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When I say that "the assertion, in some concepts and terms or other, that we are justified by grace alone through faith alone is just as 'constitutive' (or 'constituting') as either the properly christological or the strictly theological assertion," I am unintentionally misled and misleading. For I have evidently forgotten that both "the properly christological assertion" and "the strictly theological assertion" are existential, not merely intellectual, assertions, whether empirical, empirical-historical, or metaphysical. As such, they have to do with their respective subjects -- Jesus and the ultimate reality of self, others, and God -- not in their being or structure in themselves, but in their meaning or significance for us. Thus even "the strictly theological assertion" qua theological, rather than metaphysical, has as much to do with how we can and should understand ourselves and others in relation to God as with how we are to understand God in relation to us -- as the all-gracious God whom we can and should obey through faith, which is to say, unreserved trust and unqualified loyalty.

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