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QUOTES - AUTHORITY

The problem of authority is the most fundamental problem that the Christian Church ever faces. This is because Christianity is built on truth; that is to say, on the content of a divine revelation (J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God).

Those who disagree as to the principle of authority and, in consequence, as to the right method in theology, can reach no significant agreement on anything else (J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God).

Statements that are not absolutely true and reliable could not be absolutely authoritative (J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and the Word of God).

He who rejects the Biblical view of Scripture, no matter how much it may be disguised, has set up the human mind as an arbiter to decide how the Bible is to be regarded (E. J. Young, Thy Word is Truth).

The Bible is authoritative, therefore, whether there is any Divine-human encounter or not. The Bible is authoritative whether or not its message is borne home to me in compelling power. It is authoritative whether I believe it or not; whether I believe in Jesus Christ or not. The Bible, according to the Christian position, is authoritative in itself; its authority resides in the fact that it is the Word of God  (E. J. Young, Thy Word is Truth).

A return to the Bible is the greatest need of the day. Unless the Church turns to this authoritative Word of the sovereign God as—let us say it boldly—an external authority; unless the Church is willing to hear the Word of God in the one place where that Word may be heard, she will soon cease to be the Church of the living God (E. J. Young, Thy Word is Truth).

If the Bible is not authoritative, then its Author also lacks authority and credibility (Michael Scott Horton, Mission Accomplished).

The real authority of the Bible is not the scholarly exegesis of the text, open only to an elite, but the Word that issues forth when the Spirit takes the Word and renders it the living voice of the Lord. Therefore, it is not a text we can master through techniques but a text that wants to master us (C. Pinnock, The Scripture Principle).

The objective Word, the written Scripture, together with the Subjective word, the inner illumination and conviction of the Holy Spirit, constitutes authority for the Christian (Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology).

The word of Scripture is not the final court of appeal, since Jesus Christ Himself alone is this ultimate authority; but even while we examine the doctrine of Scripture, we remain within the Scriptures not, it is true, as an authority, but as the source of all that truth which possesses absolute authority (Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God).

Authority, in religion, means Divine Authority. To rest one's faith on authority means that one believes divine truth to have been communicated to mankind unmistakably and through a reliable medium (E. P. Dickie, God is Light).


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