This series on the nature of authority in Christianity has been wide-ranging, and perhaps even a little chaotic. If there’s one thing that I hope it’s demonstrated it’s that authority is complex and never as simple as many of us would like to believe. The goal of today’s post is to bring the discussion together … Continue reading Who Do We Trust?: Final Thoughts on Authority in Christian Thought and Life
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the different and complex array of elements that make up ‘authority’ for Christians, from official ones like Scripture, creeds and canons, and hierarchy, to those which few people would suggest should be authoritative, but yet unavoidably impact our faith and theology, such as reason and culture. Today … Continue reading Who Do We Trust?: Experience
Unlike the other two ‘bad boys’ of Christian authority, reason and experience, which have been much talked-about over the centuries, the topic of today’s post, culture, is not one that’s been the subject of a lot of debate in theological circles until the past century or so. But, just like a lot of the other … Continue reading Who Do We Trust?: Language and Culture
Today, as this series on the question of authority within Christianity starts to draw nearer to its end, we turn to away from official sources of authority to the concept’s ‘bad boys’, things that people have been reluctant to consider reliable enough to consider authoritative, but which we all end up trusting to some extent … Continue reading Who Do We Trust?: Reason
Today’s post is the final one in this ‘subseries’ on Tradition within the larger series about authority in Christian life, thought, and faith. And it’s going to be a bit of a bridge between de iure forms of authority — that is, what the rules say ‘should be’ authoritative — de facto sources of authority … Continue reading Who Do We Trust?: Liturgy
Matthew Root 