ABSTRACT
Historical critics make assumptions by virtue of their trade, and one assumption is troubling for Christians. Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is early, common and general; it easily passes the Vincentian test of orthodoxy, and that is what Christians look to. The dove is well known as a symbol in Canaanite and Phoenician religions, and quite naturally the symbol was taken up in the writing of the Tanakh and was available to the early Christian community. Classical phenomenology needs to be modified before it can serve many of the most important interests of Christian theology. To eliminate the representatives of the phenomenological tradition as being only, at best, of limited value in modern philosophy, including the philosophy of religion, would commit one to a parochial vision of the discipline. When Husserl speaks of phenomenology leading to description, he has in mind philosophical descriptions – of ontological structures, structures of consciousness, structures of meaning – and not literary ones.
