Authority and Obedience in the Church Today—II

Abstract

In the first part of this paper, I suggested something of the nature and justification of our current questioning of authority in the Church, and tried to indicate the relevant scriptural criteria for evaluating the issues. Towards the end of this first part, brief reference was made to some of the actual questions being raised in the present crisis of authority. A great many of these deal with what we could call ‘outward’ and disciplinary matters. But there are others which belong more directly to the realm of doctrine, where teaching authority comes in. These would seem to give rise to a more serious inner sense of anguish than many of the others, since they penetrate more deeply into the inmost reserves of our Christian commitment.It should be noted that the more disciplinary difficulties date mainly from the Middle Ages, whereas the doctrinal are more peculiar to the post-Reformation Church. Of course, heretics were burned in the Middle Ages, but the theory at least was that this took place because they were a threat to the social cohesion of the Christian world. It was only when the Church was progressively robbed of her grip on society, from the sixteenth century onwards, that there was added the intense preoccupation with a demand for a thorough-going conformity of conscience all along the line, even in detail, in matters of doctrine, according as these were examined, decided and prescribed entirely from above.