(11)-(15)

(11) The precedents one recognizes can themselves be correct or incorrect, of course; these recognitions, too, can be mapped onto a series of precedents. Transition from the recognition of precedents to the recognition of recognizers.

(12) If the meaning of a candidate commitment (in this instance, a concept-use) depends upon its standing at the end, so to speak, of a series of precedents, it follows that the candidate use aims to carry on that series and so serve as a precedent for still other uses. In using a concept one thus recognizes certain precedents, and one seeks this same precedential status for one's own use.

(13) One's use of a concept thus contributes to its meaning, from which it follows that its content is in some respect due to one. More generally, one's doxastic, practical, and emotional commitments contribute to the norm implicit in the intersubjective practices they seek to carry on, which means that these norms are recognizable as one's own.

(14) It likewise follows that to use a concept (contribute to the norm implicit in a practice) is to change its meaning, if ever so slightly: the meaning of a concept is a product of a normative trajectory implicit in precedent uses; every time a would-be use is recognized as carrying on that trajectory, it opens up still further possibilities of carrying it on.

(15) One of the aims of theology is thus to open up possibilities for novel expression. One makes explicit the content of one's commitments and tries to see the commitment as going on in the same way as certain precedents; to the extent that one is successful, one contributes something novel to the series of precedents, thereby enabling still other novelties. (The example of metaphor.)