The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology

1. Genesis of a Concept: Postliberalism and its Opponents.

Preparation: 1945–54.

Exploring New Directions at Yale: 1955–64.

A Tendency Takes Shape: 1965–74.

The “Yale School” before Postliberalism: 1975–84.

The Crystallization and Contentious Reception of Postliberalism: 1985–94.

The Decline of Postliberalism: 1995 to the Present.

The Goal of the Present Work.

2. George Lindbeck: Theology and the Ecclesial People of Witness.

Orthodoxy and Society after Christendom.

Community Definition by Grammatical Rules.

The Truth of the People of Witness.

A New Theology for the Ecclesial “Text”.

3. Hans Frei: Theology and the Christological Object of Witness.

Concreteness and Identity in the Christological Object.

Christology and Biblical Hermeneutics.

Negotiating Perspectives on the Christological Object.

The “Generosity” of Orthodoxy as an Issue of Method.

4. Lindbeck: Elusive Oppositions and the Construction of Postliberalism (I).

The Conceptual Scaffolding of the Liberal–Postliberal Dualism.

Ecclesiology and the Verbum Externum.

Liberalism as “Experiential-¬Expressivism”.

Intratextuality.

Temptations of Opposition.

5. Frei: Elusive Oppositions and the Construction of Postliberalism (II).

The Mystery of the Christological Object and Types of Theology.

The Typology.

Dogmatics and Apologetics: a Zero-sum Game?.

Systematic versus Ad Hoc (I): The Case of David Tracy.

Systematic versus Ad Hoc (II): Irreducible Mystery and the Lessons of Correlation.

6. The Trial of the Witnesses: The Yale Thinkers “After” Postliberalism.

Fashioning an Alternative to Postliberalism: The Trial.

Trial as Endurance under Temptation.

Trial as Experiment.

Trial as Submission to Judgment.

The Logic of Proliferation.

Bibliography.

Index