It would appear as if there is no avoidance of vicious circles and feedback loops when one is dealing with the problem of scriptural authority. As someone who spends considerable time wrestling with questions of authority in one fashion or another, often with a highly critical attitude born of generally negative experiences with authorities, but also as someone with a position of at least some official authority, my own feelings are highly ambivalent. Like many other people, I come from a religious tradition that has openly condemned certain corrupt authorities and that has sought to restore practices and beliefs from previous ages freed of certain corruption. On the other hand, I have found that even if certain traditions are openly ridiculed as heathen (with good cause), that other traditions are blindly followed and not recognized as tradition. If some authorities are rejected other authorities are placed in privileged positions, often uncritically, spared the rather unfriendly criticism that is heaped on rejected authorities.

I try to avoid being a hypocrite myself. Recognizing within myself a certain caustic attitude of criticism toward corrupt authorities and those whom I view as undeserved elites, I recognize at the same time that there are limitations to just and fair criticism given that I claim a certain privileged authority for my own perspectives based upon certain educational experiences that in many ways are shared with those whom I critique, with the additional uncomfortable knowledge that judgment is without mercy for those who judge without mercy, and that it is very easy for me to be guilty of the same sins that I accuse others of, especially because we can recognize no sins as readily as those we secretly struggle against fiercely ourselves.

When we face up to the question of our own legitimacy to serve as a scriptural authority for anyone else, whether writing about the scriptures or speaking from the pulpit, we have to recognize where the source of our authority lies. For example, we have to wrestle with the reality that we cannot justly attack the ground we claim for our own authority. For example, if we claim a certain individual right to express ourselves apart from a community of faith, we cannot then deny that same right to any other individual who wishes to disagree with us, as a result making us divided into as many different belief systems as there are people, with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. This tends to lead to anarchy and chaos and confusion because there is no agreed upon standard by which to judge whether someone’s thoughts or ideas or interpretations are acceptable.

But the ditch is not only to the left, but also to the right as well. We can have such an inflated view of authority that we consider anything that challenges the culture of an institution or of its leaders as unacceptable, so that we become rigid and unable to accept necessary and proper changes in relationships and social structures. When we become overly rigid, tradition ceases to be a living and somewhat flexible matter and becomes rigidly replaced by traditionalism, an unthinking and unreflective defense of the past without recognizing what traditions are no longer valid, or what need to be changed, or what aspects of our relationships and behaviors need to reflect a changed reality, or whether the interpretations of the past need to be modified to counteract new threats or accommodate new and deeper understanding that follows one’s traditional worldview and rules of interpretation, just taken to greater levels of consistency and application.

We cannot avoid tension and struggle and wrestling. Written scriptures or constitutions or laws are never sufficient to answer all subjects in dispute, not least because when words are divorced from community and practice they can be twisted and interpreted in a variety of ways. For the written word, anyone’s written word, to survive as authoritative it has to be understood properly, and there was to be certain “rules of faith” and principles of interpretation that are passed down that allow us to understand which interpretations are permissible and which are not. Proper understanding of a text therefore requires commitment to an institution that nurtures proper understanding and draws insight from that text, or else it simply becomes a battleground for inconclusive struggles with an absence of common ground where resolution can be found.

This becomes especially problematic because in a time of conflict about the meaning of words or their precise applications, those on different sides of a given dispute will deny the legitimacy of others to interpret such matters differently. These problems cannot be avoided. Some of the problems are false dilemmas, in that any worthwhile text can contain multiple layers of meaning and application simultaneously, and may even be robust enough to include tension between accommodations to present practice as well as a deeper ‘spirit’ that is far more demanding than the ability of anyone to practice and that presents a continual challenge to those who wish to live by such a document to reform corrupt and unacceptable practices. Again, these tensions cannot be avoided because there is always a gap between the way things are in any person or institution and the way things ought to be in a perfect world. That means there is always work to be done and we are never finished so long as we draw breath. We can either be depressed by the enormity of our task or inspired by the fact that we need never be bored for there is always something needful that needs to be done.

And this creates a constant sense of tension in every person and institution at every point in history. We draw our authority be being part of a larger body, nourished by its roots and supported by its trunk, and yet at times it might be necessary for branches to be removed because they are dead, so that the rest of the tree may live. Because we must draw strength and nutrients of a body we cannot cut ourselves off and remain viable on our own as branches or twigs taken off from the tree. If we are cut off from the body, we suffer and (if not re-grafted) die. Our moral and spiritual lives, whether in families or communities or churches or nations, depends on being part of a larger whole where we belong and have an honorable place. And yet our own spiritual health may require the reform and cleansing of those institutions when they have become corrupt through sin and human frailty (as well as often by either too rapid change or through a rigid refusal to change at all).

There are so many ways to go wrong. Spiritual and moral health for an institution requires there to be dual feedback, where individuals are nourished and cared for by the greater body, where there is a respect for authority and a passing down of godly traditions and understandings, and where the individual fulfills responsibilities to that greater whole, including the (often unpleasant) responsibility of cleansing and correcting and rebuking corruption in the greater body, even as the individual remains accountable for being rebuked for their own shortcomings by the larger whole as well. This is a difficult balance to maintain, where we consider our relationships more important than our power and prestige and authority, and where we accept even unfair criticism and seek to learn from it while at the same time working to ensure the well-being of all, even those we have problems with, who happen to be within the same body. We are commanded to have mutual love and respect even as we are also commanded to have an unswerving fidelity to the often bitter and unpleasant truths about ourselves and others. We are given no room either to use honesty as an excuse for disrespect or hatred nor to use love as an excuse for deceit or compromise of the truth.

Again, these are dilemmas we cannot escape. Given a variety of different threats, we may have to emphasize our role as prophets rebuking corrupt and sinful institutions in dire need of repentance to avoid God’s judgment, while at other times we might have to defend the legitimacy of authorities to decisively and sometimes harshly deal with sedition and rebellion and heresy. We must do so with an eye toward the overall health of the body and not our own selfish interest. We must rebuke with genuine love, and accept even unkind and unfair rebuke patiently, seeking to gain what wisdom and insight we can even from unfair judgment and criticism. I will not pretend to have done any of this well in my life. It is certainly my goal to do so, but I will be the first to admit that I have been very prickly and thorny to deal with on many occasions in my life, sometimes unfairly so, just as others have been toward me. But I can forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness from those whom I have wronged in my turn.

It is the competing demands that God places on us that forces us to wrestle with these tensions all of our lives. Each of us has different struggles that test the balance in different ways. The same is true of different generations–at some times we are more threatened by anarchy, at some times more threatened by tyranny. Sometimes we may be challenged more by the right, sometimes more by the left. Our defenses must be flexible, our willingness to follow the lead of God to ever-increasingly take on His nature must be unshakable, and we must remain humble in the face of our own immense and immeasurable ignorance, regardless of how wise or knowledgeable we fancy ourselves. And we can either choose to despair at the immense difficulty and complexity of the task or relish the challenge. That choice is ours, as it is the choice of every person, family, institution, and culture that has ever or will ever exist on this earth, or any other planet we choose to settle. We are complicated beings in dynamic tension, and we cannot choose any other way to exist, because we have the freedom and the responsibility to choose for ourselves what way we shall follow. That responsibility has immense consequences, but it remains ours whether we like those consequences or not.