The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth

THE RULE THEORY OF DOCTRINE AND PROPOSITIONAL TRUTH PROFESSOR GEORGE A. LINDBECK'S theory of doctrine * is developed in a connected series of closely reasoned arguments which are often difficult in their details. At the same time his work is unified by two related themes which are well-defined. There is, first, the theme of ecumenical discussion. The author notes how much he has been impressed by the fact that participants in such dialogue insist tha.t they have been compelled to conclude " that positions that were once really opposed are now really reconcilable, even though these positions remain in a significant sense identical to what they were before" (15). The second theme appears explicitly in the final chapter which outlines what might be the characteristics of a postliberal theology. In terms reminiscent of Karl Barth's wry plea (in The Humanity of God) for permission to use " a little of the patois of Canaan ", Prof. Lindbeck proposes an "intratextual " theology which " redescribes reality within the scriptural framework rather than translating Scripture into extrascriptura.I categories" (118). In this context he alludes to Reinhold Niebuhr as " perhaps the last American theologian who in practice (and to some extent in theory) made extended and effective attempts to redescribe major aspects of the contemporary scene in distinctively Christian terms " (124) . The second theme represents, no doubt, the broader outlook that the author would have us share; but in order to clear the way to his point of vantage he is obliged to confront two theological assessments of religion and doctrine which, for very different reasons, are in apparent opposition to his own under- *The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a PostliberaZ Age, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1984. Numerical references in the present article are to pages. 417 418 COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P. standing of these phenomena. The first of these " emphasizes the cognitive aspects of religion and stresses the way in which church doctrines function as informative propositions or truth claims a.bout objective realities". Irt is identified as the approach of traditional orthodoxies, of many heterodoxies, and is said to have certain affinities with much modern Anglo-American empiricist analytic philosophy " with its preoccupation with the cognitive or informational meaningfulness of religious utterances" (16). The second, named by the author the "experiential -expressive" approach, "interprets doctrines as noninformative and nondiscursive symbols of inner feelings, attitudes or existential orientations " and is found to be typical of liberal theologies descending from Schleiermacher (16) and dependent on " the Continental tradition of idealism, roma.nticism , and phenomenological existentialism" (63). A third approach is also recognized, tha.t of the "transcendental Thomists ",which attempts to combine the two foregoing emphases : " both the cognitively propositional and the expressively symbolic dimensions and functions of religion and doctrine are viewed, at least in the case of Christianity, as religiously significant and valid". While recognizing advantages in this " hybrid " with respect to the " one-dimensional alternatives ", Prof. Lindbeck considers that it may generally be subsumed under the two main approaches (16). The strategy the author adopts when faced with his adversaries is one of a vast outflanking movement followed by deep penetration behind their lines; he then calls for an armistice. He starts off, innocuously enough, by defining the question at issue as one of a lack of adequate categories for conceptualizing current problems concerning doctrine. "We are often unable , for example, to specify the criteria we implicitly employ when we say that some changes are faithful to a doctrinal tradition and others are unfaithful, or some doctrines are churchdividing and others are not" (7) . Both liberalism and preliberal orthodoxy have shown themselves to be unhelpful in this crisis, the latter because of its unbending rigidity, the former because of its unstructured excess of flexibility. There- DOCTRINE AND PROPOSITIONAL TRUTH 419 fore a third way must be found, and the one suggested here " derives from philosophical and social-scientific approaches " (7), specifically from a cultural-linguistic understanding of religion and, consequently, of doctrine. At first sight it appears as though what is beini rproposed ~ simply a method adapted to the scientific study of religions, and the way in which it is applied seems to confinn this...