societies or the world around us as these are related to God.3 There have been times in the history of theology when theologians conceived of their task differently, as when Schleiermacher famously defined Christian doctrines as ‘accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech’.4 Such an anthropological orientation to theology was rightly overturned by Karl Barth in 1921, even though it continues to linger on in some quarters and resonates with the pluralist and relativist agenda