III
Overlapping the later Roman Empire, absorbing the
forms of its culture while
assisting at its demise, the
Christian Church perpetuated Roman ideas of
author-
ity along with the Latin terms for
them. But the
Churchmen introduced these ideas into new situations
and
used them in new contexts which both changed
the substance and reinforced
the pattern of relations
already established between the autonomous and
the
hybrid ideas of authority. Starting from the reformula-
tion of Roman concepts under the theological
and
ecclesiastical auspices of the Latin Church Fathers and
running
through the Protestant and Catholic Reforma-
tions of the sixteenth century, the idea of authority
was
revitalized by the special affinity of Christian
religiosity for it.
Association with an intellectually and
institutionally autonomous
Christianity restored the
independence of the original pure idea of
authority
and made the Church, both in its internal and external
relations, the main arena in the medieval history of
the idea.
The new authority in the Christian dispensation was
attributed to God's
revealed truth. Its pervasive impact
stemmed from the combination of its
acknowledged
supremacy over all other kinds of authority with its
continuous relevance to all forms of temporal life in
general and to
temporal government and power in
particular. The initial effect of this new
Christian di-
mension of authority upon the
Roman traditions of
authority which it absorbed was to loosen the
Imperial
combination of authority with temporal political
power by
intruding a source of authority independent
of political power.
Subsequently, the theologians and
the canonists re-knit the bonds between
authority and
political power to include the originally autonomous
authority of religion in a hierarchical system of official
Christian
authorities.
The three main steps in this medieval process of
successive disruption and
re-integration which would
become paradigmatic for every new stage in the
history
of the idea of authority were: the development of
Revelation
into a Christian authority sui generis; the
primary interaction of Christian religion and ecclesias-
tical politics in the constitution of the Catholic
Church;
the conclusive interaction of religion, Church, and
temporal
government in the organization of the uni-
versal Christian community. Each step contributed an
analytically
distinct source of the idea and, despite the
overlap among them, these
religious, doctrinal, and insti-
tutional ideas of Christian authority also represented
successive chronological emphases within the Christian
era. The
Reformations of the sixteenth century, in this
schema, can be viewed as so
many attempted restora-
tions of the
initial, purely religious idea of authority
which developed, under the
pervasive late-medieval
conditions of religio-secular interpenetration,
into
conflicting versions of institutional authority.
1. Religious Authority.
The idea of a transcendent
and ultimate depository of human trust,
not dependent
in principle on earthly offices, took several compatible
forms in early Christian disquisitions.
First, the idea of “divine authority,” stipulated by
Augustine (in his De ordine) as the
“supreme” (summa)
authority,
juxtaposed notions of authority grounded on
origination (God as author or
cause of his creation),
on metaphysical hierarchy (God as the worker of
mira-
cles for the limited human capacity
of comprehension),
and on responsible power (God as both infinite
power
[potestas] over men and as infinite mercy [clementia]
for men). Second, the idea of
“Christ's authority”
(auctoritas
Christi) juxtaposed the notion of authoriza-
tion (delegation of the Creator's authority to the
medi-
ator), the anthropological belief in
family hierarchy
(the derivation of the authority of the Son from the
authority of the Father), the appeal of personal influ-
ence (the person of Christ as authoritative
“example”),
and the commitment to an ultimate source
(Christ as
“author of the Gospel”). Third, the idea
of “Scriptural
authority” (auctoritas divinae scripturae) juxtaposed
the notion of
authorization (the Bible as the Word of
God, embodying “the
authority of God”) with the
incremental respect due the
guarantor (the Bible as
“apostolic
authority”—that is, the testimony of apos-
tolic witnesses who confirmed the truth of the
Gospel
for future generations of believers). Fourth, the idea
of
patristic authority (auctoritas patrum or auctoritas
sanctorum) juxtaposed the notion of
authorization (the
inspiration of the Fathers by Holy Scripture), the
notion of persuasion apart from or prior to rational
demonstration, the
notion of personal expertise in the
juristic formulation of a canonical
faith, and the
anthropological reverence for the elders (auctoritas
maiorum as the respect due the fathers
of a Christian
doctrinal tradition). The idea of church authority
(auctoritas ecclesiae), finally, juxtaposed
ideas of au-
thorized power (the delegation
of “divine authority”
to the Church by Christ), of
unbroken binding tradition
(the authority of the Church as the transmitter
of the
authoritative “tradition of the elders”), of
universal
persuasion (the real meaning of Augustine's famous
declaration in his anti-Manichaean Contra epistolam
quam vocant fundamenti that “I would not believe
the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did
not impel me to it”), and of confirmation (the role
of
the Church in reinforcing Scriptural faith).
Despite the linkage of “authority” and
“power”
which Christianity carried over into
theological ideas
of the Divinity and which led medieval men to use
the terms interchangeably in many contexts, the addi-
tion of the specifically Christian dimension to the idea
of
authority endowed it with a renewed independence
in its relations with the
idea of power. The authority
in the authority-power syndrome referred
always to
the higher, otherworldly source of the force being
exercised, whereas power referred to the source of the
force within the
realm of its exercise. If the easy con-
vertibility of authority and power testified to the inter-
penetration of spiritual and
natural realms in the Mid-
dle Ages, the
spiritual explosions in the name of
authority both at the beginning and the
end of that
period testified to the countervailing effort to keep a
realm of superior being at once apart from and influ-
ential upon the powers of this world.
This general contribution of Christianity, as a reli-
gion, to the idea of authority—its combination of
transcendence and immanence to provide a platform
outside this world for
the agencies which could bind
men within this world—had its
model in the specific
contribution of Augustine. He traced the
ultimate
source of authority over men to the person of Christ:
it was
through His “authority” that the power of God
was
modulated into the power of the Church and it
was the relationship of His
divine to His human nature,
at once distinct and effluent, that epitomized
all Chris-
tian authority, at once
transcendent and effective.
2. Doctrinal Authority.
Between the early appli-
cations of
Roman legal concepts to the Christian State
Church in the fourth century
A.D. and the church-state
polemics of the late thirteenth, Christian ideas
of au-
thority developed primarily under the
impetus given
by the internal organization of the Catholic Church.
Of
the two organizational levels—the doctrinal and the
constitutional—it was the former that proved to be
the more
provocative of distinctively Christian ideas
of authority.
The articulation of a Catholic doctrine shaped ideas
of authority by
defining them vis-à-vis the ideas of
tradition on the one side and
of reason on the other.
As the set of religious practices and beliefs
hallowed
by long usage and predicated upon the universal con-
sensus of the faithful over the
generations, tradition
took its place during the early Middle Ages
alongside
Scripture, official administrative position, and canon
law
as separate, frequently competing, subheadings of
authority. This position
was eroded away by the
growth of papal power and the consolidation of
a
hierarchical official order within the Church, until by
the end of the Investiture conflict in the twelfth cen-
tury the idea of tradition as an explicit
kind of authority
had all but disappeared. It was subordinated to
papal
discretion, absorbed into official canonical jurispru-
dence, or, alternatively,
distilled into constitutional
doctrines of conciliar authority (Morrison,
pp. 33,
345-46, 354-55). Among the sources of doctrinal au-
thority, tradition clearly represented what
was most
distinctive in the original idea of uncoercive authority.
The
historical process which made the definition of it
a function of the
claimants to official authoritative
power in the Church reflected the
process of unification
and subjection undergone by the idea itself.
The shifting theological relationship of authority and
reason shows,
mutatis mutandis, a similar tendency
toward the collapsing of authority's distinctive flexibil-
ity. The history of this relationship is tortuous,
for it
assumed a different shape with each medieval theolo-
gian of consequence and, indeed, along with the
issue
of reason and faith, was a prime topic for the articula-
tion of doctrinal conflicts. As in
the case of the relations
between authority and tradition, the changing
course
of the relations between authority and reason postu-
lated a change in the predominant idea of authority
as such.
In its early medieval phase the emphasis was on its
spiritual source, its
personal incidence, its originative
function, and its practical
effectiveness: it was the
active counterpart of faith; it was faith
translated into
a rule for living in this world, compatible with the
faculty of reason, to which it furnished first principles.
In its middle
phase authority became a bridging prin-
ciple,
one of the crucial concepts which lent verisimil-
itude to the scholastic syntheses of
transcendental
Christianity and Aristotelian naturalism by represent-
ing each overlap of faith and
reason as an identifiable
principle. The idea of authority could have this
func-
tion because of its inherited
spectrum of meanings,
ranging from the claims of spirit to the demands
of
power. In a figure like Aquinas Scripture and Aristotle
were
dovetailed as “authorities,” and the idea of au-
thority itself could be used both for
“the principle of
origins... in divine matters” and
for the agency of
“coercive force” in
“public” affairs (ed. Deferrari, pp.
96-97). The
effect of the idea in its synthetic employ-
ment was to provide an ontological backing for the
dominion of some
men over others: thus Aquinas could
assert authority to be the natural
relationship of supe-
rior to inferior in any
society of men, whether pre-
lapsarian or
postlapsarian, on the principle that
through their guidance and direction
the superiors
were the causes or authors of the actions of their
inferiors. In its late medieval phase the idea of author-
ity, which was disjoined from reason along with the
disjunction of faith and reason, tended itself increas-
ingly to become a quality of will
and power. Duns
Scotus merged the worship due God for his authority
as
“author” or “cause” of life with
that due God for
his “omnipotence” (Scotus, VIII,
816-17). When John
of Paris distinguished between direction and
dominion
as modes of control, he assigned the label
“authority”
(modum
auctoritatis) to dominion (ed. Alan Gewirth,
pp. xlix-1). Ockham
finally epitomized the subjugation
of authority as a distinctive concept by
denying it any
role as intermediary between faith and reason. The
disjunction between the realms of faith and reason
entailed, in this view, the primacy of the power of
will and of the
principle of individuation within each
realm. In
matters of faith, authority was subordinated
to the power of the Holy
Spirit over individual con-
science. In
matters of reason the authority both of logic
and the moral law was
subordinate to individual exist-
ences and
prescriptions created directly by divine
omnipotence.
3. Institutional Authority.
The early institutionally
conditioned idea of authority found its
archetypal ex-
pression in the fifth-century
formula of Pope Gelasius
I on the twofold government of the world:
“the sacred
authority of the popes (auctoritas sacrata pontificum)
and the power of kings
(potestas regalis), with the
former the
greater of the two by virtue of the account
which the popes must render of
the kings themselves
to God” (Ullmann, p. 23). Authority in this
distinctive
phase had four characteristic connotations. First, it was
spiritual in the double sense that it was the direction
of men toward the
salvation of their souls and that
its agency was separate from the agency
of coercive
force. Second, it was unified in the double sense that
only a unified guidance could lead to man's single final
end—i.e., salvation—and that it was indivisible, in con-
trast to power, which could be divided.
Third, it
was superior, in the sense that it prescribed what was
executed by the wielders of power. Finally, authority
was literally
transitional in the sense that it was the
transfer into the temporal world
of what was power
in the spiritual world.
In its internal ecclesiastical applications, conse-
quently, there was from the start the tendency toward
a
terminological confusion of auctoritas and potestas,
since the inherited distinction between
the capacity
to evoke assent and the right to command obedience
was
blurred in its application to the “principate of the
Roman
Church,” conceived to be a realm of spirit
innocent of physical
coercion but yet ordained with
a spiritual “power of the
keys.” “Plenary authority”
and
“plenary power,” for example, were used inter-
changeably to characterize the
administrative mandate
conferred on popes and bishops by election (Tierney,
pp. 143-46). By and large it may be said that down
to the
thirteenth century the ideas of authority and
power tended to merge in
their application within the
Roman Church but, as the persistence of the
Gelasian
formula indicates, they retained their distinctive
meanings
in their application to the relations between
the organized Church and the
Christian society as a
whole. The net result was an attitude toward
authority
which equipped its bearers with the power of ecclesi-
astical coercion in spiritual
matters and with the influ-
ence to guide
action in temporal matters.
But from the thirteenth century conditions both
within the Roman Church
(heretical and conciliar
movements) and outside it (conflict with the
temporal
powers) converged with the revival of classical modes
of
thinking to produce a notable change in the medie-
val idea of authority. The change tended to blend the
meanings of
the idea in the spiritual and temporal
realms of the Christian society, and
to produce a sim-
plified notion of authority
as the basis of coercive
power. Because spiritual authority within the
Church
became disunited and disputed during this period,
Papalists and
Conciliarists alike resolved the ecclesias-
tical ambiguity of authority and power in favor of the
more
manageable idea of power, with the idea of
authority adduced simply to add
the connotation of
rightful origin to the rightful title already inherent
in
the idea of power. This idea of authoritative spiritual
power
within the Roman Church had its analogue in
the relations between the
emerging separate institu-
tions of church
and state, for whether in the Papalist's
form of the Pope's
“authority” in temporal affairs or
the Conciliarist
acknowledgment of the temporal
ruler's independent
“authority” over the externals of
ecclesiastical
organization, the idea of authority in
church-state relations too became
inseparable from
coercive dominion.
The Papalist version of the late medieval idea of
authority was the more
explicit. The Papalist writers
came to rely increasingly upon the doctrine
of the
“plenitude of power,” redefined during the
thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries so that it no longer signified
the
circumscribed papal and episcopal “plenary au-
thority” within the Church, but now referred to
the
Pope's exclusive and unlimited sovereignty, derived
from Christ
through Saint Peter and applicable to
spiritual and temporal matters alike.
Within the
Church this doctrine was accompanied by the emphasis
on
“the power of jurisdiction”—i.e., the
governmental
power over the Church transmitted from Christ to the
Pope
alone—and on the subordination of the “sacra-
mental power” bequeathed by
Christ to all priests
(Wilks, pp. 375-77). Outside the Church, the
Pope's
plenitude of jurisdictional power was called “author
ity” no longer, as in the Gelasian formula, to charac-
terize a mere spiritual superiority
over the power of
temporal rulers but to denote the “supreme
temporal
power” itself, as it was possessed in its integrity
by
the Pope before he delegated it to be exercised by
secular rulers
under his direction. Papal authority, in
short, was the form taken by the
Pope's spiritual power
in the temporal arena.
Against this papal offensive, the intellectual defend-
ers of the secular rulers sought in the main to make
a cogent
doctrine out of the traditional pluralism in
the medieval attitude toward
authority. This they did
by streamlining the functional multiplicity of the
sev-
eral ordained authorities into a dual
track of ecclesias-
tical authority in
the realm of spirit and an Imperial
or royal authority in the temporal
realm, with this
“regal authority” equivalent in
function and superior
in power to pontifical authority. Only the
Conciliar
writers, engaging the Papalists all along the extended
and
wavering line between the spiritual and temporal
realms, developed a mirror
image of the Papalist idea
of authority and carried even further the idea
of au-
thority as the absolute spiritual
ground of political
power. Where the Papalists used the ambiguous mean-
ing of the “church”
(ecclesia) to include within its
spiritual power
a spiritual aspect of the temporal
realm, the Conciliarists used the
ambiguous meaning
of the “state” (civitas or regnum) to include a temporal
aspect of the spiritual realm. Moreover, when the
Conciliarists argued
Christ's direct authorization of “a
general council composed of
all Christians or of the
weightier part of them” as the
“principal authority”
in the Church and carried it
over by implied analogy
to “the whole body of citizens, or the
weightier part
thereof” as the “primary
authority” in the state
(Marsilius, pp. 45, 280), they placed a
Christian im-
primatur on the pyramidal model
of political authority,
operating through representation, to counter
the
Papalist legacy of the hieratic model of authority,
operating
through delegation.
Reformations of the sixteenth century initiated
nothing essentially new in
the principle of authority,
but they did mark the denouement of its
medieval
stage. The Protestant reformers sealed off further de-
velopment of the Christian idea of
authority by merely
recapitulating its medieval development. But while
they did not significantly change the idea, they did
significantly change
the conditions to which the idea
applied, and they contributed thereby to
the change
of the idea under other auspices. Whether Luther's
break
with the Roman Church is explained in terms
of religious individualism,
arrogant disobedience, or the
revolt of the son against the father, it is
clear that what
he wanted was the institution of different authorities
in religion rather than no authorities in religion, and
it is
clear too that the main-line Protestant reformers—
Zwingli and
Calvin—followed him in this. To all three,
the Word of God was
the supreme objective authority
for all individuals; this authority took a
form external
to individuals, since it was manifest in Scripture, an
externality epitomized by radicals' reference to the
main-liners' Scripture
as the “paper Pope.”
For the determination of right doctrine and the
correct administration of
essential sacraments, Scrip-
tural authority
was vested in community churches, and
the individual's submission to their
transmitted author-
ity thus became necessary
to salvation. Submission to
the temporal authorities was prescribed,
finally, for all
occasions save the most flagrant political violation
of
God's Word, on the grounds of the divine ordination
of the temporal
hierarchy to make possible the un-
trammelled spiritual operation of the true Church
(Davies, passim).
This generic position of the main
Protestant church-fathers shows even
their original
conception of their mission to have been not the over-
throw of ecclesiastical authority in the
name of reli-
gious liberty but the reversion
to the early spiritual
type of religious authority against the late
medieval
tendency to make the ideas of authority and power
overlap.
And yet the Protestant churches of the Reformation
developed precisely in
the same direction as the Cath-
olic Church
which they attacked. Whether in the form
of theocracies or of state
churches, ecclesiastical au-
thority and
political power tended increasingly to
merge in Lutheranism, Zwinglianism,
Calvinism. The
sectarian movements of the radical Reformation re-
sisted the merger precisely as the heretical
movements
of the later Middle Ages had resisted the merger of
authority and power in the Roman Church, and even
more strongly in the
Protestant than in the Catholic
case, the radical sects carried their
despair of official
authoritative churches to the point of condemning
authority along with power in all matters of religion.
They called instead
upon the immediacy of the Holy
Spirit in individuals to replace the
authority of tradi-
tion, community, and
Scripture itself in the mediation
of salvation. And when the Protestant
churches—
notably the Calvinist—did devise a doctrine
of resist-
ance to authority in the name of
religious liberty during
the latter part of the sixteenth century, it was
given
the same label (monarchomach) and it took the same
form as the
concurrent Catholic doctrine of resistance
to Protestant
authority—a form that meant not a new
development away from the
idea of ecclesiastical
authoritative power but only a denial of it to the
wrong
Church. The problem of authority versus liberty in the
determination of ultimate religious truth would, to be
sure, develop into a perennial and provocative concern
of
Protestant theology, but it did so only in tandem
with the more general
confrontation which had its
main focus in a secular sphere.
The competition of analogous Protestant and Cath-
olic doctrines of authoritative power marked the outer
limit of
creative religious authority. The situation of
several ecclesiastical
authorities striving for the mo-
nopolistic
direction of coercive power was obviously
untenable. Since the idea of
authority had come to
provide a necessary higher unity for the
collective
thought and action of human communities, a more
unified
authority than the competing claims to divine
ordination could afford
became an urgent intellectual
and practical necessity. The resulting shift
in the locus
of authority, from transcendent religion to natural
politics, and the concomitant revival of its autonomous
function, was part
of the new mentality which intro-
duced the
modern period of Western history.
