It is time to move out from our focus on Christ and soteriology to wider questions concerning the doctrine of God and God's relationship with humanity. I have already stated that transcendental arguments typically show what other conditions must obtain granted the starting point of the argument, and in the previous chapter I tried to show that we need to approach questions about language and representation through the Christ-event. In this chapter, by taking covenant as a focal concept I want to retrieve some biblical resources so as to argue for an approach to questions of epistemology and ontology which follow from taking the triune God to be the ens realissimum. These are vast issues, and for reasons of space only pointers for future research and a brief outline of the issues sufficient to undergird the defence of realism can be given. To round off the discussion, and because this is the source of a number of problems with non-Christocentric defences of realism, we then look at the conceptual role realism has played and should play in Christian theology.

GOD AND HUMANITY

We have seen that theological realism confuses the creator with the creature by not taking sufficient account of the fact that God is the ens realissimum. Speaking of God in this quasi-technical way is to use language drawn from and partially shaped by a (theological and) philosophical tradition, but there need be nothing intrinsically mistaken in doing this provided that the usage is theologically disciplined.