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But this is not all that can be said about theology's context, and it is only by considering what may be called its several contextual factors that the theological task itself can be fully understood. For the present, however, it must suffice to say that the several factors that go to make up the context of theology all fall into one or the other of two groups, which reflect the twofold question that theology asks and tries to answer and, behind that, its necessary and sufficient conditions as a process of reflection in the Christian witness of faith and the human existence for which that witness claims to be decisive, and hence true. Thus one may distinguish such factors as the following as belonging, respectively, to the two groups: (1) revelation, faith, church, the apostolic witness, Scripture, tradition; and (2) experience, reason, culture, religion, academy, history, philosophy, the special sciences and the arts. It should be evident that, in pursuing this fourth question of the context, or the contextual factors, of theology, one must perforce retread the ground covered only by all the loci of traditional prolegomena -- not only the locus on theology, but also the loci on revelation, on faith, and on Holy Scripture.

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Wiki Markup^1^ On this definition of the theological task, as well as on all that follows in this paper, see the more extended discussion in my essay, "What Is Theology?" +The Journal of Religion+, LII, 1 (January 1972), 22-40. ^2^ See my essay, "The Point of Christology," +The Journal of Religion+, LV, 4 (October 1975), 375-395. ^3^ This is true, I should maintain,even if a proto-form of "the Christ-kerygma" should prove to be at least as early as "the Jesus-kerygma" documented by the Synoptic Gospels. For it is in the Jesus-kerygma that the Jesus who is the subject of all Christian witness, and hence the explicit source of all that is theologically normative, is attested without explicit christological predicates--the Christ-kerygma as such, as Willi Marxsen has shown, being merely implicit in the "that" of the Jesus-kerygma, as distinct from its "what." Because all explicit christological predicates not only interpret their subject but, more importantly, are also to be interpreted by it, it is the Jesus discernible precisely in the Jesus-kerygma by which the appropriateness of all explicit christology and, consequently, all other theological claims must finally be judged. See further Willi Marxsen, +Das Neue Testament als Buch der Kirche+ (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1968), pp. 108 f., III (English translation by James E. Mignard as +The New Testament as the Church's Book+ \[Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972\], pp. 112 f., ¹ On this definition of the theological task, as well as on all that follows in this paper, see the more extended discussion in my essay, "What Is Theology?" The Journal of Religion, LII, 1 (January 1972), 22-40.
² See my essay, "The Point of Christology," The Journal of Religion, LV, 4 (October 1975), 375-395.
³ This is true, I should maintain,even if a proto-form of "the Christ-kerygma" should prove to be at least as early as "the Jesus-kerygma" documented by the Synoptic Gospels. For it is in the Jesus-kerygma that the Jesus who is the subject of all Christian witness, and hence the explicit source of all that is theologically normative, is attested without explicit christological predicates--the Christ-kerygma as such, as Willi Marxsen has shown, being merely implicit in the "that" of the Jesus-kerygma, as distinct from its "what." Because all explicit christological predicates not only interpret their subject but, more importantly, are also to be interpreted by it, it is the Jesus discernible precisely in the Jesus-kerygma by which the appropriateness of all explicit christology and, consequently, all other theological claims must finally be judged. See further Willi Marxsen, Das Neue Testament als Buch der Kirche (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1968), pp. 108 f., III (English translation by James E. Mignard as The New Testament as the Church's Book [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972], pp. 112 f., 115).