George Lindbeck

George Arthur Lindbeck (March 10, 1923 – January 8, 2018) was an American Lutheran theologian. He was best known as an ecumenicist and as one of the fathers of postliberal theology.

Early life and education Lindbeck was born on March 10, 1923, in Luoyang, China, the son of American Lutheran missionaries. Raised in that country and in Korea for the first seventeen years of his life, he was often sickly as a child and found himself often isolated from the world around himself.

He attended Gustavus Adolphus College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1943. He went on to do graduate work at Yale University, receiving his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1946. After his undergraduate work he spent a year at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies with Étienne Gilson in Toronto then two years at the École Pratique des Hautes Études with in Paris. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Yale in 1955 concentrating on medieval studies, delivering a dissertation on the Franciscan theologian Duns Scotus.

Lindbeck died on January 8, 2018.

Selected works

Lindbeck, George A. (1984). The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. Lindbeck, George A. (2003). The Church in a Postliberal Age. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.