Is Incommensurability Insurmountable? A Modest Response to Some Interpretations of George Lindbeck

This article is meant to respond to certain ways of construing the theoretical insights of George Lindbeck. In his famous The Nature of Doctrine, Lindbeck sketched what he dubbed the “cultural-linguistic” approach to religions. In this framework, religious doctrines are seen neither as descriptive propositions about the world nor as expressions of nondiscursive, internal reactions to one’s experience of the Divine but rather as interpretive schemas through which believers learn how to understand and interact with their world. This theory (which we call theological particularism) poses problems for proponents of interreligious dialogue and comparative theology, for it seems to allow no common criteria by which different religions can be compared. Several recent thinkers have construed particularism as unamenable to projects of interreligious dialogue or comparison. In response, I argue that such interpretations rely on imputing to particularists a disputable understanding of what comprises a “religious tradition.” In short, one must presume that the structure of a religion’s theological grammar itself represents the essence of that religion in order to construe incommensurability as such a problem. This presumption, however, ignores the important fact that religions are historically constituted and ever changing. To remedy this issue, I propose that particularists retrieve an important aspect of the thought of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who argued that religious traditions are the product of ongoing hermeneutical negotiations. I illustrate the utility of incorporating Smith’s proposal by considering the conflicting approaches of two contemporary scholars of the Qur’an.