Abstract
Helmer criticizes the work of Bruce Marshall, a former student of Lindbeck, because in Marshall’s hands, “doctrine is enlisted as the grammar of a worldview” that furnishes “timeless norms for Christianity” and polices what Christians can or cannot say, believe, and do: “Marshall lifts theological assertions out of history . . . . Instead of describing God as norm, theology and its doctrinal formulations become the norms of belief and practice” (p. 61). Marshall’s handling of the Bible is particularly troubling for Helmer, since he “identifies Scripture so closely with a particular set of doctrines,” which are then determined “to be the sole biblical hermeneutic for the church” (p. 95). She is referring to the so-called “rule of faith” (regula fidei) to which Marshall and other postliberals appeal in order to close the gap between Scripture and the creeds formulated in the patristic period. The Bible, for Marshall, is to be interpreted through “shared creedal rules” that consist of those beliefs deemed essential to the church’s identity. Aside from objecting to Marshall’s appeal to creeds as providing the “sole hermeneutic” for biblical interpretation, she notes that Marshall always speaks of “the Church” in the singular with a capital “C.” Whereas Marshall is a convert to Roman Catholicism, Helmer is clearly a Protestant. Not surprisingly, then, she rejects Marshall’s positing of an unproblematic identity between Scripture and tradition “by imposing one doctrinal reading of Scripture as the church’s norm” (p. 96). Her final evaluation of Marshall is devastating: “At this point, doctrine has come to an end. Doctrine without dialectic, theology without discovery, church without history, and language without meaning—this is what is left when doctrine loses its transcendent reality and becomes the norm of its own truth, a self-enclosed system incapable of communicating to others on the outside” (p. 105).
It may come as a surprise to the adherents of the postliberal view that Helmer appeals to Karl Barth in support of her thesis against it, since many of them claim to be Barthians. Yet she makes a compelling argument that Barth and Marshall are moving in opposite directions and are utterly opposed to one another. Whereas Barth persisted in distinguishing the human words of doctrine and theology from God’s Word, Helmer notes that contemporary theologians who claim Barth as their inspiration conceptualize doctrine in such a way that it “ends up losing its referent to a transcendent reality” and “yields a view of Christian truth as normative social construction” (pp. 89–90). By contrast, Barth insisted on God “as a transcendent reality,” and he established “a dialectical relationship between human words and the transcendent reality of God,” always holding open “the possibility of the divine judgment” upon doctrinal theology when it fails “to explicate the word of God in terms of its content” faithfully (p. 105). In addition to Barth, Helmer appeals to the examples of Martin Luther and Friedrich Schleiermacher in support of her thesis. By invoking this German-speaking triumvirate against the postliberal theory of doctrine, Helmer disarms readers who assume that Schleiermacher has nothing in common with either Luther or Barth. But one of the great strengths of her book is to show that there really is a line of significant continuity linking the three. All of them affirmed a dynamic and self-critical understanding of doctrine that pointed away from itself to a transcendent reality that it nevertheless aspired to bespeak in appropriately faithful terms. For this reason, her book exposes the grotesque caricatures of Schleiermacher’s positions that have dominated so much twentieth-century theology (going back to Emil Brunner’s allegation that Schleiermacher substituted mysticism for faith). If one is going to take on the postliberal school, as Helmer intends to do, then one has to validate two claims. First, one has to show that its characterization of Schleiermacher’s position as “experiential-expressivist” is an extremely one-sided depiction of his actual viewpoint on the relation of language and experience. Second, one has to show that its appeal to Barth in defense of Lindbeck’s theory of doctrine is without merit. In my judgment, she has successfully defended both claims.
In a book designed not only to criticize the postliberal view of doctrine but also to rehabilitate Schleiermacher, it is somewhat puzzling that Helmer appears to be unaware of Brian Gerrish’s thoughtful and perceptive review of Lindbeck’s book, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), wherein he argued that the postliberal theory of doctrine fails to account for the possibility of doctrinal development, a concern dear to Helmer’s heart. Moreover, her book would have been strengthened by engagement with Gerrish’s careful studies of Schleiermacher in her effort to correct many distorted interpretations of Schleiermacher’s theology, some of which unfortunately go back to Barth himself. She might also have availed herself of James Gustafson’s powerful critique of the sectarian character of postliberal theology, given her conviction that this kind of theology has emptied doctrine of its distinctive content and put an end to its capacity to make truth-claims that could be discussed and debated by others in the university. Like Gustafson, she is concerned to insure that theology remains a vital conversation-partner among the disciplines of the academy. But these are minor criticisms of a book I otherwise admire and highly recommend.
A book taking aim at postliberalism is unexpected from someone who did her doctoral studies at Yale University. But perhaps for this reason her book will be taken with far greater seriousness by theologians affiliated with Yale than have similar works by theologians associated with the University of Chicago. Her argument deserves to be digested and discussed by all theologians, regardless of school affiliation. If theology is to exemplify not only academic integrity but also ecclesial responsibility, then it has to be able to articulate and to defend truth-claims about God and human existence in the world and demonstrate why being a Christian makes or ought to make a difference in terms of how we live and understand ourselves. In calling for theology to return to its proper vocation, Helmer has rendered a service to both the church and the academy. Yet her tone is so gracious and irenic that I suspect the force of her argument might be muted. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that she argues a case which, if correct, is utterly damaging to the postliberal view of doctrine and thus of theology as well.