Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context

Lakeland - Book Profile: Beyond Foundationalism - JCRT 2.3

Book Profile

Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. xi + 298 pages. First edition. ISBN 0-664-25769-0.

Paul Lakeland
Fairfield University

Since at least the time of the publication of George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine (1984), foundationalism in theology has been on the defensive, if not definitively routed. Lindbeck's cultural theory of religion, dubbed "postliberalism," was equally critical of traditional "propositionalism" and what he called "experiential-expressivism, roughly the post-Schleiermacherian romantic trend in theology. The target of Lindbeck's by-now classic critique was any attempt to set a standard or hermeneutical frame of reference by which the truth of doctrine was to be measured, thus any "foundation" external to the Christian narrative.

Paul F. Lakeland is Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University in Connecticut. He teaches courses on the intersection of religion and culture, and on Catholic theology. He is the author of Theology and Critical Theory (1990) and, most recently, of Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age. He is currently an editor of Religious Studies Review and chairs the Theology and Religious Reflection section of the American Academy of Religion.

' 2001 Paul Lakeland. All rights reserved.
Updated 07/28/21.
http://jcrt.org/archives/02.3/lakeland/