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Is it correct to say, as I've said, that "the indirect form of Christian witness properly distinguished as 'Christian teaching' , , . - typically includes both properly metaphysical teaching about things that are to be believed (credenda) and properly moral teaching about things that are to be done (agenda)" ("Paul in Contemporary Theology and Ethics": 295)?

That Christian teaching necessarily implies properly metaphysical as well as properly moral teaching, and in that sense includes it, is clear enough. But it now seems to me misleading to say that the credenda and agenda taught by Christian teaching are themselves only, or even primarily, "properly metaphysical" and "properly moral" teaching respectively. Although they certainly have properly metaphysical and properly moral implications, they themselves are properly religious. Thus, for example, even the supposedly "metaphysical" dogmas 'of the triunity of God and of the divine-human person of Jesus Christ are properly religious, rather than properly metaphysical, teaching. To this extent, or in this sense, then, my statement now seems to me to be incorrect -- and to contribute to the unfortunate impression I fear too many of the things I've said may have given, that religion, in my view, is ultimately reducible to metaphysics and/or morals and so is not "the necessary and indispensable third" after all.

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