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The apostles are uniquely authoritative because being – -- in John Knox's terms – -- "the community" aspect of the decisive event of the church's coming into being, they are, together with Jesus as "the person" aspect of the event, co-constitutive of it. This means that just as there is no way of holding fast to the faith and witness of the apostles except by holding fast to the Jesus who is the explicit primal ontic source of their authority (their own experience of him as such being its explicit primal noetic source), so there is no way of holding fast to this Jesus except by also holding fast to the faith and witness of the apostles authorized by him as their explicit primal ontic source.

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If the Christian witness is constituted as such by the assertions expressed or implied by the original and originating and therefore constitutive Christian witness, then this earliest witness is uniquely authoritative for all Christian witness. For even though it, in turn, is authorized by a source beyond itself – -- namely, by the decisive event of its own coming into being – -- it is just as true that the only necessary and therefore sufficient condition of any Christian witness's being authorized by this same primal source is that it agree in substance, even if not in form, with this earliest Christian witness.

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The claims made for any primary authority – -- to the effect that it is "pure," "perfect," "authentic," "inspired," "inerrant," and so on – -- are valid if, and only if, any such attribute is a function of the fact that, although the authority is indeed authorized solely by a primal source beyond itself, this authorizing source is available as such, finally, solely through this primary authority. In this sense, the validity of the claim depends on defining the primal source of authority and the primary authority it authorizes correlatively, in correlation with one another.

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What is right is that the fundamentum fidei essentiale aut substantiale and the fundamentum fidei organicum seu ministeriale, although clearly distinguishable, can never be separated, but must always be defined in terms of one another as correlative concepts. If the fundamentum organicum is really that, then it utterly depends on the fundamentum essentiale. On the other hand, what the fundamentum essentiale really is and means for all Christians after the apostles utterly depends on the fundamentum organicum of the apostolic witness. Of course, no one today can any longer convincingly identify the apostolic witness with either the New Testament or scripture as a whole. But assuming that what one can and should identify it with is what we today can reconstruct as the earliest Christian witness, one can urge that the same relation exists between the essential foundation of faith, implicit and explicit, and this earliest and therefore, properly, apostolic witness. On the one hand, this witness depends entirely on a real foundation, or a foundation in reality, beyond itself, since were there no such real foundation, or were what is real otherwise than this witness asserts or implies it to be, the witness itself could no longer be the organic foundation of (authentic) faith. On the other hand, what this real foundation of (authentic) faith is for any post-apostolic knowledge or explicit understanding of it, has to be determined – -- but also can be determined – -- from the witness of the apostles and, in this sense, is entirely dependent on their witness.

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