ABSTRACT
Through a reading of a major theological trend, heavily indebted to Barth, the chapter relates author's argument to the recent theological climate. In the introduction to Types of Christian Theology, Hans Frei asks how one can come to read Scripture as a text as opposed to a historical source. The Identity of Jesus Christ is based in the insistence that the question of who Jesus is can only refer to what is narrated in the gospels. The term 'postliberal' strictly refers to the theological method advocated by George Lindbeck, in that he coined the term. In the case of the major monotheistic religions, such an externality largely takes the form of a story, enshrined in a canonical text; thus does 'intratextuality' become the form of intra-semiotic fidelity. Theology's concern is the Bible not as narrative but as the narrative contextualisation of the Word – of a rhetoric of authority which theology itself participates in.
