Abstract
This essay responds to Mark I. Wallace's claim that Paul Ricoeur's thought should be read ‘from scripture to phenomenology ’, given Ricoeur's respect for the specificity of religious traditions over against the pretension of phenomenology to ground philosophy in the certainty of the cogito. Although I agree that Ricoeur challenges the Cartesian tendencies of phenomenology, I argue against Wallace that the understanding of religious selfhood must for Ricoeur proceed ‘from phenomenology to scripture’, inasmuch as it is the general structure of selfhood as conscience that makes the appropriation of the Christ image possible to begin with.