Spiritual authority belongs to the Bible, churches, and pastors. It’s the authority that Scripture asserts over every person’s life, particularly as Scripture is mediated and applied in the lives of believers by churches and pastors. To be sure, Christians do not depend directly on church authority for their salvation. For that reason, they should remain ever vigilant and be willing to defy a church when it departs from the Word of God.

Several years ago, a pastor friend became convinced that, when leading the Lord’s Supper, he should “fence the Table.” If you don’t know that phrase, it refers to the practice of saying who should and should not receive the Lord’s Supper—putting a fence around the Supper, as it were, leaving some people inside the fence and other people outside of it. He wanted to lead the Supper by saying something like,

If you are a member of this church or a baptized member of some other church that preaches the same gospel you heard here this morning, you are welcome to take the Supper with us. If, however, you are not a follower of Jesus Christ in committed fellowship with his church, we’re very grateful you’re here. You are most welcome. Thank you for coming. We’d encourage you to let the elements pass by and use this time to pray and to reflect on what you heard in the sermon.

To put my own cards on the table, I think this is good language. My fellow elders and I offer some version of it every Sunday when we lead the Lord’s Supper. Yet my friend’s fellow elders were uncomfortable with that language. It felt too restrictive to them. If I had to guess, many Christians today would feel uncomfortable with such a verbal fence, too.

I offer the vignette to raise the question of spiritual authority, which, no doubt, is a contentious issue—and the topic of this essay. To fence the Lord’s Table is to assert one very concrete type of spiritual authority, which is church authority. That particular assertion of spiritual authority creates the possibility of excluding a sincere Christian from the Lord’s Table because he is not a church member somewhere. It risks pitting an individual’s personal conviction against a church. Jesus might say about the Supper, “Do this in remembrance of me.” But fencing the Table is a way of saying, “Some of you should not do this in remembrance of him.” And, I assume, that might sound shocking to some Christians today.

Yet suppose I switch around the story. Instead of pitting the individual against the church, I pit the church against the state. In a debate over whether elected officials should be required to take religious assessment tests, James Madison argued that governors and legislatures should not make these kinds of theological judgments. Such authority belongs to religious bodies. His speech notes read, “What edition, Hebrew, Septuagint, or Vulgate? What copy—what translation … What books canonical, what apochryphal? The papists holding to be the former what Protestants the latter, the Lutherans the latter what other Protestant and papists the former.”¹ Madison’s point was that politicians are not competent to answer sensitive theological questions. Leave such judgments to the churches.

In other words, when the conversation pits spiritual authority against the civil, many if not most Christians will quickly side with Madison and advocate for some form of spiritual or even church authority. Something like spiritual authority or church authority must exist. We don’t want the state storming all over the church’s domain.

So what exactly is spiritual authority?

What Is Authority?

Before answering that question, it will serve our purpose to ask what authority is generally.

Authorization To Exercise Power

Authority is not power. Power pertains to capacity or ability. To say someone has the power to solve an algebra problem or renovate a kitchen is to say that person has the ability to do those things. Authority, on the other hand, is an authorization. It is a moral license to exercise power. A person might have the power to renovate a kitchen, but he doesn’t have the authority to do so until a county inspection’s office licenses him to do so. The topic of authority, in other words, ushers conversations about power into a moral register, moving from what someone can do to what someone may, should, or must do, depending on one’s position.

All authority possesses both a basis and scope. An authority’s basis is the source of that moral license. Who is the authorizer? Who makes an authority figure’s rule morally right, such that he or she has the right to say, “You must,” and anyone under that command is morally bound to obey the must? An authority’s scope is the area of its work, including its purpose, prerogatives, responsibilities, and limits or jurisdiction. For instance, legal authority clearly possesses a different scope than medical authority.

God’s Intrinsic Authority

Authority first shows up in the Bible in Genesis 1 and 2 with God. Uniquely, God is the basis for his own authority. He possesses an intrinsic right to rule. The divine creator is the divine ruler. As with a playwright and his plays, so with God and all creation. The author, by definition, possesses all author-ity. To hate authority is to hate God, because essential to God’s being is the intrinsic right to create and to rule.

God alone, therefore, possesses absolute authority. There is no voter recall or judicial review for God. Said King Nebuchadnezzar, “No one can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Dan 4:35 ).²

Uniquely also, God’s authority is comprehensive in scope. It covers all of life and all the universe since he created all of it. No plant or star, no word or deed, no hope or desire, neither the future nor the past, is outside of his jurisdiction. He gives purpose and significance to everything and imbues them with their moral value. He declares what’s right and wrong universally and eternally, and he does whatever he pleases (Ps 115:3 ).

Humanity’s Delegated Authority

Yet not only is God’s authority absolute and comprehensive, it is generous. He uses his rule to authorize rule in us. He delegates. He created humanity in his image and told us to multiply and fill, to subdue and exercise dominion (Gen 1:28 ).

I’ve heard Christians say that authority is a “necessary evil.” Apparently, they forgot these opening chapters of Scripture, as well as Psalm 8, which looks back on these chapters and marvels that God crowned every human being with glory and honor and put all things under his feet. God created human beings to rule.

Ruling—exercising authority—plays a central role in imaging or representing him. We image the divine ruler by ruling. This applies to every person ever born: from a father to a sister to a congressman to the homeless man one steps over on the way to work. Every one of them God created to rule and exercise dominion over some plot of earth.

These facts should cause us to praise. God could have ruled the universe far more effectively all alone. Yet, like a father asking his son to build a rocking chair with him, so the Lord of glory created humanity and said, “I want you to share my rule with me as well as all the glory that goes with it.” So the psalmist exclaims, “What is man that you are mindful of him!” (Ps 8:4 ).

Ruling by Submitting

Yet the Lord’s authorization of Adam and Eve came with a crucial qualification: As you rule, you must obey me. Human authority is neither absolute nor comprehensive. It’s always relative to the assignments God gives and the boundaries or jurisdictions he establishes. He’s like a father teaching his daughter to drive, as I’ve now done three times: “I’ll teach you to drive, but you must listen to me. Do exactly what I say.”

Humanity learns to rule by submitting. For a human being, authority and submission are two sides of the same coin. Human authority is never intrinsic to us, as it is with God. It is never something a human being simply is. It is something that must be given by an authorizing agent.³ It is always a gift, an office we can only step into.

Plus, that office—whether pastor, policeman, parent, parliamentarian, pilot, or toll booth operator—must always remain in submission to some other authority; namely, whoever authorized it. This was true of Israel’s king (Deut 17). More profoundly, it proved true of the incarnate Son. Jesus only did what the divine Father told him to do (John 5:19 , 30 ; 12:49 ) and so proved himself worthy of all authority in heaven and earth (Matt 28:18 ).

Good & Bad Authority

Keeping all these lessons about what authority is in mind, we can distinguish between good and bad forms of authority.

• Good authority creates life, while bad authority harms and steals it.
• Good authority stays in its lanes, while bad authority does not.
• Good authority seeks wisdom, while bad authority trusts only itself.
• Good authority makes itself vulnerable and absorbs whatever costs it can, while bad authority only imposes costs on others.
• Good authority submits to a higher authority, while bad authority rejects whatever rules, purposes, or boundaries the authorizing agent imposes.

Bad authority, in that regard, is self-generated, self-focused, and narcissistic. Never place a person in a position of authority, in other words, if he or she doesn’t know how to submit.⁴

Spiritual Authority & Institutionalism

If authority is an authorization—a moral license to exercise power—what is spiritual authority?

Authority as Institutionally Conferred

Before answering that, consider as a comparison what people mean when they refer to “medical” authority or “legal” authority. In both cases, the adjective speaks to the scope and the basis of that authority. To say a doctor possesses medical authority means he is authorized to address medical matters—that is the scope of his authority. And it means that his authority depends upon a medically recognized and agreed-upon basis, such as licensure by the American Medical Association, as well as the legal framework created by a host of public health laws. Likewise, to say lawyers and judges possess legal authority mean they are authorized to take legal actions (that’s the scope) by virtue of their licensure by a state bar, as well as by the larger framework of constitutions, statues, administrative agency regulations, and the precedents established by various court decisions (that’s the basis).

Furthermore, notice that in both examples the basis and scope of authority depends upon a publicly recognized institutional framework. Why is that important? Remember what authority is: a moral license or right to exercise power. A moral license cannot be self-manufactured. We cannot confer moral prerogatives upon ourselves. Only delusional dictators, postmodern philosophers, and rambunctious toddlers believe otherwise, all of whom happily confer moral authority upon themselves whenever they please. Such is the way of atomistic individualism. Rather, every legitimate authority—whether the adjective out front is medical, legal, civil, workplace, parental, academic, or spiritual—must possesses a moral basis, and that moral basis must be conferred.

Typically, this conferral—or authorization—occurs through a publicly recognizable and recognized rule structure, which is what an institution is: a rule structure. Such institutions or rule structures establish the terms, responsibilities, rights, and limits of any given authority—its scope. Returning to the example of medical authority, federal statutes create a national medical association, which in turn grants licensure to hospitals and doctors. So with state bar associations and lawyers.

To speak of any authority outside of an institutional framework, in other words, turns that authority into something unbound, unrestricted, unchecked, uncontrollable. It treats that authority as narcissistically self-generated, making it profoundly—here’s one more “un” word—unsafe.

Today’s Anti-Institutionalism

Turning to the topic of spiritual authority, then, the first matter worthy of our attention is our Western context and society’s widespread anti-institutional impulses.

We call ourselves “spiritual, not religious”; meaning, we want to appeal to spiritual realities, but we’re reluctant to institutionalize them by subjecting them to a so-called religious authority. Ask the average Western citizen about any spiritual authorities in his or her life, and chances are you will hear the name of a favorite wellness author, a yoga instructor, or a talk show host like Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey herself speaks for many when she remarks, “I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything.”⁵ Notice that the institution of the “church” is entirely subjectivized and individualized in her rendering.

The Christian version of the anti-institutional “spiritual, not religious” mantra is something like, “I love Jesus, but not the church.”⁶ We, too, like spiritual-sounding language, such as talk of a personal relationship with Jesus. But clunky institutional topics like church membership, church discipline, or fencing the Table can feel unspiritual and legalistic to us.

In my experience of teaching church leaders for two decades, even the average church leader has difficulty explaining church authority or pastoral authority. Ask about either and they’ll sheepishly offer, “The authority to teach?” Follow up the first question with a second: “So what’s the difference between a Christian friend teaching you the Bible on a weeknight and the pastor teaching it on Sunday? Don’t both moments depend on the authority of the Bible itself?” They’ll respond with a blank face. Biblical authority, in other words, Christians understand. But pastoral authority and church authority? Are they something different?

Contemporary Definitions of Spiritual Authority

When we turn to formal Christian definitions of “spiritual authority,” these same anti-institutional, individualistic instincts show up. No mention will be made of church structures.

One Christian author defines spiritual authority as “the God-given right to receive and use God’s power that flows from the indwelling Holy Spirit.”⁷ His definition sounds similar to Winfrey’s: “I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything.” The only difference is the Christian author names the Holy Spirit. His definition rightly points to the divine basis for this so-called spiritual authority, but he leaves it to every individual to define for him- or herself what the scope of that authority might be, based on a subjective sense of God’s power within. Authority is not an office with rights, responsibilities, and limits that are imposed upon a leader, but a kind of charismatic power. The risk, of course, is that that charismatic power and its claims become self-defining. Spiritual authority starts to look like a baptized version of what Alisdair MacIntyre labels emotivism or Carl Trueman calls individual expressivism.

Here’s another example from another Christian author on this topic. Notice how he explicitly denies the institutional dynamic:

Spiritual authority, unlike secular authority, is not rooted in position. An officer in the army or the president of a corporation has authority by virtue of his or her office. Spiritual authority, however (even though it may be associated with an office in the church, or one’s position as a parent), is actually rooted in one’s gift. Paul relied on “the authority the Lord gave me” (13:10) in his dealings with the Corinthians.⁸

First, this author creates a false antithesis between gift and office, even though an office is a gift. Second, he ignores the fact that Paul occupied a distinct, non-repeatable, non-universal office—the office of apostle, which, ironically, Paul calls a gift (Eph 4:8 , 11 ). Third, by locating authority in one’s internal gift and not in a churchly office, this author effectively subjectivizes authority. He turns it into a passion and a demand which one soul unilaterally imposes upon the world, like the obstreperous young men I knew in seminary who declared themselves “called” into ministry by the Holy Spirit and were unwilling to be gainsaid by their elders.

Historical Views of Spiritual Authority

Meanwhile, tackling the topic of spiritual authority in the history of the Christian church yields a different picture.

Spiritual Authority in the Ancient & Medieval Church

The exact phrase “spiritual authority” is not common,⁹ but the concept is—with two differences. First, the historical discussions tie spiritual authority to an institutional framing, as with phrases like “ecclesiastical authority” or “priestly authority.” Second and relatedly, the historical conversation concerns the relationship between the government and the church, not the relationship between the church and the individual, as in the discussion concerning anti-institutionalism above.

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