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Perhaps a happier, because less confrontational, way of making my case would be to allow precritical as well as properly critical senses of "theology," "philosophy," "metaphysics," and so on.

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Of course, making something very like this distinction is nothing new to my thinking and writing. Indeed, I make it in so many words already in my Auseinandersetzung with Hough and Cobb, when I distinguish between a "critical reflection" that is a reflection in faith as well as on faith and a critical reflection that is a reflection on faith, but not in it, because it allows for critically invalidating as well as validating all the claims to validity made or implied in bearing the witness of faith, including the claim to credibility or truth (Doing Theology Today: 74 ff.). "In the final analysis, then," I conclude, "the question is not whether we may properly use the term 'theology' and its cognates in a strict as well as a broad sense; the question is what we are to mean as and when we so use them. Are we to mean only such 'critical reflection' as is possible to Christians understanding and thinking as Christians? Or are we to mean the critical
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reflection that is necessary if Christian claims to truth or credibility, not to mention appropriateness or fittingness, are themselves to be critically validated?" (76).

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In any event, I see nothing in allowing such a distinction that would compromise what I want to say; and allowing it may have a certain strategic or tactical advantage in making my case. On the other hand, considering that I have -- in have—in effect, and even in so many words -- already words—already long made the distinction, I can't be too optimistic about the difference that making it now is likely to make.

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