Up with Authority: Why We Need Authority to Flourish as Human Beings

(Paperback)

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Authority is something we experience every day, but is it necessary Many think that it is not, and that it exists only as a remedy for some defect in us. Victor Lee Austin sets about exploring the higher and nobler functions of authority, and in doing so reveals its human importance as more than simply a provision for human inadequacies. A significant contribution to Christian anthropology, the book illuminates an indispensable feature of human sociality: the need for, and the good provided by, authority. In enabling us to do more complex activities, to gain and communicate understanding of the world around us and to flourish in political communities, authority ultimately leads us to enjoy God. Victor Lee Austin makes a unique contribution to political theology by deliberating the ways that authority functions both socially and epistemologically. The field of ecclesiology is also enriched by the book's discussion of authority as at once necessary and fallible. Those interested in the work of Michael Polanyi, Yves Simon, or Oliver O'Donovan will find these authors brought into the broader conversation about authority in an engaging way.

Reviews

Our postmodern era views authority as something to be grimly endured -- or simply overthrown. Victor Austin writes against this antinomian sensibility. His clear, accessible and convincing analysis shows how moral, political, and religious authority brings order to society and beauty to the soul.' - R. R. Reno, Department of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA. -- R.R. Reno
Father Austin's style is energetic and engaging, his thought enriched by decades as priest, teacher, and theologian, and his thesis compels attention: social beings require authority to flourish, and we are social beings from the beginning of this life to beyond its end. We need not accept all of his premises to benefit from this wide-ranging essay, fortunately so, since the author at times plays the smiling contrarian who invites us all to revisit our assumptions. For readers who have taken social order as rooted in either persuasion or compulsion, and so assumed that authority is derivative, transient, postlapsarian, the dead hand of the past, or the polite mask of force, this book offers a clear-headed alternative. Austin explores the ineliminable centrality of fallible authority in our social, epistemic, political, and ecclesial communal lives, and discerns structures of authority in the Trinity and the paradisal life of friends living together. In part Christian theology, in part humane anthropology, in part philosophical reflection, this is altogether a galvanizing book. -- Ronald Mawby, Whitney Young School of Honors and Liberal Studies, Kentucky State University, USA
His account is in no way nave. Indeed, his reflections on how "we live with fallible authority" which would always be in season, are particularly timely just now.' -- National Review
Interview with the author in the Mars Hill Audio Journal, Vol. 107
Austin draws on thinkers such as Catholic philosopher Yves R. Simon, Michael Polanyi, and Oliver O'Donovan to put forth not simply an elegant defence of authority, but a captivating portrait of a world in which authority contributes irreplaceably to the larger task of cultural development. At the end of this book, the reader may feel as if she has just finished a healthy and satisfying meal whose every course makes the whole a memorable experience. http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2885/ -- www.Cardus.ca
... [a] subtle and elegantly argued book... At a time when university education in this country looks set to move in a more utilitarian direction, it is encouraging to see that the author of this book holds the post of theologian-in-residence at a church. -- Church Times
Up with Authority is a profound and profoundly important book. -- Touchstone
In his wonderful recent book, Up With Authority (T&T Clark, 2010), Victor Lee Austin uses the analogy of an orchestra to explain why authority is necessary for human life to flourish.' -- First Things * First Things *
Authority must exist and be exercised if we are to have the possibility of being fully human, of living well, and this is so in every human society. This is the thesis of Victor Lee Austins book and his argument is convincing... He knows that his argument goes against the stream, but his approach is not remotely defensive. Rather, his book is punctuated with wry humour. -- Nicholas Townsend, Sarum College, Salisbury * Studies in Christian Ethics *

Author Bio

The Reverend Victor Lee Austin, (PhD), is Theologian-in-residence at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City, USA. He is the author of Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed and Up with Authority, and has written scholarly articles in political theology, ecclesiology, and social ethics, as well as a book of theological meditations on everyday life, A Priest's Journal.