of suffering must be rejected, and which can be accepted?
3. Atonement as a change within human being is linked with Peter Abelard in the eleventh century and with modern liberal theology. Here the cross is viewed as the expression of God’s forgiving love for sinful humanity, even in the face of human rebellion and violence toward its bearer. Because the goal is understood to be a change in human attitude and mode of life, this theory is called the “moral influence” theory—a term often misunderstood, for it means not “merely” moral or exemplary, but influencing the inmost affections through an appeal that is consciously apprehended. The emphasis is upon the dynamics of human subjectivity, human possibilities for growth, and the transforming role of interpersonal relations.
If there is a current trend, it is away from insistence upon a single metaphor for atonement and the conceptual framework that seems to grow from it, and toward appreciation of the variety of images, each of which suggests something important about divine initiative, human response, and continuing obstacles to the renewal of life.
EUGENE TESELLE
Bibliography
Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn, eds., Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique.
Dennis Edwards, What Are They Saying About Salvation?
Paul S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement.
Robert S. Franks, The Work of Christ: A Historical Study of Christian Doctrine.
Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality, and the Christian Tradition.
Walter Wink, The Powers, 3 volumes.
Cross-Reference: Anthropology, Christology, Evil, Justification, Sin, Soteriology, Suffering.
AUTHORITY
The issue of authority is central for Christian theology. Most broadly, authority deals with the sources of legitimation for theological assertions. Given the plurality of theological positions within the Christian orb today and the many theological methods and styles on the contemporary scene, it is apparent that sources of authority are quite varied. Most basically, Christian theology deals with the living God who is the source of all. This includes the recognition that it is God who “authorizes” theological claims. Yet recognizing this point raises the further issue of how humans can discern and understand the means God uses to disclose God’s truth. How are theological truth claims authorized?
Avenues of Authority. Current approaches to the issue of authority have their roots in the history of Christian theology. An appreciation of today’s discussions can be enhanced by looking at the sources from which these approaches emerge.
Since the earliest days of the church, theologians have wrestled with the question of how God’s “authority” is to be understood and the avenues by which it comes to us. Since this is such a basic question, other theological issues and doctrines have taken their trajectories from the various viewpoints established. Several such channels of authority have functioned in normative ways for Christian theology.
1. Church. After the death of the apostles of Jesus, the emerging Christian community faced the question of how God’s authority would be maintained. Through Jesus and his immediate disciples, the community experienced what it considered to be God’s authoritative word and presence. As the early centuries went on, however, three important new sources of authority emerged in the church: the canon of Scripture (Old and New Testaments); the creeds of the church and church councils; and the advancing authority ascribed to church leaders, such as bishops, elders, and deacons. The Middle Ages saw the growth of the papacy and the structured authority of the Roman Catholic Church as the major expression of Christianity in the Western world. Within the Roman church, the sources of Scripture and tradition vied for a place as the ultimate authority for the church’s life. Persons who appealed to the tradition of the church as having its roots in the church’s oral traditions and ultimately with the apostles themselves argued that these ecclesiastical traditions are the arbiters of validity. The Scriptures gain the authority conferred to them by the church, and the Christian community is the adjudicator of Christian doctrine.
2. Scripture. The Protestant Reformers challenged this conception of the church’s authority by rejecting the primacy of the papacy and the magisterium as the foremost interpreters of Christian doctrine. Martin Luther contended that Scripture interprets itself through the work of the Holy Spirit. John Calvin, agreeing with this stance, went on to argue that the church is built on the Word of God, “the teaching of apostles and prophets” (Eph. 2:20), now found for the church in the writings of Holy Scripture (Institutes of the Christian Religion 4.2.4). For Calvin, Scripture is the “Word of God” (Institutes 1.7.1), superior to all human wisdom since it originates with God. God used human writers, accommodating the divine wisdom to human capacities for understanding and thus communicating God’s divine message through human thought forms. Scripture authenticates itself as the Word of God by the testimony of the Holy Spirit, which is “more excellent than all reason” (Institutes 1.7.4) and which seals the conviction that Scripture is God’s Word in the experience of believers. This concentration on Scripture as the primary authority for Christian theology and for the church led to the Reformation slogan, ”sola scriptura” (Scripture alone).
3. Spirit. Within Protestantism, the Anabaptist movement was marked by a rejection of Lutheran and Reformed teachings on several doctrines (most notably, baptism) and by a differing emphasis on the source of authority. Among these believers, “God’s Spirit, which the Anabaptists believed themselves to possess, is the ultimate authority which first gives authority to the written word of the Bible” (Reventlow, 53). Anabaptists stressed the “outer word” (Scripture) and the “inner word” (the legitimation by the Holy Spirit). A biblical text without the penetration and testing of the Spirit was a “dead letter.” Spiritual authority—of whatever kind—was grounded in the promptings of the Holy Spirit in an individual’s heart. The “authority” of church and Scripture must yield to this “inner light” (Quakerism) of immediate revelation as the ultimate and final authority for Christian theology and the Christian life as well.
Another factor has been active in these three avenues of authority. The place of human reason must also be considered. Although opinions differ on the extent to which “reason” is a “theological” as opposed to a “natural” factor, reason is a means by which theological systems are judged and theological claims assessed (the historic controversies on the relation between reason and revelation point to the necessity to consider reason as an important factor). Appropriation of the church’s tradition, the interpretation of Scripture, and the discernment of individual revelation are all filtered (as Immanuel Kant showed) through the eye of “reason.” Today, theorists recognize that in the interpretations of texts, the interpreter as well as the text itself must be interpreted: One’s own cultural milieu and setting in life actively influence interpretation. In the broadest sense of “reason” as the agent by which we understand and articulate what we perceive as church tradition, Scripture, or the Spirit, this dimension of human involvement and the human community is always present.
In the post-Reformation period, the principal avenues of authority were broadened further by various theological movements. The authority of the church and its traditions was fortified through the Council of Trent (1545-63), in which the Roman Catholic Church asserted that church teachings could be drawn “from Sacred Scripture, the apostolic traditions, the holy and approved councils, the constitutions and authorities of the supreme pontiffs and holy fathers, and the consensus of the Catholic
