This book is about the crisis brought about by doctrine’s estrangement from reality–that is from actual lives, experiences, histories, and from God. By invoking ‘the end of doctrine, ‘ Christine Helmer opens a new discussion of doctrinal production that is engaged with the challenges and possibilities of modernity. The end of doctrine refers on the one hand to unquestioning doctrinal reception, which Helmer critiques, and on the other, represents an invitation to a new way of understanding the aim of doctrine in deeper connection to the reality that it seeks.
The book’s first section offers an analysis of the current situation in theology by reconstructing a trajectory of Protestant theology from the turn of the twentieth century to today. This history focuses primarily on the status of the word in theology and explains how changes in theology in the context of the political and social crisis in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s led to a distancing of the word from reality. Helmer then turns to the constructive section of the book to propose a repositioning of theology to the world and to God. Helmer’s powerful work will inspire revitalized interest in both doctrine and theological inquiry itself.
قائمة المحتويات
Chapter 1: Theology and Doctrine
I. Theology between Church and Academy
II. Theology’s Concern with Doctrine
III. The Lure of Eternity
IV. Historicist Shock
V. Linguistic Turn
VI. A Look Ahead
Chapter 2: From Ritschl to Brunner: Neither Mysticism
nor Metaphysics, but the Problem with Schleiermacher
I. What Does Doctrine Mean?
II. Ritschl and the Doctrine of Justification
II.1. Righteousness and Justification
II.2. A New Take on Justification
II.3. Justification and the Problem with Schleiermacher
III. Mysticism to Mediation
III.1. Mediation in Relationship: Spirit
III.2. Mysticism in Relationship: Nature
IV. Brunner and the Word against Schleiermacher
IV.1. The Problem of ‘Ground’: Metaphysics
IV.2. The Problem of Immediate
Self-Consciousness: Mysticism
IV.3. Theology of the Word
V. The Problem with Schleiermacher
Chapter 3: From Trinitarian Representation
to the Epistemic-Advantage Model:
Word, Doctrine, Theology
PART 1
I. From Word to Doctrine
II. Theology and Trinitarian Representation
II.1. Word in the Aftermath of War
II.2. Word in the Crisis of National Socialism
II.3. Word in the Prolegomena to Theological System
II.3.1. Word and the Dialectics of Genre
II.3.2. Word and Dogmatics
II.3.3. Word, Trinity, and Dogmatics
II.4. Doctrine and Ground of System?
PART 2
I. The Epistemic-Advantage Model of Doctrine
I.1. Doctrine as Root Assertion
I.2. Christian Beliefs, Communal Identity, God
I.2.1. Christian Beliefs and the Harmonizing Hermeneutic
I.2.2. Christian Beliefs and Communal Identity
I.2.3. Christian Beliefs and God
I.3. Luther’s Contribution
I.4. Christianity as a Worldview
I.5. Conversion to a Worldview
II. The End of Doctrine
Chapter 4: Language and Reality: A Theological
Epistemology with Some Help from Schleiermacher
I. At the End, a (Tentative) Beginning
I.1. Bible and Doctrine
I.2. Reception and Production
I.3. Qualifying the Help from Schleiermacher
II. Language and Reality in the New Testament
II.1. Jesus and the New Testament
II.2. Mysticism Again
II.3. Total Impression
II.4. Acclamation
II.4.1. Predication and Intensional Logic
II.4.2. Predication in a Linguistic Milieu
II.5. Consciousness, Language, and Doctrine
III. Theological Epistemology and Doctrine
III.1. The Origins of Doctrine
III.2. The Development of Doctrine in Intersubjective Milieu
III.3. Doctrine in a Global Context
III.3.1. Categorization
III.3.2. Construction
IV. From Epistemology to Content
Chapter 5: Acknowledging Social Construction
and Moving beyond Deconstruction: Doctrine
for Theology and Religious Studies
I. Doctrine as Inevitable Social Construction
II. Beyond Deconstruction
III. Getting Clear on the Social Construction of Reality
III.1. Conversation with Religious Studies
III.2. The Return to History
IV. Language, Doctrine, Reality
عن المؤلف
Christine Helmeris Professor of German and Religious Studies at Northwestern University. She is the editor or coeditor of numerous volumes in the areas of biblical theology, Schleiermacher studies, and Luther scholarship, and is the main Christianity editor of the Encyclopedia of Bible and Its Reception. She is the author of The Trinity and Martin Luther and Theology and the End of Doctrine as well as instructor of the free massive open online course (MOOC): Luther and the West.