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The second inference is that what makes problems of systematic theology "_basic_ problems" is that they arise at the relatively more critical level of determining and employing _ultimate_ criteria of judgment, as distinct from the relatively less critical level on which the criteria are consuetudinary only. This is clear enough (at least now\!) from my observing that systematic theology, in "\[i\]ts first and third phases, which I term respectively 'historical' and 'philosophical,' are both concerned, in different ways, with establishing _criteria_ of validation," whereas "\[i\]ts second, 'hermeneutical' phase is wholly concerned with interpretation" ("Theology without Metaphysics?"; italics added). What I did not bring out sufficiently in that context, however, is that problems arising in connection with the critical interpretation with which systematic theology is concerned in its second phase are also "basic," because such interpretation is not different from the interpretation with which historical theology, along with secular history, is also concerned; Le., it is interpretation, as I say, "not only of the 'surface meaning' of the speech acts, including the language acts, performed in bearing witness, but also of their 'deep structure,' or logical _kind_ of meaning." Because this is so, problems arising at the relatively more critical level of the second phase of systematic theology are also "_basic_ problems" \-\- both because interpretation of "deep structure" as well as "surface meaning" is "basic" to, because necessarily presupposed by, critical validation, and also because interpretation of the first is "basic" to interpretation of the second.