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ship, as Creator, and also by right of his own truthfulness and holiness, the
God of the Bible claims unqualified moral authority over us when teaching
us what to believe and do; and this same God has full power, both in present
providence and in future final judgment, to bring to an end active disbelief
of and disobedience to his Word whenever he chooses to do so. His Word
has thus extrinsic as well as intrinsic authority, and as there are no grounds
for conscientious appeal against it, so no one has power to defy it further
than God himself permits.
A rider to this is that ecclesiastical decisions and declarations, and cer
tainly individual theological opinions, have no divine authority binding our
consciences save as they can show themselves to be faithful echoes and
sound applications of the Word of God. Divine authority for faith and life
belongs to God’s Word alone.
(iii)
Authority—meaning here, moral authority in particular—is a
te leo -
logical
concept, one that relates to the finding and fulfilling of all that is
involved in being human. As there does not seem ever to have been a time
when mankind did not believe in some sort of future life, so there does not
seem ever to have been a time when individuals did not think of their own
existence ideologically, in terms of a goal or set of goals, a
summum bonum
to be aimed at, a good life to which the wise man aspires. Nor, it seems, was
there ever a time when ideas of moral authority and of human fulfilment in
these terms were not in some way linked together. In today’s secular world,
social, political and economic strategies, whatever their legal authority, can
only claim moral authority to the extent that they make for what sociologists
and ecumenists refer to as the
humanum
, the truly human state o f life. Bib
lical Christianity, speaking from its unashamedly other-worldly standpo in t
from which it sees this life as the journey home and the future life as home
itself, proclaims the vision, adoration and enjoyment of God, in perfect righ
teousness with fulness of joy and love, as the true
telos
of man, and sees the
worship of God as the central activity upon which to all eternity the rest of
the
telos
must be predicated. Now if worship and godliness were no t integral
to our happiness, the moral authority of God ’s summons to bo th would be
in question, for commands whose fulfilment goes against the well-being of
those commanded are to that extent morally disreputable (think of Jim
Jones’ command to his followers to take poison). But the Christian claim is
that because of the way we are made, the more wholeheartedly and thank
fully we submit to God ’s authority, the deeper will be the personal fulfilment
into which we come. Thus, under the gospel, duty and interest coincide. In
heaven our fulfillment will be complete, partly because there our acceptance
of God ’s authority will be complete too. Here on earth we are called to move
towards that goal as far and as fast as we can, by doing the will o f God from
our hearts.