Though the institutional arrangements of theology in modernity have often made it hard for us to see this point, theology is not a transcendent moment, some activity of the mind standing above the merely domestic life of the Christian community and submitting it to an ironic, critical gaze. Holy reason is ecclesiastical science–a knowing and inquiring which takes place within ‘the commonwealth gathered, founded, and ordered by the Word of God’, and participating in the calling and promise which God issues to that commonwealth.

John Webster, Holiness, 26