(20)-(23)

(20) Here it is crucial that the meaning of a concept changes over time, since this entails that a concept's application to God need not be thought to cut God down to creaturely size. To apply the concept "justice" to God is indeed to claim that this application carries on the normative trajectory implicit in a series of "profane" precedents, yet the theological application can be seen as both fulfilling and judging those precedents: just as Jesus' humanity is the judgment and fulfilment of all other instantiations of humanity, so God's justice is the judgment and fulfillment of all other instances of justice.

(21) The specifically theological meaning of a concept is thus retrospectively recognizable as carrying on the normative trajectory implicit in its ordinary applications; its meaning as theologically applied is not prospectively determined by these precedents, however, which means, again, that God need not be thought to have been "cut down to size" by them.

(22) An analogy: "I never knew what love meant until I had children." That does not mean that "love" has taken on an altogether new meaning, but that all previous uses of the concept pale in comparison to this one.

(23) In most cases it suffices to cite only a few of the relevant precedents: once the connection between a candidate faith-commitment and a few precedents (say, one "profane" and one "sacred") has been exhibited, a competent reader should know how the rest of the series would be filled in. No need to be exhaustive, in other words.