The Pattern of Authority

by Bernard Ramm

117 pages, Hardcover

Published February 2, 1957

Reviews

[Paul Vawter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This very brief text offers some insights into the nature of religious authority. Ramm demonstrates how Protestants have understood divine authority and its relationship to the Bible. He argues against the claims of Roman Catholicism, that religious authority is centered in the Church and its magisterium. He demonstrates the failure of modernism to justify any religious authority by elevating experience over truth. He shows the kerygmatic position to be too narrow by limiting revelation to Christology. Finally, he exposes neo-orthodoxy as self-refuting because by denying the factual nature of revelation, one cannot maintain any objective authority, and religion is reduced to subjectivism.