ABSTRACT
George Lindbeck is widely regarded as setting out the postliberal agenda in his seminal work, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (1984).1 In this slender and complex volume he posits what he terms a prolegomena on the current status of doctrine.2 This work can be described as ‘pre-theological’ because it is not an exercise in systematic theology, but instead is the provision of a framework within which theology can be discussed and developed.3 Lindbeck’s thesis has emerged out ‘of a growing dissatisfaction with the usual ways of thinking about those norms of communal belief and action which are generally spoken of as the doctrines or dogmas of churches’.4 Approaching theological studies from an ecumenical perspective, Lindbeck is attempting both to overcome divisions within Christendom and to develop a theory that will bring unity closer. For our purposes, the significance of his work lies, not only in the Wittgensteinan influence, but in its questioning of traditional methodology.5
