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Debriefing after After Writing My Paper for the Potthoff Group

1. Why is doing theology in a less rather than a more critical way really a way of bearing witness? - Because it cannot be adequately distinguished from bearing witness -  particularly witness—particularly not, from bearing witness indirectly, by teaching, as distinct from bearing witness directly, by proclamation. This is so, at any rate, assuming that even doing theology less critically is, as I argue, doing theology in a strict rather than a broad sense and therefore doing it critically.

2. I've long argued not just that doing theology has to depend on certain resources, but also that its tasks are its own, and that they are inalienable. But, in the nature of the case, the resources on which doing theology has to depend are mixed. In critically interpreting the meaning of bearing witness, it has to depend, obviously, on the resources available from critical historical reflection generally. On the other hand, in validating the credibility credibility of bearing witness, it is necessarily dependent on critical philosophical reflection, and, therefore, on that of professional philosophers as well as that of professional theologians.

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