Includes bibliographical references (pages 165-172) and indexes.

pt. 1: Meaning, manipulation and truth -- God as self-affirming illusion? Manipulation, truth and language -- Postmodernism, modernity and the postmodern self -- Do all controlling models in religion serve manipulative purposes? -- The rhetoric of theological models and currencies of meaning -- Language, truth and life in theology and postmodernity -- Non-manipulative interpretation and truth as relational -- pt. 2: Interpreting texts and interpreting the self -- Respecting the other: transcending prior categories and the limits of empirical method -- Biblical texts and pastoral hermeneutics: history, science and personhood -- A temporal hermeneutic of the self through the 'detour' of texts as 'other' -- Five ways in which textual reading interprets the self -- Self-deception and sub-text: psychoanalysis, suspicion and conversation -- Self-identity within the temporal logic of narrative plot -- pt. 3: Postmodern God? Sea of faith or abyss of Babel? -- Sea of faith network: interpreting God as a human construct -- Successive stages in Cupitt's interpretations of God -- 'Taking leave of God' as internalizing, de-objectifying and autonomy -- Rehearsing an over-played script: 'facts', world-views and divine agency -- 'God's second death' in the postmodern self: an 'internalized' God now? -- Pluralism or propaganda? The forked rhetoric of postmodern interpretation -- pt. 4: Postmodern self and society: towards a theology of promise -- Collapse of the hope of the 'modern' self: from active agency to passive situatedness -- More social consequences of postmodern selfhood: despair, conflict and manipulation -- Corporate power and corporate self-deception -- Present and future: the pluriform grammar of hope and the God of promise -- Further issues on 'Interpreting God': Christology and Trinity -- Will-to-power de-centred, transformed and re-centred in promise and love.