1619. Bearing witness is appropriate to the explicit . . .

SCANNED PDF

1. Bearing witness is appropriate to the explicit primal source authorizing it if, and only if, it either is or else substantially agrees with the norm of appropriate bearing witness.
   
   
2. To determine what is to count in principle as the norm of appropriate bearing witness is to determine that a religious community's earliest, original and originating, bearing witness counts in principle as this norm.
   
   
3. Determining this is not possible without philosophical reflection, specifically, the reflection proper to philosophy of religion, understood as logical analysis of the "deep structure," or logical kind of meaning, characteristic not only of explicit religious language but also of the implicit bearing witness that religious language explicitly authorizes.
   
   
4. To determine what is to count in fact as the norm of appropriate bearing witness is to determine the bearing witness that satisfies this principle.
   
   
5. Determining this is not possible without historical reflection, specifically, the reflection proper to historically reconstructing the earliest, the original and originating, and therefore constitutive, bearing witness of a religious community.
   
   
6. Bearing witness is credible to human existence if, and only if, it substantially agrees with the norm of credible bearing witness.
   
   
7. To determine what is to count in principle as the norm of credible bearing witness is to determine that the self-understanding/ understanding of existence originally, albeit implicitly, authorized by ultimate reality itself counts as this principle.
   
   
8. Determining this is not possible without philosophical reflection, specifically, the reflection proper to the philosophy of religion, understood as logical analysis of the "deep structure," or logical kind of meaning, characteristic not only of explicit religious language but also of the implicit bearing witness that religious language explicitly authorizes.
   
   
9. To determine what is to count in fact as the norm of credible bearing witness is to determine the self-understanding/ understandng of existence that satisfies this principle.
   
   
10. Determining this is not possible without philosophical reflection, specifically, the philosophical reflection proper to metaphysics and ethics, understood as the logical analysis of ultimate reality itself as the necessary presupposition of any and all kinds of meaning, metaphysics analyzing the structure of ultimate reality in itself, ethics analyzing the structure of its meaning for us.

15 November 2005; rev. 6 November 2009