Theology is an office in the Church of Jesus Christ. It is properly undertaken in the sphere of the Church, that is, in the region of human fellowship which is brought into being and sustained by the saving activity and presence of God. Theology is one of the effects of that saving presence; it is one of the activities of reason transfigured by the renewal of human life and history which the holy God effects in his works and makes manifest in his word. The divine works of renewal culminate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, his exaltation over all things, and his bestowal of new life in the Spirit’s power. Through the Spirit, Jesus Christ the exalted one generates a new mode of common human life, the life of the Church. To participate in that common human life, hearing the gospel in fellowship under the word of God and living together under the signs of baptism and the Lord’s supper, is to exist in a sphere in which God’s limitless power is unleashed and extends into the entirety of human life: moral, political, cultural, affective, intellectual. Reason, like everything else, is remade in the sphere of the Church; and theological reason is an activity of the regenerate mind turned towards the gospel of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the Church’s origin and vocation.

John Webster, Holiness, 1ff.