Abstract

On Christian doctrine, God is love; and the love of God is most manifest in Christ’s passion. The passion of Christ thus matters to philosophical theology’s examination of the divine attribute of love. But the passion of Christ is presented in a biblical story, and there are serious methodological questions about the way in which a biblical story can be used as evidence in philosophical theology. And these questions in turn raise deeper epistemological questions. How does any narrative transmit knowledge? And what counts as veridicality in a narrative? This paper deals with some of the questions for philosophical theology and then concentrates on the more general epistemological questions about narratively transmitted knowledge.