"For the religious, knowledge depends not only upon rationality and clarity but also upon ethical living, participation in prayer and liturgy, practices of fidelity, and openness to the Spirit. This is chiefly because in knowing God, we seek to know a person and persons must reveal themselves through cultivated relationships."
- Francis Martin
James KA Smith uses George Lindbeck to defend that Christianity is more like a culture than an intellectual system, the following are some excerpts from his book Who's Afraid of Relativism :
Christianity is a “form of life” found first and foremost in the community of practice that is the church. In other words, Christian faith (and religion more generally) is a kind of know-how; theology and doctrine, then, “make explicit” our know-how as know-that claims, articulating the norms implicit in the practices of the community that is the body of Christ.
Doctrines are, in a sense, derivative from practice.
Religion (e.g., Christianity) is not a set of propositions that one believes but rather a (communal) way of life. Religion will be a matter more of initiation than of information, a matter of know-how before it ever becomes a matter of know-that.
In the cultural-linguistic model, “religions are seen as comprehensive interpretive schemes, usually embodied in myths or narratives and heavily ritualized, which structure human experience and understanding of self and world” Contrary to the cognitive-propositional model, religion is“not primarily an array of beliefs” but more like a “set' of skills” .
But contrary to the individualism and subjective-approach, the culturaI-linguistic model emphasizes the essentially communal character of religion:
“Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities” .
Discipleship, then, is a kind of acculturation:
"To become religious involves becoming skilled in the language, the symbol system of a given religion. To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one's world in its terms" . In short, a religion is essentially bound up with the communal form of its practices : the material practices precede and shape the subjectivity of adherents, making it possible to experience and construe the world in certain ways. It takes a village to have an "experience."
In a way, one needs to "try on" a whole new "picture"—be inculcated into a new (theoretical) practice—in order to he able to see the whole anew. And the only "proof" or demonstration that is possible, then, is the power of the new picture to help one make sense of the whole, and to feel its superiority to one's prior account.
Lindbeck's is a "cultural" model of religion because it emphasizes these dynamics of formation, socialization, and acculturation—all of which happen on the (implicit) level of know-how. The model is "linguistic" because this is how we learn a first language: it is caught, not taught. "To become religious—no less than to become culturally or linguistically competent—is to interiorize a set of skills by practice and training.
One learns how to feel, act, and think in conformity with a religious tradition that is, in its inner structure, far richer and more subtle than can be explicitly "articulated."A religion works like a language in this respect: "It comprises a vocabulary of discursive and nondiscursive symbols together with a distinctive logic or grammar in terms of which this vocabulary can he meaningfully deployed" .
Note that final emphasis: this is a language to be used, put to work in a way of life.
Our doings precede our thinkings. Practice is primary.
A comprehensive scheme or story used to structure all dimensions of existence is not primarily a set of propositions to be believed, but is rather the medium in which one moves, a set of skills that one employs in living one’s life. Its vocabulary of symbols and its syntax may be used for many purposes, only one of which is the formulation of statements about reality. Thus while a religion’s truth claims are often of the utmost importance to it (as in the case of Christianity), it is, nevertheless, the conceptual vocabulary and the syntax or inner logic which determine the kinds of truth claims the religion can make. The cognitive aspect, while often important, is not primary. - Lindbeck
So the real question is - What does doctrine do ?
In the cognitive-propositional, doctrines are primarily used to make truth claims; in the experiential- expressive, doctrines are used to express interior feelings and experiences. “The function of church doctrines that becomes most prominent” in the cultural-linguistic model “is their use, not as expressive symbols or as truth claims, but as communally authoritative rules of discourse, attitude, and action.”
If doctrines function as “rules” for the community of (religious) practice, this is only because those doctrines make explicit the norms that were already embedded in the community’s practiceIn other words, doctrines make explicit the know-how that was already implicit in our practice. To confess that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God”is to articulate what was already implicit in our prayers, a worshipful way of life nourished by the Scriptures.
Narrative coherence has always ultimately governed tradition and its development.
For example, that Arian controversies showed that each dissident party could quote sources of theology quite evenly, and thus as a singular issue either one could have been vindicated. But it was the narrative compatibility (faith that was already practiced, sung, and understood for centuries) with dogmatic theses that resolved the matter in favour of the Nicene party.
The evaluation of whether to affirm the Nicene homoousios or the semi-Arian homoiousios is not a matter that can be settled by "formal" logic." Which of these is a good move, a good inference, is inextricably bound to the matter of the community of practice who are heirs of the apostles' teaching, who receive and read and inhabit the world of Scripture, and who pray to Jesus. That "first order" of prayer and proclamation is on the plane of know-how; doctrines as formulated in the Nicene Creed are the fruit of the community of Christian practice "making explicit" the norms that were previously unsaid. Doctrines say what, up to that point, we previously did, in a sense. In doing so, the community of practice is able to discern what counts as faithful practice.
Doctrines are, in very real way, derivative from practice.
Doctrines are not about the world or God, but how we can speak about those things on the first order level of prayer and proclamation...
Inferential, not referential claims…regulate truth claims…they make explicit the norms already in Christian practice…and then we can harmonize our commitments, renew or redirect our practices.
Doctrine is not synonymous with religion, nor is it either the center or foundation of religion. Religion is located primarily in our doings, in the practices that constitute a community of worship and devotion to God.
Part of the scandal of the cross is that the cross cannot be understood for what it is apart from one’s being enfolded into the community of practice that confesses “Jesus is Lord.”Our knowledge of this reality is relative to, and dependent upon, the Spirited community of practice that is the church.We are dependent upon such a communal context as the condition for understanding this as “the true story of the whole world.
After all, Pagan converts to the catholic mainstream did not, for the most part, first understand the faith and then decide to become Christians; rather, the process was reversed: they first decided and then they understood. More precisely, they were first attracted by the Christian community and form of life.
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