Where is Your Authority?

In a small book by J.I. Packer, entitled Freedom and Authority, the ancient Roman moralist, Seneca, is quoted as describing the slavery to self as the worst possible slavery. He believed that any other authority structure was preferable to the tyranny imposed by one's own will. John Paul II put out an encyclical not too long ago, putting his own spin on Seneca's sentiments. The belated leader of the Roman-Catholic church wrote that true freedom is exercised in one's ability to escape animalistic impulses in favor or reason and virtue.

Like Seneca and John Paul II, many Christians and pagans throughout world history have sought to establish an accountability to a higher authority. They would engage in this quest because, through deep reflection, they would come to realization that human authority was compromised by the selfish desires of the human heart. To grant absolute human authority was even more unthinkable. As Lord Acton once said, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Although the need for a higher authority was well established amongst the ancients, the source of that higher authority was oft-debated. Ancient Judaism sought its authority in a god of rules--compromising on the Old Testament God of the Law that condemns. In this way, human reason and righteousness could be guarded by self-imposed, Pharisaic rules. Ancient Greeks and Romans worshipped pagan deities, who happened to be quite permissive when it came to those animalistic desires of mankind. Roman Catholicism, arising a few centuries after the early Church, sought to make the Church the guardian of God's words--most notably centralized in the papacy. In all of these various expressions, people cloaked God's rule in human garb, preferring a rule that was made less terrifying through some form of human mediation. None of these systems were willing to fully account for God's holy law and man's wholly depraved character. Even so, the pursuit of a higher authority was generally a given.

The post-Enlightenment Western World tired of such antiquated views and sought to establish a worldview based on the autonomy (independence and authority) of the human mind. Philosophers established rational proofs and naturalistic scientists established a scientific method, both of which gave man absolute, unquestioned authority over the object of his pursuits--an absolute authority that would have made Lord Acton shudder. Human autonomy in this form--where God is ignored in the initiation, process, and end of human enquiry--became an inhumane autonomy. As America's Founding Fathers correctly noted with their system of checks and balances in human governance, human beings are always in need of accountability.

In the Western World of the 20th century, mankind bowed down to the primacy of the human mind--an unchecked mind which set loose unprecedented horrors across the face of the globe. Such human-centered external power is now checked by the power of individual human experience, which looks within for self-guidance. Instead of being guided by optimistic individuals with misguided notions of truth, this truth-from-within conception will ultimately bring a truth-by-consensus mentality by necessity of order, and will bring the same sort of human-centered tyranny unleashed upon the world in the past century.

So where is authority to be found? For the Christian, that authority is found solely within the Word of God. The Bible is the transcendent Word from God, breaking upon human hearts as the immanent source of hope. It is through the Bible that God speaks to mankind, offering the divine plan of redemption in the sphere of human history. When one bows the knee to the God of the Bible, she is acknowledging He who created the world in perfect harmony and even now restrains sin and chaos through His providence. When once bows the knee to anything else, she is prostrating herself to the same forces that initially brought chaos and brokenness.

Christians must resist the tyrannical authority of the papacy, which assumes the throne of Christ with utter disregard for the Lord of Hosts. They must also resist the tyranny of "mini-popes"--those church leaders who deny the need for accountability from a larger denominational structure. In addition, those charismatic groups that claim the power of the Spirit while neglecting the power of the Word must also be considered dangerous. There are many Christians in all of these other bodies, but they are Christians playing with fire.

Instead, the Christian should submit himself to a local church body within a larger denomination which professes the supremacy of the Word of God over all of human life. He should profess allegiance to the historic Confession of that denomination, a confession which unites believers of many ages and many countries under a clear understanding of the Bible. In this way, he will also avoid the pitfalls of interpretational, a la carte Christian relativism. God speaks to His people as they wander this worldly wilderness and has granted that the Church maintain the bonds of unity in these dark days. Why forsake the gifts of the Lord?