Abstract
Opposition to the abuse of authority is one true way of defining the liberal political tradition. Such abuse has been so great—in the past 100 years greater than ever in the suffering it has caused—that the necessity for the liberal political tradition can hardly be doubted. Arguably, this history, of both abuse and opposition to it, gives most people in liberal societies a basic suspicion of authority in all its forms.
Yet, authority must exist and be exercised if we are to have the possibility of being fully human, of living well, and this is so in every human society. This is the thesis of Victor Lee Austin’s book and his argument is convincing. Austin is theologian-in-residence at an episcopal church in New York City, and he lived for a long time in Woodstock, the village that gave its name to the 1969 festival. He knows that his argument goes against the stream, but his approach is not remotely defensive. Rather, his book is punctuated with wry humour. Perhaps he is confident that the case is strong enough that, once made, it will strike many who read it as common sense, which in the main it will.
Austin addresses four kinds of authority in the four chapters that form the book’s constructive argument. His labels for them are ‘social’, ‘epistemic’, ‘political’ and ‘ecclesial’. These chapters manifest careful organisation, each following a similar pattern. After an introduction, Austin gives an extended illustration of the kind of authority in question. Then there is the chapter’s main argument, in which he draws on different writers in each—Yves Simon on social authority, Michael Polanyi on epistemic authority, Oliver O’Donovan on political authority, and Richard Hooker (alongside ARCIC) on authority in the Church. He follows this by presenting objections and responding to them. Finally there is a theological tailpiece, one which connects the chapter’s argument not only with Scripture but with Jesus Christ.
It is Austin’s argument about social authority that has the widest significance. To some extent this gives a template for those about the other kinds of authority. Writing for Christian ethicists, I’ll focus on social authority and political authority.
Illustrating what social authority means by an orchestra and its conductor, Austin uses the term to refer to the forms of coordination which make possible the common actions that generate the many social goods that make life rich and full. He refers to all these by the label ‘mini-societies’ (p. 86); this term covers both those that exist on a particular occasion, such as an orchestral performance, and those that endure through time, such as a neighbourhood association.
At root, his argument on social authority is Aristotelian and Thomist. Here is one summary. ‘We are social beings by our very nature. This means that to flourish as human beings, to be what we are, we need others. [The orchestra’s] member[s] … could not flourish as musicians … without the ordered society of the orchestra. And within that ordered society, authority is needed’ (pp. 22-23).
Austin points out that it is especially so that complex goods can exist that we need authority—and it is these that are especially important if possibilities are to be open to us of freely living full lives. Such goods mean that ‘there is more that can be done and more that can be known’ (p. 25, italics original). So, he argues, social authority is not (in principle) opposed to freedom; on the contrary, these increase together.
The 2012 Olympic Games in London were judged a great success, at least by many in Britain. Seven years in the preparation, they were a hugely complex common good, giving opportunity for a large number of people to act freely in ways that both helped to generate and directly gave enjoyment of that good. Of course, some of the objections made at the time of the Games were to do with restrictions on freedom, for example, that of companies that were not official sponsors. This complex good could have been organised in other ways, and if it had been it might have been even better. What this shows is how much the exercise of social authority matters, and how difficult it is.
At first, it is not obvious how Austin’s ‘social authority’ is different from ‘political authority’. He invites some confusion by beginning his exposition of the former by discussing Aristotle on ‘man as a “political animal”’ (p. 21). However, his chapter on political authority turns out to distinguish them clearly and convincingly. What marks out political authority is that its remit is a society as a whole (i.e., not just a ‘mini-society’, but one that includes many of these) and, therefore, that its exercise precludes non-compliance, essentially because members cannot leave. Austin’s logic is impeccable in arguing, after Aquinas, that even a sinless human society would need political authority for its common good, and that the difference human sin makes is only that political authority has to depend on possible resort to coercive force (p. 71).
Austin locates these points within what is possibly the best short exposition of O’Donovan’s political theology there is to date. For this he draws carefully on all O’Donovan’s relevant books, bringing together what are not always connected in them. Nevertheless, this generates some tension, because O’Donovan’s writings seem to show dissent from the Thomist conception of original or natural political authority outlined in the last paragraph. Not only does Austin not engage directly with what O’Donovan calls ‘the reactive principle’, according to which what government does is always to be a reaction to wrongs (The Ways of Judgment, pp. 57-62), but he appears not to see that such dissent is implicit, at least, in O’Donovan’s conceiving of judgment in court as the paradigm political act. What this means is that Austin expounds O’Donovan with inadvertent Thomist spin. This may or may not give a more convincing account of political authority, but I suggest that O’Donovan’s conception is doing somewhat less work for Austin’s own argument than he thinks it is.
I should not pass over Austin’s discussions of epistemic and ecclesial authority entirely. The former draws on Thomas Kuhn as well as Polanyi in a highly convincing way. ‘In epistemology as in society, never is the need to trust authority transcended… Knowledge… does not come in discreet bits like jewels… Because there is no knowledge that is independent of other knowledge, there is no epistemic authority that stands apart from other[s]’ (pp. 53-54). The latter, taking as its illustration the Bach aria, argues, controversially but powerfully, that ecclesial authority lies essentially in each member, authorised by Christ through Scripture. Such structures for the mediation of authority as churches devise exist to serve each believer in that way, even though ‘we cannot have an individual confession of Christ that does not arise out of a Eucharistic community’ (p. 101). It is perhaps a missed opportunity that Austin does not compare and contrast the four kinds of authority more than he does. While political authority can be seen as one form of social authority, can ecclesial authority be seen as one form of epistemic authority? What about the senses, brought out by many contemporary theologians, in which the Church should be seen as a subversive kind of polis? In light of those, how are political and ecclesial authority related?
After the chapters on the four kinds of authority, the penultimate chapter addresses what happens when authority goes wrong. The illustration he gives here is fascinating: it is of epistemic authority erring, when, in the 1910s, a group of scientists that included Einstein disputed and then dismissed as quite wrong a chemistry paper by Polanyi that turned out, decades later, to be quite right.
Yet this example could be seen as symbolising what some would see as a lacuna in the book as a whole. As I put it in relation to that example, Austin’s discussion is framed in terms of authority ‘erring’, and then of it being ‘disputed’. These are vital aspects of the topic to address, and the discussion that follows of how each kind of authority errs is careful and helpful; here he engages with Avery Dulles on ecclesial authority, among others. But beyond authority being exercised erroneously, it also is abused. As I noted at the start, it is this that generates the widespread suspicion of any appeal to it. Austin’s book makes a very important argument. This could have been enhanced by being located more explicitly against the background of the great abuses of authority that have justifiably provoked such liberal suspicion. He could readily have addressed how each kind of authority tends to be abused and how signs of nascent such abuses might be recognised.
In the last chapter, Austin lifts up the reader’s sights. Having argued for the indispensability of all four kinds of authority in the human societies we know, he addresses tentatively—some would say speculatively—whether there will be authority in ‘heaven’, and if there is authority in the triune life of God. He expounds Dante, appeals briefly to T. S. Eliot, and commends Robert Jenson in suggesting that the answer to both questions is yes.
Music again gives an illustration. ‘Heaven is an on-going explosion of music… Decisions must be made… They are joyfully made by authority… [This] is simply social and epistemic authority, exercised by redeemed persons over redeemed persons and under redeemed persons… Heaven is friends living together. But they are not at rest. They are active beyond our imagination… thanks to authority’ (pp. 160-61).