Category Archives: Prolegomena

The Difference Between the Theologian’s and the Philosopher’s Vocation

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Theology done without finding its sustenance in the incarnation of God has no source for a specified fruitfulness. That is, theology that isnā€™t first christology has no theological grounding except upon the neutrality of the theologianā€™s wit. But if the theologian is only neutral then their imaginations are free to run wild wherever the winds of social and thus theological imaginary might take them. And yet, the God who is Self-revealed for us in Jesus Christ cannot be generalized or universalized in such a willy-nilly way. The genuinely Christian theologian is bound to the scandal of particularity, to the wisdom of God, the wisdom of the cross. This wisdom has the theologian crucified to the world and the world to the theologian. As such there is no bereft theological imaginary available to the theologian if in fact the theologian will have something meaningful to say. Indeed, the Christian theologian isnā€™t a manufacturer or fabricator of materials, as if capable to spin theological things ostensibly out of the nothingness of their imaginary. The Christian theologian is simply, and at best, a worshipper of the God Self-explicated for us, by way of the theologianā€™s participation with Christ in the triune life as an adopted co-heir with Christ; and as such, the theologianā€™s task is to be a witness (Ī¼Ī¬ĻĻ„Ļ…Ļ‚) to the res (reality) they have come to encounter in the prosopon (face) of God in Jesus Christ.

Hence, unlike the philosopher, the Christian theologian isnā€™t attempting to discover metaphysical things in the vestiges of the natural order. The theologian, instead, is simply in union with the living triune God in Christ, which entails a lively, an organic ā€œsystem of knowledgeā€ that is based on contact with the LORD by way of Divine sustenance through ā€˜Immanuelā€™s veins.ā€™ This is an altogether different reality from the philosopherā€™s. The philosopher constructs models, presents hypotheses, attempts to tap into a naked knowledge source latent in the natural order. But the theologian sits in the heavenlies above all principalities and powers gaining lived and organic knowledge of ultimate reality upon filial and personalist fellowship with reality Hisself.

Let the theologian (and the philosopher) understand.

Christian Doctrine Slavishly Bound to a Theology of the Word

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Christians donā€™t just get to make up doctrine and beliefs as they go. As Protestants, deeply committed to a theology of the Word, doctrine must be grounded in Holy Scripture and its reality in Jesus Christ. Good theology understands this. Its theological reasoning processes are attendant to the inner reality of Scripture, which in fact is an analogate of the incarnation itself. That is, a genuine biblical exegesis does its reasoning by closely following the depth contours and teleology of the text of Holy Scripture itself. Anything beyond this, beyond the Word of God, is to adulterate and produce no-doctrines that only can lead people to destruction.

God is God Theology

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When reality starts with God as the given, as the Self-given one for the world in Christā€”indeed as the purpose for the worldā€™s existenceā€”rather than starting from the given, as if the creaturely just is, then everything is flipped on its head. Questions of human freedom, agency, morality, sin, evil, life, deathā€”everythingā€”is from that point on conditioned by God first rather than us first. We at His behest, and He not at ours (i.e., He doesnā€™t answer to us). Because He is a relational Father-Son-by the Holy Spirit Got, there is ineffable amount of space to dialogue with and know Him, as He has deigned it so.

The sooner folks accept that He is God and that we are not, the sooner an order is given in regard to the character of our questions and His answers. And this because He is the One who sets the questions to be answered, not us.

This is what true dogmatic theology does: it only attempts to speak, after it recognizes Deus dixit (that ā€˜God has spokenā€™ in Christ). Outwith this order there really is no order in theological development, or the great questions of life. All that someone can do outside of this God is God order is speculate in discursive forms, hoping to make contact with the source of all reality.

Evangelical Theology as Bricolage

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Do evangelicals have a theology, like a confessional-dogmatic theology? No. As an evangelical myself, growing up the deepest theologies I was ever exposed to was something like Walter Martinā€™s Kingdom of the Cults, or on the fringes, I would hear the name, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop (as an evangelical who was an intellectual) thrown around (and maybe, Charles Ryrie). None of this is to suggest that my experience is the delimiting factor in regards to whether or not evangelicals had or have a dogmatic theology present. But it is to recognize that even if attempts were indeed being made, they were not prominent ones. Later in life (like in my early 20s) I was exposed to Millard Erickson and Wayne Grudem; not to mention Bruce and Demarest and Stanley Grenz. But none of these theologies have ever risen to the levels of the Post Reformed orthodox theologians, or the Lutherans scholastics of the 16th and 17th centuries. And of course, in such a vacuum, because of the lacuna of dogmatic theologies for contemporary evangelicals and Reformed types, they are called back to said 16th and 17th century theologians, respectively (which we see now in the retrieval movement). And I think I am also part of this generation of evangelicals who happens to be a deep thinker, and was on the lookout for something deeper and substantive; something catholic, which has a liminal rootage with the church continuous.

Whatā€™s more, my turn hasnā€™t been to the 16th and 17th centuries, per se, but, clearly to the early 20th century as that is primarily resident in the theologies of Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance. Even so, my ā€œturnā€ happened by becoming attuned to the patristics, the medieval theologians, along with Martin Luther, John Calvin, and even the Post Reformed orthodox; primarily, the Puritans and Pietists. I quickly recognized that whilst there are great riches strewn throughout the history of the churchā€™s doctrinal development, that much of it did not correlate directly with an evangelical ethos. That is, while there has been a lacuna of evangelical dogmatics in the 20th and 21st centuries, even still, evangelicals have functioned with an unspoken set of theological themes that have served regulative for their worship services, Sunday morning sermons, Bible studies, so on and so forth. Evangelicals, by and large, believe that Jesus died and rose again for everyone; that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God; that the Gospel is genuinely offered to everyone (not just sufficiently, but efficaciously too); that God is love; that Jesus is God in flesh, both fully God and fully human; that God is triune as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that salvation is by faith alone; and more.

And yet, does Post Reformed orthodoxy map onto those themes in ethos? No, I would say not; even if there is some doctrinal overlap here and there. And so where can the evangelical turn? Many think they are more Arminian or Wesleyan than Calvinist, and then vice versa. As if these types of binaries are the only ones available, or most proximate to what they think they believe as evangelicals. And so often, the evangelical will attempt to cobble together some type of theological identity by taking themes from this perceived ā€œsideā€ or that, and then claim to be an Arminian, Wesleyan, Provisionist (as that has been more popularly developing), Free Grace, Calvinist, Anabaptist, evangelical Lutheran etc. But, in my view, this type of pastiche does not represent a coherent dogmatic theological offering that is genuinely evangelical in ethos, in spirit. I think Barth and TF Torrance, in their own ways, map onto a real evangelical dogmatic theology in ways that evangelicals have been in search for, for a long time (if they have been searching, anyway).

I understand that this post is highly generalized. But it is in gist.

God’s Wrath in the Theology of Karl Barth: The Theologian’s Theologian

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Karl Barth is often accused (erroneously so) of being a liberal theologian. This mistakenly happens under the neo-orthodox label, as if, at best, maybe a soft form of theological liberalism. And yet, Barth is more critical of theological liberalism than most of the so-called Reformed and Lutheran critics of Barth in the 21st century. Barth was more intimately related to, and formed by the mediating and liberal theologians, in direct ways, much beyond his critics today (and yesterday). The whole premise of Barthā€™s radical shift was in response to what he finally perceived as theological slop, in regard to the theological liberalism he had been trained under. He realized, famously, from his pulpit in Safenwil, that the theological pablum he had been fed in his university training, was just that. It had no real power, no grist or grit in the face of the fallout produced by WW1. As a result, he famously took such theology to task, initially, in his commentary on Romans (Der Rƶmerbrief), and finally, in his Church Dogmatics.

What I want to highlight in this brief article is how false the aforementioned is. Barth, whilst radically, or consistently, following the Protestant Scripture Principle, brought critique against both theological liberalism, scholasticism Reformed, and much of the medieval harvest, that all, just the same, promoted portraits of God that ran afoul of the simple teaching and witness found in Holy Scripture. In this instance, in the example I am culling forward for this article, you will see how Barth might even sound like a conservative Reformed theologian of today (okay, Iā€™m stretching thatā€”heā€™s better). Here we see Barthā€™s commentary on Godā€™s wrath:

To the critics of the term ā€œwrath of Godā€ and especially A. Ritschl (Rechtf. u. Vers., II, Ā§ 16 f.) were quite wrong when they said that ā€œwrathā€ is not a quality or activity or attitude which can be explained in the light of Godā€™s being, or brought into harmony with His love and grace. In reply to this criticism we have to say plainly that the grace of God would not be grace if it were separated from the holiness in which God causes only His own and therefore His good will to prevail and be done, holding aloof from and opposing everything that is contrary to it, judging and excluding and destroying everything that resists it. And grace would not be free grace if it were bound to any single form of its appearance and manifestation, if God always had to show Himself monotonously as ā€œlove,ā€ or what we think of as love, if He were not permitted to negate that which has to be negated, if He could not conceal Himself when He is resisted, revealing His grace only in the alien form of unwillingness and wrath. Above all, grace would not be grace, the serious and effective address of God to man, the effective establishment of fellowship with him, if God did not oppose manā€™s opposition to Himself, if He left man to go his own way unaccused and uncondemned and unpunished, if He ignored the miserable pride of man, if the man of sin had nothing to fear from Him, if it were not a fearful thing to fall into His hands (Heb. 12.29). That His grace would not be grace without His judgment is just as true as the supposed opposite with which it is indissolubly connected, that there is no holiness of God which can be separated from His grace, and therefore no wrath of Godā€”this is something which, unfortunately, A. Ritschl did not even remotely understandā€”that can be anything other than the redemptive fire of His love, which has its final and proper work in the fact that for our sake, for the sake of man fallen in sin and guilt, He did not spare His only Son.[1]

Let it be known, I donā€™t care whether or not Barth is palatable to the so-called conservative Reformed and Lutheran theologians of today. But let it also be observed that Barth is no churlish reader and receiver of the Reformed tradition such that he simply discards with what might sound offensive to the Romanticā€™s and Rationalistā€™s eardrums. Barth is a Bible reader. As a result, he attempts to do his theology in light of Scriptureā€™s reality (res), Jesus Christ. As the passage illustrates, Barth understands Godā€™s grace (and love) from within the context of Godā€™s Self-revelation as that comes for us in His dearly beloved Son.

This isnā€™t so much an apology for Barth (in fact I repudiate such things), as it is a call for people to be good theologians. Donā€™t let foreign limiting factors enter into the theological task, such that said factors delimit the Word of God of being the only source and ground for the outworking of a genuinely Christian theology. In the aforementioned from Barth, we have an example of this type of outworking in the context of his rebuttal of a mediating (liberal) theologian Albrecht Ritschl. And yet, de jure, the basis upon which Barth reads a constructively christologically conditioned notion of Godā€™s wrath, against, in this case, Ritschl, applies catholically across the board and all around to every period of theological development; into the present and forthcoming.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics IV/1 Ā§60 [490] The Doctrine of Reconciliation:Ā Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 131.

As a Narrative Theologian You Pray, You Worship, You Write

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I prefer doing narratival theology. Why? Because to me it is the most organic expression of a dialogical theology. What is a dialogical theology? It is a theology where you’re constantly in prayer, in dialog with the One who has made and re-made us in Jesus Christ. It is a theology where you aren’t waiting to be participant or partaker with the divine nature, but actively keeping in step with that as the reality of the Christian daily existence. Narratival theology remains an open form. One that reflects a stream of worship, meditation, and con-versation with God, who is Father of the Son by the Holy Spirit. Dialogical theology operates from within the center of God’s life in Christ; it is greater than the written word, but not lesser. As such it can be written for the Church’s edification; indeed, grounded in the experience of Christ’s lived life, His vicarious humanity for us. So, a narratival theology as the expression of a dialogical theology is a highly personalist and experiential theology. But it isn’t a rationalist or romanticist theology insofar that the experience of God isn’t grounded in each one of us abstractly, but in God the Son’s experience for us in His archetypal and greater Adamic humanity for us.

As a narratival thelogian you simply pray, you worship, you participate in the triune life and the communio sanctorum (communion of the saints), and then write and speak upon it for others; for purposes of edification of the body of Christ writ large.

” . . . the illusion of an abstract monotheism”

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There is no God, but the One God; and we know this One God by the Son of God made flesh in the humanity of Jesus Christ. This One God is not known any other way. He is not known by the philosophers nor made known by the philosopher-theologians. He is only and ever centrally known as He has freely made Himself Self-known in the face of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit; indeed, He would have no face for us without the Holy Spirit. The genuinely Christian God is One (de Deo uno) in Three (de Deo trino), Three in One in eternal koinonia from His a se existence. It is by the humility of this God, as exemplified by the free obedience of the Son in the Father by the Holy Spirit, whereby this God becomes known. The theological Philistines have attempted to reason their way to this God, but only because they first became aware of this God by this Godā€™s Self-revelation; even as inchoate in His mediated presence through the Hebrews. In other words, it was only ever because of this triune Godā€™s gracious stooping to the sons of men that the notion of One God was contrived in the first place. And the mesmerizing thing about this God is that He has always already been vulnerable enough in His inner and triune life to make this impossible a possibility; that is, to be willing to be made known, even with the possibility of being mistaken for some type of mechanistic simple Monad of the brutish thinkers. Even so, this God has contradicted such triteness; even by Him becoming obedient to the point of death, even the death of the Roman cross. There is no space for the monadic on the scandalous cross; this God is altogether too complex to be imagined, even in the greatest of the philosophical imaginaries among us. This God, the triune and eternal God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in perichoretic bondedness, has taken on human blood in His own humanity as the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

Someone else gets at the aforementioned much more eloquently thusly:

As we look at Jesus Christ we cannot avoid the astounding conclusion of a divine obedience. Therefore we have to draw the no less astounding deduction that in equal Godhead the one God is, in fact, the One and also the Another, that He is indeed a First and a Second, One who rules and commands in majesty and One who obeys in humility. The one God is both the one and the other. And, we continue, he is the one and the other without any cleft or differentiation but in perfect unity and equality because in the same perfect unity and equality he is also a Third, the One who affirms the one and equal Godhead through and by and in the two modes of being, the One who makes possible and maintains His fellowship with Himself as the one and the other. In virtue of this third mode of being He is in the other two without division or contradiction, the whole God in each. But again in virtue of this third mode of being He is in neither for itself and apart from the other, but in each in its relationship to the other, and therefore, in fact, in the totality, the connexion, the interplay, the history of these relationships. And because all division and contradiction is excluded, there is also excluded any striving to identify the two modes of being, or any possibility of the one being absorbed by the other, or both in their common deity. God is God in these two modes of being which cannot be separated, which cannot be autonomous, but which cannot cease to be different. He is God in their concrete relationships the one to the other, in the history which takes place between them. He is God only in these relationships of its modes of being, which is neutral towards them. This neutral Godhead, this pure and empty Godhead, and its claim to be true divinity, is the illusion of an abstract ā€œmonotheismā€ which usually fools men most successfully at the high-water mark of the development of heathen religions and mythologies and philosophies. The true and living God is the One whose Godhead consists in this history, who is in these three modes of being the One God, the Eternal, the Almighty, the Holy, the Merciful, the One who loves in His freedom and is free in His love.[1]

Well said, Uncle; well said.

Please notice maybe an almost unnoticed profundity when Barth refers to the history that obtains between and in and among the fellowship of the triune persons. It is within this space, this Father-Son-by-the-Holy Spirit relationship wherein all of human history and being takes place; indeed, as the electing God, the elected Man, the eternal Logos, the Son of God, graciously and freely chose to become us that we, by that act and actualism of Grace, might become human before God. It is His history, within His own Self-predestined and inner-triune life, whereby the creation obtains; wherein the redemption, the recreation, the elevation of humanity occurs. Just as the Son, before the foundation of the world, is freely Logos incarnandus (ā€˜the Word to be incarnateā€™), it is within this freedom of Godā€™s life by which the whole created order finds its determination. This, in the Eschaton, in the final and consummate reality actualized, and finally realized, is how it is that humanity becomes and is sustained as humanity simpliciter. That is by Godā€™s freedom, by the obedience and humility intrinsic to the life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, within the mysterium Trinitatis, by which anything, not least of which, humanity, exists at all; as worshippers and witnesses of their very life before God, by God, in God by the Spirit anointed humanity of the free God, the Son of Man, the Man from Nazareth, the Son in the bosom of the Father, Jesus Christ.

[1] Karl Barth,Ā Church Dogmatics IV/1 Ā§59 [203] The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Study EditionĀ (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 196.

You Have a Hermeneutic, Did You Know That? Probably Not.

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The online and non-online Christian world is occupied by interminable and ongoing debates with reference to both theological and exegetical conclusions vis-Ć -vis an a priori, yet typically, uncritically received hermeneutical framework. And even if this or that person claims this or that theological framework, say a Calvinism or Arminianism, a Hellenism or Hegelianism, an asserted literal biblical hermeneutic or allegorical/spiritual, so on and so forth, there is almost zero discourse having to do with the ideas that stand behind said frameworks. That is, there is little to no awareness about the informing ideas and intellectual histories that have given rise to the array of hermeneutical expressions that we live with today. Indeed, there is this type of uncritical non-self-reflective reception of whatever hermeneutic said person receives and deploys in their respective engagement with the text of Holy Scripture, and its reality in Jesus Christ (I just snuck some of my hermeneutic in right here).

What I am primarily referring to, particularly on the theological side, is a prolegomenon. A prolegomenon, especially when the student flips open a systematic theology book, is often the first section of said book. It is explaining the theologianā€™s theological methodology and the various theological-intellectual priors they are utilizing to arrive at their respective theological conclusions vis-Ć -vis the array of theological loci that typically populates a systematic theology. But even among the theologians who present a prolegomenon for their systematic theologies, respectively, they often simply reveal that they too have uncritically received a particular style of a so-called ā€˜classical-theisticā€™ commitment. That is to say, this or that theologian often will give the company lines as their prolegomenon; and as far as that goes, that can be helpful for the reader, in terms of knowing what to expect. But even at this level if the theologian is just repeating what has been handed down for the centuries, within their respective theological ā€œgroup,ā€ all they end up doing, ironically, is modeling a way to uncritically receive, rinse, and repeat a theological methodology that has been cleanly packaged for them by their prior giants. This model for doing theology is not helpful in my view, and only ends up contributing to the perpetuation of what I was referring to in my above paragraph for this article.

So, it might seem like Iā€™m griping just to gripe. But I want to suggest something. I want to suggest that all theologians and biblical exegetes need to spend the time criticizing their own received interpretive traditions, their hermeneutics, respectively, and consider their source and synthesis. In other words, be sure, as a theology or Bible reader and doer, that you, the theologian, spend the time looking at what is informing your theological and exegetical conclusions. Make sure, in other words, that you understand the theological ontology and subsequent epistemology that stands behind and informs the way you think theologically in general. Ask the question: does my theological methodology (hermeneutic) have a ground in the heavenlies, in the ascended Christ, or does it only have an earthly and abstract fount of knowledge? In other words, consider whether or not your theological methodology has a genuinely Christian ground, and one that works from the interior theo-logic presented by the implications of the incarnation of God in Christ, or if it only reflects a prior logic deduced from the abstract and speculative ratiocinations of a naked humanity; one that relies on philosophical witticism rather than Christian revelation.

Without this type of self-criticism and deep self-engagement, as far as understanding what stands behind and within our theological and exegetical conclusions, theological discourse will only continue to go by the bye. Now, I am not so naĆÆve to think my exhortation here will fall on ripe ears, per se; at least not in general. But what I am hoping is that by at least highlighting this matter it might have the effect of waking some folks up. Maybe they have never even stopped to consider that they have a hermeneutic; that they have prior theological and philosophical commitments informing their respective conclusions. I think this issue plagues most of the Church; not just among the laity, but the ā€œspecialistsā€ alike. And until people recognize this fact, they will continue to frustratingly bang their heads against their interlocutorā€™s walls.

The Tomb of Christian Revelation Juxtaposed with the Vapors of Metaphysics

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There is no abstract conceptual apparatus by which we can know the Christian God. Knowledge of God is absolutely contingent on Godā€™s free Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This is the only way as Christians that we know God; as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has descended to us in the real garb of a flesh and blood human; as a Jew from Nazareth. And His reception in Maryā€™s womb was made fertile by the millennia of preparation for His first coming as the Holy Spirit hovered over the Hebrews.

None of the above requires augmentation by way of appeal to and appropriation of foreign and abstract metaphysics. The Christ child came in the wood of the manger; died on the wood of the cross; and rose again from the rock of the tomb. These are all concrete and particular materials that have no correspondence with the ethereal of the philosophers, per se.

‘The Faith of Christ’ in Contradiction to the gods of the Metaphysicians

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What hath Jerusalem to do with Athens? A question from the days of Tertullian, and now down through the centuries. I would vociferously argue that Jerusalem must condition Athens in such a way that Athens becomes nothing more than a pretext to be used by the textuality of Godā€™s life Self-revealed for the church and world in Jesus Christ. This question of ā€œfaith and reasonā€ has been given many iterations and treatments throughout the halls of history, whether that be from someone as boisterous as Martin Luther, or someone as methodologically skeptical as Rene Descartes. Indeed, the reformational scholastics themselves, and their progeny, even into the repristinate of today, ostensibly maintain that the metaphysics of the classical Greek philosophers is in fact univocal towards thinking and speaking the Christian God.

I protest, and so does Eberhard JĆ¼ngel:

The faith which interposes such questions is a disturbance. But should not faith be seen as a disturber of the metaphysical thought of God, as even its greatest menace? Was it not necessary that a study of religion within the boundaries of pure reason would have to come to the aid of the metaphysical concept of God in order to reduce the all too human discourse about a God who reveals himself in history to a rational level? Did not faith have to be subordinated to that morality which was established without faith, if it were not to become irrational in and of itself and thus be dead?

But then faith will reply with the question whether it really is such a rational capacity that a theoretical or practical use of reason, separate from the event of faith, can prescribe reasonā€™s function. What becomes of God when an abstract ā€œI thinkā€ or an abstract ā€œthou shaltā€ sets the context from the outset within which one then may and must decide what merits being called God? Although the intention to maintain the strictest possible distinction between God and man cannot be supported too strongly by theology, does not this approach lead to a result which is totally opposed to that intention? And finally, if God has been established as the securing factor for man, has not then the decision been already made that from now on the securing must become the god of man? Is not ultimately the categorical imperative the grand attempt to establish the morally understood security of the human race as its highest good? If ā€œnothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will,ā€ then does not the good will which secures the welfare of the human race become the god of man?[1]

Prior to the above passage Juengal has been discussing how certainty and non-certainty might work within a theological and philosophical frame vis-Ć -vis God. Without getting into the details, for our purposes, the questions Juengal puts to the God constructed from classical and modern metaphysical premises are sufficient. Sufficient, for drawing attention to the fact that faith itself, if indeed it has to do with a genuine knowledge of the genuine and triune God of the Christians, has its starting point insofar as God starts with us first; that is, rather than us starting with God first. Is Christian faith intended to provide a provision of self-security in a seemingly insecure world for its own sake (something like a ā€˜god-of-the-gapsā€™)? Or is Christian faith purely focused upon knowledge of God that is focused on God as God, as God is in Himself as the reality who indeed is to be worshipped simply because He is, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Well of course, the Christian should want to say the latter rather than the former. But methodologically so much of Christian theology, one way or the other, no matter how much piety and piousness is on display, has given way to thinking God only after God has first been thought by the profane mind. Indeed, the mind that is ultimately seeking a huge scratch for the itch of uncertainties, for the chaos that this world presents each and everyone of us with upon our respective arrivals on planet earth.

I think the moral here is that Godā€™s Self-revelation is categorically distinct, in a sui generis type of way, from the metaphysics. That is, knowledge of God for the Christian entails a vulnerability. But the vulnerability isnā€™t about assuaging our own anxieties about the ostensible disorder of the world, and our place in it. The vulnerability is that we donā€™t have the capacity to disentangle ourselves from the chaos of this world order; no matter what type of metaphysical structures we might build in that very attempt. The genuine vulnerability we have is that without being rightly positioned within the order that God has set about, we indeed will seek to create our own veritable towers of Babel; reaching up to a certainty of reality that ultimately has to do with ensuring a salvation for ourselves rather than being reliant upon the One who can actually provide us with a true and rightly ordered salvation, as that obtains in Godself for us in Jesus Christ. And it is this, this faith of Christ, that confronts the metaphysically construed gods, who seek a faith built upon its own internal premises, rather than the alien premises of faith provided for, truly, by the living God for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Eberhard JĆ¼ngel,Ā God as the Mystery of the World,Ā trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 195ā€“96.