmeaning that Lindbeck, following Geertz, identifies with ‘religion’.

In the second section I turn from Lindbeck’s theory of religion to histheory of doctrine, looking at the latter in light of Kathryn Tanner’sthesis (itself developed largely in response to Lindbeck) that Christianidentity is essentially relational. The argument that Christian identity isessentially relational implies an understanding of doctrine emphasizing itspolitical function, namely, that doctrines function to mobilize groupidentity through social opposition. In this respect they resemble themobilizing slogans of political discourse more than, as Lindbeck’s theorysuggests, the grammatical rules governing Wittgensteinian languagegames. Inasmuch as doctrines function as mobilizing slogans, theyembody the political in its Schmittian dimension.

Despite their difference in focus, the two parts of the essay are logicallyconnected. The first argues that the power of religion to shape experiencederives from the recognition of a social group, and the second that thesocial group is constituted, at least in part, through social antagonism.

THE LIMITS OF A FORMALIST CONCEPT OF RELIGION

In this first section I look at Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory in lightof Asad’s critique of Geertz’s understanding of religion as a (relativelyautonomous) cultural system.9 Asad’s critique of the tendency, asexemplified in Geertz’s work, to abstract a system of religious meaningfrom the power-dimension of society brings to light a fundamentaltension in Lindbeck’s project. On the one hand, Lindbeck’s polemicagainst experiential-expressivism exploits an abstract, ‘formalist’ con-ception of religion. On the other hand, Lindbeck’s proposal for an‘intratextual’ method of theology and his interpretation of the infallibilitydoctrine implicitly call such a conception into question.

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Asad’s fundamental criticism of Geertz’s definition of religion is that ituniversalizes an understanding of ‘religion’ that is culturally andhistorically specific. The understanding of religion as a cultural systemreflects and, to the extent it purports to be universal, naturalizes aseparation of religion from the spheres of politics, law, and science –cultural spheres that collectively represent what could be termed thepower-dimension of society.10 The notion of religion as an autonomouscultural sphere is the product of a reconfiguration of public power inpost-Reformation Europe in which political authority shifted from theChurch to the modern state.11 Geertz’s definition of religion effectivelyconceals the historical specificity of this notion of religion by mapping thedistinction between religion and power onto a social-scientific distinctionbetween the cultural and the social.12 The understanding of religion as acultural system implicitly confines religion to the ‘logico-meaningful’realm of the cultural, thereby excluding it from the ‘causal-functional’domain of the social.13 Geertz’s definition essentially packages ahistorically contingent conception of religion in terms of supposedlyneutral and universal analytic categories. Therein lies its genius – and itsspeciousness.

A corollary to this confinement of religion to the cultural, ‘meaning’dimension of human activity is that the specifically religious character ofa particular cultural system is assumed to correspond to the intrinsicproperties of the symbols that compose it. According to Asad, such aconception thus fails to recognize the extent to which what is taken to bereligious in a given context is contingent upon the outcome of ongoingstruggles over religious meaning taking place on the level of socialpractice. What is taken to be religious (and hence authoritative) in onehistorical context might not be in another.14 The formalist tendency toidentify the religious with an intrinsic quality of a set of cultural symbols(e.g., that they express a cosmic order of existence) fails to recognize therole of ongoing social processes in determining what counts as religious.

If anything, Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory suppresses the socio-political factor in the determination of religious meaning to an evengreater degree than Geertz’s theory. Lindbeck’s polemical interest indrawing the sharpest possible contrast between his position and liberal‘experiential expressivism’ discourages an acknowledgment of thepractical and experiential factors acting back upon the religious systemfrom the realm of social action. It is precisely these factors that get elidedin the translation of Geertz’s theory into Lindbeck’s thesis that theexternal aspects of religion shape experience. We can easily see this whenwe note that the concepts of ‘religion’ and ‘experience’ in this shorthandformulation of Lindbeck’s thesis correspond, respectively, to the cultural,on the one hand, and the social and psychological, on the other, inGeertz’s theory.15 Lindbeck’s thesis effectively narrows the concept ofexperience down to the psychological component of Geertz’s second


term; the social dimension of experience that gets silently dropped inLindbeck’s discussion of the relation between ‘external’ religion and‘inner’ experience. Now the thesis that religion shapes experience is mosttenable – that is, stands less in need of qualification – when one is talkingabout personal (‘psychological’) experience. When one widens theconcept of experience to include its social dimension, however, one isforced to concede a more intimate and complex relation between thereligious and the experiential.16 An acknowledgment of these socialdeterminants of culture and religion favors an understanding of thecultural or religious as a dimension of social action and experience, ratherthan as a reified system of meaning standing over and against them.17 Tothe extent that it elides the social dimension of experience, Lindbeck’sappropriation of Geertz’s theory, at least in the context of his discussionof religious experience, reinforces the formalist and reifying tendencies ofthe latter.

Ultimately it is Lindbeck’s underlying theological commitments thatlead him to exploit and amplify the reifying tendencies in Geertz’sconception of religion. As David Tracy and others have noted, thetheological doctrine of the revelatory Word addressing the humansituation from without underlies Lindbeck’s insistence on the priority of‘religion’ over experience.18 The cultural-linguistic religious system playsthe same role vis-a-vis human experience as the Word of God inLindbeck’s neo-Barthian, postliberal theology. This implicit homologiza-tion of Lindbeck’s concept of religion to the Word of God discourages anacknowledgment of the role of social processes in authorizing thecomponents of that system as religious.

The social and political determinants of religious meaning that wereeffectively suppressed in Lindbeck’s schematic treatment of the relationbetween religion and experience become impossible to ignore, however, inLindbeck’s discussion of the intratextual method of theology.19 Theintratextuality discussion fleshes out the thesis that religion shapesexperience by explaining how religious texts can be used to redescribe andthereby transform personal and communal experience. Somewhatironically, Lindbeck’s effort here to provide a ‘normative explication ofthe meaning of a religion for its adherents’ reveals the limitations of theunderstanding of religion exclusively in terms of meaning.20

Prima facie, the concept of intratextuality seeks to normalize aformalist understanding of religious meaning and truth. In contrast to anextra-textual approach, for which the meaning of the religious text orsemiotic system is identified with its reference to an objective orexperiential reality located outside of the text, the intratextual approachholds that the meaning of the text is immanent.21 Religious meaningproceeds outward from the semiotic system to the extra-textual world,not the other way around. Framing the contrast between the twointerpretive approaches in this way, however – namely, as a question of

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the source and directionality of religious meaning – leaves out what is thedecisive issue: the question of the relative distribution of power andauthority in a given historical context. The question of whether the bibleis interpreted in terms of the extra-biblical world or vice versa is afunction of cultural hegemony. The direction of interpretation simplyfollows the socio-cultural power gradient in a given historical context.The ‘great reversal’ that Hans Frei describes in his Eclipse of BiblicalNarrative is, on one level, easily explained by the Church’s loss of socio-cultural power and dominance in post-Reformation Europe. Theascendancy of the extra-textual, apologetic theology that Lindbeckbemoans reflects the Church’s relative weakness vis-a-vis the wider society.Lindbeck’s advocacy of a return to small, close-knit Christian enclaves canbe regarded as a strategy of neutralizing the power advantage that secularinstitutions and their corresponding forms of knowledge enjoy in a post-Christian society.22 The kind of sectarianism Lindbeck advocates seeks toblock the recognition of secular institutions that invests these with culturalpower. Shifting the center of gravity back to the Christian community willof itself reverse the interpretive flow back in an intratexual direction.Intratextuality is therefore not simply a matter of having a soundhermeneutical theory, as its association with a cultural-linguistic theorymight suggest, but rather implies a concrete political strategy.

Somewhat paradoxically, then, an understanding of the concept ofintratextuality takes us outside the immanent sphere of meaning andplaces us in the thick of the power relations taking place at the level ofsocial action. The authority that the intratextual approach presupposes isnot reducible to the formal properties of the biblical text. Pierre Bourdieumakes this point in his critique of J. L. Austin’s analysis of performativelanguage. According to Bourdieu, logical analyses like Austin’s are fatallyflawed by their underlying assumption that the key to the efficacy ofperformative speech is to be found in its formal or logical properties.23

Against such formalist approaches to the philosophy of language,Bourdieu argues that authority ‘comes to language from outside’.24 Inother words, the authority that renders certain speech efficacious isconstituted by the recognition that such speech receives from a socialgroup. Bourdieu’s analysis suggests that the social group is the ultimatesource of the power of religious discourse to redescribe humanexperience. David Kelsey makes the same basic point when he arguesfor a functionalist understanding of biblical authority. The authority of areligious text – or, as Kelsey might say, its status as ‘scripture’ – does notcorrespond to a property of the text; it refers, rather, to the way that textis used in a religious community to sustain that community’s self-identity.25 The authority that a social group recognizes in a religious textor discourse ultimately is a reflection of itself, though in misrecognizedform.26 It is through such discourse, moreover, that a social groupbecomes conscious of itself as such; it is in this way that authoritative


discourse mediates a sense of social identity. Thus a social group and thediscourses it recognizes as authoritative are mutually constitutive.Lindbeck emphasizes the socially creative side of this relation when hespeaks of the formative power of the Christian scriptures to constitute theChurch as the people of God.27

Only by acknowledging the social source of a text’s authority does thequestion of interpretive direction make any sense. It is difficult, if notimpossible, to tell whether a given interpretation is intratextual orextratextual if one confines oneself to the level of formal analysis. AsKathryn Tanner notes, there are no intrinsic criteria by which one candetermine definitively whether non-Christian ideas are being interpreted interms of Christian ones or vice-versa.28 Is one obliged to interpret apreponderance of non-Christian elements in a given interpretation ofChristianity as a concession to non-Christian standards of value andrationality? Or can it be taken as a measure of Christianity’s power toabsorb the extra-textual world into the world of the Bible? It is impossibleto tell on the level of formal analysis. In order to discern the direction ofinterpretation we have to widen our angle of vision to include theunderlying social dynamics, the hegemonic struggles for social recognitionand cultural influence. Only by looking beyond the intrinsic properties oftexts and other cultural artifacts are we able to account for the contingency,ambiguity, and reversibility that characterize cultural relations.29

Lindbeck actually comes very close to breaking away from a formalistunderstanding of religious authority in his discussion of the doctrine ofinfallibility. There he advances the thesis that the locus of infallibility – or,what is basically the same thing, the source of doctrinal authority – is thecommunity of competent practitioners of a particular religious idiom. Hearrives at this thesis by analogy from the linguistic principle that thespeech community is the ultimate arbiter of questions of correct linguisticusage.30 This account of the source of doctrinal authority connectsquestions of religious meaning to the socio-political realm of humaninteraction. It suggests that the question of ‘What is religious?’ or, morespecifically, ‘What is genuinely Christian?’ ultimately cannot be decidedon the level of the intrinsic content of a religious doctrine, practice, orsymbol. What constitutes a discourse, practice, or symbol as authenticallyChristian is the fact of its being recognized as such by members of aparticular Christian community. Even in traditions that have ahierarchical structure, such judgments have a communal basis insofaras church officials function as genuine representatives of the church.31

Infallibility belongs to doctrines, ecumenical councils, and even the Bibleonly insofar as these are received as such by the churches.32

By locating the source of doctrinal authority in the community,Lindbeck effectively dissolves the boundary separating the religious fromthe political. The suggestion that doctrinal authority is constituted by therecognition of the community implicitly ties the determination of what is

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religious to hegemonic struggles over religious meaning. The determina-tion of religious truth would seem to be inextricably intertwined with theexercise of social-political power.33

Lindbeck, however, stops short of affirming these consequences of histhesis regarding the communal source of religious authority. Hisassumption of an ‘inner logic’ of a religion to which the discursive andpractical habits of its mainstream community conforms preserves thenotion of a system of religious meaning standing apart from the powerdimension of society. The notion of an inner logic of a traditionanalogous to a language’s prescriptive grammar functions to insulate asystem of religious meaning from the contingency and antagonism of thesocial world. Put differently, the inner logic idea masks the hegemonicnature of the religious mainstream. In any tradition there are multiplefactions, often roughly equivalent in terms of membership and degree ofreligious commitment, vying for mainstream status. Even when onefaction has attained a position of undisputed dominance over the others,the identification of this faction as the mainstream is not an innocentmatter of empirical determination. To identify the dominant faction asthe mainstream is to contribute to the recognition that sustains itshegemony. Crediting the religious mainstream with safeguarding the‘inner logic’ of the tradition simply normalizes the religious habits of thefaction that happens to have achieved social dominance.34

The inner logic idea thus represents an ideological conflation of theprescriptive and the descriptive. It is here that Lindbeck’s linguisticanalogy betrays him. Lindbeck’s notion of a privileged, mainstreamcommunity of religiously competent speakers conforming to a tradition’sinner logic recalls the discredited view of 18th century grammarians thatthe standard form of a language conforms more closely to an assumedstandard of reason than the local dialects of that language.35 Now weknow, of course, that the standard form of a language like modern Englishor French was originally only one of a number of local speech-forms (or,as in the case of modern Italian, an amalgam of a restricted subsetthereof). The standard formwas typically simply the dialect that happenedto attain cultural dominance thanks to the economic and politicaldominance of its original locality (hence the adage that a language is but adialect backed up by an army).36 A purely cultural-linguistic theory ofreligion – that is, one divorced from any theological commitments – wouldtherefore suggest that the religious mainstream is simply the faction thatmanaged to establish hegemony over its proximate rivals.

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE

Asad’s critique of Geertz focuses on what could perhaps be picturedas a ‘vertical’ relation between a system of religious meaning and the


power-dimension of society. There is, however, another, ‘horizontal’dimension to the relation between modes of religious signification andforms of social power that up until this point has not come clearly intoview. This latter dimension refers to the way in which forms of religiousdiscourse sustain relations of social opposition. This ‘Schmittian’dimension of religious discourse comes to the fore when we shift ourattention from Lindbeck’s theory of religion to his theory of doctrine. Inthis section I shall argue that doctrine is one means by which religiouscommunities establish group identity and consolidate authority throughsocial opposition.

Such an understanding of doctrine suggests itself when we consider thenature of doctrine in light of Kathryn Tanner’s critique of postliberalismin her book Theories of Culture. The feature of Lindbeck’s postliberalismthat Tanner singles out for criticism is its understanding of a distinctivelyChristian way of life as a self-generating and self-contained whole.37

Against this understanding of Christian identity, Tanner argues thatChristian identity is essentially relational. Building on Tanner’s critiqueof the postliberal conception of Christian identity, I would like to arguethat this conception of a Christian way of life as a self-contained wholeallows Lindbeck to affirm the essentially social nature of religion withouthaving to acknowledge its oppositional, ‘political’ dimension.38 Tanner’scritique thus clears the way for a recognition of the political, particularlyas this principle is embodied in religious doctrine.

Although this assumption regarding the self-contained nature of aChristian form of life coheres with the Geertzian understanding ofreligion as a semi-autonomous cultural system, it derives from a differentsource. As Tanner perceptively notes, the notion of a Christian way of lifeas a kind of self-sufficient entity is presupposed in the theologicalproblematic that Lindbeck inherits from the modern theologicaltradition, namely, the debate concerning the stance Christianity oughtto take towards its cultural environment. The debate between liberals andpostliberals on this question assumes the prior existence of the Christianand non-Christian ways of life as well-defined wholes.39 Although thisassumption is implicit in both sides of the debate, it is most pronounced inthe postliberal position. Lindbeck’s Barthian concern with preserving thedistinctiveness of a Christian way of life against outside influence assumesthat cultural interaction poses a challenge to Christian identity. This inturn presumes that Christian identity must be based on somethingstanding apart from outside influence.40 In Lindbeck’s theology, whatguarantees the distinctiveness of a Christian way of life is the cultural-linguistic framework through which Christians understand and experi-ence the world. While Lindbeck readily concedes that the concreteunderstandings, experiences, and practices of a historical Christiancommunity reflect the influence of the outside culture, he is apparentlyunwilling to consider this possibility with respect to the Christian

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interpretive framework itself.41 Here the theological demand for anahistorical basis of Christian identity dovetails with an essentialistconcept of religion as a cultural-linguistic system abstracted fromhistorical processes.

Tanner argues that this notion of self-originating core of religiousmeaning is not only difficult to justify from a historical/empirical point ofview, but is also unnecessary to account for Christian identity. As for thefirst point, the exemption of some central aspect of Christianity – thebiblical narrative, say, or a central doctrine – from outside influence ispurely arbitrary. The core doctrines of Christianity and even the biblicalnarrative itself can be shown to be constituted by an apologetic withcontemporary religious and cultural movements.42 As for the secondpoint, the assumption regarding the antithetical relationship betweenChristian identity and cultural interaction rests on a misunderstanding ofthe way cultures and religions achieve a sense of identity. Appealing topostmodern theories of culture, Tanner argues that Christianity achievesa distinct identity not in spite of its interaction with the surroundingculture, but rather precisely in and through that interaction.43 Adistinctive Christian sense emerges in the particular way that Christiansuse and appropriate outside materials. The acknowledgment that outsideinfluence ‘goes all the way down’ thus is not fatal to the notion ofChristianity as a distinctive way of life.44

Tanner’s thesis that ‘Christian identity is essentially relational’ goes along way towards an acknowledgment of the oppositional, ‘political’factor in the formation of religious community. However, her under-standing of Christian identity in terms of the Michel De Certeau-inspiredconcept of a ‘creativity of consumption’ downplays this oppositionalelement. Outright opposition is only one of the many possible waysChristians relate to the outside world. The notion of rival cultures ascontrasting wholes conceals a subtle and complex range of interactionsoccurring on the level of practice. On this practical level it makes littlesense to speak of oppositional identity, or even of communal boundaries,except in a rather qualified sense.45

Tanner’s focus on the practical level of cultural interaction marks asubtle shift from a descriptive to a normative analysis. A normativeconcern with countering the ill effects of essentializing contrasts betweencultures leads Tanner to focus on this practical dimension of Christianidentity at the expense of what might be termed the ideological.46 Theformer refers to a micro-level of discourse and practice where Christianswork out a way of life by appropriating cultural practices on a case-by-case basis.47 The latter refers to a macro-level of discourse whereChristians situate themselves in a given milieu by drawing contrastsbetween themselves and their cultural and/or religious rivals.48 Given theinevitable tendency for such discursive practices to occlude the diversitywithin communities as well as the commonalities between them, Tanner’s


tendency to downplay this second, ideological dimension of Christianidentity is understandable and largely justified in an account of Christianidentity forming the basis of a constructive theological proposal.Nevertheless, as long as one remains within a descriptive mode ofanalysis, one is forced to acknowledge this ideological dimension ofreligious identity. For such ideological discourses, to the extent that theyshape perceptions of social reality, are constitutive of that reality.Moreover, the creative ‘troping’ of borrowed materials that occurs on thelevel of practice may in fact presuppose the ideological interest inmaintaining cultural boundaries. A purely formal concern withcontrasting what one does from others is often what ultimately motivatesone to appropriate otherwise obligatory outside practices in a distinctiveway.49 Inasmuch as the practical dimension of Christian identitypresupposes the ideological, we could say that a contrastive oroppositional attitude towards the wider culture presides over the set ofpossible relations occurring on the intra-atomic level of practice.50

A due acknowledgment of the ideological dimension of Christianidentity allows us to incorporate Tanner’s thesis that Christian identity isessentially relational into a theory of doctrine. Doctrine, after all, is thechief ideological means through which Christians establish a sense ofsocial identity.51 Significantly, Tanner’s discussion of Christian identitydoes not include an analysis of the nature of doctrine, an omission thatreflects the critical, revisionist character of her theological proposal.52 If itdid, her thesis regarding the essentially relational nature of Christianidentity would favor an understanding of doctrine emphasizing its role inmobilizing group identity through contrasts with rival communities. Suchan understanding of doctrine highlights the ways in which churchdoctrines resemble the mobilizing slogans of political discourse. This isnot to say, of course, that political mobilization is the only function ofdoctrine. But I would venture to say that it is one the most directlyrelevant to its role in sustaining a sense of religious identity.

Now church doctrines exhibit two features in particular that likenthem to political slogans. First, they serve as formal markers vis-a-visrival communities. It is chiefly through its doctrines that a Christiancommunity defines itself in relation to other religious communities and/orsocial groups. Doctrines select from a body of belief and practice thosefeatures that establish contrasts with its proximate rivals. A concern withforging a distinct sense of identity singles out certain elements of atradition for special significance. This act of selection introduces adimension of meaning into these selected elements that is irreducible towhatever intrinsic meaning they might have. The former dimension ofmeaning differs from the latter in that it is differential, rather thanreferential, in nature. In this way the elements of religious belief andpractice selected out by doctrine resemble the phonemes in a system oflanguage.53 Lindbeck hints at this contrastive dimension of doctrinal

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meaning when he observes that ‘the official doctrines of a communitymay poorly reflect its most important and abiding orientations orbeliefs’.54 In other words, what is doctrinally significant does not alwayscoincide with what is theologically or religiously significant. The politicalnature of doctrine comes clearly into view when these two dimensions ofmeaning fail to coincide, or, as Lindbeck puts it, when otherwise trivialpoints of difference, such as the infamous iota that separated the Nicenehomoousios from the semi-Arian homoiousios, become matters of life anddeath importance.55 In a revealing passage quoted favorably byLindbeck, John Henry Newman compares the seemingly insignificantpoints of doctrine and worship debated with great seriousness bytheologians, on the one hand, with the trifles that hold political partiestogether, on the other.56 In both cases, what makes such otherwise trivialpoints of difference significant is their role in mobilizing group identity.

The second feature of church doctrines that reveals their kinship withpolitical slogans is their vagueness and ambiguity. Doctrinal formula-tions are often vague and ambiguous in order to secure the broadestpossible base of support. In other words, doctrines are formulated in sucha way that they are amenable to a variety of interpretations.57 Thisambiguity allows the members of a diverse constituency to recognize theirown particular concerns and viewpoints in a common set of affirmations.Because of this vagueness and ambiguity, it is, to quote Lindbeck onceagain, ‘usually much easier to specify what doctrines deny than what theyaffirm’.58

If we accept Bourdieu’s claim that discursive authority derives fromthe recognition of a social group, we see that the vagueness that ensuresconsensus is essential to doctrine’s capacity to mediate authority.Doctrinal statements exhibit the circular logic of political representation,described by Bourdieu, whereby ‘the representative receives from thegroup the power of creating the group’.59 Thus the authority derivingfrom the social group and consolidated in doctrine endows certaindiscourses and gestures with the performative force needed to enact groupidentity. The doctrines performatively enacted in a liturgical or othergroup setting resemble the mobilizing slogans used by politicians tomobilize a social group in support of a particular cause.60 The history ofthe doctrinal controversies of the early Church supports such anunderstanding of theological doctrine in terms of political mobilizingslogans. As H. A. Drake’s impressive study of Christianity in the periodof Constantine shows, doctrinal formulas were the primary means bywhich fourth century bishops mobilized a base of popular support in theirstruggles for ecclesiastical hegemony and political influence.61

These two features of doctrine – namely, their differential meaning andtheir vagueness – are simply two aspects of the same political function:doctrines mobilize identity by establishing an in-group/out-groupcontrast. The twofold nature of doctrine thus reflects the sociological


principle that conflict on one level of analysis produces solidarity on thelevel below it. Or, in other words, doctrines embody the Schmittianprinciple of identity-formation through social antagonism.

Lindbeck himself acknowledges many of the features of doctrine thatsuggest such a political interpretation of doctrine, namely, that doctrinesare the products of conflict, that doctrinal significance does not alwayscoincide with what is abidingly significant in terms of religious belief andpractice, and that doctrines are vaguely formulated so as to be amenableto a range of interpretation. His proposal for a regulative theory ofdoctrine, however, obscures this political-ideological function.

Lindbeck develops his regulative theory as a solution to a particularproblematic arising out of ecumenical discussions. The chief selling pointfor the understanding of doctrines as rules is that it allows for theecumenical possibility of ‘doctrinal reconciliation without capitulation’.Lindbeck lends some rhetorical force to his argument by presenting theregulative theory as a quasi-scientific hypothesis for the doctrinalreconciliation without capitulation that he has personally experiencedas a long participant in ecumenical dialogue.62 Neither of the twocurrently available theories – namely, the understanding of doctrines asfirst-order, informative truth claims, on the one hand, and as expressionsof inner experiences, on the other – can account for this ecumenicalphenomenon. The former because it excludes the possibility of doctrinalreconciliation without capitulation; the latter because it fails to recognizethe normativity of doctrine that would make such reconciliation ameaningful achievement.63 The concept of rule provides the combinationof normativity and flexibility needed to satisfy the twin demands of theecumenical problematic. On the one hand, the normativity of rules allowsthe regulative theory to affirm the communally binding character ofchurch doctrines. On the other, the situational nature of this bindingforce – in other words, that certain conditions have to be in place for rulesto be binding – allows his theory to avoid the rigidity associated with theunderstanding of doctrines as ontological truth claims.64

Lindbeck’s understanding of doctrines as rules provides a compellingsolution to the ecumenical problematic that chiefly concerns him. And yetthe regulative theory fails to provide an adequate explanation of howdoctrine brings about a sense of Christian identity.65 In particular, theregulative theory fails to recognize the differential, ‘phonemic’ dimensionof group identity. In default of a clear explanation of exactly how adistinctive sense of Christian identity emerges in and through theregulation of religious speech and behavior, the regulative theory suggests– though, admittedly, does not logically entail66 – the simplistic view thatChristian identity derives in rectilinear fashion from the form of life thatdoctrinal rules regulate. Communal boundaries are then simply naturalmarkers of a distinctive form of life bearing no essential relation to whatgoes on outside. Inasmuch as the regulative theory presupposes the prior

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existence of the way of life to be regulated, it lends itself readily to anunderstanding of Christian culture as a kind of self-subsisting entity orsubstance – the very notion that Tanner’s critique so effectively calls intoquestion. Put differently, the Geertzian understanding of ‘religion’ as anautonomous system provides a measure of ‘cover’ for Lindbeck’s effectiverestriction of doctrine to its regulative function. Thus we see howLindbeck’s theory of doctrine coheres with the classic anthropologicalconcept of culture that is more or less implicit in Geertz’s understandingof religion as a cultural system. What holds together Lindbeck’s theory ofdoctrine and his theory of religion – the two ‘books’ that, according toDavid Tracy, comprise The Nature of Doctrine67 – is a kind of synergichomology between Geertz’s understanding of a religion as a self-contained cultural system, on the one hand, and Wittgenstein’s conceptof a rule-governed, autonomous language game, on the other.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: DOCTRINE AS DISCOURSE

A recognition of the ideological function of doctrine draws specialattention to its status as discourse. In other words, the mobilizing power ofa given doctrine comes into view only when we take account of itsdiscursive context; its capacity to mobilize identity cannot be read off itsinherent linguistic properties. In this respect, an understanding of doctrineemphasizing its political-ideological function parallels the critique of theformalist conception of religion as a cultural-linguistic system.

The understanding of doctrine as discourse implies a degree ofindependence between its mobilizing capacity, on the one hand, and itspropositional or expressive content, on the other. Just as virtually anystatement can assume an ideological function under the right discursiveconditions, as Terry Eagleton notes, so too can virtually any belief,expression or practice potentially serve as a differential marker ofreligious identity.68 This relative independence of ideological functionand propositional content has two implications, the first of whichsuggests a hospitable stance toward a more traditional, propositionalistunderstanding of doctrine and the second a decidedly more critical one.On the one hand, an understanding of doctrine emphasizing itsideological function does not exclude its cognitive or expressive ones.Nothing prevents a doctrinal truth claim from assuming a sociologicalfunction. On the other hand, however, the independence of theideological and the propositional favors the development of proposi-tionally attenuated forms of discourse. Here a theory of doctrineemphasizing its ideological function presupposes (and thereby counte-nances) the critical conclusions drawn by the early stages of the logicalanalysis of religious language (A. J. Ayer, Antony Flew, et al.). It suggeststhat the informational vacuity of (at least some) theological statements


renders them particularly suitable for the mobilization of identity. Suchstatements have little in the way of informative content to interfere withtheir performative use in evoking social sentiment. In this respecttheological doctrines resemble the formalized speech of political oratoryas analyzed by the anthropologist Maurice Bloch. Based on his study ofthe solemn, stylized political oratory of the Merina of Madagascar, Blochdevelops the more general thesis that propositionally attenuated languageserves as a particularly suitable medium for the communication oftraditional authority.69 The restriction of syntax that fixes formalizedspeech to its context of utterance (and thereby inhibits the combinatorypotential of linguistic units upon which the communicative power oflanguage depends) at the same time enhances its ability to sustainrelations of authority. This it does by greatly restricting the number ofpossible responses to a formalized utterance, to the point of excluding thepossibility of challenge and contradiction.70 Put differently, formaliza-tion blocks the hemorrhaging of authority into persuasion that occurswhenever the former is forced to explain itself.71 Bloch’s thesis thusreveals another dimension to the connection, noted above, betweendoctrinal vagueness and the consolidation of authority. It suggests thatthe obscurity and informational vacuity frequently noted with referenceto theological doctrines not only renders such doctrines amenable to arange of interpretations, but also preserves a structure of authorityagainst excessive rationalization.72

Notes

1 Privatistic ‘experiential-expressivism’, on the one hand, and an outlook assuming themodern concept of religion, on the other, correspond, respectively, to two moments of thesecularization thesis as analyzed by Jose Casanova, namely, the privatization of religion and thestructural differentiation of cultural spheres. Casanova argues that the relation between thesetwo moments is contingent, such an acceptance of the latter need not entail the former. See hisPublic Religions in the Modern World (Chicago, 1994), 19–39 and passim.

2 For example, Gordon Kaufman (see his review of The Nature of Doctrine in TheologyToday 42 (July, 1985), 241.). For Gordon Michalson (‘The Response to Lindbeck’, ModernTheology 4:2 (January, 1988), 111.) this indicates that Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic theory ofreligion ‘is separable in principle from his postliberal theological interest’. While not denying thedistinction between these two components of Lindbeck’s project, however, I would argue thatthe simple fact that he accepts Geertz as unproblematic betrays an underlying set of assumptionsabout the nature of religion that could be called ‘liberal’ in the broader sense.The first reviewers of The Nature of Doctrine may have anticipated this assessment when they

pointed out that Lindbeck’s characterization of liberal theology as ‘experiential expressivism’was a caricature (see, e.g., David Tracy, ‘Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology: A Reflection’,The Thomist 4:9 (July, 1985), 462–5. That Lindbeck’s postliberalism is apparently forced to setup straw men in its effort to present itself as a clear alternative to the liberal tradition can bereadily explained on the hypothesis that it retains the fundamental assumptions of the latter.

3 Talal Asad, ‘The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category’ in Genealogiesof Religion (Johns Hopkins, 1993), 28–9.

4 Cf. Ivan Strenski’s argument that the predication of an unspecified concept of power toreligion verges on banality (‘Religion, Power, and Final Foucault’, Journal of the AmericanAcademy of Religion 66:2 (Summer 1998), 347.).

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5 Schmitt sets forth his definition of the political in The Concept of the Political, GeorgeSchwab, trans. (Chicago, 1996), esp. 25–37.

6 Carl Schmitt, ‘Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen’, in Positionenund Begriffe im Kampf mit Weimar – Genf – Versailes 1923–1939 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,1988), 128.

7 William Placher draws attention to this aspect of Lindbeck’s postliberal theology (namely,that it affirms the essentially communal nature of religion) when he argues that it is, in at leastone sense of the term, more ‘public’ than revisionist theologies such as David Tracy’s. See his‘Revisionist and Postliberal Theologies and the Public Character of Theology’, 407–16.

8 My argument here runs parallel to Asad’s critique of Casanova’s argument (see note no. 1above) that a deprivatized religion can be reconciled with modernity on the condition that itrenounce its coercive powers. Asad argues that publicly expressed religious conviction ultimatelycannot confine itself to purely persuasive means. See ‘Secularism, Nation-State, Religion’, inFormations of the Secular (Stanford, 2003), 181–7.

9 One could examine Lindbeck’s suppression of the political from another angle, namely,through a critique of his appropriation of the principle of the sociology of knowledge astransmitted by Peter Berger. The sociology of knowledge universalizes the Marxist concept ofideology, neutralizing the latter’s critical and polemical edge in the process. But even in theclassic works of Karl Mannheim the principle of the sociology of knowledge remains rooted inthe realm of politics. When we get to Berger’s formulation of the concept, however, traces of itspolitical provenance have all but disappeared. The evolution of the political concept of ideologyinto the non-political concept of a cultural-religious worldview is virtually complete.

10 Genealogies, 28; the phrase comes from John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory(Blackwell, 1993), 104 and passim.

11 See, e.g., William T. Cavanaugh, ‘A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House’: TheWars of Religion and the Rise of the State’, Modern Theology 11: 4 (October, 1995), 397–420.

12 Genealogies, 32.13 This way of expressing the Geerzian/Parsonian distinction between the cultural and the

social comes from James Fernandez, ‘Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult’,American Anthropologist 67:4 (1965), 913.

14 Genealogies, 37–9, and passim.15 For Geertz’s distinction between the cultural, the social, and the psychological, see

‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books, 1973), esp. 92–3.16 Lindbeck eventually concedes a dialectical relation between religion and experience, but

maintains that the former remains the ‘leading partner’ in the relationship (The Nature ofDoctrine (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), 33–4). When one examines thesestatements in light of Lindbeck’s claim that the cultural-linguistic interpretive frameworkrepresents the constant element of a religion (pp. 79–84), however, we can infer that thisgrammatical/symbolic core is what allows religion to remain the leading partner. Thetransformation of religion that Lindbeck acknowledges does not extend to this essential core.Ultimately he hasn’t conceded as much as it might first appear.

17 For a critique of the substantive concept of ‘culture’ in favor of the dimensional, adjectivalconcept of ‘the cultural’, see Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minnesota, 1993), 12–13.

18 See David Tracy’s memorable remark about Lindbeck’s postliberal project that, ‘Thehands may be the hands of Wittgenstein and Geertz but the voice is the voice of Karl Barth’.(‘Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology’, 465.)

19 It is significant that the acknowledgment of the social determinants of religion here(implicit in the transposition of the religion-experience relation into that of Christianity andculture) transforms what purported to be a descriptive thesis into a normative proposal. Thusread in terms of the ‘religion shapes experience’ thesis, the discussion of intratextuality exposesthe normative underpinnings of Lindbeck’s supposedly neutral theory of religion.

20 The Nature of Doctrine, 113.21 The Nature of Doctrine, 114.22 Lindbeck argues for a particular kind of sectarianism (namely, a ‘sociological’ and

‘ecumenical’ sectarianism as opposed to a ‘theological’, ‘schismatic’ sectarianism) in‘Ecumenism and the Future of Belief ’, Una Sancta, 25:3, 3–17; also in ‘The Sectarian Futureof the Church’, in The God Experience, Joseph P. Whelan, S.J., ed. (New York: Newman Press,1971).

23 Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson,trans. (Harvard, 1991), 107; 109.


24 Bourdieu, 109.25 David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,

1975), 30; 109; 152; see also Kathryn E. Tanner, ‘Theology and the Plain Sense’, in ScripturalAuthority and Narrative Interpretation, Garrett Greed, ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987),62–3.

26 In order for discourse to be effective, the authority stemming from the recognition of asocial group usually must be perceived as an intrinsic property of the discourse itself. Bourdieusuggests that Austin, to the extent that he focused his analysis on the formal, logical properties ofperformative discourse, was unwittingly taken in by the very misrecognition encouraged by thediscourse he studied (Bourdieu, 111); see also Kelsey, 29, on theologians who identify biblicalauthority with an intrinsic property of the text like inerrancy or distinctiveness.

27 For the creative function of Scripture with respect to the community of faith, see, e.g.,‘Scripture, Consensus, and Community’, in The Church in a Postliberal Age, James J. Buckley, ed.(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 204–5, and passim; ‘TheChurch’, from the same volume, 149 and passim; see also StanleyHauerwas, ‘The Church asGod’sNew Language’, in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, 193: ‘Put differently, thepreached word’s power is its capacity to create a people receptive to being formed by that Word’.Lindbeck acknowledges the church’s role in constituting scripture, but maintains that scripture

becomes the leading partner in this relationship after the closing of the canon (see ‘Scripture,Consensus, and Community’, 205). Lindbeck’s insistence on the logical priority of the biblicalnarrative (see, e.g., ‘The Church’, 149) at once reflects a Protestant viewpoint that the bible createsthe church (cf. Kelsey, 94), on the one hand, and a formalist conception of religion as a semi-autonomous system of meaning, on the other.

28 Theories of Culture, 148–9.29 Theories of Culture, 148–9; see also Casanova’s observation concerning the ‘paradox of

unintended consequences’ that befalls theocratic attempts to shape and influence the world: ‘Themore religion wants to transform the world in a religious direction, the more religion becomesentangled in ‘worldly’ affairs and is transformed by the world’. (Casanova, 49.)

30 The Nature of Doctrine, 99.31 This is implicit in Lindbeck’s suggestion that a concern on the part of the Pope to speak for

the whole church be one of the (officially unstated) conditions for papal infallibility. See TheNature of Doctrine, 103.

32 Ibid., 103. This understanding of doctrinal authority has a natural affinity with the EasternOrthodox teaching that infallibility ultimately resides in the church as a whole. Lindbeck, inkeeping with his characteristically ecumenical spirit, generalizes his understanding of doctrinalauthority so as to be reconcilable with the Protestant and Catholic positions.

33 On the connection between religious truth and religious power, see, once again, Asad,Genealogies, 33–5.

34 Theories of Culture, 142.35 Leonard Bloomfield, Language (Chicago, 1984), 321.36 It is significant, in this connection, that Gramsci’s concept of political hegemony was

inspired in part by his study of historical linguistics, in particular, of the way in which a privilegedform of a language comes to exert an influence over the others. See Antonio Gramsci, TheAntonio Gramsci Reader (New York University Press, 2000), 324; 423.

37 Theories of Culture, 104–119.38 This assumption regarding the self-contained character of a Christian way of life insulates

Lindbeck’s concept of ‘sociological sectarianism’ from the connotations of antagonism thatwould offend liberal sensibilities. It suggests the image of Christians ‘doing their own thing’ withan attitude of benign indifference towards the ways of the outside world. The implied attitudehere stands in sharp contrast to the spirit of rancor that characterizes the ‘theologicalsectarianism’ that Lindbeck rejects. The thesis regarding the inherently relational nature ofChristian identity, however, calls into question the distinction between the two forms ofsectarianism in this respect. It suggests that the antagonism that the latter directs towards otherChristian groups the former simply re-directs towards the wider culture.

39 Theories of Culture, 115–17.40 Theories of Culture, 114.41 Theories of Culture, 105. At one point in The Nature of Doctrine Lindbeck concedes that

‘adjustments also take place in the interpretive scheme’ (p. 82), but only to assert that ‘the basicrules for the use’ of certain central Christian affirmations (such as of Jesus as the Christ) remainunchanged (p. 83). As was the case in his acknowledgment of the dialectical nature of the relation

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between religion and experience (see note 16 above), Lindbeck ultimately concedes very littlehere. For this reason I believe that Tanner does not misrepresent Lindbeck’s position when sheclaims that he exempts the interpretive framework from outside influence.

42 See, for example, Daniel Boyarin’s historical argument that Logos theology, whichoriginally was neither definitive of, nor exclusive to Christianity, was constructed as the definingfeature of Christian belief in the context of an apologetic with contemporary Judaism, asexemplified in Justin Martyr’s (2nd. century) Dialogue with Trypho. See Daniel Boyarin, BorderLines (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 89–147.

43 Theories of Culture, 112ff., and passim.44 Theories of Culture, 114–5.45 One can detect in Tanner’s discussion a certain ambiguity regarding the nature of

boundaries. On the one hand, she (rightly) rejects an understanding of Christian identity in termsof boundaries if these are understood as natural markers of a culturally autonomous, self-contained way of life (see, e.g., p. 110). She concedes, albeit, one suspects, somewhat reluctantly,that ‘Christian identity may have something to do with the drawing of a boundary’ (p. 108) if thedifferences marked by boundaries are understood in a contrastive, relational sense. On the otherhand, her statement that ‘the distinctiveness of a Christian way of life is not so much formed bythe boundary as at it’ (p. 115) implies a denial of an instrumental role of boundaries in definingChristian identity. The notion of boundaries as emerging out of practical relations between socialgroups seems to suggest that boundaries passively mark a distinctive way of using culturalmaterials that is logically prior.

46 The ambiguity and ambivalence concerning boundaries (see the immediately precedingnote) reflects a certain tension between (a) Tanner’s thesis regarding the essentially relationalnature of Christian identity and (b) her interest in downplaying the ideological dimension of thatidentity. It is almost as if this thesis regarding the essentially relational nature of Christianidentity can be reconciled with her critique of essentialism and ‘dichotomous typification’ only byshifting attention away from the role of boundaries and, as we shall shortly see, of doctrine in theformation of Christian identity.

47 Theories of Culture, 117–119.48 With respect to this latter dimension of Christian identity, I use the term ‘ideology’ in a

more or less neutral sense to refer to discursive means of social integration, realizing, of course,that this function does not exclude, and perhaps in some situations leads inevitably to, itspathological tendency towards dissimulation and distortion. This conception of ideology comesfrom Paul Ricoeur. See his essay, ‘Ideology and Utopia’, in From Text to Action, KathleenBlamey and John B. Thompson, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991).

49 With respect to this idea of modifying practices for the sake of establishing contrasts, theChristian troping of received practices is akin to Catherine Bell’s concept of ritualization. See herRitual Theory, Ritual Practice New York: Oxford, 1992), 90–93.

50 Of course, to acknowledge this logical priority of the ideological is not to deny that thepractical encounter with the cultural ‘other’ can reflexively prompt a critical reassessment andrevision of the ideological motives and presuppositions with which it began. It is this criticalfunction of Christian practice that Tanner’s proposal serves to highlight; her focus on thepractical dimension of Christian identity calls attention to its critical potential to contain thepathological excesses of the ideological.

51 See Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 37–52, for anexcellent discussion of the function of doctrine as a means of social demarcation.

52 Tanner does deal with doctrine, though only obliquely, in her critique of the postliberalappeal to the concept of rules as the principle that unifies Christian practices. (Theories ofCulture, 138–43.) The relative absence of a discussion of doctrine per se is noteworthy in a workfor which, according to Reinhard Hutter, Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine serves as the‘unthematized other’. See Hutter’s review of Theories of Culture in Modern Theology 15:4(October 1999), 499; 501.

53 Pierre Bourdieu compares the differences that structure the social world to a system ofphonemes. See Language and Symbolic Power, 237.

54 The Nature of Doctrine, 75.55 The Nature of Doctrine, 75–6.56 The Nature of Doctrine, 75.57 Theories of Culture, 122. See also Anthony Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of

Community (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985), 17–18 and passim, on the link betweenthe vagueness of social symbols and their capacity to mediate a sense of group identity.


58 The Nature of Doctrine, 75.59 Bourdieu, 248.60 This understanding of doctrine has the advantage of recognizing an essential link

between the nature of doctrine and its liturgical use. (Cf. Alexander Schmemann’s remarkthat biblical and theological language is ‘in its element’ in church. Liturgy and Life (OrthodoxChurch of America, 1993), 15–19.) Lindbeck’s regulative theory, by contrast, relegates theliturgical use of doctrine to a secondary, symbolic/expressive function. See The Nature ofDoctrine, 19; 80; 95.

61 H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops (Johns Hopkins, 2000), 399–400; 289, andpassim.

62 The Nature of Doctrine, 15ff.63 The Nature of Doctrine, 16–17; cf. 78.64 The Nature of Doctrine, 18.65 We get an initial sense of this inadequacy if we examine the method that Lindbeck uses to

establish his regulative theory. He first distinguishes between ‘practical doctrines’ and ‘doctrinesconcerning belief’. Then, using the obviously regulative (p.104) practical doctrines as a model, heproceeds to argue that the admittedly more complex and ambiguous belief doctrines can also beunderstood as rules (p. 85). If we consider Lindbeck’s own statements regarding the intrinsicconnection between doctrine and religious identity, however, then this decision to make practicaldoctrines the paradigm for theological doctrine in general is problematic. It is significant that theexamples of practical doctrines that Lindbeck gives – the law of charity, care for the poor, thecondemnation of slavery, Sunday worship – are neither unique to nor, with the exception of thefirst (whose vagueness, by effectively rendering it unfalsifiable, calls into question its status as apractical doctrine to begin with), indispensable to Christianity. We could perhaps say, moreover,that such an injunctive, ‘practical doctrine’ becomes a doctrine proper only when it takes on anidentity marking function, that is, when it becomes the locus of a significant difference between acommunity and its proximate rivals. Inasmuch, then, as marking identity belongs to the nature ofdoctrine, ‘practical’ doctrines would seem to be doctrines only accidentally. The ‘essence’ ofdoctrine would appear to be found, rather, in those other doctrines, the ‘doctrines concerningbelief’. Significantly, the belief doctrines differ most markedly from rules with respect to the twofeatures that liken doctrines to political slogans, namely, their vagueness and their differentialmeaning. By making the rule concept the model for an understanding of doctrine, Lindbeck’sregulative theory elides precisely those features of doctrine that suggest a ‘political’interpretation.

66 The implication that the function of doctrine in sustaining identity is tied somehow to theregulation of pre-existing patterns of speech and behavior is compatible with Tanner’s concept ofChristian identity as a ‘creativity of consumption’. (Tanner herself acknowledges a certainaffinity between her conception of Christian identity in terms of style, on the one hand, and theunderstanding of identity in terms of rules, on the other; see Theories of Culture, 144.) Theregulative theory does not exclude the emergence of a distinctive way of doing thing in theregulation of prior forms of discourse and practice. Nevertheless, the concept of regulation, whileit does not exclude the idea of creativity, does not acknowledge or encourage it, either. JohnSearle’s distinction between regulative rules and constitutive rules provides an interestingperspective on this question of the relationship between the rule concept and the idea ofcreativity. Searle’s distinction would seem to restrict creativity to the latter. See his Speech Acts(Cambridge, 1974), 33–42.

67 ‘Lindbeck’s New Program for Theology’, 462.68 Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (Verso, 1991), 9.69 Maurice Bloch, ‘Symbol, Song, Dance, and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an

Extreme Form of Traditional Authority’, in Ritual, History, and Power: Selected Papers inAnthropology (London: Athlone Press, 1989), 24ff; also, idem., ‘Introduction’, PoliticalLanguage and Oratory in Traditional Society, Maurice Bloch (New York: Academic Press,1975), 12ff.

70 ‘Symbolic, Song, Dance’, 27–9, and passim.71 For a lucid analysis of the phenomenon of authority and its relationship to persuasion, on

the one hand, and coercion, on the other, see Bruce Lincoln, Authority: Construction andCorrosion (Chicago, 1994), 1–6. Lincoln argues that authority negates itself when it is forced toexplain itself: ‘[W]hen authority is asked to explain itself and responds to that request by arguingin earnest rather than simply reasserting itself, it ceases to be authority for the moment andbecomes (an attempt at) persuasion’. (p. 6)

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72 The antithetical element in the relation between authority and persuasion explains thetendency towards archaism in religious language (see Bloch, ‘Symbols, Song, Dance’, 40).Lindbeck’s explanation for the retention of ancient formulations, namely, that they function asblanks or surds that can readily be filled in by ‘whatever meaning is most effective in a givensetting’ (The Nature of Doctrine, 95), only tells half the story. The archaic formulations are oftenthemselves deemed the ‘most effective’, specifically, in mediating religious authority. Witness thepreference for the now obscure King James translation in many conservative churches, or theresistance in the Catholic and Orthodox churches to liturgical reform.


Documents

THE POLITICAL NATURE OF DOCTRINE: A CRITIQUE OF LINDBECK IN LIGHT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP