ABSTRACT
The Oxford-born symposium on the theme 'story and revelation' began in the spring of 1995. The participants were looking, without any programmatic intentions, for a theme that could offer many opportunities for encounter to people belonging to different churches and representing various theological disciplines. Very early on, one point of consensus was formulated. People were to a great extent at one in thinking that the relationship between 'story' and 'revelation' mandated a particular orientation to the text. Recourse to the concept of revelation rules out the idea that human beings have any natural access to God. But this cannot be shown on the basis of any particular passages in the text; it is to some extent a way of reading the text. Despite the differences between the terms 'revelation' and 'story', they share the role of guarding against certain conceptions.
