By faith the person…not only hears about God but enters into a personal relationship of obedient love with God his Father.

Theology in the true sense starts not merely with certain formal authoritative propositions about God but from this personal relationship. [@merton80 92]

The concept of “personal relationship” is therefore playing a crucial role in grounding the very definition of theology, yet I suspect that it does not receive any more precise specification that it does here. That’s my project.