The present study is a critical engagement with postliberal theological method. It argues that postliberal theologians tend to maintain a dualism between scheme and content by employing the notion of religion as intermediary between the knowing agent and the divine subject-matter. The conceptual scheme, represented by such notions as tradition, community, religion, tends to be reified. The consequence is a loss of theology’s ontological vehemence (reference), accompanied by a weakening of its self-critical consciousness (legitimation). Narrative alone, some suggest, by contrast to ontological discourse, is capable of handling theological issues such as the particularity of Jesus, revelation, the meaning of the Scriptures, rational justification. Against this it will be argued that, following the pragmatist deconstruction of the scheme-content dualism and its implied relation between meaning and truth, it no longer makes sense to employ strong notions of religion, tradition, or community as radically constructing our access to the theological subject-matter. Narrative itself will be understood to depend on an ontological imagination for its very meaningfulness. Theology therefore escapes a vicious circularity and subjectivism to which it seemed destined by a certain reading of postmodernity.