perhaps takes historical criticism further by consciously declining to seek any ‘direct’ reading of the New Testament. In the contextualizing approach nobody asks, for example, what Paul says about God and Christ of such a kind that we might then also go on to say the same, that is, as something to be taken over from Paul. Instead one asks from the outside: How does Paul speak of God (etc.)? What does he mean by it? And what broader sense does it make within his own context? There is no question