On Church Authority

This is part of a conversation with my brother adapted for this blog. It started over a joke I made about the Pope speaking "ex-twithedra." (The Pope has a Twitter account that he began using recently; he's @Pontifex. See Andrew Brown's article here for a thoughtful perspective.) The Pope's first tweet was "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

I anticipate soon hearing jokes about tweeting cardinals.

I've slowly come to realize (and you have likely seen this in my writing) that there is good reason for doing things the way we do them, but that the reasons often distill down to "because it makes life easier for all of us," not because it's right or wrong.[1]

All sorts of things - nearly everything – falls into this category:

• You might very well be able to drive 70 MPH in a 35 MPH zone and not hurt anyone. But if everyone did that, someone would get hurt, so we make a rule that says everyone must stay at or below the posted limit.

• We teach our children to say "thank you" and "please" and "you're welcome" not because there's any magic in these words but because they facilitate cooperation in communities that appreciate those sentiments and gauge future conduct by them. (Other communities use other words, some don't use them at all).

• We don't tip over tombstones or speak ill of the dead, not for fear of supernatural consequences, and not because they can hear us, but because communities share a belief that these things are disrespectful to us all.[2]

• etc

 

I do believe there is right and wrong, but I don't need to convince others of that to agree on appropriate behavior.

When it comes to civil authority, most of us agree most of the time to simply abide by the rules for self preservation, peaceful coexistence, and other good things; we usually don't agree because the rules are in any sense "right." Rousseau called this the Social Contract.

(We learn this principle early. Talking back to Mom or Dad means going to bed early. Disrupting the class means sitting in the corner. Etc.)

When it comes to religious authority, this contract is no longer with each other, but with God, and we use new terminology to frame it, ie, "covenant."

You can believe there is no God and that doctrinal covenants are nonsense, but you can't dispense with their utility any more than you can let everyone drive 70 MPH in a 35 MPH zone and expect no one to get hurt.

Whether it's your pastor or the Pope, the principles are the same, it's just a matter of how we interpret and apply them. The bigger the group, the bigger the need for consistency and formalized response to disagreement.

Final thought: Firm central authority with some error is preferred over no authority.[3]

c0

[1]
That doesn't justify following every rule, nor does it justify disobeying them. In fact, by itself, it justifies nothing, as "justice" has no meaning on a purely pragmatic level.

Linguistic note: When we say that someone has "drunk the Kool-Aid," it means they are not able to see the difference between what's practical and what's moral. They believe in their own motivational language (which most everyone else does not).

[2]
I suspect this is mostly a carryover from our superstitious past, but no one can look at a tombstone and not imagine themselves under it. I think that's the bigger motivation today. We want to be treated with respect when we're gone so we treat the departed with respect while we're here.

[3]
That authority can be a body or a person, a book, a method, a set of beliefs, etc.

c0

Started: 2012-12-06