My undergraduate academic advisor, Robert Heineman, was a fairly conservative guy. A student of Kirkian conservatism, Heineman was not the kind of normal reactionary one thinks of when the word "conservative" is bandied about. Like Kirk, he took his starting point from Burke's observations on the nature of human society, as an organic reality that impacts our lives in various and sundry ways. His major work, revised twice, is entitled Authority and the Liberal Tradition. Its central thesis is simple enough. Liberalism undermines itself as a social philosophy precisely because two of its central tenets render the necessity of authority untenable. The false notion of the atomized individual, sovereign in reason, being both judge and jury upon any claims upon the individual result in even the most beneficent liberal authority being questioned as a source of social and political authority.
We non-Roman Christians inherited a similar disposition from the Lutheran Reformation, which became ensconced in much Enlightenment thought on religion. It has become almost a caricature in American religious life, with the proliferation of denominations whose claim to authority all too often rests upon differences that are either of minute dogmatic concern, or deeply rooted social anima, mostly racial. Churches in the Wesleyan tradition, for example, are numerous. The largest are the interracial United Methodist Church, and three large historically-black denominations, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. There is also the Wesleyan Church, Free Methodists, and the CME Zion Churches. Finally, there are off-shoots from the holiness revivals of the 19th century, the most prominent of which is the Church of the Nazarene. There were even more Methodist-related denominations, the result of pre-Civil War regional tensions and anti-Epsicopal feeling (The Methodist Protestant Church, which spawned Westminster Theological Seminary, which was moved to Washington, DC in 1965 to become Wesley Theological Seminary, my alma mater) that only ceased to exist at the so-called "Uniting Conference" of 1939, which also created the now-defunct, racially segregated Central Conference system (these were done away with at another "Uniting Conference" in 1968).
That's just one tradition.
These initial thoughts are prompted by this discussion begun by ER. At the heart of this discussion rests, I think, some assumptions concerning authority, how it is constituted, and how we and it interrelate. The multivalent tensions - between the individual and the community; between our contemporary needs and the ancient nature of our foundational texts; the various claims of authority - individual, communal, historical/traditional, and modern - seem to have surfaced in this discussion in various ways.
We early-21st century Christians cannot escape the conundrum, and I for one would never insist we surrender that part of the tradition that calls for questioning "authority" as it rests either in denominational structure or deeper doctrinal claims of Scriptural authority. For both good and ill we must each come to terms with what way and how far we are willing to grant to these ancient writings and their accumulated layers of interpretation any role in shaping our own experience of faith. Such questions must always exist, plaguing our sense of ease and rest in having reached satisfactory conclusions.
Because, you see, the texts themselves insist they are not so much authoritative as pointers toward the only truly sovereign authority - the God whose interactions with creation are given voice and narrative shape within their pages. Precisely for this reason, the texts offer up an opportunity to delve in to them and their claims of authority. Not just on an individual, but communal, level we must always be ready to post that most dangerous, frightening question - Why should I accept this word about the Word?
From this, Calvin's notion of a church always in need of reformation should open up our too often stale and limited devotion to tradition to all sorts of ideas and thoughts. It is this impetus that gives the Christian tradition its liveliness. It is in this way that the tradition becomes authoritative for us in each generation, precisely by raising the question of whether or not it should be an authority.
Virtual Tin Cup
