Description:
<jats:p> THESIS: This is a linguistic analytical attempt to redeem a phrase which, because of its ingrained difficulties, has tended to be regarded as useless and redundant for modern theology. By setting up a correlation between three different ways of analyzing the linguistic ambiguity involved in the phrase and three different theological interpretations of the Christian life to which the phrase can be seen to give expression, various ways are opened to overcome the ambiguity—or at least to clarify it so as to abrogate its more destructive theological consequences. The result is that both within Augustinian and Lutheran, as well as Wesleyan, interpretations of the Christian life, one can—with full intellectual respectability—make a meaningful use of the phrase. </jats:p>