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Storm Clouds of Religious Defiance: The Crisis of Authority
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15326 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1989 |
5,186 Words |
| Author
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Carl F.H. Henry
Carl F.H. Henry, an evangelical theologian, is the author of
more than thirty books, among them The Uneasy Conscience of
Modern Fundamentalism and the six-volume work God, Revelation,
and Authority. |
The defiant head winds of human autonomy are sweeping over much of contemporary life with a despite for authority unmatched by that of earlier generations in scope and intensity. On virtually every front, authority now faces scornful challenges, not least of all in the arena of religion.
The rejection of religious authority is especially significant because, as Thomas Molnar remarks, "Religious [devine] authority is the prototype of all authority." Not all world religions acknowledge a personal God, but all nonetheless claim divine origin and authority.
Conventionally, the West has considered the God of the Bible as the ultimate authority over human life and has at the same time viewed him as the source and guarantor of human freedom. Today's reining naturalism, however, rejects both these assumptions. The contemporary humanist Paul Kurtz urges us to "weed out permanently the idea of God." Uncompromisingly hostile to the supernatural, secular humanism--now often depicted as the "covert metaphysics" of modern liberal learning--disavows a transcendent deity as promotive of an arbitrary or despotic authority and as an intolerable barrier to human freedom.
Upon the outcome of this conflict over deity, authority, and autonomy hinges the future of Western civilization. John Locke (1632-1704) and Freidrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) perceived better than many recent philosophers that a distinctive connection prevails between the reality of God and the nature of Western society. Western culture, Locke emphasized, rests on theistic belief, and atheism threatens its very survival. Nietzsche contended that "God is dead" and that this divine
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