Where now is the authority?
The one foundation
Phyllis Tickle noticed that every rummage sale drags the same question up out of the basement and sets it on the lawn: where now is the authority? When the old answer cracks — the tradition you inherited, the certainty you were raised on, the leader or the institution or the way of reading the Bible that settled every argument — the church, and the soul, has to discover all over again what it actually stands on. It is a terrifying question while you are inside it. It is also a clarifying one.
Paul had already named the floor beneath every floor. You can lose a hundred lesser authorities — and an upheaval will strip them away one by one — but no one can lay any other foundation than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. Jesus said the same thing with a picture: the wise build on rock, and when the floods come and beat against the house, it stands, because of what is underneath it. Upheaval is the flood that finally shows you what your house was built on.
“For no one can lay any other foundation than that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 3:11 (WEB)
“Everyone therefore who hears these words of mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house on a rock... it didn't fall, for it was founded on the rock.”
The authority question belongs to disorientation — the phase where the old map has failed and a new one has not formed. It feels like the worst part. It is often the most important, because it drives you down past every lesser authority to the only one that holds.
Your upheaval will expose what you were really trusting — and it is rarely only Christ. A teacher, a tradition, your own competence, the comfortable feeling of having it all figured out. An upheaval is a flood, and a flood is honest; it does not care what you said your house was built on, only what it was actually built on. When those lesser authorities wash away, do not despair. You are being driven down to the rock that was always underneath, the one foundation the water cannot move. The authorities that wash away in the water were never the foundation, however much weight you had quietly rested on them — a charismatic leader, an unquestioned tradition, a borrowed certainty, your own competence.
This is why the authority question, terrifying as it is, is a gift. It forces you to stop standing on the floors and find the rock. So as your certainties go floating past, ask the clarifying question the flood is forcing: under all of it, what am I actually standing on — and is it Christ Himself, or only a floor that has not yet been flooded?
Every reformation in the Church's history is, at heart, a fight over one question Phyllis Tickle named — paraphrased here, not quoted — the question every rummage sale drags onto the lawn: where now is the authority? When an inherited authority cracks across the Body — a magisterium, a way of reading Scripture, a culture's deference to the faith — the temptation is to grab the nearest replacement: a stronger institution, a harder line, a nostalgic certainty. The renewing path is harder and surer. It drives the whole Church back down past every lesser authority to the one foundation no council or culture laid and none can remove — Jesus Christ Himself, the rock beneath every floor the Church has ever leaned on.
The foundation already laid — Jesus Christ. Every other authority is a floor that can give way; He is the rock the floors were resting on. What cannot be shaken is not your certainty about Him, but Him.
- When my certainties wash away, what am I actually left standing on?
- Which authorities have I been resting on that were never the foundation?
- Is my house built on the rock, or only on floors that have not yet been flooded?
Lord, the flood is showing me what I was really standing on, and not all of it was You. As the lesser authorities wash away, drive me down to the one foundation that cannot be moved. Let me stand on the rock, and not on the floors. Amen.