This book comprises The Payton Lectures delivered in April 1981 at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, under the title "The Realist Basis of Evangelical Theology." The aim of the lectures was to cut a swath through the prevailing confusion about the nature of theological and biblical interpretation of divine revelation, so that Christ clothed with his gospel may be allowed to occupy the controlling center of the church's life, thought, and mission in the world today. That is what evangelical theology in the proper sense is about, in its ontological commitment to the incarnate presence and activity of God in Jesus Christ within the objectivities and intelligibilities of our human existence in space and time. [From the Preface]