Authority

John McWhorter examines the reasons behind the decline in articulate speech and writing in the late 20th century, and the implications of this change across many areas of culture. (55 minutes)

Michael Hanby addresses a confusion at the heart of our current cultural crisis: a conflation of the concepts of authority and power. (52 minutes)

Lesslie Newbigin on authority and the Author of all being

Douglas Farrow examines the relation between “the kings of the earth” and the law of Christ, particularly when governmental law is exercised without reference to natural or divine law. (49 minutes)

W. Bradford Littlejohn summarizes the definitions of liberty offered by Richard Bauckham and Oliver O’Donovan

Brad Littlejohn builds a case for the idea that authority makes free action possible, illustrating how that occurs within the forms of political and epistemic authority, properly understood and wisely practiced. (45 minutes)

In the second of two lectures given by D. C. Schindler, he explores the nature of authority with reference to the transcendental dance of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. (60 minutes)

In this lecture presented at the CiRCE Institute national conference, D. C. Schindler presents a metaphysical description of what symbols are. (54 Minutes)

Authority, argues David Koyzis, is an aspect of the image of God, exercised to fulfill human vocations. (30 minutes)

Victor Lee Austin describes the ways in which human action is free and flourishing when authority is active and honored. (26 minutes)

Nathan O. Hatch on the DIY spirit of early American Christianity

Augusto Del Noce on the greatest modern reversal

Oliver O’Donovan on the necessity of situating all political authority within redemptive history

Jean Bethke Elshtain summarizes mid-twentieth-century concerns of Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) about the growing suspicion about the very idea of authority. (41 minutes)

John Patrick Diggins on Max Weber’s struggle to imagine social order without authority

Sociologist Richard Stivers explains the confused understanding in modern culture about equality, individualism, and authority. (16 minutes)

Writing in the mid-1990s, Alan Ehrenhalt reflects on the relationship between authority and community

Victor Lee Austin: “All authority comes from God and no thing, no being, no realm is outside his dominion.”

Alan Ehrenhalt argues that real community can only be sustained when three things are assumed: the goodness of limits, the necessity of authority, and the reality of personal sin. (13 minutes)

Oliver O’Donovan on how authority and language connect us with reality and thus sustain community