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I have argued that "practical theology properly asks what one is to do in the particular situation in and for which one must here and now take responsibility if one is to actualize ... a Christian self-understanding" (On Theology: 97). But this understanding of practical theology is too narrow, focusing, as it does, solely on the prospective, or "constructive," as distinct from the retrospective, or "critical," role of practical theological reflection.

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This is true, at any rate, if what constitutes practical theology as such is the question of critical validation addressed to the fittingness of witness to this, that, or the other particular situation, past, present, or future. On this understanding, by contrast with the one expressed above, practical theology is distinct from historical theology in being constituted by (one particular form of) the question of critical validation, as distinct from the question of critical interpretation, while it is distinct from systematic theology (which asks the other particular form of the question of critical validation) in addressing its question to the fittingness of witness to the particular situation in and for

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which witness is borne, as distinct from addressing its question to the adequacy of witness to its content, and thus to its appropriateness to Jesus Christ and its credibility to human existence, in any historical situation whatever.

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