Lord Acton famously wrote that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” a statement frequently quoted and all too often accepted at face value. Mark Earley‘s modification is an improvement:
But remember this: power corrupts, but power itself is not necessarily corrupt. God has given power to the state to be used to restrain evil and maintain order. It is the use of power, whether for personal gain or for the state’s ordained function, that is really at issue.
I would expand on this, because it has relevance beyond political life. All of us, as God’s image-bearers, are gifted with various capacities (i.e., powers) enabling us to fulfil the responsibilities of the authoritative offices in which God has placed us, the most basic of which is that of divine image-bearer. (Among other things, this diversity of capacities is why it is misleading, following the latter-day heirs of Marx, to divide humanity into the two exhaustive categories of powerful and powerless.)
These God-given capacities are not themselves corrupting. However, like everything else in God’s good creation, they are capable of being misused by sinful human beings. It’s not power that corrupts; it’s our own rebellious nature that does so. Acton’s saying might be closer to the truth if turned around: Human sin corrupts the otherwise legitimate use of power.
February 16th, 2010 | 3:35 pm | #1
Lord Acton’s point was essentially that with great power comes great responsibility, and that holding office is no excuse for immoral conduct.
But it’s unfortunate to see that in the name of banishing “face value” acceptance context can also be abandoned. Check out the original context and see if Acton’s point is really all that different from Earley’s.
Even merely the sentences before and after the famous quote show that Acton is not trying to depersonalize responsibility and blame “power” rather than moral agents:
He also means “absolute power” in a rather technical sense, that is, potentia absoluta.
February 16th, 2010 | 5:29 pm | #2
I might add that power in the church is also an interesting sidebar to this conversation. Those of us who truly believe in human depravity ought to opt for a balance of powers type of church government. While this is theoretically in baptistic or congregational form of polity, it is often the pastor who gets to determine what is voted on and how it is voted on. Meanwhile, the Catholic and Anglican churches consolidate power to individuals in a hierarchical fashion. If an individual is corrupt, it affects the whole system.
And then there is the elder/Presbyterian system. The denomination that I’m a part of is the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In order to quorum at the Presbytery or National level, there must be 2 ruling elders for every pastor present. Furthermore, elders are elected by congregational members, they can only serve 3-year terms, and thus the system looks much the house of representatives, with the exception that re-election or serving two consecutive terms is outlawed.
Essentially what I’m saying is that power is divided, dispersed, and spread across the board to mitigate the power temptation that you discuss. I don’t know that there’s a “Biblically mandated” form of church government, but this one seems to be the wisest, in my experience.
February 16th, 2010 | 5:47 pm | #3
Mr. Strunk,
The real question of Church authority is what Jesus wants.
February 16th, 2010 | 7:24 pm | #4
Having spent half a decade attending a local Anglican church, our family came away with a less than favourable attitude towards bishops, who seem to amount to virtual tyrants within their own dioceses. There are few checks on their authority – certainly not from below and nothing of substance from above either. Neither the Archbishop of Canterbury nor Lambeth offer much to prevent a bishop from running away with his own diocese. Ironically such a bishop is using his own authority to subvert virtually every other authority, especially that of Scripture as God’s word.
In the Roman Catholic Church the Pope can act to rein in a potentially rogue bishop, which is a good thing. But, of course, if the Pope himself should become a heretic, the entire RC communion goes with him. Is there something like the ephors within the RC church? Might the cardinals perform something of this function?
February 17th, 2010 | 11:10 am | #5
orthodoxdj,
I actually accept the premise of your question, but please note in my earlier comment that I don’t think any form of polity is Biblically mandated. I realize this might be an issue of contention because I think authority lies in Scripture and I’m not sure of your background, but an RC thinks authority is within the church (someone correct me if it’s more nuanced than this). I only bring that up bc we could be arguing past one another. So I’ll proceed.
Based on the Book of Acts and other Epistles, I don’t believe the Bible proscribes one form of church government against another (and obviously, I interpret the “On this Rock” passage of Jesus to be a declaration of Peter’s exclamation and not Peter himself). Early in Acts, it seems the apostles operated as kind of an oligarchy in the sense that they directed the affairs of the Jerusalem church. But then the church expanded, and needed deacons (Acts 6), and then elders/presbyters/bishops come along. It seemed the church organized itself on the basis of need, as opposed to a mandated vision from God that this was the organizational form the church MUST take.
I’m essentially saying that I believe God gave the church latitude and grace in organizing itself, and factors such as human depravity and the exercise of power within the church are factors to consider in that latitude.
If I ask the question, what does God want in and for the church?, I’m left to thinking there are wiser forms than others but that God honestly doesn’t condemn others’ form of polity if they happen to disagree with mine.
It’s a pretty big Church in lots of different cultures. We should be thankful for God’s latitude and remember that Jesus’ prayer was for spiritual unity not organizational unity (John 17- Francis Schaeffer also wrote a tome on this called “The Mark of the Christian”).
My apologies to Evangel for going mildly off-topic.
February 17th, 2010 | 12:28 pm | #6
Thanks, Jordan, for posting the larger passage in which Acton’s saying occurs. You are correct, of course, about the danger of ignoring context. It is unfortunate that virtually everyone quotes that one sentence out of context, which I have too often seen turned against power itself rather than against its abuse by those in possession of it. There can be no doubt that great power in the hands of evil persons can magnify the effects of that evil to everyone’s detriment. Which explains why functioning constitutional government depends so heavily on institutional checks on power.
February 17th, 2010 | 1:12 pm | #7
Re: institutional check on power, that’s right on, which is why Acton was also such a proponent of federalism.
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