In putting the finishing touches on my manuscript on authority, office and the image of God, I came across this wonderful passage in Thomas Molnar, Authority and Its Enemies (p. 112):
There have always been people like Dr. Ronald Fletcher, who writes: “Never accept authority; whether that of a jealous god, priest, prime minister, president, dictator, unless in your own seriously considered view, there are good grounds for it. . . . Rationalists in the modern world reject the authoritarian heritage of Moses and substitute a set of non-commandments, i.e., principles on which the individual must work out his own conduct when faced by particular problems.” One wonders what authority issues (or doesn’t issue?) the non-commandments which tell individuals how they must work out their problems, and one is reassured again that the enemies of authority do not allow authority to fade away. If not Moses, then Dr. Ronald Fletcher is in authority.
Addendum: By the way, Molnar’s book contains the earliest negative use of politically correct that I’ve come across (p. 99).
