Revelation without authority

Rick Elgendy

pp. 67-90

in: Joshua Daniel, Rick Elgendy (eds), Renegotiating power, theology, and politics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Under the heading of "Doctrinal Hermeneutics' in his 1898 Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology, Revere Franklin Weidner writes, "when we speak of a truth communicated by God, the notion of authority is inseparable from the notion of revelation. Suppose a revelation without authority: no more value, or certainty, can be attached to it than to a philosophy, and it would become, so far as it is a supernatural communication, utterly worthless."¹ Though pithy, Weidner's view of revelation is hardly exceptional. One could just as easily cite contemporary examples such as Ross Douthat's claim that though Christian orthodoxy does not require a "blind Biblical literalism," it does require a "respect for the authority of … revelation."² The association between the terms "revelation" and "authority" seems to occur so spontaneously and, it would appear, naturally, that it is not immediately clear that the concept of revelation can survive without authority. Whether it comes from within the inherently religious human person, or without, from a dialectically transcendent God, that revelation, once accepted as such, appears to bear the indelible mark of a final authority: a source of truth that, because of its superior ontological or social status, proves irrefutable.