“... the point of the Christian life is to sit docile before the Word and thus to know God rather than to become well-known.”- David Gibson@davidngibbo
The question of authority was in many ways the central question in the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The Christian view that authority comes down from God was unquestioned throughout the medieval period and remained untouched through the Reformation. Indeed, the biblical concept of sin is all about the defiance by human beings of God’s authority; whether that is encountered in the direct form of his moral law, or in the delegated form of human authorities instituted by him. The two, of course, coincide in the fifth commandment, to honour your father and mother. The human authority is to be obeyed for God’s sake.
The Enlightenment can neatly be summarised as an exercise in the rebranding of sin. What was previously called God’s authority, the Enlightenment called human immaturity; what was previously called sin, the Enlightenment called liberty. To believe God is in charge is to remain in infancy. To believe that we are our own masters is the mark of maturity. This rebranding is the point of Immanuel Kant’s famous essay ‘What is Enlightenment?’. The effects of this rebranding on politics were most clearly proclaimed by Rousseau in ‘The Social Contract’. Rousseau argued that the authority of governments is not derived from above, by God’s delegation, but upwards from below, by the consent of the people. Man is the measure of all things; true authority derives from the individual man. God is not the original authority, but a usurping one, who threatens the authority of the individual. The individual henceforth must be the only deity. The Christian God will only be tolerated if he is reduced to nothing more than a personal choice of individual people. He has no business being involved in government.- The real Brexit issue: Where does authority come from?, MATTHEW ROBERTS
Both quotes from my fellow IPC elders in different churches.
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