God Ad Extra and Covenantal Condescension

This does not mean, however, that for Junius the identity of archetypal theology with the divine essence of God renders Him incapable of communicating to the created order. God Himself bridges the gap by graciously revealing ectypal theology to His creatures by an act of His free and contingent will ad extra. At the same time, the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology underscores the fact that human beings do not have direct access to the knowledge of God. Thus, humans are dependent on God’s external self-disclosure. In other words, there is no way of access from man to God, but only from God to man.

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...the overarching paradigm for understanding the principles and task of theology was the archetypal/ectypal distinction, and the parallel distinction between the essential or ad intra dimension and the contingent or ad extra dimension of divine agency.