We Answer to Another Quotes

“The church is not a political society and will never be one, but its mission is to point to one peculiar and ultimate political society: a kingdom of citizens who freely obey and follow their King, who live in a city of which their Lord is the light.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“As Sir Bernard Crick puts it, “No state has the capacity to ensure that men are happy; but all states have the capacity to ensure that men are unhappy.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“Authority,” argues Molnar, “is the guarantee that man is not totally subordinated to authority,” or, better, to a single overreaching authority that would extinguish all others.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“Because the rituals of the larger culture play a formative role in fashioning our affections, it must be recognized that idolatry is not merely an individual sin but is embedded in the very patterns of civilizations where they take on a systemic character.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“If social authority aims at united action, epistemic authority aims at the truth, which is as necessary to human flourishing as social authority.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“Authority, I say, is held by a person or persons who lead humans to a fuller exercise of their freedom to accomplish human tasks.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“The most basic office we hold is indeed that of divine image. Respect for authority must begin with this authoritative office, in which all the other offices find their focus and point of origin. This indeed is the grain of truth to be found in the contemporary ideology of human rights, as manifested in both practical jurisprudence and popular culture.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“Charismatic authority is best described by a series of negatives—by what it is not.161 The staff of a charismatic leader is not made up of technically-trained officials. Appointment and dismissal, career and promotion have no place here, only the call of the leader himself. There is no hierarchical organization, no defined sphere of competence, and no salary scale. There is “no system of formal rules, of abstract legal principles,” no systematic judicial process, and no recognition of the normative status of precedent. Each judicial decision is arrived at de novo, as if by a fresh oracle of the divine. Charismatic authority repudiates the past and allows no place for tradition. Ordinary economic considerations have no place either, while “‘booty’ and extortion” are “the typical form of charismatic provision for needs.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“Ignatieff is perhaps more honest than most in admitting that, “[i]f idolatry consists in elevating any purely human principle into an unquestioned absolute, surely human rights looks like an idolatry.”134 Rejecting what he calls the “humanist idolatry” of the person, he believes that, to be consistent, the humanist would have to affirm that “there is nothing sacred about human beings” and that the only foundation for the protection of rights is historical utility: “Human rights is the language through which individuals have created a defense of their autonomy against the oppression of religion, state, family, and group.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God

“This explains the near religious language attached to, e.g., the “sanctity” of human rights or of the person, which is supposed to evoke a certain awe or deference in those hearing it. As Mary Ann Glendon has argued, rights talk is treated as a trump card, i.e., as something to put a stop to deliberation rather than to move it forward.132 It is the functional equivalent to “thus saith the Lord.” Grant points to the general liberal tendency to appeal to the word person to cover for a lack of an adequate account of what makes human beings worthy of respect.”
― David T. Koyzis, We Answer to Another: Authority, Office, and the Image of God