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                                                                             THE BIBLE AND CHRISTIAN MORALITY TODAY
                                                                                                Concluding Summary

1. The authority of the Bible – -- for Christian existence generally as well as for Christian morality in particular – -- is not global and unrestricted, an authority with respect to anything and everything, but rather focal and restricted, an authority with respect to but one thing – -- namely, the thing that Christians think and speak of as human salvation, or, as we may say in somewhat more formal terms, human authenticity, the realization of human existence as it is meant to be, as distinct from the contrary mode of inauthentic existence.

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4. What is authoritative in the Bible, then – -- for Christian existence generally as well as for Christian morality in particular – -- is only the self-understanding, or understanding of our existence in relation to others in the whole, that the Bible expresses, together with all of the necessary implications of this understanding for action as well as belief.

5. But this means that the authority of the Bible in no way extends to the various assumptions perforce made by those to whom we owe its writings when they formulated its answer to the existential question in their particular times and places; on the contrary, all such assumptions, along with the conceptualities and terminologies in which they were formulated, ever remain subject to critical appropriation by reference to the understanding of human existence for whose explication in certain particular situations they were merely that – -- assumptions.

6. More than that, even the consequences that are drawn in the Bible for Christian action as well as Christian belief depend for their authority entirely upon the self-understanding, or understanding of existence, that the Bible seeks to express as the answer – -- the true and decisive answer – -- to our existential question about the meaning of our existence as human beings.

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