Within any traditional Christian scheme—invoked here not as an a priori to settle historical matters, but as the necessary foundation for showing how traditional Christian judgments have in fact worked—all authority belongs ultimately to the creator god; and if (as traditional Christianity has gone on to say) this god is made known supremely in Jesus, then Jesus, too, holds an authority that is superior to all writing about him. Many, of course, will suppose this to be a false antithesis, since what we know about Jesus we know precisely in these writings. But this will scarcely hold within
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