AUTHORITY AND FREEDOM (KTW & P.

Verghese)
A. Authority
When Christ was asked, 'By what authority are you doing these things, or who
gave you this authority to do them?' (Mk 11:28), he did not answer in direct
terms. The exercise of authority within the Church continues to be a baffling
and elusive subject. Most of the basic questions which separate Christians
today are connected with our understanding of authority. In an attempt to grasp
what may be termed the 'inner logic' of Church authority, let us start with the
touchstone and fountain-head of all Christian life: the word of our Lord in the
Gospels. How should we interpret his teaching upon the exercise of authority?
There is, first of all, a negative statement of crucial significance, occurring in
two of the Synoptic gospels during Christ's last journey to Jerusalem (Matt
20:25-26; Mk 10:42-43), and in the third immediately after the institution of the
Eucharist (Lk 22:25-26): 'You know that those who are supposed to rule over
the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.
But it shall not be so among you.' Not so among you: Jesus is altogether
unambiguous. In ecclesiology, we are never to take as our dominant model a
political structure in the secular society around us. As a Kingdom 'not of this
world' (Jn 18:36) - eucharistic, pentecostal and eschatological in character - the
Church is not to be understood in terms of worldly power and jurisdiction. We
are to assimilate the Church neither to the absolutist system of the Roman
Empire, nor to the graded hierarchies of medieval society, nor yet to patterns of
modern democracy. The bishop is not to be envisaged either as a feudal
overlord or as an elected parliamentary representative. The chief bishop or
primate is neither a dictator nor a constitutional monarch nor the chairman of a
board of directors. To interpret ecclesiastical authority by such analogies is to
overlook the Church's uniqueness and to forget Christ's severe and specific
warning.
On the positive side - and this is also a point of decisive importance - the
Gospels make it clear that authority (exousia) is not assumed but received, not
taken but given. Authority is given by the Father to Christ, and is in turn given
by Christ to the apostles. The Father is the well-spring, and Christ is the
intermediary.
Christ exercises His authority above all in three ways: by casting out evil spirits
(Lk 4:36; cf. Mk 1:27), by teaching (Matt 7:29; Mk 1:22), and by forgiving sins
(Matt 9:6; Mk 2:10; Lk 5:24). It is emphasised that such power comes only
from God (Matt 9:8; Mk 2:7). All three forms of authority are in turn
transmitted by Christ to the Twelve. They have exousia to cast out evil spirits

and to heal (Matt 10:1; Mk 3:15; 6:7; Lk 9:1; 10:19); and they are also
empowered to teach (Mk 3:14; Lk 9:2) and to forgive sins (Matt 18:18).
In the case of both Christ and the apostles, then, authority extends to the realms
alike of belief and practice. It is doctrinal, for it is an authority to teach; and it
is pastoral, for it is an authority to cast out evil and to forgive.
The Synoptic view of authority is summed up in the proclamation of the risen
Christ at the end of St Matthew's Gospel: 'All authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising
them teaching them .. and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age'
(Matt 28:18-20). Three points stand out in this passage. First, authority is very
evidently something given, not assumed: it is imparted to Christ by the Father,
and to the disciples by Christ. Secondly, its exercise by the disciples takes the
form, as before, of teaching, casting out evil spirits, and conferring the
forgiveness of sins (the last two of these functions are implied in the act of
baptising). Thirdly, in conferring authority on his disciples, Christ insists that
he will be present with them 'to the close of the age.' This emphasis on the
continuing presence of Christ is, as we shall see, vitally important for any
balanced doctrine of Church authority.
A similar understanding of authority is to be found in the Fourth Gospel where
it is also said that authority is something conferred by God. When Pilate claims
authority to release Christ or to execute Him, our Lord replies: 'You would have
no authority over me unless it had been given you from above' (Jn 19:10-11).
Twice Christ affirms explicitly that his authority comes to him from the Father
(5:27; 17:2). Christ exercises this authority by acting as judge (5:27), by laying
down his life and taking it up again (10:18) - and here, authority signifies
freedom - and by granting eternal life.
From the evidence of the Gospels, then, it emerges negatively that the exercise
of authority within the Church is to be totally different from any of the forms
prevailing in secular power-structures; and positively that all authority within
the Church comes from the Son, Who has in His turn received it from the
Father. Furthermore, the Son, Who is the giver of all Church authority,
continues to be Himself continually present within the ecclesial community. In
transmitting authority to his disciples, He does not thereby become a distant and
inactive figure-head or an absentee landlord. 'I am with you always': He shares
his authority, but does not delegate it.
Christ, therefore, ever present in the Church as the source of all authority, forms
the one and only pattern for its exercise. Any sound doctrine of authority needs
to be consistently Christocentric; questions concerning Church authority are in
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the last resort Christological questions. A Christian community that lacks a

sound Christology - that does not adhere to the teaching of the early Councils
concerning the fullness of both the Godhead and manhood in the one Christ lacks also a secure basis for ecclesiastical authority. Only if Christ is true God
can He possess 'all authority in heaven and on earth'; only if he is true man does
He transmit this authority directly and organically to the members of his Body,
the Church.
If Christ is our paradigm, this signifies one thing in particular. When Jesus said,
'I am among you as one who serves' (Lk 22:27), he fundamentally altered the
master-disciple relationship. Authority, when understood in a Christlike way,
means diakonia. The only valid model of Church authority is our Lord's action
in washing the disciples' feet (Jn 13:14-16). We are not God's slaves but his
sons, not his servants but his 'friends' (Jn 15:15) and 'fellow-workers' (1 Cor.
3:9). And if this is true of Christ's own relationship with his disciples, then it
should likewise be true a fortiori of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in relation to the
other members of the Church. Within the Church there is to be no autocracy, no
polarisation between an absolute ruler and passive subjects; on the contrary,
there is to be brotherhood, communion, co-responsibility, synergeia, syndesmos.
If anything is clear from the New Testament, it is surely that; and only on such a
presupposition is it possible to interpret Church life in eucharistic and
pentecostal terms. As Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch stated some years ago in an
address to the Executive Committee of SYNDESMOS, 'Communion is the
highest authority in the Church.'
Taking as our basis this Christ-centred, Scriptural view of Church authority, let
us now go on to inquire: how is the authority of the risen Christ, ever present in
the Church through the Holy Spirit, to be exercised in practice? How does the
voice of the Spirit become audible - through what persons and structures, and on
what occasions? Let us consider in turn, first, the authority of Scripture; second,
the authority of the sensus fidelium or general conscience of the Church; and
thirdly, the authority of the episcopate, as expressed above all through councils
and through the various forms of primacy.
As with Christ and the apostles, so likewise within the Church, authority
extends to the realms of both belief and practice; it concerns equally the
guardianship and proclamation of the truth, and the government of the Christian
community. In what follows we shall be concerned with both aspects.
The Authority of Scripture
'We treat the Holy Bible as the test of every dogma and rule,' declares St
Gregory of Nyssa, 'accepting only such things as agree with the meaning of
Scripture.' In the words of St John Chrysostom, 'That which the Scriptures
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affirm, the Lord Himself has said; and so, even if someone were to rise from the
dead or an angel were to come from heaven, they would not deserve more
credence than the Scriptures.'
The Orthodox standpoint is also to be found in the Agreed Statement adopted by
the Anglican-Orthodox Joint Doctrinal Commission that met in Moscow in
1976:
The Scriptures constitute a coherent whole. They are at once divinely
inspired and humanly expressed. They bear authoritative witness to
God's revelation of himself in creation, in the Incarnation of the Word and
in the whole history of salvation, and as such express the Word of God in
human language Our approach to the Bible is one of obedience The
books of Scripture contained in the canon are authoritative because they
truly convey the authentic revelation of God Scripture is the main
criterion whereby the Church tests traditions to determine whether they
are truly part of Holy tradition or not.
The delegates at the Moscow conference described Scripture as 'the main
criterion' partly because they wished to avoid any tendency to isolate the Bible
from its context within the total life of the Church. 'We know, receive, and
interpret Scripture through the Church and in the Church,' they declared in their
Agreed Statement. Scripture is to be interpreted through the Church and in the
Church. The authority of the Bible, that is to say, is not to be 'materialised' and
treated in an exterior fashion, as if the letter of Scripture could by itself, in some
mechanical and automatic way, immediately answer all the questions of the
Church in later ages.
To the best of our knowledge, Christ himself wrote nothing; initially there was
only oral tradition, handed down within the worshipping community of the
Church, so that chronologically Tradition is before Scripture. When written
documents appeared, it was the Church that decided which if them should
constitute the canon of scripture; and so, in this sense, Scripture owes its
authority to the Church.
It is the Church, likewise that alone constitutes the authoritative interpreter of
the Bible. 'Do you understand what you are reading?' asked Philip, when he
found the Ethiopian eunuch poring over the text of Isaiah; to which the eunuch
replies, 'How can I, unless someone guides me?' (Acts 8:30-31). The letter of
Holy Scripture is not self-explanatory; as we study it we need the Church's
guidance. We read the Bible, in other words, not as isolated individuals but as
members of the Church, in communion with all other members throughout the

world and throughout all ages. The decisive criterion for our understanding of
Scripture is the mind of the Church.
This does not preclude the use of personal judgement and of critical scholarship;
but it means that private opinions, however learned, are not to be preferred to
the experience of the saints throughout the centuries. The Church has the right
and the duty to test the results of critical study, accepting, discarding, or
modifying them in the light of its inherited faith and its liturgical practice, as
detailed in the Moscow Agreed Statement.
We should reject any approach to the Bible that regards the letter of Scripture as
an authority in isolation, separated from the Church's life as a whole. So far
from being an exterior authority set up over the Church, Scripture lives and is
understood within the Church. The authority of Scripture constitutes a single,
undivided unity with the authority of the Church itself.
The General Conscience of the Church and its Authority
The authority of the Church is to be seen from two complementary points of
view. There is, first, the authority of the total community; and secondly, there is
the authority vested in the episcopate. These two forms of authority are
correlative.
The basis for the first form of authority, that which is invested in the Church as
a whole, lies first of all in the fact that man is created in the image and likeness
of God (Gen 1:26). As St Paul said on the Areopagus, God 'is not far from each
one of us'; we are his offspring or kin (Acts 17: 27-28). We are each his living
icon, and we have the Divinity as the innermost centre of our being, the
determining element in our humanity. Formed as we are according to the divine
image, there is implanted in every one of us the authority of the conscience, of
the inner or natural law written in our hearts (Rom 2:14-15) - of what the
Society of Friends describes as the 'inner light'. Any balanced doctrine of
church authority should allow full scope to this factor.
Through the descent of the Holy Spirit in the upper room at Pentecost, and
through the renewal of Pentecost in the sacraments of Christian initiation, all the
members of the Church without exception are made Spirit-bearers and
'charismatics', in the true sense of the word; all alike are anointed as priests and
kings (1 Pet 2:9; Rev 1:6; 5:10). By virtue, then, of Baptism, every member of
the laity without exception becomes entrusted with the defence of the faith
which he has professed publicly. It is not the bishops alone who are guardians
and defenders of the faith but the entire company of the baptised. In Christ's
promise, 'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth' (Jn

16:13), the preposition 'you' should not be restricted to bishops, clergy or

professional theologians, but indicates every baptised member of the Church.
If, then, we choose to speak in terms of 'infallibility', then it is the Church in its
totality that should be called infallible, and not any single person or group
treated in isolation from the rest. According to our Lord's promise, truth will be
invincible within the Church, in the sense that there will never be a time when
all the members of the Church fall into falsehood. But it does not therefore
follow that any particular bishop or gathering of bishops will be exemplified
automatically from all possibility of error, and that we shall know this fact in
advance.
The Authority of the Bishop
Now of the lion one need have no fear; the leopard is a gentle
creature; and even the snake that terrifies you is likely to turn in
flight. But there is one thing you must be aware of, I assure you.
Bad bishops. Do not be over-awed by the dignity of the throne. All
have the dignity, yes; but all do not have the grace. Discard the
outer clothing; watch for the wolf. Words do not convince me; I
must have deeds.
-St Gregory, Bishop of Nazianzus (329/30389/90)
Complementing the gift of discernment conferred by the Spirit upon every
member of the 'royal priesthood,' there is also the charisma veritatis (to use St
Irinaeus' phrase) entrusted specifically to the bishops by virtue of their
succession from the apostles. The apostolic authority of the bishop extends
equally to the realms of practice and belief: it is an authority to give both
leadership and teaching.
Historically, the laity are neither public teachers nor official interpreters of the
faith, but rather its defenders. The layman's task is to conserve the faith
unchanged, safeguarding it from innovation; it is not claimed for him that he
formulates fresh definitions of doctrine, or that he examines and expounds the
truth in council.
Some have thought of the whole body of the Church as the bearer of
infallibility, while the episcopate gathered in synod is the mouth of the Church,
the 'organ' through which infallibility is made manifest.
Each bishop, then, presides with authority over his local flock, and acts within
that flock as the divinely-appointed teacher of the truth. This teaching ministry
he exercises above all when preaching to his people at the celebration of the
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Eucharist: for the church is essentially a eucharistic society, and the bishop is
therefore essentially a eucharistic person. But, while it is the bishop's duty
'rightly to define the word of truth' (2 Tim 2:15), yet he is always speaking not
to the uninitiated but to those who themselves 'know' (1 Jn 2:20) by virtue of
their baptism.
'The bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop,' St Cyprian insists.
But here he means the local Church rather than the Church universal. We
should never isolate the bishop from his community. He is of course by no
means simply an elected delegate, under an obligation to express the views held
by the majority of those who have appointed him: but at the same time,
whenever by the power of his apostolic office he proclaims the truth, he does
not merely put forward a personal opinion, but he is bearing witness to the
traditional faith as handed down in the local Church over which he presides.
We need to keep constantly in view the mutual interdependence and reciprocity
of charismata existing between the ministerial priesthood of the hierarchy and
the royal priesthood of the whole people of God.
The Authority of the Council
While each hierarch is authorised to teach the faith specifically within his own
diocese, at the same time episcopal authority forms an invisible unity. The
Church is an organic whole, a living body, not a heap of pebbles. A hierarch,
therefore, has responsibility to proclaim and bear witness to the truth not within
his own diocese only but within the Church at large. To use St Cyprian's phrase,
every bishop exercises his episcopal authority in solidarity, in solidum, with
every other bishop. In his panegyric on St Eustathios of Antioch, St John
Chrysostom said, 'He has been rightly taught by the Holy Spirit that a bishop
should care not only for the particular Church entrusted to him by the Spirit, but
for every Church throughout the inhabited earth.'
This exercise of episcopal authority in solidum becomes a concrete and visible
reality above all when bishops meet together at a church council. 'Where two or
three ' (Matt 18:20): Christ's promise, while not restricted to episcopal
gatherings, applies to them par excellence. ' there am I in the midst of
them': the authority of Christ himself, present through the Holy Spirit. This is
already apparent in the accounts of apostolic synods in the New Testament.
Meeting immediately after the Ascension to elect a successor in place of Judas,
the Eleven called upon Christ himself to make the choice: 'Lord show which
one of these two thou hast chosen' (Acts 1:24). At their subsequent meeting in
Jerusalem, they preface their decision with the words: 'It has seemed good to
the Holy Spirit and to us' (Acts 15:28).

Significantly, the apostolic decree says 'to us,' not 'to me'. Collectively, the
shepherds of the Church, whether apostles or bishops, speak with an authority
that none of them can command individually. At every true council the total is
greater than the sum of its parts: together the members of the episcopate
become something more than they are as scattered individuals, and this
'something more' is precisely the presence of Christ and of the Spirit in their
midst. The 'common mind' which the assembled bishops reach under the
Paraclete's guidance is not merely their mind but Christ's.
We have spoken earlier about the reciprocity of charismata between the bishop
and the laity. This applies in a particular way to an episcopal council. Just as
the local bishop is not to be isolated from the community over which he
presides, so the episcopal council is not to be isolated from the total experience
of the people of God. No synod of bishops, therefore, can be considered
'ecumenical' - using the word not just in a geographical but in a theological
sense, as meaning 'that which speaks the truth with authority' - unless such a
synod has been accepted by the royal priesthood as a whole, that is to say,
received by the Church at large.
How do we know whether or not a particular council is genuinely ecumenical?
Are there any criteria which can guarantee in advance that a particular assembly
will prove to be an ecumenical council?
Reviewing the various external criteria, we find that from an Orthodox point of
view none of them, taken in isolation, is sufficient to guarantee 'ecumenicity', in
the full theological sense of the term:
1. The number of bishops. In itself this is no proof of ecumenicity. There have
been heretical councils with many more participants than recognised
Ecumenical Councils. Church history shows that the truth cannot be
determined merely by counting heads.
2. The geographical distribution of the bishops and their representative
character. While the actual number of bishops attending an ecumenical
council is not of significance, it is certainly required that these bishops
should in principle represent all parts of the Catholic Church in order that the
council be accounted ecumenical. Without this representative character the
council, even when it is recognised as having proclaimed the truth, will not
be considered ecumenical. But this, while indispensable, is scarcely by itself
a sufficient criterion of genuine ecumenicity in the deeper sense. Several
councils (such as Ferrara-Florence in 1438-39) were as representative as any
of the seven ecumenical councils, yet have not been accepted as ecumenical
by the Church.
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3. The conviction of the council itself. This is not by itself a decisive test.
Many councils have explicitly proclaimed themselves to be ecumenical, yet
have not been accepted as such by the Church. On the other hand, it is not
clear whether the Council of Constantinople in 381 (today called the Second
Ecumenical Council) regarded itself as ecumenical.
4. Recognition by a subsequent ecumenical council. One of the primary tasks
performed by each ecumenical council has been to ratify the decisions of its
predecessors. This is an important stage in the process of a council's
'reception' by the Church at large, but once more it is not by itself a sufficient
criterion. There will always be a last unconfirmed synod. Hence, we have
only pushed the problem a step further back. For what is the yardstick used
by later synods in gauging their predecessors and in discriminating between
true councils and false?
In the last resort, then, there is only one decisive test of ecumenicity, and this
test is retrospective. It is necessary to ask: Has a particular assembly been
accepted by the sensus fidelium, by the general conscience of the Church? It
should be noted that throughout this discussion I have used the words 'receive'
or 'recognise,' rather than 'confirm' or 'validate.' By accepting a council, the
People of God does not 'make' that Council to be ecumenical, but simply
recognises the fact that it is such. Unless the statements of a synod are true in
themselves, no amount of later assent can confer truth and authority upon them.
Conciliar decisions are not true because they are accepted by the Church, but
they are accepted by the Church because they are true. The subsequent assent is
the exterior criterion, the outward and visible sign, whereby we know that the
council has in fact been guided by the Holy Spirit.
From all this it emerges that the authority of an episcopal council, in common
with the authority of each individual bishop, is not to be treated in isolation,
apart from the life of the Church as a whole. In its turn, the Church is not to be
separated from the person of Christ. The final authority is invariably the
authority of the truth - of the living and personal truth, Christ himself, the Lord
of the Church, active among us and within us through the Holy Spirit. It is not
sufficient, therefore, to convene bishops from all parts of the world: it is also
necessary that there should be present in their midst the One who said: 'I am the
way, the truth, and the life' (John 14:16). And this presence is something that
cannot be predetermined by formal criteria: it can only be recognised.
'All authority has been given to me', the risen Christ says to us. 'Lo, I am with
you always' (Matt 28:18-20). The only 'final authority' in the Church is Christ
himself, ever present with her through the Holy Spirit. Authority is personal
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and Christocentric. Christ alone, as head of the Church, is the source of all
exousia, and any proper exercise of it can only be in him and through him. He
is not absent and so he does not delegate; but he invites our active co-operation.
The highest 'court of appeal,' the ultimate 'criterion of the truth', remains always
the Son of God himself, living mysteriously in the Church and leading it in the
way of truth. God's continuing presence in the Church is not to be 'externalised'
or 'materialised'. It cannot be identified, that is to say, simply with the letter of
Scripture, or with a single person, or with the collective person of the
episcopate gathered in council. All of these, together with the sensus fidelium,
have their part to play in the exercise of authority; yet none of them is to be
taken in isolation from the rest, or from the total life of Christ's Body.
'The Church is a continual miracle,' St John of Kronstadt (1829-1908) used to
say; and the same is true of the Church as a eucharistic organism. In our
ecclesial vision we need to return constantly to what remains, beyond all
external 'criteria' and all formal 'infallibility', the central mystery of the Church's
nature: the Church is the miracle of God's presence among men.
B. Freedom
While authority is closely connected with the will of the community, freedom is
personal. The two, however, are not independent but operate hand in hand.
Jesus taught and acted with authority when he forgave sins and cast out demons.
But he was not a slave to the book or to the rules. Rather he discerned and
decided what was right and taught it, did it. His authority was a free authority,
not an aspect of hierarchical authority that one finds, for example, in an army.
His freedom was also his authority.
When a person uses authority arbitrarily, he opposes himself to the freedom of
the one who has to obey. The arbitrary authoritarian uses the other person's will
as an extension of his own will, and thus denies all freedom to the other. The
other will is simply a tool or an instrument, to be used according to the will of
the authoritarian.
However, when someone's authority is persuasive, an appeal is made to the
other to exercise his freedom in initiating its own action in the direction
proposed by the persuader. The other will has to respond in freedom and not
merely give unquestioning compliance. The difference between demagoguery
and true persuasion is that the latter respects the autonomy of the will of the
other. Only persuasive authority can genuinely foster freedom. This is the
authority that God exercises over us and in so doing, God respects the freedom
and dignity of man.
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The problem of the authority of God is the problem of the freedom of man
precisely because sin springs from human freedom. God did not make man do
evil; man did it of his own free will. It is when we find human freedom leading
us into evil, as it did in the case of Nazi Germany, that we immediately invoke
an arbitrary God who denies freedom to man. Thus, we seek to escape
responsibility by laying down our freedom and making God a slave driver.
Behind this problem lies a deep failure - the failure to understand man as made
in the image of God. No adequate solution to the problems of authority and
freedom can be discerned until the meaning of the Image is more fully grasped.
Indeed, there is no way of coming to terms with the freedom of man except by
treating it in relation to the authority and freedom of God himself. To
presuppose a measure of conflict between God's grace or sovereignty and man's
freedom is a common basic error.
For if man is created in the image of God, then he should possess all that is
good in God, and among these the most important, freedom from necessity,
independence and sovereignty. If man is in the image of God, then either God
must be mortal and sinful like us, or else we have to become immortal, free and
holy like him. There is no other alternative. Consequently, the negation of the
liberty of man is the negation of the freedom of God. If man does not become
free, God would be bound. The liberation of man thus becomes urgent and
imperative.
Evil is the consequence of a free man's sinful decisions and actions. Evil does
not belong to man's nature, because man was created with a nature and all that
God created is intrinsically 'very good.' Human freedom opened the door to
evil, and evil became lodged within human existence. Evil cannot be eradicated
without the existence of the grace of God. Sin has gained mastery over man and
man has become a slave of evil, unable to liberate himself.
But this liberation, or salvation, of man is not to be understood merely in a
negative sense, as deliverance from sin and death. Both sin (moral evil) and
death (the wages of sin) are enemies to be vanquished. Man must become
capable of doing good and of striving for immortality.
St Gregory of Nyssa (c.330-c.395) boldly said that evil is an element in the
arena of human existence which can enhance human freedom. True freedom
comes not merely in the negative struggle against evil, but in the heroic and
worshipful process of striving to create the good in every situation. The fact
that evil exists not only as the enemy of good, but also as an impostor of
goodness (such as pleasure, comfort, security, glory, honour, power, etc) is a
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guarantee that our choice of good is a genuine act of freedom. That is, that the
good is chosen in a strenuous mood, in the face of great difficulty, rather than by
easy habit where no decision or choice is required.
Evil can thus help the growth of true humanity in freedom, by demanding
difficult and strenuous choices from us - to choose the good in situations where
it is much easier to choose evil. It is in the struggle against evil that man
develops true freedom. Evil is a power, sly, deceptive, dishonest to the core.
One has to be very careful to see that it does not deceive us and enslave us
unawares. But as man grows in love, wisdom and power, more conformed to
the freedom of God, then he becomes truly free, and free to bring evil to an end.
Without the aid of structures, Christian communities cannot articulate authentic
human freedom. Unstructured life cannot produce freedom, but structure itself
has to be discardable, and one has to be fully vigilant not to be enslaved by it. A
structure is something which we must create in order to train ourselves. But we
must also be capable of destroying what we create when it becomes a threat to
us.
There is a general kind of form for this structure which is suggested by the
tradition of the Church. This is where authority comes in - to suggest forms for
structures, and thus to keep us within the structures.
The Scriptures, the Eucharist, the Fathers of the Church, the Church's liturgical
year, the fasts and offices proposed by the Church, the decisions of the Councils
- all these are raw materials for building structures of authentic existence. Their
authority should never become tyrannical. But without them, we may be
experimenting in ways that destroy true freedom and authentic humanity.
There is no need to bewail the breakdown of freedom in our own time. This is
the only way we can be made to understand and accept authority as a form of
freedom. Finally, there is no necessary conflict between freedom and structure.
Authority can take many forms, as we have seen. But all of them are only
protective frames for the growth of freedom. Freedom should outgrow all
structures. For the full-grown saint, neither the scriptures nor the traditions are
any longer necessary. But during his period of growth to sainthood they were
necessary. He might have made shipwreck of his life if he had experimented
entirely on his own.
Authority, whether it be of a book, a spiritual superior, or a community, belongs
to the early years of the growth of human freedom. We cannot easily dispense
with them and expect man to grow to the fullness of his freedom. Even young

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people who are most in revolt have a nostalgia for authentic authority, and they
need this authority.
But in the end, all authority is discardable. It is like the wooden frame
necessary for making reinforced concrete. Without that frame the concrete
cannot take the desired shape. But the frame itself has no value once the
concrete has solidified and set beyond danger of distortion.
Man is born to be king. His vocation is to rule, not to be ruled, ultimately. He
is in the image of God. But he must grow to that image in freedom, that is, by
developing freedom through wise use of the structures of authority. The
structures should, however, never be allowed to enslave him, or distort love and
justice in the community.
Man is a quest for freedom: freedom that goes on questing throughout history.
For He who was truly free entered that history 2000 years ago and has started a
work which he will also bring to completion. The march of freedom is
ceaseless for it is the march towards the being of Him Who created the world in
freedom, Who dwells in unapproachable light, Who is Freedom.

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