Secular and Ecclesiastical Conceptions of Authority
I’ve long been interested in the concept of authority. Why do we obey one command but ignore another? Where does legitimate authority begin and end? What forms can authority take? I have found that this article from the The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2004 Edition) gives an excellent account of secular authority.
I recently attempted to interact with Tim Enloe, an intelligent guy with an academic background in religion, by posting a response to this post. My comment can be found here. Unfortunately he appears to have ignored my comment and claims to be too busy to respond to the various comments his post produced. I believe that much needless frustration occurs when participants in a discussion fail to define their terms. It is senseless to bring up a discussion then refuse to explain what you mean when you use key terms.
I reproduce my comment in full here:
“Tim, like you I’m interested in political theory and in particular the concept of ‘authority’. Unlike you, though, I no longer believe in God (I’m agnostic, not atheist; at this point I find the arguments for and against God’s existence equally plausible).
I have read a number of your posts and several of your articles and I note that you often use the word ‘authority’ in them. You also criticise your Roman Catholic opponents for failing to give a coherent account of the concept. In particular I note these examples:
- “To be honest, I find it nearly universally true that the louder modern Catholics shout about papal authority vs. Protestant rebellion, the less they’ve done much meaningful study on what authority is and within what sorts of limitations it is constrained.”
- “”Luther was a rebel against authority.” Highly debatable, depending on definitions of rebel and authority which have to be rationally justified, not merely assumed.”
- “Again, highly debatable depending on definitions of authority which have to be rationally justified, not merely assumed.”
My question is this. How do you define authority? Give a specific definition of the word itself. In particular, what is it’s source, scope and nature? How do you distinguish secular from ecclesiastical authority, especially in regard to their sources? What is the nature of the duty that each imposes, or indeed are any duties imposed at all? How are disputes in jurisdiction to be resolved? More practically (and if you only answer one question, please let it be this one), what is the ‘test’ that a given subject must apply in order to determine if an authority is legitimate or if a particular command from a legitimate authority is binding?
There is more that I’d like to know about your idea of authority but I’ll leave it there for the moment.”
Addition:
I’ve given up with this guy. Here is my last comment:
“I’ll probably get banned for this, but who cares. I’ve removed this site from my reader because it has become a joke.
Tim, I really don’t think you know what you are talking about. You frequently use the word ‘authority’ but you seem unwilling, or incapable, of actually defining the term. This makes you look particularly hypocritical when you viciously criticise Roman Catholics for failing to do the very same thing.
Have you noticed that your comments sections have become nothing but cheer squads? Jonathan Bronomo, Mary Louise, St Worm, Josh S, and a man that appears to have lost all grip on reality, the hate filled Kevin Johnson?
Sound scholarship has as much to do with the temperament of an author as it does his qualifications. If you are incapable of keeping your emotions in check you will remain the very thing you criticise - a cheap Internet polemicist.”
His reply:
”Bye Tysen. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
This guy has some potential but I doubt he will ever reach it. Most humans, and scholars in particular, are intolerant of hypocrisy. Tim paints a picture of the sixteenth century that is so bleak that it is not possible to account for the thousands of people that remained Roman Catholic, let alone some dying for it, without turning them into Jack Chick-esque caricatures of human beings. All this and he chastises others for simplifying history. There is a strange pride that some Protestants feel when they buy into the rhetoric of sixteenth century polemicists, rhetoric that even some illiterate peasants of the day could see through. And by keeping company with people like Kevin Johnson, someone I see as nothing more than a hate filled bigot, he and his co-authors do their reputations among fair minded observers serious harm.
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Comments
6 Responses to “Secular and Ecclesiastical Conceptions of Authority”
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Oh gee, I am so sorry that in the general melee that came upon the post in question I failed to answer you. I just didn’t realize how important you are, I guess, otherwise I would have dropped everything else to answer you. Doesn’t matter, I guess, that I juggle a family, full time schooling, and part time work, and got mobbed by the usual crop of Catholic converts who know how to do nothing more than make excuses, put forth caricatures, and try to redirect the questions without ever answering them themselves.
Yes, I am so sorry I “ignored” your little comment, buried as it was amidst so much other evident meaningless drivel. Man, you sure have a thin skin, giving me what, all of 24 hours to respond to you before declaring the whole website ridiculous and washing your hands of me as a cheap Internet polemicist. I don’t know what your problem is, but it’s definitely YOUR problem, not mine.
FYI, the reason I said don’t let the door hit you on the way out is because I didn’t know who you were and it appeared that you just appeared out of nowhere whining and insulting me and the other contributors to the site. Maybe if you had simply reposted your question I might have seen it and responded differently. Instead you chose to be a child and take your ball and go home. Your loss.
I feel that my comments may have been unduly harsh, more the product of my emotional discomfort than that of a balanced assessment of your arguments.
I have visited your website before although my name was probably written under the initials TJW.
The reason I responded was because I think you are capable of so much more. I don’t think that any of the others that post at http://www.reformedcatholicism.com are (excluding Paul Owen and a few others that don’t seem to post there anymore). I think that Kevin Johnson in particular brings out the worst in you.
I will end things here because I do not think that anything productive is likely to eventuate though our continued communication. That is as much an assessment of my own flaws as it is of anyone else’s. You will undoubtedly gain far more by spending time with your family than you will talking to me.
“hate-filled” - how little you know us. I’d suggest hanging around our site to take in more of what we’ve written instead of just writing us off because we didn’t respond immediately to your concerns and then took away your ability to comment because of your harsh words.
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