As a radical Protestant I am a theologian of a radical theology of the Word. This means that I first understand the Word, to be the eternal Logos, the begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. I understand his free election (Deus incarnandus) to be for us to entail what has become the written and proclaimed Word. So, the creaturely media, such as written and proclaimed Words are, in order, at least for the former to be living and active, requires that its res or reality be antecedently given in and from the eternally living and active Word of God in the triune Life. This is to say, that the evangelical–history that bears witness to its reality, as deposited in Holy Scripture, has meaningful or eschatological and concrete reality insofar that its history isn’t accidental or abstract. In other words, in God’s free election to be human-creaturely for us in the elect humanity of Jesus Christ, it is from this choice that all of the temporal history following has taken its grist and orientation from the history bound up in God’s election to be for the world, so that the world might ultimately be for Him; which is what it would mean to say that ‘Christ is the firstborn from the dead.’ So, there is a primacy, a superiority to Christ such that all of temporal history has taken its creational cues from Christ’s choice to be the image of the living God for us. The world is merely an image of the image of God in Christ. That is to say, as the priests of creation that we were created to be, in creation’s eschatological reality, even as first seeded in the protology of God’s first Word of grace “in the beginning,” we participate in and from the primacy of Christ’s life which is the meaning finally given to all of history. Not in an adoptionistic sense, but in a christologically conditioned supralapsarian sense. It is in this frame that the written Word comes to have its orientation in a theological taxis (order). The written [and proclaimed] Word has reality, because Christ first freely chose to have reality for us. The written Word comes to have primordial reality insofar that the pre-destined Word of God pre-temporally comes to give it its reality in the irruption of God’s first Word of Grace; “in the beginning.”
There are mysteries here, but not hidden mysteries; they are revealed, even paradoxical, or dialectical mysteries that have inherence insofar that that they are indeed inviting us into otherworldly matters. This becomes the basis for Christian worship. The triune God has invited us into the banqueting table of His inner-triune-Life. He has said: “come sup with me, and I with you; come wonder at me, but in me and with me, as I am first with and in you in the Son of Man.” These are indeed representative of primordial matters, just as sure, that at a physical level there was a time we once weren’t, but then were in the wombs of our mothers. The primordiality of life has mystery to it, but it is not a hidden mystery, it is a revealed mystery. We know the One who is both fully God and fully human, who is the Theanthropos. We wonder at Him, but we do so only as we talk and walk with Him as our elder brother. Our hearts burn within us as we hear Him speak and hear Him concretely refer to Himself in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms. He is the Word of God for us; He is the living and active of the written Word of God. We worship Him in Spirit and in Truth, just as sure as He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.