Authority In Religion

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Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament [1]

Authority In Religion

1. Various connotations of the word ‘authority.’ —The familiar distinction between legislative, judicial, and executive authority is one that is not only convenient, but rational and necessary. These several kinds of authority differ in their respective sources and appropriate modes of expression, and may differ also in their respective repositories. Again, authority may be original or delegated. The latter, moreover, while on a different plane, is not one whit less real than the former. And, passing by other uses of the word, it will be found that the idea lying at the heart of them all is that of a right on the part of somebody to submission of some sort and in some degree on the part of somebody else. In other words, the use of the term ‘authority’ implies the existence of an ethical standard. We shall not, therefore, have reached the ultimate authority along any line until we have arrived at this ultimate standard of right, by which the reality of all other authorities is tested. To avoid confusion, then, in considering Christ’s teachings regarding authority in religion, we shall have at every step to take account of the particular kind of authority then being dealt with.

2. Christ’s conception of religion .—That Christ’s conception of religion must have conditioned and shaped His teachings upon authority in religion is too obvious to be questioned. Hence we must at least glance at His conception of religion; but as this subject is itself a large one, we can at most merely glance at it. Our Lord, of course, has nowhere given us a formal definition of religion, nor has He anywhere formally discussed its nature. At the same time, few, we presume, will affirm that Christ has left us wholly at sea upon such a point. By common consent, religion is a term of relation. For present purposes we may, without unwarrantable assumption, say that the terms of this relation are God and man. Further, without undue assumption, we may add that true religion and right relation between God and man are equivalent expressions. Our present question, then, resolves itself into this, What, according to Christ, are the essentials of right relation between God and man?

Now, for answering this question, three statements of our Lord seem to the writer to be of fundamental importance. (1) The first of these occurs in His high priestly prayer. ‘This,’ says He, ‘is eternal life, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ’ ( John 17:3). Here the last clause may be an epexegetical addition of the Evangelist himself. With this statement naturally associate themselves, among others, those in  John 10:10;  John 3:5,  Matthew 11:27. Now, certainly no one will even for a moment suppose that our Lord here lends any countenance to anything that can properly be called intellectualism. And yet it would be violent exegesis indeed that eradicated from His words the idea that right relations to God invariably imply, and ground themselves on, right conceptions of God. On any other view, what would be the propriety of the pronoun ‘thee,’ which certainly singles out from all other possible individuals or entities Him in the knowledge of whom Christ declares that ‘eternal life’ consists? If right conceptions of God are not essential to right relation between God and man, where, again, would be the propriety of the words ‘the only true,’ and the emphasis evidently centred upon them? (cf. also  Matthew 11:27).

(2) A second passage of fundamental significance for Christ’s conception of religion is  Matthew 22:37 ff. ||  Mark 12:28 ff. ‘Thou shaft love the Lord thy God, etc. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, etc. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law and the prophets.’ But that, according to the teaching of Christ, there is an emotional element in religion, is so generally recognized that it would be superfluous to multiply references, especially in such an incidental treatment of the subject as the present.

(3) The third passage that may be regarded as fundamental for our Lord’s conception of religion is  Matthew 7:21 ‘Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’ This, like the last passage cited, is typical. It represents a group of statements that need not be reproduced here.

While, therefore, the first of these three great passages implicates man’s understanding in religion, and the second his emotions, this last implicates his will, as controlling his conduct and finding its legitimate expression through it.

What may be called, then, a qualitative analysis of Christ’s conception of religion reveals the fact, that it contains this trinity of elements bound together in the indissoluble unity of the rational soul. Were any of them totally lacking, there would be no real religion. On the other hand, the necessary interrelation and interaction between them are recognized by Christ in such declarations as, ‘If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself’ ( John 7:17); ‘How can ye believe which receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not’ ( John 5:44); ‘While ye have the light, believe on the light, that ye may become sons of light’ ( John 12:36). Such is the essential unity of the soul, that it cannot experience depravation in one of its functions without all of the others being more or less affected thereby.

While, however, we can with a measure both of ease and of certainty make what we have ventured to call a qualitative analysis of Christ’s conception of religion, it would not be so easy to arrive at a quantitative analysis of it, and say just how much knowledge, how much emotion, and how much volitional activity must be present in order to the existence in the soul of any real religion. Indeed, it is hard to conceive of Christ as elaborating any views upon such a subject. We may refrain, then, from pressing our investigation into what would only be a region of arid and empty speculation. It is enough, if it has been shown that Christ’s conception of religion recognizes the essential unity of the soul, and involves its right relation to God in all its several powers or functions. To this conception His teachings regarding authority in religion will be found to conform. See, further, art. Religion.

i. Christ’s teaching as to the ultimate standard of right, and the ultimate source of rights.—Obviously we need not expect to find Christ dealing with the ultimate standard of right under the forms of Western dialectics, or in the abstract terms of philosophy. At the same time, we need not despair of obtaining some insight into His mind even upon this question. For one thing, His mode of addressing His Father is significant. Especially is it so when we take into account the circumstances under which it was employed. ‘Holy Father,’ He says in His intercessory prayer; and again, ‘O righteous Father.’ Now, under the circumstances, this language is more, far more, than the ascription to His Father of the possession of the qualities expressed by the words ‘holy’ and ‘righteous.’ For we must not forget that Christ’s intercessory prayer was offered at the very crisis of His career. We cannot pretend to fathom the experiences of His soul in that hour. The prayer itself, however, as recorded in John 17, is tense with the emotions that wrought in our Lord’s soul as He poured it forth. He was, so to speak, getting His footing as the floods of great waters gathered around Him in their mysterious energy. And the bed-rock upon which He plants Himself is one lying out of sight so far as the visible providence of God is concerned. He assures Himself of its existence as a reality by turning away from what is taking place under the providence of God, and fixing His mind upon the nature of God. God’s nature is His voucher for the righteousness of the course of God’s providence towards Himself. In the time of stress that was upon Him, He fixes His eye upon God’s holiness and righteousness as His sole but sufficient guarantee for the existence of the qualities for which these words stand.

But, further, that Christ found the ultimate standard of right in God’s nature as expressed through God’s will, is clear also from such statements as these: ‘Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name’ ( John 12:27 f.). Here, it will be seen, our Lord places Himself absolutely at the disposal of the Divine will. But this would have been sheer moral insanity, unless God’s nature contained the final norm of righteousness. And this language is by no means exceptional; for, as all know, the Gospel of John abounds with expressions of Christ making the will of God the standard to which everything is to be referred ( e.g.  John 4:34,  John 5:30,  John 6:38 f.). Nor is the case different when we turn to the Synoptics (cf.  Matthew 5:48;  Matthew 6:10;  Matthew 11:25 f.,  Luke 22:42). All these passages and others leave no room to doubt that Christ taught that the nature of God, as finding expression through His will, is the ultimate standard of right.

And as, for Christ, God’s nature is the ultimate norm of right, so for Him God’s will is the fountain and source of all particular rights . Wherever there exists a right upon the part of anybody to submission of any kind or degree from anybody else, such right exists in virtue of God’s ordering, and is delimited by God’s will. These statements, it seems to us, are involved in the passages already cited. All authority, in other words, is simply author -ity writ short and differently pronounced. A free creature, like man, may be, in a limited sense, an original source of power, but never of rights . His rights are all derived from, and bear the stamp of, the author of his being. Not only the primary and all-comprehending dependence, but all subordinate dependences and interdependences ground themselves ultimately on the relation that subsists between the Creator, as Creator, and the creature, as creature.

ii. Legislative authority in religion.— 1 . Term defined .—What we have called legislative authority is concerned primarily with duty . Its prescriptions, while mediated, at least so far as the knowledge of them goes, through the understanding, terminate upon the conscience and the will. It is the right to require or to forbid. It is the right to establish relations and define the duties or the privileges attaching to them. It is the first and most fundamental form of authority, cleaving closest to the etymological and logical sense of the word, which as already noted is simply author -ity. Legislative authority is really or approximately a creative function. In the case of God, of course, it is really creative. Behind it lies only the Divine nature, which alone conditions and regulates its exercise. From it arise all the relations of the creature to the Creator, and to his fellow-creatures, with the duties and the privileges that inhere in them, or that, in the wisdom of God, are, from time to time and under the particular circumstances, attached to them.

Now, according to our Lord’s teaching, all legislative authority in religion vests exclusively in God. He represents God as in the most absolute sense ‘Lord of the conscience.’ To Him it belongs to say, ‘Thou shalt,’ and to Him also to say, ‘Thou shalt not.’ As He has determined the relations between Himself and His creatures (‘Father, Lord of heaven and earth,’  Matthew 11:25; cf. also  Matthew 19:4), it is for Him to define the duties emerging from those relations.

2. If, now, we pass to Christ’s teaching as to how this legislative authority belonging exclusively to God comes to expression, we find—(1) That our Lord is wholly silent as to the manifestation of God’s legislative authority in what we call ‘the laws of nature,’ using this phrase so as to include not only the laws of matter, but of mind as well, and also so as to include what St. Paul calls ‘the law written in the heart.’ For instance, nowhere does He directly advert to ‘the ordinance of heaven’ ( Jeremiah 31:35 f.,  Job 38:33) as an expression of the Divine will; nowhere does He refer His hearers to the constitution of their own nature, physical, mental, or moral, as embodying an expression of the Divine will regarding this or that. There is, it may be, the glimmer of such a reference in passages like  John 10:17 ff.,  Matthew 10:29 f., but it is at most a glimmer, and need not detain us.

(2) But that the legislative authority of God is exercised mediately as well as immediately is also taught by Christ. ( a ) Thus the preceptive portions of the OT , though mediated by ‘Moses and the prophets,’ are really ‘the commandments of God.’ Moses and the prophets, quoad this matter, are, so to speak, merely the heralds of the ‘Great King,’ or, to borrow an OT account of the relation between the prophet and God, the former is the ‘mouth’ of the latter ( Exodus 4:16; cf.  Exodus 7:1). And so, while ‘Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother’ ( Mark 7:10), this is still for Christ ‘the commandment of God.’ Further, that ‘the law of Moses’ was for Him the law of God appears from the fact that, when He was Himself tempted, and had to choose between two courses, what was written in Deuteronomy prescribed for Him the path of duty ( Matthew 4:4;  Matthew 4:7;  Matthew 4:10-11). In the parable of Dives and Lazarus, our Lord puts these very significant words into the mouth of Abraham, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them’ ( Luke 16:29). The law in  Numbers 28:9-10 (or perhaps in  1 Chronicles 9:32), according to which ‘the priests in the temple profane’ (ironical thrust at His adversaries) ‘the Sabbath and are guiltless’ ( Matthew 12:5), was for Christ determinative of duty and of privilege. Indeed, He virtually puts it upon the same plane for authority as the primary intuition and verdict of conscience, namely, that ‘it is lawful to do good—on the Sabbath day’ ( Matthew 12:12). Further, Christ’s summaries of ‘the law and the prophets’ ( Matthew 7:12;  Matthew 22:37 ff.) bear impressive testimony to the fact that He regarded the whole preceptive portion of the OT as an expression of the will of God. ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do ye also unto them,’ is, according to our Lord, but a just summary of ‘the law and the prophets’ in terms that may be appreciated by the moral sense of all men. He teaches that the whole OT, so far as it has to do with duty towards man, is but an unfolding, in relation to this or that set of circumstances, of the ‘Golden Rule,’ whose Divine origin and authority are self-evidencing (cf.  Mark 12:28 ff.).

( b ) Whether Christ represents the Apostles also as organs through whom God exercises His legislative authority is, perhaps, not quite so clear. Doubtless they were. But even passages such as  Matthew 10:20;  Matthew 16:18,  John 20:23;  John 16:13 may refer to a grant of judicial rather than of strictly legislative authority. The authority conferred in these passages is, indeed, large and significant, but none of them necessarily implies that the Apostles were to be organs through whom God would make substantive additions to the commands laid upon the human conscience. Nor has the writer been able to satisfy himself that Christ anywhere uses of them language either demanding, or even susceptible of such an interpretation. In other words, while he thinks it unquestionable that the Apostles were media through whom God exercised His legislative authority, he is of opinion that we have to go outside of the Gospels for the evidence of this fact.

( c ) With Christ Himself , however, the case is different. No doubt much of the authority we find Him using in the Gospels is judicial and not legislative. At the same time, intermingled with His judicial expositions of the law of God, we hear Him lay His own commands upon the conscience. Not only does He declare what is the Law, and what its meaning (see above), but He enunciates many specific precepts that stand related to His comprehensive summaries very much as the statutes of the land stand related to its constitution.

‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,’ etc. ( Matthew 6:19 ff.); ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls before the swine,’ etc. ( Matthew 7:6); ‘Love your enemies, do good to them that hats you,’ etc. ( Luke 6:27); ‘Repent ye, and believe in the gospel’ ( Mark 1:15)—will serve as samples. Very significant for Christ’s claims to be a special organ of the legislative authority of the Godhead is such a statement as, ‘The Son of man is Lord of the Sabbath’ ( Matthew 12:8), and equally so this other, ‘Ye call me Teacher and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am’ ( John 13:13). In both these instances it is clear that Christ asserts for Himself an authority going beyond any that can with propriety be considered as merely judicial. The ‘Lord’ is a giver of law, not simply its interpreter. The same conclusion follows even more stringently, perhaps, when our Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one,’ thereby, as the Jews affirmed, and He Himself did not deny, ‘making himself (thyself) equal with God’ ( John 10:30; cf.  John 10:33,  Matthew 11:27;  Matthew 11:29 note the word ‘yoke’). And, finally, here we must not overlook  Matthew 28:18 b ‘All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth,’ which certainly constitutes a claim comprehensive enough to include the authority to prescribe laws to the conscience. See preceding article.

(3) But to say that Christ teaches that all legislative authority in religion vests exclusively in God, is hardly to put the case either as fully or as strongly as it needs to be put. For not only does our Lord represent God as ‘Lord of the conscience,’ but with equal emphasis and great explicitness He teaches that ‘God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to His word, or beside it in matters of’ religious truth and duty. (For the purposes of this article ‘His word’ here may be taken quite broadly for any form in which God has made His will known).

This explains His word at the baptism, when the Baptist ‘would have hindered him,’ and He said, ‘Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness’ ( Matthew 3:15). So saying, He denies to the human reason the prerogative, by annulling or setting them aside, to pass judgment upon the propriety or the expediency of Divine prescriptions. Recognizing what is praiseworthy in the spirit of the Baptist, He at the same time sets the seal of His disapprobation upon all man-devised substitutions for, or modifications of, Divine ordinances. These are all either acts of open rebellion, or well meant but real usurpations of legislative functions pertaining exclusively to God. The same view finds yet more palpable and pungent expression in His rebuke to the Pharisees ( Mark 7:6 ff.). And, as is well known, it was His resistance in word and deed to the traditions of the elders regarding the Sabbath—these being ‘beside’ God’s word—that earned for Him, with the Pharisees, the odium of being Himself a Sabbath-breaker (John 5, Matthew 12, Mark 3).

Indeed, at the beginning of His Galilaean ministry, our Lord is careful to disclaim, even for Himself, either purpose or authority to disannul any of God’s commandments. ‘Think not,’ said He, ‘that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil’ ( Matthew 5:17). See, further, article Commandment, below. Thus He, as it were, anticipated and forestalled the malice of His own, and the mistaken zeal of a later day. The former made it a charge against Him that He taught contrary to Moses and the prophets; and the latter, strangely enough, has supposed that it honours Him by affirming the same. And, lofty as were the claims that He made for Himself, Christ still impressed it upon His hearers that He not only did not assume to lay upon them anything contrary to God’s revealed will but that He taught, and could teach nothing that was ‘beside’ that will ( John 5:30, cf.  John 5:19;  John 8:28 f.). And that nothing ‘contrary to or beside’ the Scriptures correctly interpreted was to be tolerated, is abundantly evident from the finality attached to them in all Christ’s appeals to the OT. For Him its declarations were an end of controversy ( Matthew 22:29;  Matthew 19:4;  Matthew 12:3 ff.,  John 10:35).

iii. Judicial authority in religion.

1. Term defined .—As legislative authority has particularly to do with duty , so judicial authority has particularly to do with truth  : the former prescribes what one is to do or to be  ; the latter, what he is to believe  : the former creates and defines relation and obligations; the latter declares and interprets them: the former is mainly concerned with the conscience  ; the latter, with the understanding . It is worth noting further that legislative differs from judicial authority in that the former is original and the latter derivative. Legislative authority, along with other things, prescribes who is to interpret the laws it makes, and how much of finality shall attach to their interpretation by different persons. At the same time, we should not overlook the fact that the most limited judicial authority, so far as it goes, is no less real than the most absolute. Further, judicial authority, though derived, is just as real authority as is legislative authority. And, finally, when the judicial function vests in the same person as the legislative, then the maxim, ‘The interpretation of the law is the law,’ receives its highest exemplification; for then the law and the interpretation of the law are but different modal manifestations of one and the same personal will or author -ity. For, in this case, the same character that guarantees to the conscience the righteousness of the relation or obligation created by the will of the lawgiver, guarantees also to the understanding the truth of the finding of the judge. And this, be it observed, is precisely the function of judicial authority, namely, not to create a right, not to make an idea correspond with reality, but to certify to the understanding the existence or non-existence of a right, the truth or the falsity of an idea or a statement. The vital importance of this distinction will appear more and more as the discussion proceeds.

2. Repositories .—As to judicial authority, our Lord teaches that it is distributed among a number of repositories, somewhat as the same I kind of authority in a modern State is distributed among a number of courts from the lowest to the highest.

In the case of such courts, no one thinks of denying to the least and lowest of them the character of a true court. Its jurisdiction may be limited, its decisions liable to reversal, but so long as it keeps within its jurisdiction, so long as the appeal from its decisions is pending, its authority is not only as real but as absolute as that of the highest court. Further, even the lowest court possesses a genuine independence: its functions cannot be discharged for it, nor can they be wrested from it by any other court. Further still, it is for each court, at least in the first instance, to interpret and declare the law by which it was created, and its duties and prerogatives under the law. Nor does the fact that it may err in the exercise of this right either nullify or invalidate the right itself. We elaborate this analogy thus in detail, because we believe that it will prove helpful in enabling us to understand our Lord’s teachings concerning judicial authority in the sphere of religion.

Proceeding now to note His distribution itself, we find that He accords the fullest recognition (1) to what is commonly known as the right of private judgment . For Him each individual is clothed with a large, though not an absolute or final, judicial authority. Indeed, it is safe to say that no one has surpassed Christ in the honour, and even—if such words may be used of Him—in the deference with which in practice He treated the judicial rights of the darkest and humblest human souls. Despite the supreme claims that He made for Himself, He habitually permitted both Himself and His claims to be put upon proof at the bar of such souls. Not only did He consent, like any other man of His day, to plead at the bar of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, but, while He always spake as one having authority, He never failed to submit His credentials along with His claims at the bar of the individual reason and conscience. But here we must particularize.

Christ taught, then, ( a ) That it is the inalienable prerogative of every man to verify for himself the truth of a proposition before assenting to it as true; and to verify for himself the rectitude of a command before yielding obedience to it as right (cf.  John 15:24,  Matthew 16:4;  Matthew 11:4 ff;  Matthew 9:6;  Matthew 11:20).

( b ) Further, as is involved in what has been already said, Christ teaches that the conclusions reached in the exercise of this prerogative are not to be, if, indeed, we should not say cannot be, dictated by any form of external compulsion. In many ways He emphasizes the position that the individual is to be left wholly untrammelled in the exercise of his judicial rights. What else, after all, is the meaning of His words to Pilate, ‘My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence’ ( John 18:36)? If men were to be left free to deal with His own claims, including, of course, His teachings, without constraint or compulsion of any kind, and to do this even when the decision reached affected not only His liberty but His very life, certainly He would have them no less untrammelled in dealing with every other question of truth or of duty with which they might find themselves confronted. Nor was it only the compulsion of physical force that Christ declined to countenance. He set the seal of His disapproval upon the more subtle and spiritual, but no less real compulsion of a tyrannical public or ecclesiastical opinion, whether formulated into a tradition or into a usage.

His ‘Do not your alms before men, to be seen of them’ ( Matthew 6:1), was designed hardly more to eradicate pride from the souls of His disciples, than it was to hearten them to throw off the incubus of a perverted public and ecclesiastical sentiment which threatened to stifle Christian humility and Godwardness in their very birth. It was to disenthrall the souls of His disciples from all fear tending to paralyze the free action of the spirit in its quest for truth and in its witness to the truth, that He said, ‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him,’ etc. ( Matthew 10:28); cf.  Mark 10:29 f.,  Mark 7:9 ff.,  Matthew 12:1 ff.,  John 5:9.

( c ) If what has been said be true, we are not surprised to find Christ teaching that every mind is equipped for the exercise of this high prerogative, that in a certain very true sense the mind has ‘the supreme norm of its ideas and acts, not outside of itself, but within itself, in its very constitution’ (Sabatier, Religions of Authority , p. xvi).

This also is involved in the passages already quoted. And what else can we make of such statements as these: ‘Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, to he loosed from this bond on the day of the Sabbath’ ( Luke 13:16)? Where would have been the use of submitting such a case to ‘the stupid country archisynagogos ’ (Edersheim), unless, stupid as he was, even he was so equipped as to be able to subject it to some sort of process of ‘inner verification’? Or, take the question put to the disciples, ‘Who do the multitudes say that i am?’ and what propriety would there he in it, unless it carried with it the implication that men generally—‘the multitudes’—were equipped for the forming of a rational judgment upon the truth and righteousness of His claims, and had some touchstone each within himself by which he could determine the truth or falsity of those claims, and the moral quality of the character and of the teachings that lay behind them? The possession of such a norm is involved in every argument framed, in every appeal made, and in every rebuke administered by Christ.

Not only does Christ recognize in every man the existence of such a norm, but He goes farther, and shows that He regards this norm as ‘supreme,’ in the sense, at least, that for the individual man there is no standard of truth or of right more ultimate than that embedded in his very constitution. Nothing can be substituted for it. Nothing can be used to supplement or to correct it. No appeal lies from it. Man has nought that he can do but to abide by the decisions reached in the use of it. ‘If ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins’ ( John 8:24) is no arbitrary sentence; but simply the announcement of the momentous truth, that the beliefs or unbeliefs of those whom He addressed would involve certain consequences for them , precisely because those beliefs or unbeliefs were theirs . Christ does not teach, of course, that men can make or unmake truth or right for themselves any more than for others. But He does teach that the conclusions that men reach in the use of the norm that is embedded in the very constitution of the mind are for them severally and individually final. It is this fact that constitutes the very heart of the solemnity of His words, when He says, ‘If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness’ ( Matthew 6:23). The light that is in a man is the only light that is available for him. It is the light in which he sees light. It cannot itself be tested, so far, at least, as the user of it is concerned, by any other light (cf. also  Matthew 13:9 and the principle laid down in  Romans 15:30).

( d ) Christ, moreover, is equally clear in teaching that in the proper use of the equipment given them, men may and always will arrive at correct judgments in regard both to truth and to duty—that is, in all cases and as regards all matters in reference to which they are called upon, or indeed are entitled, to form judgments. He recognizes, to be sure, the sad fact that men not only may, but as a matter of fact often do, give hospitable entertainment both to error and to evil. He is very emphatic, however, in asserting that this is their fault, and in no sense their misfortune. Whatever the difficulties of the teaching, they need not leave the soul in error or even in doubt. ‘If any man willeth to do his will,’ says our Lord, ‘he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself’ ( John 7:17).

Any account of Christ’s teachings as to the judicial authority vested in the individual would be fatally defective if it overlooked a saving like  Matthew 11:27 (cf.  John Joh_14:9 b,  John 8:19 b,  John 17:26). ‘No one knoweth the Son,’ says Christ, ‘save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.’ This is not the place for a detailed exposition of these remarkable words. So much, however, is clear upon their very face, namely, that there is a knowledge of God for which men are wholly dependent upon Christ . Again, it is evident from  John 14:9 b. that whatever other elements this knowledge of God contains, it is a knowledge that is mediated through the understanding. ‘He that hath seen me,’ says our Lord, ‘hath seen the Father.’ The same conclusion follows inevitably from the great emphasis which Christ laid upon His teaching function. But how is a man to test the correctness of propositions for the very knowledge of the contents of which, and much more for their accuracy, he is ex hypothesi wholly dependent upon Christ? We have said that Christ teaches that it is the prerogative of every man to bring every proposition, to the truth of which be is expected to assent, to some sort of process of ‘inner verification’; but here are matters which, ex hypothesi , men must accept upon testimony, albeit it is the testimony of no less a witness than Christ Himself. Have we here, then, an inconsistency in Christ’s teaching? We think not. We test our telescope; we satisfy ourselves that the laws of its structure are the same as those that obtain in the structure of the eye itself. It is just as truly an organ of vision as is the eye itself, though, of course, an organ of vastly greater range. What it discloses to us we could not apprehend without it. Much that it discloses to us, we either only gradually come to comprehend, or find to be at present incomprehensible to us. But whether we comprehend what we apprehend through the telescope or not, we accept its disclosures, and at least refer them to the large and vague category of what we call facts of existence, and wait expecting to be able to make a closer classification with our advancing knowledge, or the further development of our powers. And, while we never reach the point where we are able with our own eyes to verify the facts given us through the telescope, yet, when we have used the norm in our eye upon the norm in the telescope, and have thus proved a complete correspondence between the two, we have an unshakable conviction that they are not two but one, and that what has been disclosed by the norm in the telescope is assented to by the norm in our eye, as much so as if we had been in a position to bring the norm in our eye to bear directly upon the phenomena revealed to us through the telescope. Just so it is in the case of the individual and Christ. For the knowledge of certain facts regarding God and Christ, and concerning God in Christ, we are absolutely dependent upon the testimony of Christ. We cannot verify the correspondence between that testimony and reality by ourselves comparing it with the reality. The reality here is as inaccessible to our immediate inspection as the phenomena of stellar space would be, apart from the telescope. What then? Does Christ call upon us to surrender the very badge of our individuality, when we are dealing with His statements? Does He claim that His statements must be accepted without our being able to subject them to any process of ‘inner verification,’ the latter being, of course, the only possible real verification? Not at all. What He does claim, however, is that when we have assented to His trustworthiness, we have assented to the trustworthiness of His statements. Obviously, if He is as He claims to be, ‘the Truth,’ and we have satisfied ourselves of this by the same rational and moral processes by which we satisfy ourselves of any other propositions whatever, then in verifying Him, so to speak, we have verified His statements, as truly and as certainly as if we were capable of comparing those statements with the great realities to which they relate. Otherwise, where would be the sense in examining witnesses in our courts? And how else do we verify the ultimate facts given us, in the frame of nature and in the constitution of our own being—which, be it observed, are after all but the testimony of God,—except by verifying God? That we can do, of which proposition the simple proof is that we do it. For nothing is more certain than that ‘it is impossible for God to lie.’ This is the ultimate axiom upon which not only all certainty, but the possibility of any certainty depends.

Christ’s teaching in reference to an external revelation, and our absolute dependence upon His veracity for the truth and the righteousness of its contents, do not impinge in the least either upon His teaching as to the judicial authority with which each individual is invested, or upon the true and proper autonomy of the soul. For He constantly teaches both by implication and by direct assertion that it is possible for men to verify Him, so to speak, and that it is at once their privilege and their duty to do so. And how exquisitely tender is His subtle appeal to His disciples to apply to His moral being that norm embedded in the constitution of their minds, when He says, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you’ ( John 14:2).

(2) While Christ accords a large judicial authority to the individual, it is, as already stated, neither an unlimited, nor an absolutely final authority. In His famous words to St. Peter, He speaks of ‘my church ’ ( Matthew 16:18), and in His equally celebrated words to Pilate, of ‘my kingdom’ ( John 18:36). Now it is no doubt true, as Dr. Vos has shown ( The Kingdom of God and the Church , ch. ix.), that these expressions are not absolutely coterminous in their respective connotations, the ‘church’ being but one phase of the ‘kingdom.’ Still, even this being true, it follows that the Church is an organized body, with officers, laws, and members. Now it is clear, from what Christ says of the Church, that the authority vested in her, and exercised through her officers, is a purely judicial authority. The Lord is her lawgiver. From Him alone she receives all the laws by which she binds the consciences of men. Her sole functions are to declare and to apply the law of Christ. To make any laws for her own members or for others is beyond her prerogative.

That such is her authority as set forth in the teachings of Christ appears from such statements as, ‘If thy brother sin against thee, go show him his fault between thee and him alone: … But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, etc. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican’ ( Matthew 18:15 ff.); ‘Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, etc.: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,’ etc. ( Matthew 28:19 f.).

The criticism of the former passage by B. Weiss can hardly be regarded as invalidating it as a proper source of information as to our Lord’s teaching concerning the Church (see his NT Theol. i. p. 141). It is fair, we think, to assume that the charge contained in the latter passage was addressed to the Apostles, not as such, but as representatives of the Church in all ages.

As will be observed, the judicial authority ascribed to the Church in these sayings of our Lord has a twofold aspect. In Matthew 28 she is authorized to declare the law of Christ to those without her fold with a view to bringing them into subjection to Him. And in both sayings she is empowered to unfold that law to those within her pale. The necessity for both aspects of her judicial authority is as obvious as is the grant of it. If it be her function to extend the Kingdom, then it must also be her prerogative authoritatively to declare the nature and laws of the Kingdom. And again, if the term ‘kingdom’ as applied to the Church is not a hopeless misnomer, then she must have authority to determine what the law of Christ demands of the citizens of the Kingdom, and when this or that citizen is conforming to the law. See, further, art. Church.

(3) The supreme and final judicial authority belongs to the Holy Spirit , whose findings are mediated proximately through the Scriptures, and ultimately through the Prophets, Apostles, and Christ Himself. We have seen that, while both the individual and the Church may, in the proper use of their respective equipments, arrive at a knowledge of truth and right in reference to all matters of truth and duty upon which they are respectively entitled to formulate a judgment; yet, as a matter of fact, neither the Church nor the individual does always arrive at such knowledge. Now the very statement of this position implies the existence of some standard by the use of which faulty judgments, when reached, may be detected as such, and corrected. This standard, according to Christ, is, in the last resort, to be found nowhere else than in the teachings of the Prophets, Apostles, and Himself. The finality and the infallibility of these teachings are, so our Lord teaches, guaranteed by the fact that they proceed directly from the Godhead, through the immediate agency of its great executive, the Holy Spirit, whose instruments or organs the Prophets, Apostles, and He Himself were. If we may use the term ‘Scriptures’ as a somewhat loose synonym for the teachings of the Prophets, Apostles, and Christ, then the Scriptures are, or, as with admirable accuracy the Westminster Confession puts it, ‘the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture’ is, ‘the Supreme Judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined … and in whose sentence we are to rest’ (ch. i. sec. x.).

( a ) That Christ conceived of the teachings of the Prophets , or the OT, as constituting, as far as it went, a court of last appeal in matters of religion, is strikingly evinced in His two summaries of those teachings already referred to: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, etc.… Thou shalt love thy neighbour, etc.… On these two commandments hangeth the whole law and the prophets’ ( Matthew 22:34 ff.,  Mark 12:28 ff.,  Matthew 7:12). But God being love, it is just in love that religion finds its highest and fullest expression. That standard, therefore, which being adhered to leads to love, is the final standard.

The same point of view as regards the OT finds expression in the words, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.… If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead’ ( Luke 16:29;  Luke 16:31). The implication in Dives’ plea was that it was his misfortune that he had come to that place of torment. These words distinctly disallow that implication. They affirm both the sufficiency and the finality of the OT in all matters connected with the salvation of those to whom that revelation was given. And so the Sadducees are told ( Matthew 22:29), ‘Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures,’ etc., which means, of course, that they need not have erred had they only gone to the Scriptures in the right spirit. Upon all questions raised by His adversaries, it was to the teachings of the OT that Christ Himself continually appealed as the final authority. Quoting Hosea, He said to the Pharisees, ‘If ye had known what this meaneth, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless’ ( Matthew 12:7). Thus the standard to which He brings their judgment of Himself and by which He exposes its falsity and wickedness, is the teaching of the OT. His ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone’ ( Matthew 23:23), is but an application of the standard of the OT for the testing of Pharisaic teachings and practice. Further, He recognizes the oughtness of these teachings, when they concern the tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, as truly as in the weightier matters of judgment, mercy, and faith. Especially significant are words like those in  Mark 12:35 ff. (cf.  Matthew 22:41 ff.,  Luke 20:41 ff.): ‘How say the scribes that the Christ is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto my Lord, etc. David himself calleth him Lord, and whence is he his son?’

( b ) Besides the passages already cited, the following show that Christ represents His Apostles as being the organs of the Holy Spirit in such sense that their teachings, qua Apostles, are ultimate and infallible in all matters of faith and duty: ‘And I also say unto thee, That thou art Peter, etc.… I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth shall be loosed in heaven’ ( Matthew 16:18 f.). The same promise is made to the Apostles, no doubt to all of them, in  Matthew 18:18. In  John 20:22 f. we read, ‘And when he had said this he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’

B. Weiss ( NT Theol. i. 142, footnote) regards  Matthew 18:18 as addressed to ‘the disciples in the wider sense,’ and avoids bringing the statement into collision with the facts of history only by finding in them ‘nothing else than the authorization of the Apostles to proclaim the message by means of which men are called into the Kingdom’ ( ib. p. 139, where he is commenting more particularly upon  Matthew 16:19. On the other side see art. ‘Power of the Keys’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iv.). To most persons, however, such a view of this passage will appear inadequate. Dr. Chas. Hodge, believing that the grant of power made in these words was not designed to be limited to the Apostles, seeks to avoid collision with the facts of history by representing it as made to the invisible Church ( Church Polity , p. 35 ff.). This, however, will seem to many as little satisfactory as is Weiss’ view. That the words were addressed to the Apostles, and to no others, appears probable, not only from  Matthew 16:18 f. and  John 20:22 f., but even more so from a comparison of  Matthew 18:1 ff. with  Mark 9:33 ff. That the Church also, according to Christ, was invested with a limited judicial authority, has already been shown.

The full character and extent of the power with which Christ represents His Apostles as being clothed appear conspicuously in the words, ‘And whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words, as ye go forth out of that house, or that city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily, I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city’ ( Matthew 10:14 f. With this should be compared  Matthew 11:24). The sufficient ground for such a statement is furnished by the words also spoken of the Apostles (and subsequently of ‘the seventy,’ who received a similar, but more temporary commission,  Luke 10:16)—‘He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me’ ( Matthew 10:40, cf.  John 13:29).

( c ) That Christ claimed for Himself a judicial authority that was absolute and final, needs hardly to be illustrated. It appears from such facts as that He taught as one having authority ( Mark 1:22;  Mark 1:27,  Luke 4:36); He always commanded and never merely counselled ( Matthew 28:20,  Luke 8:55,  Matthew 10:5); while unfailingly tender, He did not tolerate even well-meant correction ( Matthew 16:22 f.); He invited, expected, and demanded of His disciples the most complete and unreserved surrender to His teachings and to His will.

His ‘hypocoristic expressions’ or ‘endearing diminutives’ (see art. by Professor B. B. Warfield in Bible Student and Teacher , Sept. [Note: Septuagint.] 1904, p. 515 ff.) indicate not only His attitude towards His disciples, but, indirectly, that He expected their attitude towards Him to be one of unquestioning docility, dependence, and submission ( Luke 12:32;  Luke 10:3,  John 10:7;  John 10:16;  John 13:15,  Matthew 18:19 et passim ). Both His authority and the nature of it are less veiled behind the very common designation of ‘disciples.’ ‘A disciple,’ says our Lord, using the figure of meiosis , ‘is not above his teacher’ ( Matthew 10:24). The very terms of discipleship demand the same absolute self-abnegation upon the disciple’s part that Christ Himself had manifested towards His Father. ‘If any man,’ says He, ‘will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me’ ( Mark 8:34,  Luke 9:23). In the saying, ‘Ye call me Teacher and Lord: and ye say well: for so I am’ ( John 13:13), ‘teacher’ is suggestively united with ‘Lord.’ And not less suited to arrest the attention is the statement, ‘But be ye not called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren’ ( Matthew 23:8).

Once more, Christ declared Himself to be ‘The Way, and the Truth, and the Life’ ( John 14:6); He invited men to believe in Himself just as they believed in God ( John 14:1); He conditioned His blessings upon the acceptance of His ‘yoke’ and His teachings ( Matthew 11:29). Nay, He conditioned men’s everlasting salvation upon their unquestioning acceptance of His statements about Himself ( John 8:24; for the repetition of this thought in a slightly different form see  Matthew 23:37 f.,  Luke 13:34 f,  Luke 19:41 f.). The word that He spake was to judge them at the last day ( John 12:48). His words are God’s words: ‘The words that I say unto you, I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me he doeth the works’ ( John 14:10). In a word, He and the Father are one ( John 10:30); seeing Him, one sees the Father ( John 14:9); the ‘Spirit of truth’ in guiding into all truth was to glorify Him, ‘for,’ said our Lord, ‘he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I that he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you’ ( John 16:14 f.).

Thus when we reach Christ in the matter of religion, we have reached the fountainhead. It were idle to look for a court in which to review and put to the test His findings in regard either to truth or to duty. Such, certainly, is His own teaching upon the subject. See preceding article.

iv. Executive authority in religion.

1. Term defined .—The function of executive authority, as needs scarcely be said, is simply and solely to give effect to the legislative will and to judicial findings. Of itself it originates nothing, interprets and declares nothing. It simply does . More need not be said, because executive authority is so obviously and so markedly distinct from both legislative and judicial, that there is no danger of its being confused with either the one or the other.

2. Repositories .—(1) Our Lord obviously teaches that as every individual is a repository of judicial authority, so every individual was designed to be, and every individual Christian is, an executive agent of the Godhead. It is His constant contention that it is for doing the will of God that men exist, whether as creatures or as Christians. The end of His whole teaching function was to set men doing, and to guide them in doing, the will of God. It was the gravamen of His complaint against those, like the Pharisees, who ought to have been His disciples, but were not, that instead of doing the will of God, they did the lusts of their father, the devil ( John 8:44). The end that He set before those professing to be His disciples was, ‘So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven’ ( Matthew 5:16). The first three petitions that He puts on their lips are, ‘Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.’ The badge of discipleship ( Matthew 12:39), the only accepted evidence of love and of loyalty ( John 14:15), a condition sine qua non to salvation ( Matthew 7:22 ff.), was that His followers should do the will of God. It was His ceaseless theme, elaborated now in this form and now in that, that the end of life is not getting, or having, or being ministered unto, or thinking, but being and doing the will of God . To go into details here would require the incorporation in this article of a very considerable part of all four Gospels, and would be superfluous.

(2) The passages already cited show that Christ represents the Church in her corporate capacity as the great executive agency of God for the preaching of the gospel of the Kingdom as a witness among all nations, making disciples of all nations, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded. Executive and judicial authority here complement each other.

(3) That Christ ascribes executive authority to the Prophets is perhaps a fair inference from such a passage as  Mark 7:6, in which our Lord refers to Isaiah not merely as an interpreter of God’s law, but as a teacher of God’s people. But the inference is not to be strained. And for evidence of the executive authority unquestionably exercised by the Prophets, we have to turn elsewhere than to the Gospels. The case is different with the Apostles . The mission of ‘the Twelve’ (Matthew 10) points clearly to the fact that they were invested with authority to diffuse the knowledge of the gospel, and to use a variety of agencies to gain men’s attention and win their allegiance to it. The same follows from  Luke 24:44 ff. and  Acts 1:8. But as to the details of their executive functions we learn but little from the Gospels. It is different, however, in the case of Christ . He applies to Himself ( Luke 4:17 ff.) th

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia [2]

ô - thor´i - ti רבה , rābhāh  ; תּקף , tōḳeph  ; ἐξουσία , exousı́a  ; εξουσιάζω , exousiázō  ; κατεξουσιάζω , katexousiázō  ; ἐπιταγή , epitagḗ  ; ὑπεροχή , huperochḗ  ; αὐθεντέω , authentéō  ; δυνάστης , dunástēs

I. General Idea

1. Of Two Kinds

(1) External

(2) Internal

2. Universal Need of Authority

3. Necessity for Infallible Criterion of Truth

4. Ultimate Nature of Authority

5. It Is God

6. Different Ideas of God and Different Views of Authority

7. A P roblem of Knowledge for Christians

II. The Biblical References

1. In the Old Testament

2. In the New Testament

3. Common Elements in their Meaning

III. Biblical Teaching

1. Old Testament Teaching

(1) Earliest Form Patriarchal

(2) Tribal and Personal Authority

(3) Seers and Priests

(4) Kings and Established Religion

(5) The Great Prophets

(6) The Canon and Rabbinical Tradition

2. New Testament Teaching

(1) Jesus Christ's Authority

(a) His Teaching

(b) His Works

(c) Forgiving and Judging

(d) Life and Salvation

(e) Derived from His Sonship

(f) In His Ascended State

(g) Christ and the Paraclete

(2) The Disciples' Authority

(a) Derived from Christ

(b) Paul's Authority

(c) Authority of All Believers

(d) Authority over the Nations

(3) Church's Authority: Moral and Personal

(4) Authority of the Bible

IV. Outline History of Ecclesiastical Doctrine of Authority

1. Appeal to Reason as Logos

2. Orthodox Dogma

3. Scholasticism

4. Ecclesiastical Absolutism

5. Reformation Principles

6. New Scholasticism

7. The Inner Light

8. Back to Experience

9. Distrust of Reason

10. Christian Skepticism

V. Classification of Theories

1. External

(1) Incipient Catholicism

(2) General Councils

(3) Romanism

(4) Papal Infallibility

(5) Inerrancy of Scripture

(6) Anglican Appeal to Antiquity

(7) Limitations of External Authority

(a) Not Infallible

(b) Rests on Personal Authority

(c) No Apostolical Tradition Extant

(d) No Consensus of Fathers

(e) Bible Needs Interpretation

(f) Authority Necessarily Spiritual

2. Internal Authority

Literature

I. General Idea

1. Of Two Kinds

The term is of manifold and ambiguous meaning. The various ideas of authority fall into two main classes: as external or public tribunal or standard, which therefore in the nature of the case can only apply to the outward expressions of religion; and as immanent principle which governs the most secret movements of the soul's life.

(1) External

A characteristic instance of the former idea of authority is found in A. J. Balfour's Foundations of Belief  : "Authority as I have been using the term is in all cases contrasted with reason, and stands for that group of non-rational causes, moral, social and educational, which produces its results by psychic processes other than reasoning" (p. 232, 8th edition). The bulk of men's important beliefs are produced and authorized by "custom, education, public opinion, the contagious convictions of countrymen, family, party or church" (p. 226). Authority and reason are "rival claimants" (p. 243). "Authority as such is, from the nature of the case, dumb in the presence of argument" (p. 234). Newman makes a kindred distinction between authority in revealed religion and conscience in natural religion, although he does not assign as wide a sphere to authority, and he allows to conscience a kind of authority. "The supremacy of conscience is the essence of natural religion, the supremacy of apostle or pope or church or bishop is the essence of revealed; and when such external authority is taken away, the mind falls back again of necessity upon that inward guide which it possessed even before revelation was vouchsafed" ( Development of Doctrine , 86, edition 1878). From a very different standpoint the same antithesis appears in the very title of Sabatier's book, The Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit . He knows both kinds of authority. "The authority of material force, of custom, tradition, the co de, more and more yields place to the inward authority of conscience and reason, and in the same measure becomes transformed for the subject into a true autonomy" (p. xxxiii, English Translation).

(2) Internal

Martineau distinguishes the two types of authority to reject the former and accept the latter. "The mere resort to testimony for information beyond our province does not fill the meaning of 'authority'; which we never acknowledge till that which speaks to us from another and a higher strikes home and wakes the echoes in ourselves, and is thereby instantly transferred from external attestation to self-evidence. And this response it is which makes the moral intuitions, started by outward appeal, reflected back by inward veneration, more than egoistic phenomena, and turning them into correspondency between the universal and the individual mind, invests them with true authority" ( Seat of Authority , Preface, edition 1890).

Confusion would disappear if the fact were recognized that for different persons, and even for the same persons at different times, authority means different things. For a child his father's or his teacher's word is a decree of absolute authority. He accepts its truth and recognizes his obligation to allow it to determine his conduct. But when reason awakes in him, he may doubt their knowledge or wisdom, and he will seek other guides or authorities. So it is in religious development. Some repudiate authorities that others acknowledge. But no one has a monopoly of the term or concept, and no one may justly say to Dr. Martineau or anybody else that "he has no right to speak of 'authority' at all."

2. Universal Need of Authority

All religion involves a certain attitude of thought and will toward God and the Universe. The feeling element is also present, but that is ignored in theories of external authority. All religion then involves certain ideas or beliefs about God, and conduct corresponding to them, but ideas may be true or false, and conduct right or wrong. Men need to know what is true, that they may do that which is right. They need some test or standard or court of appeal which distinguishes and enforces the truth; forbids the wrong and commands the right. As in all government there is a legislative and an executive function, the one issuing out of the other, so in every kind of religious authority recognized as such, men require that it should tell them what ideas they ought to believe and what deeds to perform.

In this general sense authority is recognized in every realm of life, even beyond that which is usually called religious life. Science builds up its system in conformity with natural phenomena. Art has its ideals of beauty. Politics seeks to realize some idea of the state. Metaphysics reconstructs the universe in conformity with some principle of truth or reality.

3. Necessity for Infallible Criterion of Truth

"If we are.... to attach any definite intelligible meaning to the distinction between things as they really are, and things as they merely appear to be, we must clearly have some universal criterion or test by which the distinction may be made. This criterion must be in the first place infallible; that is, must be such that we cannot doubt its validity without falling into a contradiction in our thought .... Freedom from contradiction is a characteristic that belongs to everything that is real ... and we may therefore use it as a test or criterion of reality" (Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics , 18-19). A more skeptical philosopher writes: "That the truth itself is one and whole and complete, and that all thinking and all experience moves within its recognition, and subject to its manifest authority, this I have never doubted" (Joachim, The Nature of Truth , 178). It is only a thoroughgoing skeptic that could disp ense with authority, a "Pyrrho," who holds suspense of judgment to be the only right attitude of mind, and he, to be logical, must also suspend all action and cease to be. There can be no question, therefore, except in total nescience, as to the fact of authority in general; and the problem to decide is, "What is the authority in religion?"

4. Ultimate Nature of Authority

It is a problem involved in the difficulties of all ultimate problems, and all argument about it is apt to move in a circle. For the ultimate must bear witness of its own ultimacy, the absolute of its own absoluteness, and authority of its own sovereignty. If there were a court of appeal or a standard of reference to which anything called ultimate, absolute and supreme, could apply for its credentials, it would therefore become relative and subordinate to that other criterion. There is a sense in which Mr. Balfour's saying is true, "that authority is dumb in the presence of argument." No process of mediate reasoning can establish it, for no premise can be found from which it issues as a conclusion. It judges all things, but is judged of none. It is its own witness and judge. All that reason can say about it is the dictum of Paxmenides: "it is."

5. It Is God

In this sense, there can be no question again among religious people, that the authority is God. The one idea involves the other. He alone is self-existent and supreme, who is what He is of His own right. If God exists, He is the ultimate criterion and power of truth and reality. All truth inheres in Him and issues from Him. The problem of authority Thus becomes one with the proof and definition of God. These questions lie beyond the purpose of the present article; (see God ). Their solution is assumed in this discussion of authority, although different theories of authority no doubt involve different ideas of God.

6. Different Ideas of God and Different Views of Authority

External theories generally involve what is called a deistic conception of God. Spiritualistic theories of authority correspond to theistic views of God. If He is immanent as well as transcendent, He speaks directly to men, and has no need of intermediaries. Pantheism results in a naturalistic theory of truth. The mind of God is the law of Nature. But pantheism in practice tends to become polytheism, and then to issue in a crude anarchy which is the denial of all authority and truth. But within Christendom the problem of authority lies between those who agree in believing in one God, who is personal, transcendent and to some extent immanent. The differences on these points are really consequences of differences of views as to His mode of self-communication.

7. A P roblem of Knowledge for Christians

It is, therefore, a problem of epistemology rather than of ontology. The question is, in what way does God make known Himself, His mind and His authority to men generally? The purpose of this article is the exposition of the Biblical teaching of authority, with some attempt to place it in its true position in the life of the church.

II. The Biblical References

1. In the Old Testament

Only for (1) rābhāh ( Proverbs 29:2 ): "to be great" or "many." "When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice." So the King James Version and the Revised Version, margin, but the Revised Version (British and American) "When the righteous are increased" (so BDB ). Toy in the place cited remarks, "The Hebrew has: 'When the righteous increase,' the suggestion being that they then have control of affairs; the change of a letter gives the reading 'rule' which is required by the 'govern' of the second line." (2) tōḳeph ( Esther 9:29 ): "Esther the queen ... wrote with all authority to confirm this second letter of Purim" (Revised Version margin "strength" [so BDB ).

2. In the New Testament

(1) Most frequently for exousia  ; exousiazō  ; and katexousiazō ̌ : ( a ) of God's authority ( Acts 1:7 ): as the potter's over clay ( Romans 9:21 , right";  Judges 1:25 , "power"; Rev 9, "power"); ( b ) of Christ's teaching and works ( Matthew 7:29;  Matthew 21:23 ,  Matthew 21:24 ,  Matthew 21:27 =   Mark 1:22 ,  Mark 1:27;  Mark 11:28 ,  Mark 11:29 ,  Mark 11:33 =   Luke 4:36;  Luke 20:2 ,  Luke 20:8;  John 5:27 , authority to execute judgment. The same Greek word, translated "power" in the King James Version but generally "authority" in the Revised Version (British and American) or the Revised Version, margin, appears also in  Matthew 9:6 ,  Matthew 9:8 , to forgive sins:  Matthew 28:18;  Mark 2:10;  Luke 4:32;  Luke 5:24;  John 10:18;  John 17:2;  Revelation 12:10 ); ( c ) of the disciples, as Christ's representatives and witnesses ( Luke 9:1 , the twelve;  2 Corinthians 10:8 , Paul); also of their rights and privileges; (the same Greek word in  Matthew 10:1;  Mark 3:15;  Mark 6:7;  Luke 10:19 = the Revised Version (British and American) "authority";   John 1:12;  Acts 8:19;  2 Corinthians 13:10;  2 Thessalonians 3:9;  Hebrews 13:10;  Revelation 2:26;  Revelation 22:14 = the Revised Version (British and American) "right"); ( d ) of subordinate heavenly authorities or powers ( 1 Corinthians 15:24;  1 Peter 3:22; and the same Greek word in  Ephesians 1:21;  Ephesians 3:10;  Ephesians 6:12;  Colossians 1:16;  Colossians 2:10 ,  Colossians 2:15;  Revelation 11:6;  Revelation 14:18;  Revelation 18:1 ); ( e ) of civil authority, as of king, magistrate or steward ( Luke 7:8 =   Matthew 8:9 [centurion  ;   Mark 13:34;  Luke 19:17;  Luke 20:20;  Luke 22:25 =   Matthew 20:25 =   Mark 10:42; and  Acts 9:14;  Acts 26:10 ,  Acts 26:12 [of Saul  ; and the same Greek word in   Luke 12:11;  Luke 23:7;  John 19:10 ,  John 19:11;  Acts 5:4;  Romans 13:1 ,  Romans 13:2 ,  Romans 13:3;  Titus 3:1;  Revelation 17:12 ,  Revelation 17:13 ); ( f ) of the powers of evil ( Revelation 13:2 , "the beast that came out of the sea"; and the same Greek word in  Luke 4:6;  Luke 12:5;  Luke 22:53;  Acts 26:18;  Ephesians 2:2;  Colossians 1:13;  Revelation 6:8;  Revelation 9:3 ,  Revelation 9:10 ,  Revelation 9:19;  Revelation 13:4 ,  Revelation 13:5 ,  Revelation 13:7 ,  Revelation 13:12;  Revelation 20:6 ). ( g ) of man's inward power of self-control (the same Greek word in  1 Corinthians 7:37;  1 Corinthians 8:9 , "liberty";  1 Corinthians 6:12;  1 Corinthians 7:4;  1 Corinthians 9:4 ,  1 Corinthians 9:5 ,  1 Corinthians 9:6 ,  1 Corinthians 9:12 ,  1 Corinthians 9:18 , the Revised Version (British and American) "right";  1 Corinthians 11:10 ).

(2) For epitagē ̌ : commandment, authority to exhort and reprove the church ( Titus 2:15 ).

(3) For huperochē ̌ : "for kings and all that are in high place" (Revised Version (British and American)  1 Timothy 2:2 ).

(4) For authenteō ̌ : "I permit not a woman ... to have dominion over a man" (Revised Version,  1 Timothy 2:12 ).

(5) For dunastēs ̌ : "A eunuch of great authority" ( Acts 8:27 ).

3. Common Elements in Their Meaning

Of the words translated "authority," exousia , alone expresses the idea of religious authority, whether of God, of Christ or of man. The other uses of this word are here instructive in as bringing out the common element in secular and religious authority. The control of the state over its subjects, whether as supreme in the person of emperor or king, or as delegated to and exercised by proconsul, magistrate or soldier, and the control of a householder over his family and servants and property, exercised directly or indirectly through stewards, have some characteristics which also pertain to religious authority; and the differences, essential though they are, must be derived from the context and the circumstances of the case. In one passage indeed the civil type of authority is mentioned to be repudiated as something that should not obtain within the religious community ( Matthew 20:25-27 =   Mark 10:42-44 =   Luke 22:25 ,  Luke 22:26 ). But although its principle and power are so entirely different in different realms, the fact of authority as determining religious thought, conduct and relations permeates the whole Bible, and is expressed by many terms and phrases besides those translated "authority."

III. Biblical Teaching

A summary of the Biblical account of authority is given in  Hebrews 1:1; "God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in a Son [RVm]." Behind all persons and institutions stands God, who reveals His mind and exercises His sovereignty in many ways, through many persons and institutions, piecemeal and progressively, until His final revelation of His mind and will culminates in Jesus Christ.

1. Old Testament Teaching

(1) Earliest Form Patriarchal

The earliest form of authority is patriarchal. The father of the family is at once its prophet, priest and king. The consciousness of individuality was as yet weak. The unit of life was the family, and the father sums up the family in himself before God and stands to it as God. Such is the earliest picture of religious life found in the Bible. For whatever view may be taken of the historicity of Gen, there can be little doubt that the stories of the patriarchs represent an early stage of religious life, before the national or even the tribal consciousness had developed.

(2) Tribal and Personal Authority

When the tribal consciousness emerges, it is clad in a network of customs and traditions which had grown with it, and which governed the greater part of the life of the tribe. The father had now become the elder and judge who exercised authority over the larger family, the tribe. But also, men of commanding personality and influence appear, who change and refashion the tribal customs. They may be men of practical wisdom like Jethro, great warriors like Joshua, or emergency men like the judges. Moses stands apart, a prophet and reformer who knew that he bore a message from God to reform his people's religion, and gave Israel a knowledge of God and a covenant with God which set them forever apart from all other peoples. Other tribes might have a Jethro, a Joshua and a Jephtha, but Israel alone had its Moses. His authority has remained a large factor in the life of Israel to the present day and should hereafter be assumed as existing side by side with other authorities mentioned.

(3) Seers and Priests

In our earliest glimpses of Hebrew life in Canaan we find bands of seers or prophets associated with religion in Israel, as well as a disorganized priesthood which conducted the public worship of Yahweh. These features were probably common to Israel and neighboring Semitic tribes. Here again the individual person emerges who rises above custom and tradition, and exercises an individual authority direct from God over the lives of the people. Samuel, too, was a prophet, priest and king, but he regarded his function as so entirely ministerial, that God might be said to govern His people directly and personally, though He made known His will through the prophet.

(4) Kings and Established Religion

In the period of the kingship, religious authority became more organized, institutional and external. The occasional coöperation of the tribes developed into nationality, and the sporadic leadership of emergency chieftains gave way to the permanent rule of the king. Priests and prophets became organized and recognized guilds which acted together under the protection and influence of the king, along the lines of traditional morality and religion. The Hebrew church in its middle ages was an established church and thoroughly "Erastian." We know very little of the details of its organization, but it is clear that the religious orders as a rule offered little resistance to the corrupting influences of the court and of the surrounding heathenism.

(5) The Great Prophets

Opposition to corruption and advance to higher levels of religious life invariably originated outside the recognized religious authorities. God raised for Himself prophets such as Elijah, Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah, who spoke out of the consciousness of an immediate vision or message or command from God. In turn they influenced the established religious authorities, as may be seen in the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah. All that is distinctive in the religion of Israel, all revelation of God in the Old Testament, proceeded from the inner experiences of the irregular prophets.

(6) The Canon and Rabbinical Tradition

In the Judaism of the post-exilic period, the disappearance of the kingship, and the cessation of prophecy produced new conditions which demanded a readaptation of religious authorities. The relative position of the priesthood was greatly enhanced. Its chiefs became princes of Jerusalem, and exercised all the powers of theocracy that remained under foreign rule. And new developments emerged. The formation of the canon of the Old Testament set up a body of writings which stood as a permanent and external standard of doctrine and worship. But the necessity was felt to interpret the Scriptures and to apply them to existing conditions. The place of the old prophetic guilds was taken by the new order of rabbis and scribes. Gradually they secured a share with the priests in the administration of the law. "In the last two pre-Christian centuries and throughout the Talmudic times, the scribes ṣōpherı̄m , also called the wise ḥăkhāmı̄m , who claimed to have received the true interpretation of the Law as 'the tradition of the Elders and Fathers' in direct line from Moses, the prophets, and the men of the great synagogue,... included people from all classes. They formed the court of justice in every town as well as the high court of justice, the Sanhedrin in Jerus" (Köhler in Jewish Encyclopedia , II, 337). In the time of Christ, these courts were the recognized authorities in all matters of religion.

2. New Testament Teaching

(1) Jesus Christ's Authority

When He began to teach in Palestine, all knowledge of God, and all exercise of His authority were mediated through the priests and scribes, who however claimed the Old Testament as their source. Christ was neither the destroyer nor the creator of institutions. He never discussed the abstract right or capacity of the Jewish orders to be religious teachers. He enjoined obedience to their teaching ( Matthew 23:2 ,  Matthew 23:3 ). Still less did He question the authority of the Old Testament. He came not to destroy, but to fulfill the law and the prophets ( Matthew 5:17 ). But He did two things which involved the assertion of a new and superior authority in Himself. He repudiated the scribes' interpretation of the law ( Matthew 23:13-16 ), and He declared that certain of the provisions of the Mosaic law itself were temporary and tentative, and to be replaced or supplemented by His own more adequate teaching ( Matthew 5:32 ,  Matthew 5:34 ,  Matthew 5:39 ,  Matthew 5:44;  Matthew 19:8 ,  Matthew 19:9 ). In doing this, He was really fulfilling a line of thought which permeates the entire Old Testament. All its writers disclaim finality and look forward to a fuller revelation of the mind of God in a day of Yahweh or a new covenant or a Messiah. Jesus Christ regarded these expectations as being realized in Himself, and claimed to complete and fulfill the development which had run through the Old Testament. As such, He claims finality in His teaching of the will of God, and absolute authority in the realm of religion and morals.

(A) His Teaching

His teaching is with authority. His hearers contrast it with that of the scribes, who, with all the prestige of tradition and establishment, in comparison with Him, entirely lacked authority (  Matthew 7:29;  Mark 1:22;  Luke 4:32;  John 7:46 ).

(B) His Works

His authority as a teacher is closely associated with His works , especially as these revealed His authority over that world of evil spirits whose influence was felt in the mental disorders that afflicted people ( Mark 1:27;  Luke 4:36 ).

(C) Forgiving and Judging

In His claim to forgive sins , sanctioned by works of healing, He seemed to exercise a Divine prerogative ( Matthew 9:6 ,  Matthew 9:8;  Mark 2:10;  Luke 5:24 ). It implied an infallible moral judgment, a power to dispense with the recognized laws of retribution and to remove guilt, which could only inhere in God. All these powers are asserted in another form in the statement that He is the final judge ( John 5:27 ).

(D) Life and Salvation

He therefore possesses authority over life and salvation . The Father gave Him authority over all flesh, "that whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life" ( John 17:2 the American Revised Version, margin). This authority begins in His power over His own life to give it in sacrifice for men (  John 10:18 ). By faith in Him and obedience to Him, men obtain salvation ( Matthew 10:32;  Matthew 11:28-30 ). Their relation to Him determines their relation to God and to the kingdom of heaven ( Matthew 10:40;  Luke 12:8 ).

(E) Derived from His Sonship

When challenged by the chief priests and elders, the established religious authorities, to state by what authority He taught, He gives no categorical reply, but tells them the parable of the Vineyard. All the prophets and teachers that had come from God before Him were servants, but He is the Son ( Matthew 21:23-27 ,  Matthew 21:37;  Mark 11:28-33;  Mark 12:6;  Luke 20:2 ,  Luke 20:8 ,  Luke 20:13 ). The Fourth Gospel definitely founds His authority upon His sonship (  John 5:19-27 ). Paul deduces it from His self-sacrifice ( Philippians 2:5-11 ).

(F) in His Ascended State

In His ascended state , all authority in heaven and on earth is given unto Him ( Matthew 28:18 ). It is not only authority in the church, and in the moral kingdom, but in the universe. God has set Him "far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come" ( Ephesians 1:21; compare  Colossians 2:10;  1 Peter 3:22;  1 Corinthians 15:24;  Revelation 12:10 ).

(G) Christ and the Paraclete

His authority in the church as revealer of truth and Lord of spirits is not limited or completed within His earthly life. By His resurrection and exaltation He lives on in the church. "Where two or three are gathered ... in my name, there am I in the midst of them" ( Matthew 18:20 ). "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" ( Matthew 28:20 ). Greater works than He did in the flesh will be done in the church, because of His exaltation: ( John 14:12 ); and by His sending the Paraclete , "Comforter" (American Revised Version) ( John 14:16 ). The Paraclete , which is the Holy Spirit, will teach the disciples all things, and bring to their remembrance all that He said unto them ( John 14:26 ). He has many things to tell them which in the days of His flesh they cannot receive, but the Spirit of truth shall guide them into all truth ( John 16:12 ,  John 16:13 ). And the Paraclete is neither separated nor distinct from Him in His exalted and permanent life ( John 14:18 ,  John 14:28 ). Herein is the authority of Christ made complete and permanent. His teaching, works and character, as facts outside of men, even while He lived, and still more when He was dead, could only partially and imperfectly rule their spirits. "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip?" In the day of the Spirit's revelation "ye shall know that I am in my Father" ( John 14:9 ,  John 14:20 ). Nor, again, did or could He define the truth as it applied to every contingency throughout all time, while He lived under the limitations of time and place. Such a revelation, if it could have been given, would have been quite useless, for men can only apprehend the truth progressively and in relation to the position they occupy in time and place. But by His permanent spiritual presence in the church, He enters into, inhabits and governs its whole life and determines for it what is true and right at every stage of its development. (See Forrest, Authority of Christ , 202-3.) To ask whence Christ derives or how He possesses the authority above described, is to raise the whole question of His metaphysical existence. Empirically, we see it issuing from two facts which are essentially one - H is filial consciousness and His moral perfection. These chiefly are the empirical facts which the church has sought to interpret and express in the metaphysical doctrine of the Incarnation. (See Forrest, op. cit.)

(2) The Disciples' Authority

The first disciples acknowledged Christ in all things as their Lord and Master; not the teaching they had heard, nor the example they had witnessed, but Christ in His permanent, living presence. They pray to Him to fill Judas' place among the Twelve ( Acts 1:24 ,  Acts 1:25 ). He gave the Spirit at Pentecost ( Acts 2:33 ). In His name they perform their miracles ( Acts 3:6;  Acts 9:34 ). With Him Saul meets on the way to Damascus ( Acts 9:5;  Galatians 1:12 ). From Him they receive the teaching and commands which they deliver to the churches ( 1 Corinthians 11:23 ).

But they too exercised an authority which is derivative, secondary, and dependent upon Him.

(A) Derived from Christ

While Jesus Christ yet lived He gave the Twelve, and again the Seventy, authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal all manner of diseases, while they went about preaching ( Matthew 10:1;  Mark 3:15;  Mark 6:7;  Luke 9:1;  Luke 10:19 ). After His resurrection He gave them commission to bear witness for Him, to baptize and to teach all nations ( Matthew 28:18-20;  Luke 24:48 ,  Luke 24:49 ). Paul also traced his authority to preach directly to Jesus Christ ( Galatians 1:1 ,  Galatians 1:12 ). From Him they received their endowment with the Holy Spirit for the work ( Acts 1:5;  Acts 2:33 ).

(B) Paul's Authority

Paul claimed for himself, and by inference, for the other apostles, authority to exercise discipline in the churches, "which the Lord gave for building you up" ( 2 Corinthians 10:8;  2 Corinthians 13:10 ). All the church's ministers exercise oversight and admonition over the churches ( 1 Thessalonians 5:12;  2 Timothy 4:2;  2 Timothy 2:2 ).

(C) Authority of All Believers

The authority of sonship, and of participation in the tree of life belongs to all believers ( John 1:12;  Revelation 22:14 ).

(D) Authority over the Nations

And in virtue of their faith they have authority over the nations ( Revelation 2:26;  Revelation 20:4 ). Christ makes them to be kings (Revised Version (British and American) a kingdom) and priests ( Revelation 1:6 ), a royal priesthood ( 1 Peter 2:9 ).

In all this we are to see the authority of faith, of character, of men who are messengers of Christ because they are in living union with Him. It pertains to no office or institution, and exists only where Christ reigns in men, and therefore, through them.

(3) Church's Authority: Moral and Personal

It is moral and personal and more concerned with life than with doctrine. Paul was the greatest teacher of the early church, but he claims no infallibility, promulgates no dogma, imposes no standard of orthodoxy beyond faith in Christ. He reasons, argues and persuades men to accept the gospel he had received of the Lord, but he knows no other authority than the truth as it is a living fact in Jesus Christ.

In the Pastoral Epistles we certainly read of a "sound doctrine" which should be taught and believed, but it has not crystallized into a creed, and the only condition of salvation laid down is living faith in Jesus Christ. See Doctrine .

The authority of the apostolic church, then, is in the first place that of individual men in whom Jesus Christ lives, a direct personal and individual authority. It is true that the individual can only live the Christian life, and therefore know the Christian truth, in a society, but that does not impair the individual and personal character of his witness. Yet as the church lives a collective life, there is a sense in which it may be said to bear a collective witness. Men are naturally more readily impressed by an idea held by the many. That is right in so far as the probability of the truth of a doctrine increases with the number of minds which approve it. That is the element of truth in the Catholic dictum quod ubique , quod semper , quod ab omnibus creditum est ("what is believed everywhere, always, and by all"). But the assent of the many does not constitute the truth of an idea or fact, nor enhance its authority. And there are levels of truth to which only few minds can attain, so that the assent of the many may be a presumption against the truth of an idea. And in the last resort, men do not accept ideas with mind and heart, because many believe them, but because of their inherent truth, their power to govern their minds. And the essential truth of a doctrine is no greater, whether one or a million accept it.

The apostolic church recognized this principle, for it never claimed for itself greater authority than that of a tutor to bring men to Christ, the one Lord. Peter, Paul, John, each knew Christ in a degree, and each spoke of Him as well as he could, but none of them claims to say all, or demands that his own teaching should absolutely rule men's minds; and the collective authority of the church can never rise higher than that of its best spirits.

(4) Authority of the Bible

And the authority of the Bible as a whole is of the same nature as that of the church. It is a record of the experiences of men who knew God in various ways and degrees, but among them all there is only one Master. 'No one knows the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.' In varying degrees obedience should be rendered to many men in the church and outside of it, as they satisfy the demands of reason and conscience, but in the last resort every soul by itself must find, choose and obey its own King. For Christians Christ alone is King, as He revealed Himself in His human personality, in the experience and history of the church, and ultimately in the personal experience of every believer. (For a different view see J. H. Leckie, Authority in Religion .)

IV. Outline History of Ecclesiastical Doctrine of Authority

1. Appeal to Reason as Logos

Different ideas, drawn from many sources, soon replaced New Testament principles of authority in the life and thought of the church. The Greek apologists and Fathers were generally dominated by the Platonic doctrine of the Logos, and thought of God as dwelling in man and communicating His mind to him by giving him a share of His own mind and reason. While they accepted the Scriptures and the traditions of the church as Divine teaching, they did not regard them as external and sovereign authorities, but rather as copies of the Divine reason which dwelt in every man, but in complete and perfect manner only in Jesus Christ.

2. Orthodox Dogma

Neo-Platonism followed, and it underlies much of the church teaching from Origen to Augustine. God as pure being could not make known His essence to men, and His Logos in all the forms of its manifestation tended to become a spoken word which God had sent forth from Himself, rather than the living indwelling of God with men. When the Logos ceased to be living, it tended to become external and stereotyped, and upon this basis grew up Greek orthodoxy. Men who knew but little of the living personal Word felt the need of defining and establishing the central truths of Christianity in fixed and permanent forms which should become the standard of all thinking. The inward witness of the Logos disappears, and the external authority of tradition and dogma as defined by the councils took its place. The bishops preserved the tradition and constituted the councils and Thus became the organs of authority. The Scriptures were still venerated in words, but in fact subordinated to the episcopacy.

3. Scholasticism

Aristotle's philosophy dominated the Middle Ages, or rather the pale ghost of Aristotle's system, the formal logic only. The forms of thought were mistaken for its essence. Truth consisted in logical consistency and systematic coherence. The dogmas of earlier ages were assumed as premises from which to deduce, by syllogistic inference, the whole structure of the church and its organs and sacraments, as the infallible representatives of God on earth.

4. Ecclesiastical Absolutism

Nominalism emptied the forms of thought of all reality and reared the ecclesiastical system upon negation. All the more necessary was it to affirm the absolute and unquestioned authority of the church, since it rested upon no reason or reality to which appeal could be made to justify its position and teaching. Thus, the growth of absolutism in the church went pari passu with the disappearance of idealism, of any contact of the mind with reality, truth and God. Another way of saying this truth is that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and of the living Christ suffered a total eclipse during the Middle Ages, while the authority of the church as the organ of revelation became absolute.

5. Reformation Principles

The Reformation was not consciously based upon any philosophic principles. It was the product of practical necessities. Men's spiritual needs drove them back to God, and they found Him in two sources, in the Bible, which was the record of His self-revelation through prophet, psalmist, apostle and preëminently through Jesus Christ, and in the accordant testimony of the Holy Spirit in their own hearts. But the underlying principles of this teaching were not articulated in a philosophy of knowledge and revelation for two centuries.

6. New Scholasticism

Therefore the second and third generations of Reformers, no longer possessed by the visions and convictions of Luther and Calvin, were thrown back upon the old scholastic philosophy which recognized no kinship of mind between God and man, and knew no direct communication between them. Hence, it was necessary to find a new external authority, and this they discovered in the Bible which they made into a law of truth, as defined anew by ecclesiastical councils.

7. The Inner Light

But the mystical side of the Reformers' teaching was not altogether lost, and a few obscure bodies of Christians continued to hold the doctrine of the inner light. Yet as the scholastic Protestants took only half - the objective half of the Reformers' teaching - the mystics only took the subjective half, and every man's imagination tended to become a law unto himself.

8. Back to Experience

Kant did for philosophy what Luther had done for religion. He rejected its dogmas and external authorities in order to come back to its realities. He was the first philosopher of the Protestant principle. He sought to discover a direct relation between man's mind and reality. He did not fully succeed. The old dogma of the noumenon as something that lay completely beyond man's ken clung to him, and vitiated his system. But through man's moral nature, he found a way to the heart of reality and to God. His idealistic principles were developed by his successors into the modern idealism, upon which it has been possible to erect a theory of knowledge that brings man's mind into direct contact with God, and therefore, a theory of authority which represents God as directly the sovereign of the soul.

9. Distrust of Reason

But the other side of Kant's philosophy, too, was developed into a theory of religious skepticism and external authority. Man's reason, he had taught, could not come into contact with reality, with the thing-in-itself, and therefore it could know nothing of God. This distrust of reason was made the basis of two different systems of external authority by Dean Mansol and Cardinal Newman. The skeptical element really descended from Locke and Hume, but men who would have disdained to learn their theology from Hume accepted Hume's principles from Kant, and built upon them, as a house upon sand, one, the authority of Anglicanism, and the other, the authority of Romanism.

10. Christian Skepticism

Kant's skepticism also allied itself with elements of Luther's teaching and traveled a middle course in the school of Ritschl. While holding that man may have knowledge and experience of Divine things in Jesus Christ, who is of the practical value of God for religious experience, the Ritschlians scruple to affirm that it is a direct and actual knowledge of God as He is essentially. This they will neither deny nor affirm, but the refusal to affirm has for many minds the effect of denial, and it leads to a subjectivism which is not far removed from skepticism and the denial of all authority.

V. Classification of Theories

The various theories of authority may be now classed as follows:

1. External

(1) Incipient Catholicism

Incipient Catholicism in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. - A ll ideas of a living and prosefit revelation were suppressed as in the case of Montanism. Three more or less coördinate authorities were set up which determined for individual Christians what was Christian truth and conduct. The canon of the New Testament was gradually formed to define what writings, in addition to the Old Testament taken over from the Jewish church, were inspired by the Holy Spirit and of Divine authority. The outline of a common creed or rule of faith grew up as the standard interpretation of Scripture. Above all was the episcopacy, which was supposed to preserve in unbroken tradition the unwritten teaching of the apostles. As the only living factor in this system of authority the last easily secured the predominant place. (See Harnack, History of Dogma , II, chapter ii, English translation.)

(2) General Councils

The authority of the episcopacy was organized into a permanent and general form in the councils, to whose decision obedience was demanded on pain of excommunication. The councils professed and believed that they were only defining the teaching that had always obtained in the church, and therefore invested themselves and their decisions with the authority of Christ.

(3) Romanism

During the Middle Ages, the church of Rome concentrated in itself, that is, in its episcopacy, all the authority of tradition, bishops, councils and whatever else had held sway over the mind of the church. Scripture was ignored and the Bishop of Rome exercised the plenary authority of God over men's minds and lives. "Boniface Viii accepted in the Bull Unam sancram ( ecclesiam ) of November 18, 1302, the Thomist doctrine of the papacy: 'We declare, say, define and pronounce that it is essential to salvation that every human creature should subject himself to the Roman Pontiff'" (Loofs, Dogmengeschichte , 307).

(4) Papal Infallibility

This theory culminated in 1870 in the formal declaration of the infallibility of the pope. "The Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra ... has that infallibility, with which the Divine Redeemer endowed His church, in defining a doctrine of faith or morals" (Vatican Council, 1870, Session 4, cap. 4). This authority of the pope extends over all questions of knowledge and conduct, of discipline and government in the whole church. The theory is based upon the doctrine of tradition, as laid down in the Council of Chalcedon. "The doctrine of Catholic teaching is, that the body of publicly revealed doctrine has received no objective increase since the days of the apostles," and "it is no change of doctrine when that which has always been held implicitly becomes the subject of an explicit declaration" (Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology , I, 159, 164). Newman and recent modernists, however, concede a development in the doctrines of the church, but on the basis of the traditional teaching derived from the apostles. But once a development is conceded, questions arise as to its principles and conditions, and the whole authority that rests upon them falls to the ground by the mere fact of an appeal from it to the principles that govern its development. The attempt to evade criticism by positing the miraculous preservation of the tradition from error involves a further appeal from the supposed authority to a hypothetical miracle for which there is no tittle of evidence. All the evidence is against it. The history of the church shows that it has been as liable to error, and as readily influenced by natural conditions, as any other human institution.

(5) Inerrancy of Scripture

When Protestants sought an external authority, they posited the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible, and the whole Christian faith was founded upon that dogma. "Holy Scripture is the judge, or rather the voice of the supreme and infallible judge, the Holy Spirit, and the norm to which an inferior judge should refer in deciding controversies of faith, and according to which alone he should give sentence" (Quenstedt, quoted in Hutterus Redivivus , 119, 10th edition). Protestants found it necessary to interpret Scripture, and to define doctrines in synods and councils, but their decisions had authority only because they were supposed to be expositions of Scripture, and in that sense, the expression of God's mind. They differed from the "Catholic" councils in that they claimed no authority of their own and repudiated any authority that might be derived from tradition or the ministerial office.

(6) Anglican Appeal to Antiquity

In the Anglican church too, the Scriptures as infallible were the ultimate authority, but some kind of a coördinate authority was claimed for the priesthood as standing in the succession of the apostles, and for the church Fathers and councils of the first six centuries. And the tendency has been to lay increasing emphasis on the latter factors, as criticism has undermined the literal and external authority of Scripture.

(7) Limitations of External Authority

All the above-mentioned theories contain an element of truth, and the authorities they posit have in their turns ruled the minds and lives of men; but none of them can be regarded as adequate and final expressions of the mind of God to man.

(a) Not Infallible

It is superfluous to demonstrate that they are not infallible; in spite of that they might still be all the authority that man can have or need.

(b) Rests on Personal Authority

They all rest on the assumption that God's self-revelation came to an end with the apostolic age. The Biblical theory admittedly does, and the tradition theories strictly interpreted are in exactly the same case. An authority resting upon a

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