Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Walter Lowe's work represents a contemporary trajectory of the Yale School of postliberal theology. Having worked under Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, Lowe carries some of their concerns into a negotiation with postmodern thinking. His work is characterized by its philosophical and theological intensity and by its attention to cultural context. Stimulated by Paul Ricoeur's observation that Bultmann short-circuited the examination of the representation of the Word in words, and trained in the hermeneutics of both Gadamer and Ricoeur, Walter Lowe's work begins from the Christian perspective attuned to the philosophical legacy of modernity and the critique it is currently undergoing. To this extent his writing is Protestant – placing scripture into a negotiation with the historical movements of Enlightenment thinking and Romanticism, and rehearsing the ideas of the theologians (particularly Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, and Barth) working within these contexts. One sees these same elements in Frei's work: the scriptural, the historical, the philosophical, and the theological. The Yale School developed a Barthian theology quite distinct, in English, from the Barth of Tom Torrance and, more recently, Bruce McCormack. What is distinctive about Walter Lowe's work is the way a commitment to the ongoing destiny of thought has led him to take up the challenges and critiques of poststructural ... log in or subscribe to read full text