as the sociology of religion. Hence our purpose is to understand the structure of the given reality of a church of Christ, as revealed in Christ, from the perspective of social philosophy and sociology. But the nature of the church can only be understood from within, cum ira et studio [with passionate zeal],[19] never by nonparticipants. Only those who take the claim of the church seriously—not relativizing it in relation to other similar claims or their own rationality, but viewing it from the standpoint