Since the problem of authority is central for any theology and since
Protestant theology has located authority in the Bible, the nature of biblical
authority has been of fundamental concern for Prostestant theology.
The Reformation affiirmed that ultimate authority in the church rests not
in the pope of the church but in the inspired Scriptures.
What is the nature and extent of that authority of the Scriptures?
In its personal application, the word "authority" refers to the right and ability of the individual person to perform what he wills and who, by virtue of his position or office, can command obedience. It has also application to the words spoken or written by the person whose authority has been established and whose information can consequently be trusted.
The word that is used for authority in the Greek New Testament is exousia and is sometimes translated "right" (NEB) or "power" (KJV, as for example, Matt. 9:6; John 1:12; 17:2; 19:10) and sometimes "authority" (for example, Matt. 7:29; 8:9; 21:23; John 5:27; Acts 9:14). From a survey of its occurences in the Greek New Testament what emerges is that the possession of exousia is a power held by right. In some contexts, the emphasis falls upon the authority which the possession of power rightfully gives; in other instances, it falls on the reality of the power which conditions the right use of authority.
Authority may be bestowed or inherent. When Jesus was asked by what authority he taught and acted (Matt. 21:23-24), the implication was that His authority was external. His questioners supposed Him to be exercising a representative or conferred authority. On the other hand, in the declaration that Jesus taught with authority (Matt. 7:29) and "with authority and power" expelled unclean spirits (Luke 4:36), the place of such authority was in His own being. That is to say, it was an ontological authority. Thus, while the authority of His words and acts was not His own but came from one who sent Him (John 14:10; 17:8), yet these same words and acts had their raison d'etre in His own person because they were grounded in His relationship as God's Son to God His Father.
As in the case with Christ in whom both aspects of authority, the bestwoed and the inherent, combined, so it is with the Bible. Because the Bible points beyond itself to God, it has a conferred authority. Yet the Bible has a real authority in itself as the authentic embodiment of God's self-disclosure. Liberal theologians refuse to give to the Bible this ontological authority, granting it at most a borrowed authority. Some, like Karl Barth, allow this authority to be bestowed by God while insisting that the Bible itself is essentially a human product. Others, for example, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, regarded the Bible as a fallible collection of religious writings on which the early church arbitrarily impose an authority which evangelical piety has continued to uphold. But by refusing to the Bible an ontological authority, liberal theology uncovers its fundamental inconsistency, thereby pronouncing its own condemnation. For insofar as it wishes the acceptance of it own unbiblical speculations, liberalism has to decry the authority of the Bible. Yet insofar as it is concerned to retain the label Christian, it appeals to the Bible as its authoritative source. [1]
All ultimate authority rests in God. As Creator and Sustainer of the universe, He has the absolute right over all created beings and an all-embracing authority in heaven and earth. This final and supreme authority gives Him the unlimited sovereignty to command and enforce obedience, to unconditionally possess and absolutely govern all things at all times in all places of the universe.
An approach to the subject of Biblical authority must begin with God Himself. For in Him all authority is finally located. And He is His own authority, for there is nothing outside of Himself on which His authority is founded and rests. Thus, in making His promise to Abraham, He pledged His own name since He has no greater by whom He could swear (Heb. 6:13). This authority of God is then made known in His self-disclosure, since it is only in His revelation that God can be known. Revelation is therefore the key to knowing God's authority, so that the two, revelation and authority, may be regarded as two sides of the same reality. In revelation God declares His authority.
The Old Testament prophets grounded their authority in God's revelation. As God's spokesmen, they proclaimed what God had revealed to them. In uttering their message, they delcared what God required of His people. For the Christian faith, Christ is recognized as the final revelation of God Himself. In Him, God's imperial authority is graciously expressed. Thus is Christ the sum of all that is divinely authorative for the life of man. But the progressive revelation of God in the Old Testament, which culminated in Christ, has been given perpetual form in the biblical writings. Thus the Scrptures participates in God's authority, so that Christ's relationship thereto is decisive as vindicating its authority.
Jesus saw "all the Scriptures" of the Old Testament as a prophetic outline of what He came to accomplish; and He took its very language to be the supernatural expression of the Father's will. By His attitude to and use of the Old Testament truly validated its divinity as God's word.
"17 Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets;With the same conviction, the New Testament writers accepted it and quoted it; and in its light they themselves, as the inspired interpreters of the saving significance of Christ's person and work, put their writings on an equal footing with the Old Testament Scriptures as divinely authoritative. In the words of his chosen apostles, the full measure of God's revelation in Christ was brought to completion so that Paul could declare, "In the sight of God speak we in Christ" (II Cor. 12:19). Thus do the apostles claim an absolute authority for their writings (for example, II Cor. 10:11; I Thess. 2:13; 5:27; II Thess. 2:15; 3:140.
I did not come to abolish, but to fulfil.
18 For truely I say unto you,
until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law,
until all is accomplished." (Matt. 5:17-18 NAS).
As Christians, we believe that this Almighty God has spoken to us in and through Jesus Christ, His eternal Son, the Word of God. God's authority thus confronts us in and through Him, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, reigns over all things from eternity to eternity.
From the very beginning of Church, the unreserved acceptance of the supreme authority of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour undergrided the Christian Church. When the Jewish nation as a nation refused to acknowledge the authority of the Lord Jesus, even after His resurrection, after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and after the missionary activity of the Apostles, Jerusalem and the Jewish state were finally destroyed in 70 A.D. To this day the people who rejected the authority of their true Messiah have never possessed the temple in Jerusalem.
The authority of the Bible is established by its own claims. It is the word of God. Such declarations as, "Thus says the Lord," or its equivalent, occurs so frequently in the Old Testament that it can confidently be asserted that the whole account is dominated by the claim to be the word of God. In the New Testament itself, both Christ and the gospel are called "the word of God" and so demonstrate the fact that the relationship between the two is vital and necessary one. Specifically is the gospel in its central content and many aspects, through the action of the Holy Spirit, brought into written form by Christ's appointees as God's authoritative word for the church. As the apostle Paul says,
"For this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that,Thus both testaments belong together under the one designation, "The word of God." As God's word, the Bible consequently carries in itself God's authority.
when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God,
ye accepted it not as the words of men,
but as it is in truth, the word of God." (I Thess. 2:13 KJV).
[1] H. D. McDonald, Bible, Authority of in
Walter A. Elwell, ed. Evangelical Dictionary of Theology
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984), pp. 138-139.
Frank E. Geldenhuys, "Authority of the Bible" in
Carl F. H. Henry, ed. Revelation and the Bible
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1958), pp. 369-386.