A Reconsideration of Religious Authority in C hristian Theology

As S tanley C avell has critiqued C hristianity for displacing authority from the individual to somewhere beyond critical assessment, so several C hristian theologians have also turned to W ittgenstein to justify just such displacement. This article suggests that both offer theologically impoverished and historically inattentive accounts of authority. It aims instead to sketch five moments in the C hristian tradition to suggest five ways of naming the intimacy of religious authority with individual critical assessment. Such intimacy is then theologically described through the doctrinal loci of creation and incarnation, which generate a picture of authority surprisingly near to one C avell might want to celebrate.