(27)-(30)

(27) The model of normativity underlying the preceding account of meaning. Briefly stated: the life of faith should be understood as a series of doxastic, practical, and emotional commitments. These commitments aim--usually implicitly--to carry on and so contribute to the norm implicit in a series of precedents.

(28) (Not that everything one does should be construed as the undertaking of a commitment, of course; there are instances when one is precisely not committed to or by one's thought, behavior, or emotion. Moreover, some of one's commitments make no implicit claim to normativity.)

(29) One's doxastic, practical, and emotional commitments thus recognize the normativity of certain precedents and seek that same status for oneself. They are normative claims, in other words, to the effect (a) that one should be recognized as going on in the same way as these precedents--recognized, that is, as "one of us"--and (b) that others who go on in the same way as a series of precedents that now includes one's contribution should be recognized on that basis.

(30) The recognition of commitments and the recognition of recognizers: if a commitment is retrospectively recognizable as carrying on the normative trajectory implicit in a series of precedents, it contributes to that trajectory; a person whose commitments are regularly recognized as doing so should be recognized as a reliable contributor to the series--that is, as knowing how to carry it on; and a person who is recognized as a reliable recognizer of such contributions should be recognized as a recognizer.