This chapter examines the liberal approaches to Christian prescriptivism, which have typically fallen under the label of the “essence of Christianity.” The quest for the essence has its origins in the Reformation but becomes a widespread theological concern in the Enlightenment. This first chapter examines liberal, historicist, dialectical, and liberationist versions of this quest. Using Schleiermacher’s rubric, I organize different versions of the essence along the lines of reason (doctrine), experience (culture), and morality (politics).

Doctrine became increasingly less important, giving way to the second form of the conservative quest: the turn to culture as the defining feature of Christianity. The third chapter traces the development of postliberalism through the lens of mainline Protestantism’s interest in the authority and interpretation of scripture, beginning with biblical theology and concluding with the postliberal project of theological interpretation of scripture. This development explains how the norms of Christianity became understood as cultural norms, thus paving the way for orthodoxy becoming a form of culture war.

Chapter 29 concludes this study on the development of the doctrine of justification by considering how the doctrine has been explored and expressed since the end of the First World War. The chapter opens by considering Karl Barth and Dialectical Theology, a movement of theological reconstruction and retrieval, and notes the place of the doctrine of justification within this movement, especially in the writings of Barth and Emil Brunner. The analysis then shifts to the growing interest in retrieving the existential and affective aspects of justification, particularly in response to Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (‘Being and Time’, 1927). This is followed by a discussion of the retrieval of justification as a viable theological concept in recent theological writings. Writers such as Robert Jenson, Robert Kolb, Thomas F. Torrance, Michael S. Horton and Kathryn Tanner have shown how justification remains a significant theme in modern theological reflection, despite earlier suggestions that the concept was trapped in the theological past. Finally, the work reflects on discussions of justification in recent Pauline scholarship, particularly the ‘New Perspective on Paul’, and its role in the major ecumenical dialogues of the late twentieth century. The work concludes by expressing cautious optimism for the future of justification as a viable theological category.