“If the reality that we seek to explore, and of which we are a part, is the work of a personal Creator, then authority resides in this one who is the Author. If, on the other hand, this reality is the result of processes within itself — if, for example, it is the outcome of a struggle for existence in which the strongest survives the rest then authority is simply one way of describing superior strength. Power and authority are one and the same. The Christian tradition maintains, of course, that the former is the case, that authority resides in the One who is the Author of all being. And because personal being can be known only insofar as the person chooses to reveal herself or himself, and cannot be known by the methods that are appropriate to the investigation of impersonal matters and processes, then authority, in this view, must rest on divine revelation. Modernity has declined to accept this authority. . . .

“For the purpose of this volume I am assuming that in speaking of ‘modernity’ we are speaking about the way of thinking that came to dominance in the intellectual leadership of Europe — though with roots running far back into the past — a way of thinking that rejected appeals to revelation and tradition as sources of authority except insofar as they could justify themselves before the bar of individual reason and conscience. Reliable, and therefore authoritative, knowledge of truth is not, in the view of modernity, to be found in faith in alleged revelation, but by observation of the facts and rigorously critical reflection on them. Typical of modernity is John Locke’s definition of faith: ‘a persuasion of our own minds short of knowledge’ (cited by Polanyi [Personal Knowledge] 1958, 266). This may be contrasted with the famous slogan of Augustine: credo ut intelligam; I believe in order that I may know. Here faith is understood not as an alternative to knowledge but as the pathway to knowledge. We do not come to know anything except by believing something. We have to begin by believing the evidence of our senses, the veracity of our teachers, and the validity of the tradition into which we are seeking apprenticeship. All of these things may have to be questioned at some stage. But we can question them only on the basis of things that we have come to know as the result of this kind of apprenticeship. We do not begin to acquire any kind of knowledge by laying down in advance the conditions upon which we will accept any evidence. We have to begin with an openness to a reality greater than ourselves in relation to which we are not judges but pupils. . . .

“What are we to make of this demand for a proof of the existence of God that assumes that there are grounds more trustworthy than those given in God’s own self-revelation? If God really exists, is there not something ridiculous about one of God’s creatures taking a stance that, in effect, says to God: ‘I can demonstrate your existence without relying on what you tell me about yourself.’ . . .

“It is now clear that Descartes’ method, which has dominated subsequent European thought, has in it the seeds of its own destruction. The corollary of that method was the famous ‘critical principle.’ Reliable knowledge is that which can be achieved by starting from indubitable certainties and building on them arguments that have the clarity and indubitability of mathematics. Reliable knowledge, for which the word science is henceforth used, has mathematics as its working language. What falls outside the scope of this certain knowledge is to be doubted.”

— from Lesslie Newbigin, Truth and Authority in Modernity (Trinity Press, 1996)

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