The Relation between Text and Experience in Narrative Theology of Revelation

Abstract

This article presents a critique of the narrative theology of revelation developed in Ronald Thiemann's Revelation and Theology and George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Post-Liberal Age. Both these writers are critical of any theological method that employs a correlation between scripture and human experience, because such a correlation assumes either a foundation of knowledge in experience or the possiblitiy of meaningful experience independent of concrete narrative. It is argued here that only a dialectical conception of the relationship between experience, text, and tradition can do justice to the character of biblical revelation.