ABSTRACT
Three themes are central to this book. Firstly, although this is an implicit rather than an explicit focus, I aim to manifest a theological methodology which refuses to submit to an either/or that seems prevalent in contemporary theological debate. I do not advocate a model which, like so much modern theology, sees the need for theological grammar to transform to map a contemporary, always embedded, always contextual, personal experience of God. Since the theological turn often associated with George Lindbeck1 it seems that our very experience of God in the world is filtered through the sign systems of our traditions and, as such, it is as much our inherited theological grammars that precedes and determines our experience as the other way around. This is not to say that our doctrinal inheritance is not consistently reconfigured as the component signs of our doctrinal inheritance semantically evolve through pollination by a host of other sign systems, simply that we do not need to explicitly strive for such reconfigurement, it happens commensurate with the very functioning of discourses as semiotic processes.
