1478. Christian faith implies metaphysical beliefs . . .

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The Christian faith implies metaphysical beliefs that can be validated as credible on the basis of common human experience and reason only in terms of an independent secular metaphysics.

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There is no way of distinguishing other than verbally between a so-called metaphysical analogy and a merely symbolic or metaphorical use of the category in question. 

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The metaphysics, although the only metaphysics, that theology has need of is no form of the categorial metaphysics of most philosophical tradition, but only a neoclassical form of transcendental metaphysics, which, having dispensed with all forms of metaphysical analogy, at last completes the process of demythologizing—not only of myth, but also of metaphysics. 

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In radically monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the term "God" refers to the strictly ultimate reality that is the necessary condition of the possibility not only of ourselves and of the world of other persons and things but of anything whatever that is so much as conceivable. 

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Where God is conceived radically, as in monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is clearly understood as metaphysically real and so as not even possibly the object of strictly empirical modes of experience and knowledge. As 'the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible,' God is understood to be the primal creative source and the final consummative end of anything that is so much as possible, and hence to be in the strictest sense necessary, not merely a being among others, but the being, and thus also, in a way, "being-itself." In fact, the God of radical monotheism is conceived to be the one metaphysical individual whose individuality is constitutive of reality as such and who, therefore, is the inclusive object of all our faith and understanding.

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The transcendental method is simply analyzing out and raising to explicit consciousness the basic beliefs that are the necessary conditions of the possibility of our existing or understanding at all.