Christian Rhetoric and Authority: A Boxing Match

The difficult part of modern society is finding the right authority to follow. Every study that comes up is debated back and forth by a myriad of people who all claim to be and know better than the other. And we don’t have many ways of saying one way or another who is right.

Reading the letters of Martin Luther and looking into other writings of Christian leaders and thinkers, their appeal to authority is much more simple and direct. They borrow it. They juxtapose their weakness with the greatness and perfection of God and point towards Him as the source of truth in the message they’re sharing. This isn’t a bad thing. Although some people go to a particular preacher because of how they speak, they’re still looking to be taught a message from the wisdom of God and not the wisdom of the preacher. It’s a vital part of Christian rhetoric to present humility even when you feel an assurance that you are carrying a message from a perfect authority.

But, the interesting part that I noticed was that another common practice of Christian rhetoric is, when disagreements come up, to directly attack the authority of the speaker. You have a man who stands up in a conference of priests and talks about how unworthy he feels before God, but that he has a message to share, only to have him called a fool and booed off the stage. Both attacker and defender will claim to be supported by perfect authority despite their weaknesses, while crying that the personal weakness of the other makes them unworthy to be supported.

If that’s how arguments went, it isn’t hard to see why priests began to gather power and secular authority. It didn’t matter how accomplished they were, but it also very much did.

"Up Close and Personal" under the watch of the benevolent referee.

Image credit to Jay Peeples from flickr.