Up with Authority Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings

by Austin, Victor Lee

• ISBN13: 9780567020512
• ISBN10: 0567020517
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-15
• Publisher: Bloomsbury T&T Clark

Summary

A very topical contribution To The question of whether authority is needed and what it is good for.

Author Biography

Victor Lee Austin is Theologian-in-residence at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City, USA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: We Can't Get Along without it	p. 1
To Succeed at Being a Human Being	p. 1
Why it Matters that We Value Authority	p. 4
After Authority	p. 8
Where does Authority Come From?	p. 9
A Few Words Up Front About the Acceptance of Paradox	p. 10
Authority and Freedom: Social Authority	p. 15
Is Authority Merely Substitutionary?	p. 15
Illustration: A Symphony Orchestra	p. 16
A Description of Authority	p. 19
Social Authority	p. 21
The Paradoxes of Freedom and of Free Action	p. 31
Social Authority Comes in a Living Person	p. 36
Charisma: Follow Me and Find Yourself	p. 38
Authority and Truth: Epistemic Authority	p. 41
Authority and Our Flourishing as Beings Who Know	p. 41
Illustration: A Judge Deciding a Case	p. 43
Epistemic Authority	p. 45
Objections	p. 55
The Paradoxes of Human Knowing	p. 58
You Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free	p. 64
Authority and Power: Political Authority	p. 67
Our Depoliticized Imagination	p. 67
Illustration: An Exercise of Political Judgment	p. 72
Political Authority	p. 74
The Public, the Political, and Certainty	p. 84
Christ the King and Earthly Rulers	p. 89
Authority and God: Ecclesial Authority	p. 93
The Odd Place of the Church in this Discussion	p. 93
Illustration: The Aria in Bach's Saint Matthew Passion	p. 95
Authority in the Church	p. 100
The Inescapable Difficulty of the Reading of Scripture: The Wisdom of Richard Hooker	p. 104
The Reading of Scripture and the Making of the Authorized Individual	p. 111
Judge for Yourselves: The Church as the Locus of Authoritative Non-judgment	p. 116
Authority and Error: Disputed Authority	p. 123
The Bind We are in	p. 123
Illustration: The Rejection of Polanyi's Paper on Adsorption	p. 126
What to do with the Fallibility of Authority	p. 129
Concrete Explorations of Authority	p. 134
The fallibility of church authority	p. 134
The fallibility of political authority	p. 139
The fallibility of epistemic authority	p. 141
The fallibility of social authority	p. 144
Conclusion: Authority in Paradise	p. 149
Authority Without Compulsion	p. 149
Dante's Ordered Spheres: Ranking that is Neither Higher Nor Lower	p. 151
Authority in God	p. 155
Our Being in God	p. 159
Bibliography	p. 163
Index of Scriptural Citations	p. 169
Index of Subjects	p. 170
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.