religious revolution now 251the established standards of thought that we can barely understand
them. Th e disciplines of doctrine or dogma combine three sets of traits
setting them apart from any purely philosophical or social- scientifi c
endeavor.
In the fi rst place, they treat their subject matter, the words and moves
of a religion, a legal order, or a natural language as expressive of a vi-
sion and an experience that such symbols fail to exhaust. Th e symbols
are the path, but they are not the destination. In the second place,
they do not operate as a higher- order discourse: a discourse about the
beliefs and practices that bind together a certain community, respect-
ful of the authority and of the revealing power of those symbols. Th ey
are a fi rst- order discourse, and seek infl uence in the development of the
subject matter that they profess to expound: the law, cumulatively puri-
fi ed by reasoned elaboration in law, in a po liti cal community; correct
linguistic practice in a speech community; and orthodox belief in a
community of believers. In the third place, by taking their vantage
point from within rather than from outside the community of belief
and discourse, they cast their lot with that community. As a result, the
doctrinal disciplines override the contrast between the normative and
the descriptive. Moreover, their claims have consequences for the ex-
ercise of authority, whether the authority is that of a state, a church, or
a community of speech.
Because it is constitutive of religion, theology, however, possesses an
attribute in which grammar and legal doctrine fail to share: it demands
a commitment of life for which there can never be conclusive or ade-
quate grounds. Th e core of energy and authority in religion lies in an
experience, represented and evoked by the combination of visionary
teaching with exemplary action. Th is experience is refl ected, at a remove,
in theology and in liturgy.
Th e practice of theology has never been shaped solely by its relatively
remote relation to the experience of the sacred lying at the heart of each
religion and by the characteristics that it shares with the other doctri-
nal disciplines. It has been infl uenced as well by the requirements for
the worldly success of religion: the scriptural canon that it takes for its
immediate subject matter, the collectivity of believers in which it seeks
to intervene, and even the national life with which it may be closely
connected.