I couldn’t agree more with you on the conversational imperative, Peter. I find an interesting irony about that identification of language games. I think Wittgenstein and Cupitt are actually on to something profoudly important in identifying the ways in which these different faith (and other) stories live in linguistic communities. They highlight the issues and potential problems of communication in ways complementary to something like Habermas’s Ideal Speech Situation.

Yet, for all the theoretical and actual problems, I am also constantly struck by the very piblic and permeable nature of story. On a common or garden level, postmodern society is a society that is fascinated by story. There is probably now more real and widespread communication than ever before. This is why I find Pluralist’s intra-communitarian reconstruction of resurrection so unconvincing. It was public discourse - the language of kerygma.

Perhaps it is a function of language that it is essentially barrier-crossing rather than apocalyptic (ie understandable only to the initiates)?