(8)-(10)

(8) On meaning: (a) To know what it means when a baseball umpire calls a "strike" is to know when the concept is properly applied (a ball flies over the plate at a certain height relative to the batter) and what follows from its application (if three strikes are called during one at-bat, the batter is out, etc.). For simplicity's sake, what follows from a concept-application can be understood in terms of how it changes the conditions in which still other concepts might be applied--that is, the latter condition can be understood in terms of the former. (b) One knows these things by seeing the candidate concept-use as carrying on the normative trajectory implicit in a series of precedent uses--in this case, precedent uses of the concept "strike"--where these uses have committed their user (i) to use them only in certain circumstances and (ii) to certain changes in their normative status (as entitled to do certain things, prohibited from doing others, and required to do still others).

(9) (In this context, "to know" is not to construed as a thinking-out-loud, as it were, as if one knows something just insofar as one has thought explicitly about it.)

(10) So then: to know the meaning of some commitment implicit in the life of faith is to map it onto a series of precedents. If one is doxastically committed to the claim that God is just, one understands the justice thus predicated of God in terms of precedent circumstances in which the concept has been applied and the normative consequences of those applications. Likewise, if one is practically committed to the offering of a particular prayer, or emotionally committed to reacting angrily to certain circumstances, one can understands this act or emotion in terms of its relation to a series of precedents.