| Here theology is, supposedly, not part of a social sciences hermeneutic. It is Wittgensteinian self containment. Lindbeck (1984) calls it, strangely, "cultural linguistic", which rejects individual subjectivity and makes theology a kind of self-referential language which regulates a community's experience and seeks no outside objective reference including culture. It does for doctrine what Hans Frei did in self contained narrative for the Bible and Karl Barth reasserted in a God remote from culture. |
| Known to itself to be an internal language it will not be enthusiastic about communicating outwardly, except for converts to then regulate within. |
| It still can be sociologically understood. It is subculturalism, or an in-group set apart from the general other (Sumner, 1904). It may not be supernatural, but doctrinal protection comes with a price that, being self contained, it cannot be socially communicative, except within its community boundary. It is philosophy with theological clothes and as Richard Rorty says: |
| ..within our increasingly ironist culture, philosophy has become more important for the pursuit of private perfection rather than any social task. (Rorty, 1989, 94) |
| Any language constantly modifies anyway, and theology's current shifts towards more humanistic forms and purposes (Fiorenza in Browning, Fiorenza, 1992, 75) (or its decline) allows for the possibility of social comment. |
| Lindbeck. Even if it is language and not cognitive truth, the motive is the same as the sectarian's: protection of the tradition, to even pickle it. This is opposed by more open theologians: |
| My chief criticism of this position is that while it rightly stresses the formation of into a religious community, it neglects the other necessity of reforming the tradition. (McFague TeSelle, 1993, 240) |