AUTHORITY

AUTHORITY is a constant and pervasive phenomenon in the history of religions. One often speaks of traditional authority, scriptural authority, ecclesiastical authority, or imperial authority based on religious claims. As legitimate power to require and receive submission and obedience, it is found in primitive and archaic religions as well as in founded religions wherever the question of order is involved. At different stages of history, a variety of religions have contributed to the creation and maintenance of order by providing the necessary sources of authority. These sources are diverse, but the following may be counted among the major ones: (1) persons, usually classified into various types of religious leadership such as kings, founders of religions, and other leaders of religious communities, (2) sacred writings, (3) traditions, oral and/or written, constituting doctrinal truths and ethical precepts, (4) religious communities with a priesthood and sacramental rites, and (5) personal experience. The question of the legitimacy of this or that authority has been a cause of tension and conflict in and between individual religions, for any authority recognized as legitimate must be respected and placed in proper order, while a rejected authority must be combated.

Authority in Primitive Religions

Among many primitive peoples authority is embodied in orally transmitted traditions of the tribal community. Oral traditions reign supreme, imposing a binding authority on the tribal community in which they are preserved. Especially authoritative are myths, as distinguished from legends and fables. Myth carries authority in primitive society for at least three reasons. First, myth is a "true" story, never a fable, a fiction, or a childish fancy tale. Second, it is a sacred story narrating the acts of the gods and other divine beings that took place in the beginning of mythical time. What occurred—in the words of Mircea Eliade—in illo tempore ("at this time") represents for the primitive peoples a reality higher and greater than any kind of historical reality known to them. Myth is authoritative because it reveals the "absolute truth" of the events at the beginning of mythical time. And third, this transhistorical reality that occurred in illo tempore serves as the exemplary model for the activities of man in primitive society. According to Bronislaw Malinowski, myth functions as the "charter" of established social facts, including religious beliefs and practices, morality, and everyday rules of conduct.

This divinely sanctioned authoritative tradition is transmitted orally from elders to adolescents during rites of initiation. The candidate for these rites undergoes the process of symbolic death and rebirth, and it is precisely in this process of spiritual regeneration that he receives knowledge about the secrets of the tribal tradition: the myths serve as bearers of traditional authority; they tell of the gods and the origin of the world, the names of the gods, the role and origin of the initiation ceremonies, and, of course, codes of morality and rules of conduct. Thus the initiate comes to obtain gnosis, true authoritative knowledge, essential for his life as a human being, that is, knowledge about the higher and greater reality that sustains the order of the primitive society in which he lives.

Authority in Archaic Religions

The rise of the great civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China during the third and second millennia bce marked a significant turning point in history. All these civilizations originated and unfolded along rivers. Irrigation systems had to be worked out in order to control nature and produce a good harvest, and this necessity called for the formation of the efficient administrative organization, which was accompanied by the institution of kingship. A system of writing was a sine qua non for this new development.

Under these circumstances, the authority of the oral traditions, which had characterized primitive culture, tended to be replaced by that of written traditions embodied in literary texts. These texts were primarily the creation of royal courts and temples, and those who were engaged in the interpretation and transmission of the texts were scribes and priests. They were professional carriers of the written traditions. In China, for example, government officials were thought to possess magical charisma by virtue of their familiarity with the Confucian classics. These officials made the study, interpretation, and transmission of the words of the master Confucius the focal point of their efforts. Their vision was preeminently political in orientation, and eventually they achieved an extraordinarily stable social order. In India, brahmans occupied the authoritative status in society on account of their esoteric knowledge of the Vedas, the Brahmanas, and the many other sacred writings. Not only in China and India, but also in the ancient Near East, the scribes and priests who served as guardians of the written traditions were the chief religious figures vested with authority.

It was the king, however, who exercised supreme authority. In archaic civilizations, the state functioned as a religious community, as a cosmos, and the king was the person supremely responsible for the maintenance of this cosmic order. Imperial authority was sustained by both the kingship ideology, which was grounded in myths, and the celebration of rituals, especially the New Year festival. The ideology used for the legitimation of imperial authority was different from one region to another; that is, the nature of the king's person and his role in the given cosmic order was variously conceived in different societies, depending on their religious outlook on life and the universe.

In ancient Egypt, for example, the king was believed to be divine in essence. His coronation, usually celebrated at the beginning of a new year, signified not an apotheosis but an epiphany, or self-manifestation, of the god. As long as he ruled, the king was identified with the god Horus; in fact, he was Horus incarnate in his earthly existence, but upon his death he was mystically assimilated to Osiris, the god of rebirth and immortality. Egyptian kingship was also intimately associated with the theme of cosmogony. The dais, for example, on which the new king was seated symbolized the hill of sand, the "first" land, which, according to the Egyptian cosmogonic myth, emerged out of the primeval ocean at the time of beginning. Ascension to the royal throne represented a ritual reenactment of the emergence of a cosmos out of chaos, the primeval waters. Thus, the king repeated the act of creation at his enthronement.

In Mesopotamia, too, the king played a part of vital importance in the well-being of the cosmic order. The Enuma elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, was recited and reenacted during the New Year festival. The primary purpose of this recitation and ritual reenactment of the cosmogonic myth was the renewal and regeneration of the cosmos; the king, representing the god Marduk on earth, repeated what took place at the time of absolute beginning, as narrated in the myth. However, the king in ancient Mesopotamia was generally not conceived as a divine being. More properly, he was viewed as divine only while he participated in the ceremonies as representative of Marduk. He was essentially a mortal being, not divine; he represented the gods on earth as their "chosen servant."

The king in ancient China was called the "unique man" as well as the "Son of Heaven" (tʿien-tzu ). The Son of Heaven was one who received the mandate of Heaven (tʿien-ming ). This notion of the mandate of Heaven implied that imperial authority could not become a permanent possession of the ruler, that Heaven had the complete freedom to confer or withdraw his mandate, just as in ancient Israel God was absolutely free to confer or withdraw his charisma or "gift of grace" from the ruler on earth. The Chinese Son of Heaven obviously had nothing to do with the genealogical concept of kingship, such as in ancient Egypt or Japan, where the king was considered the descendant or incarnation of a certain god; he was simply the earthly representative of Heaven, or heavenly will.

The Chinese king was also conceived as the unique man, one supremely responsible for the maintenance of the cosmic order. He maintained the cosmic order by assisting Heaven in the regulation and harmonization of the yin and yang principles, as best exemplified by his performance in the ceremonial building, the ming-tang. This structure was an imago mundi ("image of the universe"); it had a square plan symbolizing the earth and was covered by a circular roof, symbolic of the sky. Other features, such as the building's twelve rooms, reflected the cycle of the year. Thus the whole structure was a vast space-and-time diagram, a microcosm. Here the king observed the rituals of worship and sacrifice to Heaven and Earth and myriad spirits in order to secure their favor for the entire universe. When he was to inaugurate the seasons and months, he placed himself in an appropriate room of the building: in the second month of the spring, for example, the king took his position facing east, clothed in green, the color of spring and the east, while in the fall he faced west, clothed in a white ceremonial dress appropriate for the fall and the west. Thus, the king assisted Heaven in guaranteeing the ascendancy of the yang principle in spring, while in the fall he helped the rise of the yin principle. In essence, the Chinese king was expected to be the harmonizer of the cosmic movement.

Authority in Founded Religions

The emergence of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam is an innovation in the history of religions. While in primitive and archaic religions authority is embodied in the sacred kings as well as in oral or written traditions of the tribal community and state, in these founded religions authority is ultimately derived from the founder of a new community of faith, and/or his religious experience. Consequently, the founded religion, whatever it is, develops its own structure of authority and authoritative tradition, which is distinctively different from that in primitive and archaic religions.

Buddhism

The Buddha's authority was grounded in his conviction that he had discovered the dharma, the universal law of existence, through his personal experience of enlightenment. He himself lived in accordance with it, and on his deathbed he urged his disciples to depend on it as the sole guiding principle of life.

But this truth was not self-evident; it was the truth taught and interpreted by the Buddha that his followers accepted. After his death his closest disciples assumed a new responsibility for the successful realization of the Buddhist ideal. Inevitably, important traditions emerged that were transmitted orally until they were put into writing in the first century bce. These authoritative oral traditions included the memories and interpretations of the Buddha's own teaching concerning the dharma and the rules of conduct, the Vinaya, which he had established for the regulation of the saṃgha, or Buddhist community.

However, there exists no single canon of scriptures that is universally recognized by all Buddhists. The development of such a canon was impossible because of the decentralized nature of the Buddhist community or the lack of a central ecclesiastical authority to determine orthodoxy. From the beginning of its history, Buddhism allowed its local monastic orders to function as autonomous, self-governing bodies in accordance with the teachings and disciplinary rules that they had inherited. As might be expected, the development of the autonomous monastic orders, or "schools," led to the rise of different versions of the canon without, however, invalidating the importance of the concept of canon or the theoretical unity of the Buddhist community as a whole.

Underneath all this evidence for a virtual absence of the canonical and ecclesiastical authority is the Buddha's insistence on the primacy of self-knowledge, the immediacy of experience, or the personal realization of truth. The canon of scriptures in Buddhism was generally authoritative in concept, but in practice it functioned meaningfully only on the level of particular monastic orders or schools. Moreover, the concept of canonicity itself was often in conflict with the Buddhist belief in the immediacy of the experience of enlightenment.

This general trend, away from the traditional scriptures and toward the exploration of new insights, wisdom, and interpretations, is more evident in Mahāyāna Buddhism, which arose in the first century ce, than in Theravāda, that is, Buddhism in more traditional forms, especially regarding the concepts of the Buddha and the dharma. The concept of the Buddha in Mahāyāna has changed so much that he is no longer simply the person who attained enlightenment in the sixth century bce, but is regarded as a self-manifestation in history of the dharmakāya, a cosmic principle immanent in all beings, the ground of all expressions of the eternal Buddha nature. The Buddha preaching on the Vulture Peak, as he does in Mahāyāna scriptures, is not a human teacher talking to a band of his disciples but a transhistorical being addressing himself to representatives of the whole universe. Mahāyāna scriptures purport to be ever-recurring revelations of the eternal universal principle (dharmakāya ) and tend to be dissociated from the tradition that is deeply rooted in the particular life of the historical Buddha. A scripture is considered useful insofar as it can lead one to the same religious experience that the Buddha himself had during his life. The implication is that scriptures can ultimately be dispensed with. This implication is most evident in Zen Buddhism, which claims to be based on a "special transmission outside the scriptures" and stresses only the immediate personal experience of kenshō ("seeing into one's true nature"), or enlightenment.

Christianity

During his public life of ministry, Jesus of Nazareth rejected the authority of the oral Torah in Judaism, which is often referred to in the New Testament as the "tradition of the fathers." For this he substituted his own authority as interpreter of the written Torah (the Mosaic Law), namely, the authority of the one who proclaimed, in word and deed, God's will as well as the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus thus presented himself as the ultimate source of the new traditions, which were to become authoritative for the emerging church or community of Christians.

After the resurrection of Jesus, his immediate disciples understood the meaning of his life, suffering, and death in the light of the Hebrew scriptures: Jesus was the Messiah (the Christ) and the fulfillment of God's promise. Naturally, the church assumed responsibility for the creation and transmission of the traditions concerning the words and deeds of Jesus Christ. For the primitive Christian community these traditions were the most appropriate and correct interpretations of the written Torah; they were, in effect, the oral Torah of Christianity. It was especially the apostles and Paul—eyewitnesses to the earthly life and to the resurrection of Jesus Christ—who played a vital role in the interpretation and transmission of the traditions, just as in Judaism scribes and rabbis made essential contributions to the transmission of the oral Torah. Here emerged the authoritative apostolic tradition, which was initially transmitted orally, then written down in the various literary forms, and finally codified by the church as the canon of the New Testament. This New Testament took its place beside the canon of the Old Testament. While Protestantism accords supreme authority to the combined Old and New Testament as the sum total of the apostolic tradition, distinguishing it from the postapostolic tradition, Catholicism asserts the ongoing tradition of the church as having equal authority with the apostolic tradition embodied in the scripture. For Catholics there is no fundamental opposition between scripture and tradition; they are manifestations of one and the same thing, the apostolic tradition.

The essence of the Roman Catholic church lies in its institutional character as the objective organ of salvation, which is embodied in tradition, sacraments (seven in number), and priesthood. The church stands for the eternal presence of Jesus Christ in history, and the papacy is based on the founder's explicit designation of Peter as the foundation rock of the church. Roman Catholics claim a direct succession of papal authority from Peter to the present pope, and this claim to legitimacy, which under the pope's sanction extends to the entire Roman Catholic priesthood, is a vital element in grounding the authority of the church. Sacraments are the objective and tangible channels through which God's grace is communicated to the faithful. The objectivism of Roman Catholicism is best exemplified in its interpretation of the Eucharist, namely, the theory of transubstantiation, officially proclaimed as doctrine in 1215. As to the teaching of the church, it is the magisterium (teaching authority) of the church, the pope, who determines the legitimate interpretation of scripture and tradition. From medieval times, membership in the Roman Catholic church has involved submission to papal authority. This is certainly a typical example of institutionalized charisma, and over the centuries it has proved its strength as a source of authority in the lives of its adherents.

Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism agree that the church possesses the divinely given infallible authority. Eastern Orthodoxy differs from Roman Catholicism, however, in that its church has no organ of infallibility; the quality of infallibility resides in the mystically conceived church itself, not in any fixed office like that of the Roman Catholic papacy.

The Protestant understanding of authority is inclined more or less toward subjectivism in contrast to the objectivism of medieval Christianity. The Protestant Reformation hinged upon two main principles of complementary importance: justification by faith and the authority of scripture.

The question that most preoccupied Martin Luther was soteriology, that is, the question of personal salvation and its certainty. According to Luther, man is justified before God by faith alone; the church with its priesthood, sacraments, and tradition can by no means guarantee man's salvation. Hence Luther reduced the sacraments to two, baptism and the Lord's Supper. While justification by faith is the "material" principle of the Reformation, scripture alone is its "formal" principle. For Luther, as well as for John Calvin, the Bible, not the church, is the final authority for Christian life. While Calvin in his practice of interpretation seems to accept particular words of the Bible as the revealed word of God, Luther distinguishes between the words of the Bible and the word that God speaks through them: the words of the Bible are the "cradle of Christ." Accordingly, Luther does not support the literal interpretation of the Bible, nor does he find the word of God equally in all its parts, but regards some as inferior in quality. The corollary of the two main principles of the Reformation is the theory concerning the priesthood of all believers: each and every individual is a priest to himself or herself and as such is to serve God by listening to the word of God within the words of the Bible. This emphasis on personal conscience constitutes a great innovation of the Reformation, but it has also opened the way for uncontrolled interpretations of the Bible as well as the proliferation of an ever-increasing number of Protestant denominations and small sects led by conscientious, "inspired" leaders.

Trends away from the Roman Catholic type of objectivism and toward subjectivism are even more evident in many sectarian Protestant communities. They insist on the importance of Bible study, prayer, and the personal experience of salvation and its certainty; and for members of these communities the ideas of sin, salvation, and faith in Jesus Christ assume an intense and vivid personal reality. One of the best examples of this Protestant emphasis is George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, also known as the Quakers. Fox organized a community of the faithful without priesthood or sacramental rites. He was convinced that true religion consisted not in the church or in the creeds, but in the personal experience of what he called illumination by the Holy Spirit; the source of final authority for him was the personal experience of the inner light.

Islam

For Muslims the Qurʾān is the immediate and complete revelation of God's message to mankind through Muḥammad. It is the heavenly book of revelation, the word of God par excellence. While controversies have raged among Muslims as to the sense in which this is true, that it is true has never been questioned. The Qurʾān for some Muslims is "created," but for the majority it is not a historical creation; just as the Torah in Judaism is of celestial origin, deriving from the time prior to the creation, the Qurʾān, although composed in Arabic, reflects its heavenly archetype. Thus the Qurʾān is "uncreated," not conditioned by time and history. The Qurʾān is unquestionably the supreme source of authority for the ummah, or Muslim community.

The Muslim community has also accepted the ḥadīth ("tradition," i.e., the record of the words and deeds) of the prophet Muḥammad as the normative authority for its beliefs and practices. While Muslims do not consider him the savior in the Christian sense of the word, they are firmly convinced that Muḥammad was divinely guided in the years after receiving the revelation; he is God's prophet and apostle and the perfect man, the exemplary model and spiritual guide for humanity. For Muslims, everything Muḥammad said and did during his life is worthy of study and imitation.

Still another tradition, which is accepted as authoritative by the orthodox Muslims (Sunnīs), is the ḥadīth of the first four caliphs. In his later years, when he was in Medina, Muḥammad attempted to build up a socioreligious community on the basis of Islamic principles, and after his death this ideal was carried on by his four immediate successors (caliphs), known as the ideal rulers. The Muslim community then was in need of detailed rules for ordering both its communal life and the life of its individual members. These rules of life, called sharīʿah, or Islamic law, are based on the interpretation of the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth s of Muḥammad and the first four caliphs who followed him.

Significantly, the caliph as head of the community had no pontifical or even priestly functions. His task was not to expound or to interpret the faith, but to serve as the guardian of the public order. The task of interpreting the Qurʾān and ḥadīth s and applying them to the actual life of the community was carried out by the ʿulamāʾ. They were not priests and claimed no priestly power or authority, but, on account of their learning in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth s, played an important role quite analogous to that of the Jewish rabbinate.

While the Sunnīs consider the ḥadīth concerning the first three caliphs as one of the sources of authority for Islam, the Shīʿīs have rejected it as such, because they view the three caliphs as illegal usurpers and recognize instead ʿAlī, Muḥammad's cousin and son-in-law, as the first caliph, or, more properly, the first imam. What underlies the Shīʿī contention is the belief that Muḥammad's personal charisma, which he received from God, is transmitted genealogically only in his family tradition. This view is remarkably different from the Sunnī view that Muḥammad's charisma is channeled through the office of caliph regardless of its occupant: while Sunnī orthodoxy is committed to the principle of institutional charisma, the Shīʿīs reject it and uphold the principle of hereditary charisma. Accordingly, the Shīʿīs have replaced the ḥadīth of the first three caliphs with the ḥadīth of the twelve imams.

In sharp contrast to the caliph, who has no legal authority, the imam is authorized to interpret the ḥaqīqah, or inner mysteries, which are hidden in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth s. He is endowed with such a spiritual gift because, through the chain of direct transmission, he has received from Muḥammad a body of gnosis, or esoteric knowledge. Consequently, the imam is charged with a power at once political and religious; he is one who rules the community with mercy and justice but who also interprets Islamic law and its inner meanings. Naturally, the Shīʿīs are persuaded that the final authority for Islam is in the hands of the imam himself. According to them, the last, or twelfth, imam, the so-called hidden imam, did not die but entered a prolonged "concealment." One day, so they believe, from that state of concealment he will emerge as the Mahdi ("expected one"), that is, the messiah. Until he comes, a group of leading lawyer-theologians, called mujtāhid s, will continue to exercise an extensive authority on matters of religion and law.

Tension between Religious and Secular Authorities

While tension between religious and secular authorities may be present in primitive and archaic cultures, it arises in its sharpest forms only after the emergence of the founded religion. Then it occurs between rival principles, each claiming universal supremacy, and only under particular cultural and historical circumstances.

Islam has rarely experienced tensions analogous to those between church and state in medieval Western Christendom because the Muslim community has been founded on the principle of theocracy, and a distinct ecclesiastical body powerful enough to challenge secular authorities has never existed.

Buddhism knows of no such tensions either, but for different reasons. While it succeeded in establishing a theocratic state in Tibet, in many other Asian countries it has been placed in a defensive position vis-à-vis the indigenous institution of sacral kingship and its ideology; the Buddhist community has either been headed by the king or indirectly put under control of the state. Consequently, it has been constantly exposed to the temptation of soliciting favor from secular authorities. It may be noted, in this connection, that Buddhism developed a theory for peaceful interdependence between its own community and the state: the ideal of the cakravartin, a righteous, universal king. Whereas the Buddha was depicted as a universal king in the spiritual domain, who set in motion of wheel of dharma, the cakravartin, essentially political in nature, was widely expected to appear as a universal king and to turn a wheel of dharma in the secular domain. The Buddhist community saw in Aśoka, the third emperor of the great Mauryan kingdom, the realization of the cakravartin ideal: he converted to Buddhism, supported its community, sent out missionaries, and governed people in accordance with the dharma. To the eyes of the Buddhists, the two wheels of dharma, one in the spiritual domain and the other in the secular, should go hand in hand. This theory, a kind of caesaropapism, has exerted enduring influences on Asian countries.

The Christian church in its early centuries had no ambition to stand against the Roman imperial authority. It desired only freedom from persecution. This whole situation was changed by the conversion of Constantine, in the fourth century, and by the subsequent spread of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. What emerged in the arena of church-state relations was caesaropapism. The Byzantine emperors transformed the church of the Eastern Empire into a state church closely dependent on the imperial government; these emperors claimed the right to control the church and decide any disputes that arose in the ecclesiastical sphere, and the prelates of Constantinople accepted their claims.

In the Western Empire the situation was different. All effective imperial power gradually declined during the early Middle Ages, and this resulted in the emergence of the popes as temporal governors of Rome and its surroundings. Moreover, they abandoned their old allegiance to the Byzantine emperors and formed a new alliance with the Frankish kings. The climax of this Frankish-papal alliance occurred with Leo III's coronation of Charlemagne as emperor of the Romans in 800; thus Leo established the precedent, followed through the Middle Ages, that papal coronation is essential to the making of an emperor, and in so doing he implanted the germ of the idea that empire is a gift to be bestowed by the papacy.

The king's office, however, was conceived to be as sacred as the papacy, a view supported by Old Testament texts; kings were regarded as the Lord's anointed, as ministers of God, and were hailed as vicars of Christ. As such, they aspired to supreme power, both spiritual and temporal. It soon became customary throughout Europe for kings to choose bishops; they gave them great fiefs and invested them with the ring and pastoral staff that symbolized episcopal office. This practice proved beneficial for the kings, but it was a radical departure from the sacred tradition of the church. A measure of this imperial power can be illustrated by an incident that occurred in 1046. When Henry III of Germany arrived in Rome for his imperial coronation, he found there three rival candidates for the papal throne, each claiming to be the rightful pope. Henry settled the issue in high-handed manner: he dismissed all three and installed his own choice. It seemed to Henry that he had as much right to appoint a bishop for Rome as for any other diocese in his territory, and as vicar of God he was also very much aware of his duty to appoint the best man available to such an important office.

The clash between papal theocracy and imperial theocracy became inevitable in 1073 when Hildebrand became Pope Gregory VII and asserted the church's independence from, and indeed its domination over, the imperial power embodied in Henry IV of Germany. Henry could not give up the right of appointing bishops without abandoning all hope of welding Germany into a unified monarchy, and Gregory could not acquiesce in the imperial claims, which included a claim to appoint the popes themselves. The Roman pontiff maintained that as God's vicar he possessed a direct authority—not only spiritual but also political—over all men and all their affairs in the Corpus Christianum. He even asserted in the Dictatus Papae, issued in 1075, that the pope could depose emperors. Henry then appointed a bishop of Milan and strengthened his position by summoning a council of German bishops, which accused Gregory of gross abuse of papal authority. Gregory replied in 1076 with a decree in which he declared Henry excommunicated and deprived of his imperial authority. Rarely has the history of religions witnessed more direct clashes between religious and secular authorities.

See Also

Buddhist Books and Texts, article on Canon and Canonization; Canon; Imamate; Intellectuals; Kingship; Myth; Papacy; Politics and Religion; Scripture; Sunnah; Tradition; Truth.

Bibliography

There are no comprehensive presentations on the theme of authority in the general history of religions based on comparative or typological studies. On the authority of myth in premodern society, see Mircea Eliade's Myth and Reality (New York, 1963). This book contains an excellent bibliography. Bronislaw Malinowski has attempted to elucidate the authentic nature and function of myth in primitive society on the basis of his fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders in New Guinea. See his classic work Myth in Primitive Psychology (New York, 1926), which has been reprinted in his Magic, Science and Religion (New York, 1948), pp. 93–148.

The best single book on the problem of imperial authority in the ancient Near East remains Henri Frankfort's Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago, 1948). The eighth International Congress for the History of Religions met in Rome in the spring of 1955 to discuss the theme of kingship. Its proceedings have been published as The Sacral Kingship (Leiden, 1959). On imperial authority in ancient China and Japan, see D. Howard Smith's "Divine Kingship in Ancient China," Numen 4 (1957): 171–203, and my own "Conceptions of State and Kingship in Early Japan," Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 28 (1976): 97–112. On the structure of authority in the Buddhist community, there is an excellent discussion in Sukumar Dutt's The Buddha and Five After-Centuries (London, 1957).

The sources of authority in Islam are succinctly presented in Sir Hamilton A. R. Gibb's Mohammedanism, 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1961), which still remains the best introduction to Islam.

The origins and development of the structure of authority in the early Christian church has been masterfully studied by Hans von Campenhausen in Kirchliches Amt und geistliche Vollmacht (Tübingen, 1953), translated by J. A. Baker as Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (Stanford, Calif., 1969). On scriptural authority in the modern period, there is much useful material in J. K. S. Reid's The Authority of Scripture: A Study of the Reformation and Post-Reformation Understanding of the Bible (London, 1957) and in Georges H. Tavard's Holy Writ or Holy Church: The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation (London, 1959). Concerning authority in Eastern Orthodoxy, see Georges Florovsky's Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View (Belmont, Mass., 1972).

On the manifold relations of church and state, a useful comparative and typological study has been presented by Joachim Wach in his Sociology of Religion (1944; Chicago, 1962), pp. 287–330. The standard work on the confrontation between papal and secular authorities in the Middle Ages remains Walter Ullmann's The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (London, 1962). The primary sources relating to the subject have been skillfully assembled by Brian Tierney in The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964).

New Sources

Abraham, William. "The Offense of Divine Revelation." Harvard Theological Review 95 (July 2002): 251–264.

Berkey, Jonathan. Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East. Seattle, Wash., 2001.

Engler, Steven. "Religion, Consecration and the State in Bourdieu." Cultural Studies 17 (May 2003): 445–468.

Keyes, Charles F., Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre, eds. Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia. Honolulu, 1994.

Lincoln, Bruce. Authority: Construction and Corrosion. Chicago, 1994.

Siebers, Tobin, ed. Religion and the Authority of the Past. Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993.

Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, 2004.

Wills, Gregory. Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South 1785–1900. New York, 1996.

Manabu Waida (1987)

Revised Bibliography