ABSTRACT
From time to time, a book is published that becomes point of reference to which everyone is obliged to relate, since it provides clear categories for the interpretation of theology’s sometimes complicated discourse. One such book appeared in 1984 when the American Lutheran theologian George Lindbeck published The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Lindbeck and Hans Frei, his colleague at the theological faculty in Yale, had already attracted attention as mentors for several young theologians who were looking for new paths for theology outside the established alternatives. Lindbeck’s book now made the term “postliberal” a collective designation of these currents in Anglo-Saxon theology. Not everyone agreed with Lindbeck in his description or in the categories he applied, but everyone was compelled to relate to these. In the last years of the twentieth century, this book set the agenda for much of the theological debate, especially in Anglo-Saxon theology.
