Authority Is a Person

Last updated on: October 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm by Kenneth Tanner

Authority Is a Person 2014-10-21T13:24:55-04:00 Kenneth Tanner

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I talk to people who struggle with belief in God, those raised with faith and those raised with none.

So when I say we live in a world where appeals to authority have little meaning in the absence of faith it’s not because I just put down a book or three of postmodern philosophy.

It’s unfortunate that in such a world the church spends so much time defending our authorities instead of living and speaking (mostly by example) the good gospel of repentance.

All authority has been given to a Person, the embodied God who stands in silence before Pilate as he inquires, on behalf of every man and woman, for all who never cease to accuse him, “What is truth?”

The only truth the Christ follower possesses is her own repentance, his own participation by grace, in the incarnate God who stands speechless before the world and loves his sisters and brothers, who loves all things, to the horrible end.

Jesus Christ is in himself the sole authority, having as God and as man humbled himself before all our cruelty and rejection, bearing on the tree every calamity, great and small, that has befallen the creation because of our endless, foolish assertions of personal authority.

So repent more and repent better and go on making good your repentance and by the grace of God the Spirit will grant you participation in the conversion and renewal God is bringing to all things.

*my gratitude to Father Stephen Freeman for inspiring this meditation.

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