Theology has been traditionally understood as the interpretation of a previously given faith. Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is its tag. Faith for many Christians has been taken as doctrinal, and theology is then seen as the interpretation of a set of truths, written in Scripture and handed down in tradition. Where, however, in reaction against an intellectual account of faith as assent to propositions, faith is regarded as a personal meeting with God as revealing himself in Christ, theology then becomes the reflexive apprehension of this faith encounter. But in either case theology is the interpretation of a pre-given religious reality, an already existing reality regarded as remaining essentially identical with itself in history. Theology would thus presuppose the unbroken self-identity of faith through all the changes of human society.

A twofold problem arises here. How in that case does theology avoid being an acceptance of, at least an acquiescence in, the present human situation? Is it not inevitably compromised as a rationalization, an attempted legitimation, of past and present human society, covering up or mystifying the alienation that society has brought? The history of faith and the history of human society merge into one history. To approach that history merely by way of interpretation is to conceive it as transmitting meaning and truth. But is it not in fact a history of alienation, a place of unmeaning and untruth, a story of domination and repression? If one tries to meet this objection by saying that theology in expressing faith formulates a protest against the present human condition and the oppressions of society, then one falls into the second half of the problem.