Further excerpts from Victor Lee Austin's Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (London: T & T Clark, 2010), chapter 5: (pages 106-110):
Hooker discerns that those who would dismiss the power of the church to decide on matters of order are putting their own reason in the place of the authority of the church; and thus they undermine that authority, with the result being the diminishment of the ability of the church to be a society. he does concede--indeed he emphasizes--that if the church is doctrinally in error (a position which for Hooker means the teaching of doctrines that are contrary to that which the Scripture lays out clearly or to that which can be clearly deduced from Scripture), then the individual must speak prophetically in opposition to authority. But in matters of ceremony, as in all matters on which Scripture does not speak clearly...the church has the necessary function of making authoritative determinations that are appropriate for [107] the time, and which might also be changed. [See Laws V.viii.2]
Still the epistemic question remains, How can it be determined, authoritatively, that a doctrine is clearly stated in Scripture or immediately deducible therefrom? How, that is, can we know that the church authority is truly handing on that which is contained in Scripture? [108] Hooker faces this question. While he emphatically ascribes Scripture a preeminent place in all knowledge of truth concerning doctrine, he points out that, not only does Scripture not say everything, it may not be a simple matter to determine what Scripture does in fact say. Thus authority is necessary, both to acquire the skills needed to read Scripture correctly, and also to perpetuate the knowledge of the truth that is held by tradition. [See Laws II.viii.5]
[109] Hooker calls upon his opponents to recognize what he takes to be an obvious fact, that "God hath endued [some people] with principal gifts to aspire unto knowledge by; whose exercises, labours, and divine studies he hath so blessed that the world for their great and rare skill that way hath them in admiration." He asks by what daring of intellect would we reject their judgment? "For mine own part," Hooker says, "I dare not so lightly esteem of the Church, and of the principal pillars therein" (Laws II.vii.4).
[110, citing Anthony Quinton, The Politics of Imperfection, 28] The Puritan opponents of Hooker were guilty of "a cognitive sin," namely, "intellectual pride." The Puritans thought the traditions of the church were of no weight; they would apply their own reason directly to the Scriptures and reach all conclusions in isolation from any need for epistemic authority."
Showing posts with label Victor Lee Austin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victor Lee Austin. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
Authority in the Church
Further excerpts from Victor Lee Austin's Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (London: T & T Clark, 2010), chapter 5:
Authority in the church, then, appears as a sort of mysterious percolation. It requires hat there be an assembly, and therefore it requires that there be the communal identity and structure that makes the assembly possible. To be specific, and to take a catholic ecclesiology as normative, authority requires that there be a given structure of ordained ministry, received creeds, and continually-renewed tradition. Above all, authority in the church requires the Scriptures, [100] faithfully handed down and recited in the presence of all the faithful. But the odd thing we see in the church is that authority in the radical sense resides in none of those things: not in ordination, not in creed and tradition, not even in Scripture. Authority resides in the individual believer who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaims faithfully her allegiance to the suffering Jesus, and thus to her Lord, and thus to the Triune Reality that is the source of all authority in heaven and earth. (pages 99-100)
Authority is actualized in the church when Christ is confessed; the Christ who is confessed is the one who has all authority. He bestows the Holy Spirit to bring human beings into communion with God and each other. (page 100)
So we cannot have an individual confession of Christ that does not arise out of a eucharistic community. And we cannot have eucharistic community without the oversight of a bishop. And we cannot have a bishop who is not in communion with other bishops, nor a eucharistic community that is not in communion with other eucharistic communities. And we cannot have communities and bishops without some means of making authoritative determinations about the [102] boundaries of Christian confession. But all these things--authoritative doctrinal determinations, authoritative conciliar structures, authoritative persons with oversight of particular communities--all exist to make possible the one truly authoritative act, which is the confession of Christ, which like all authority is ineluctably personal. (pages 101-102)
Authority in the church, in other words, highlights for us an essential dynamic in the working out of authority. The community is prior to the individual. No person could have faith or come to any knowledge of truth without submitting to the authority of others. And yet the community exists only in the individual to which it gives rise. The individual, as it were, contains the community, even as she enacts, authoritatively, the faithful response of the community, which must be in an individual, to the faithfulness of the one who is the source of all the church's authority, namely the Son to whom all authority has been given. (page 103)
[Drawing on Herbert McCabe, The Good Life [London: Continuum, 2005] and citing from pages 26-27} The error of contractarian thinking in political philosophy--that already existing individuals enter into contracts together to make societies--lies in the fact that before you could be an individual you must "be already in possession of what only society could provide--institutions such as language, contract, agreement, and so on." Humans are rational beings, which means preeminently that we can talk with each other and articulate alternatives to the way things are. "Rationality," McCabe says, "is a special way of being in a group." (page 103)
Authority in the church, then, appears as a sort of mysterious percolation. It requires hat there be an assembly, and therefore it requires that there be the communal identity and structure that makes the assembly possible. To be specific, and to take a catholic ecclesiology as normative, authority requires that there be a given structure of ordained ministry, received creeds, and continually-renewed tradition. Above all, authority in the church requires the Scriptures, [100] faithfully handed down and recited in the presence of all the faithful. But the odd thing we see in the church is that authority in the radical sense resides in none of those things: not in ordination, not in creed and tradition, not even in Scripture. Authority resides in the individual believer who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaims faithfully her allegiance to the suffering Jesus, and thus to her Lord, and thus to the Triune Reality that is the source of all authority in heaven and earth. (pages 99-100)
Authority is actualized in the church when Christ is confessed; the Christ who is confessed is the one who has all authority. He bestows the Holy Spirit to bring human beings into communion with God and each other. (page 100)
So we cannot have an individual confession of Christ that does not arise out of a eucharistic community. And we cannot have eucharistic community without the oversight of a bishop. And we cannot have a bishop who is not in communion with other bishops, nor a eucharistic community that is not in communion with other eucharistic communities. And we cannot have communities and bishops without some means of making authoritative determinations about the [102] boundaries of Christian confession. But all these things--authoritative doctrinal determinations, authoritative conciliar structures, authoritative persons with oversight of particular communities--all exist to make possible the one truly authoritative act, which is the confession of Christ, which like all authority is ineluctably personal. (pages 101-102)
Authority in the church, in other words, highlights for us an essential dynamic in the working out of authority. The community is prior to the individual. No person could have faith or come to any knowledge of truth without submitting to the authority of others. And yet the community exists only in the individual to which it gives rise. The individual, as it were, contains the community, even as she enacts, authoritatively, the faithful response of the community, which must be in an individual, to the faithfulness of the one who is the source of all the church's authority, namely the Son to whom all authority has been given. (page 103)
[Drawing on Herbert McCabe, The Good Life [London: Continuum, 2005] and citing from pages 26-27} The error of contractarian thinking in political philosophy--that already existing individuals enter into contracts together to make societies--lies in the fact that before you could be an individual you must "be already in possession of what only society could provide--institutions such as language, contract, agreement, and so on." Humans are rational beings, which means preeminently that we can talk with each other and articulate alternatives to the way things are. "Rationality," McCabe says, "is a special way of being in a group." (page 103)
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Up with Authority: The Church
Excerpts from Victor Lee Austin's Up With Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings (London: T & T Clark, 2010), chapter 5:
The examination of authority has been undertaken so far from a human point of view. To succeed at being a human, I have urged, is to be able to live together with others. Upon examination, it turns out that to live together with others in any sort of society requires that authority be there. And to live together with the skills of knowing and discerning the truth about the world, that also requires the existence of authority. Thus, to be human at all requires authority both social and epistemic. Furthermore, when we consider social authority as its most extensive--the authority that governs a society--we encounter political authority, a species that is social and epistemic but also has coercive force at its disposal.
But none of this discussion has been carried on with theological blinders. Early on, the biblical understanding of authority confirmed our sense that it is a complex, structured affair; that to be a person "in authority" or to "have authority" is not to be pushed up to the top of a pyramid, but rather to be one who is also under authority. Then the relationship of authority and truth, which Michael Polanyi helped us see as a necessarily dialectical one in which authority points beyond itself to truth and, at the same time, the truth as apprehended raises a question upon authority, was itself a dialectical relationship expressed by Jesus when he said, as one with authority, that his mission was to bring knowledge of the truth, which knoweldge in turn would be liberating. Likewise in our study of authority and power, theology was present when we turned back to the roots of political theology, as [94] exposed by Oliver O'Donovan, where we could see the nature of political authority.
This chapter does not form a simple progression with the three chapters that have preceded it, and that is because to move from social, epistemic, and political authority to ecclesial authority is not to move to yet another field or dimension of human existence. For the church is not rightly understood as another society, alongside, say, the symphony and the academy, existing in conjunction with them in a common political society. To make the church out to be another mini-society or voluntary association is to reject its claims of bearing revealed and transcendent truth. Nor is the church "over" society, as a super-City within which not only the symphony and the university but also every political society also exists. To make the church out to be the universal political society is to deny in some fundamental way both the autonomous and natural importance of human political societies and, also, the provisionality of the church itself as a witness to a kingdom that is in important ways still to come.
Neither an association nor an epistemic allegiance, nor yet an overarching "umbrella" society, the church is a strange thing that fails to fit into any given categorical scheme. Fortunately, we need not achieve the impossibility of mastering an unmasterable topic in order to learn from authority as we can see it in action in the church. Nor must the church as we experience it be healthy, faithful, and in general trouble-free. Even from an afflicted church we may learn something new about authority, and perhaps what we learn overall will be of some service to people in churches today who struggle with problems of authority. (pages 93-94)
The church is a congregation or a synagogue, words which speak etymologically of a "calling" or "bringing together." Those called together as a church have come in some way to recognize God's authority. They are a congregation dedicated to the Truth (and here the capital letter impresses itself upon us). The church is not a political society and will never be one, but its mission is to point to one peculiar and ultimate political society: a kingdom of citizens who freely obey and follow their King, who live in a city of which their Lord is the light. As a society gathered for the sake of knowing the Truth and witnessing to God's kingdom, what can the church teach us about the relationship of God and authority?" (page 95)
[The Aria is Bach's Saint Matthew Passion is discussed as an illustration of the relation between individual and community.]
What is happening when a soloist rises to sing an aria? The soloist is authorized by Bach to stand and sing; this is the plain truth of the text. In the performance, the soloist is authorized also by the conductor. But in that which the performance is about, the soloist speaks of her faith with authority. It is my view that Bach here gives us a model of the true functioning of authority in the church. The individual could not sing, as it were, authoritatively, were she not standing in the midst of the assembly of the faithful. The assembly of the faithful is the locus where we may find the exercise of authority. Yet the faithful, as a whole, only prepare the ground for the authority of the faithful individual who sings. The authority in the church as a whole is only potential and implicit; it is exercised--it comes alive--when the one stands to profess. Note too that what is said authoritatively is not the simple recitation of a scriptural text. Rather, it involves a leap that makes the sacred story contemporary to the singer. Often, what is said authoritatively entails an act of self-oblation. Again, the aria is sung with authority only because it is sung in the context of the sacred [99] words. Thus, as there is no authority apart from the assembly, so is there no authority apart from Scripture. But Scripture alone, even when it is spoken in the midst of the assembly, is not where authority is being actualized. Nonetheless, authority is responsive. The soloist responds neither to Bach nor to the conductor; she speaks in the midst of the assembly but not to the assembly; she speaks in the context of the church's recitation of the salvific narrative but her words are not in the narrative. her authority resides in the one in whom she is placing her faith.
The examination of authority has been undertaken so far from a human point of view. To succeed at being a human, I have urged, is to be able to live together with others. Upon examination, it turns out that to live together with others in any sort of society requires that authority be there. And to live together with the skills of knowing and discerning the truth about the world, that also requires the existence of authority. Thus, to be human at all requires authority both social and epistemic. Furthermore, when we consider social authority as its most extensive--the authority that governs a society--we encounter political authority, a species that is social and epistemic but also has coercive force at its disposal.
But none of this discussion has been carried on with theological blinders. Early on, the biblical understanding of authority confirmed our sense that it is a complex, structured affair; that to be a person "in authority" or to "have authority" is not to be pushed up to the top of a pyramid, but rather to be one who is also under authority. Then the relationship of authority and truth, which Michael Polanyi helped us see as a necessarily dialectical one in which authority points beyond itself to truth and, at the same time, the truth as apprehended raises a question upon authority, was itself a dialectical relationship expressed by Jesus when he said, as one with authority, that his mission was to bring knowledge of the truth, which knoweldge in turn would be liberating. Likewise in our study of authority and power, theology was present when we turned back to the roots of political theology, as [94] exposed by Oliver O'Donovan, where we could see the nature of political authority.
This chapter does not form a simple progression with the three chapters that have preceded it, and that is because to move from social, epistemic, and political authority to ecclesial authority is not to move to yet another field or dimension of human existence. For the church is not rightly understood as another society, alongside, say, the symphony and the academy, existing in conjunction with them in a common political society. To make the church out to be another mini-society or voluntary association is to reject its claims of bearing revealed and transcendent truth. Nor is the church "over" society, as a super-City within which not only the symphony and the university but also every political society also exists. To make the church out to be the universal political society is to deny in some fundamental way both the autonomous and natural importance of human political societies and, also, the provisionality of the church itself as a witness to a kingdom that is in important ways still to come.
Neither an association nor an epistemic allegiance, nor yet an overarching "umbrella" society, the church is a strange thing that fails to fit into any given categorical scheme. Fortunately, we need not achieve the impossibility of mastering an unmasterable topic in order to learn from authority as we can see it in action in the church. Nor must the church as we experience it be healthy, faithful, and in general trouble-free. Even from an afflicted church we may learn something new about authority, and perhaps what we learn overall will be of some service to people in churches today who struggle with problems of authority. (pages 93-94)
The church is a congregation or a synagogue, words which speak etymologically of a "calling" or "bringing together." Those called together as a church have come in some way to recognize God's authority. They are a congregation dedicated to the Truth (and here the capital letter impresses itself upon us). The church is not a political society and will never be one, but its mission is to point to one peculiar and ultimate political society: a kingdom of citizens who freely obey and follow their King, who live in a city of which their Lord is the light. As a society gathered for the sake of knowing the Truth and witnessing to God's kingdom, what can the church teach us about the relationship of God and authority?" (page 95)
[The Aria is Bach's Saint Matthew Passion is discussed as an illustration of the relation between individual and community.]
What is happening when a soloist rises to sing an aria? The soloist is authorized by Bach to stand and sing; this is the plain truth of the text. In the performance, the soloist is authorized also by the conductor. But in that which the performance is about, the soloist speaks of her faith with authority. It is my view that Bach here gives us a model of the true functioning of authority in the church. The individual could not sing, as it were, authoritatively, were she not standing in the midst of the assembly of the faithful. The assembly of the faithful is the locus where we may find the exercise of authority. Yet the faithful, as a whole, only prepare the ground for the authority of the faithful individual who sings. The authority in the church as a whole is only potential and implicit; it is exercised--it comes alive--when the one stands to profess. Note too that what is said authoritatively is not the simple recitation of a scriptural text. Rather, it involves a leap that makes the sacred story contemporary to the singer. Often, what is said authoritatively entails an act of self-oblation. Again, the aria is sung with authority only because it is sung in the context of the sacred [99] words. Thus, as there is no authority apart from the assembly, so is there no authority apart from Scripture. But Scripture alone, even when it is spoken in the midst of the assembly, is not where authority is being actualized. Nonetheless, authority is responsive. The soloist responds neither to Bach nor to the conductor; she speaks in the midst of the assembly but not to the assembly; she speaks in the context of the church's recitation of the salvific narrative but her words are not in the narrative. her authority resides in the one in whom she is placing her faith.
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