The Church and the Individual: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

At its best, Christian theology has sought to find a balance between two approaches to religious authority. One approach suggests that the Church has authority over the individual, and that the individual should respond with complete trust toward religious authority and its pronouncements. The other approach suggests that the individual is the source of authority, and that the individual has the right to scrutinize, critique or reject the pronouncements of the Church. In this paper, these approaches to religious authority are referred to, respectively, as dependence and independence models of religious authority.