Authority, Part III

As we have seen, authority in the Orthodox Church is (1) internal rather than external and (2) not imposed upon us. It is internal because it comes from the Holy Spirit who makes His home in the Church and deep within each Christian. It is not imposed because it wells up from inside us, where the Holy Spirit lives. Therefore, although the Holy Spirit is the Authority, not ourselves, nevertheless, it feels to us as if it came from ourselves, from our own hearts, as indeed, in a sense, it does, given that our hearts are no longer separate from Christ’s.

It is precisely because this Authority is not imposed upon us from without that it is the strongest and surest authority there could possibly be. Because it appears to us as the conviction of our own heart (and is), we do not question it, much less debate it, the way people debate an external authority such as the Bible or the pope. Because it springs up from the depths of our being where the Holy Spirit is, we cannot rebel against it without rebelling against our own selves. (That doesn’t stop us from trying, but at least we do recognize that when we sin, we are tearing our very selves apart!) And because this authority is not imposed upon us, we have it in total freedom.

External authorities, if you will pardon the tautology, cannot rule this way, from the inside of our own hearts. Therefore, those who promote such authorities as the pope or the Bible or any other external thing, rely upon fear and guilt to enforce their authority. Hence, they develop systems of rules and threats, of edicts and "church courts", in short, juridical systems. (That is where the juridical distortions all come from, at root.)

But the Holy Spirit in the Church, ruling sweetly and directly and from within, is the perfection of Authority. He is Authority as it should be, and in truth is.

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