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What it has to assert about God rests upon the presupposition of radical monotheism, by which I mean, the presupposition that all things, actual and possible, are included in the one all-encompassing whole of which we experience ourselves and all others to be parts and which is therefore conceived as the one universal individual, from, through, and for which all things exist (cf. 1 Cor. 8:6 ff.). Thus what the Christian witness somehow has to assert about God is by way of answering the question as to the identity of the all-encompassing whole thus conceived as the one universal individual – -- not, to be sure, in its structure in itself, but in its meaning for us, i.e., how it implicitly authorizes (entitles and empowers) us to understand ourselves and existence generally if we are do so authentically and truly.

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If this analysis is sound, however, the fundamental problem set for Christian witness and theology in any historical situation is how to assert what Christian faith necessarily implies and so somehow has to assert about its "essential or substantial foundation," i.e., the twofold reality of God and Jesus, even while affirming rather than denying what it necessarily presupposes about this same twofold reality. Arguably, the measure of their "orthodoxy" is the success they respectively enjoy, in their different historical situations, in solving this problem, whereas the sure sign of their "heresy" is their corresponding failure – -- whether because they assert what they must assert in such a way as to deny their presuppositions, or the other way around, because they affirm their presuppositions only at the expense of not asserting what they must somehow assert.

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