Folks like Kant, like Kierkegaard, like Engels, many others, suggest all ideas start with reality and then tend toward concreteness; formally object, concept, image.
Theology, and Philosophy too, is that bit of final direction between what is experienced — and if belief is attitudinal disposition toward a state of affairs, already believed — and the terms we’ve fashioned that seem to best capture it.
The trope is that the map is not the territory.
Ideas, no matter how much we sanctify, sanction, dogmatize, or require them for group memberships, are always on the backside of anything that has already found its best reasons for mattering.
Just a thought.
Rambling Thoughts 