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In most of my previous work I have tended, however understandably, to use "norm" and "authority" as, for all practical purposes, synonymous. But although "authority" in one of its meanings clearly is a synonym of "norm," and vice versa, this is not its only meaning.

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Clearly, this causative sense of "authority" is, in its way, as important theologically as its normative sense; and my failure to appreciate it earlier is yet another indication of the extent to which my concern with questions of truth, credibility, justification, and so on, has kept me from recognizing the relevance and importance of matters highlighted by other equally legitimate concerns. In any event, it should be one of the objectives of my work hereafter to rectify this one-sidedness by more clearly and consistently distinguishing between "authority" and "norm" and making use of the first term, rather than the second, wherever it is the more appropriate.

Wiki MarkupThus, for example, were I to rewrite the concluding sentences of Ch. 4 of _The Point of Christology_, I would (in addition to replacing "truthfully" with "truly"\!) write: "This means that the condition of truly making this assertion in any of its formulations lies not in the being of Jesus in himself that we still have to infer from this \ [_sc_. earliest Christian\] witness, but rather in the meaning of Jesus for us that this witness itself already authoritatively \ [_sic_\] represents. Consequently, it is by way of empirical-historical inquiry into what is meant by Jesus in this authoritative \ [_sic_\] witness that the conditions of asserting any christological predicate truly can be known to be satisfied, insofar as this can be historically known at all" (84 f.).

28 October 1989; rev. 5 September 2003