Against All Authority

This volume examines historical and contemporary engagements of anarchism and literary production. Anarchists have used literary production to express opposition to values and relations characterizing advanced capitalist (and socialist) societies while also expressing key aspects of the alternative values and institutions proposed within anarchism. Among favoured themes are anarchist critiques of corporatization, prisons and patriarchal relations as well as explorations of developing anarchist perspectives on revolution, ecology, polysexuality and mutual aid. A key component of anarchist perspectives is the belief that means and ends must correspond. Thus in anarchist literature as in anarchist politics, a radical approach to form is as important as content. Anarchist literature joins other critical approaches to creative production in attempting to break down divisions between readers and writer, audience and artist, encouraging all to become active participants in the creative process.

Setting Aside All Authority is an important account and analysis of seventeenth-century scientific arguments against the Copernican system. Christopher M. Graney challenges the long-standing ideas that opponents of the heliocentric ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were primarily motivated by religion or devotion to an outdated intellectual tradition, and that they were in continual retreat in the face of telescopic discoveries. Graney calls on newly translated works by anti-Copernican writers of the time to demonstrate that science, not religion, played an important, and arguably predominant, role in the opposition to the Copernican system. Anti-Copernicans, building on the work of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, were in fact able to build an increasingly strong scientific case against the heliocentric system at least through the middle of the seventeenth century, several decades after the advent of the telescope. The scientific case reached its apogee, Graney argues, in the 1651 New Almagest of the Italian Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli, who used detailed telescopic observations of stars to construct a powerful scientific argument against Copernicus. Setting Aside All Authority includes the first English translation of Monsignor Francesco Ingoli’s essay to Galileo (disputing the Copernican system on the eve of the Inquisition’s condemnation of it in 1616) and excerpts from Riccioli's reports regarding his experiments with falling bodies.

Everybody who follows Jesus will encounter a myriad of “authorities” that directly challenge the authority of Christ. These other “authorities” may be parents, teachers, bosses, presidents, institutions, religions, or ideologies. In order to stay firm in devotion to Jesus, we must believe that He has supreme authority over all. Not partial authority, not most authority—all authority. On the basis of his authority, he commissioned his people to go and make disciples among every people group on earth. This is an impossible commission if it were not for the promise that he is with them forever. The doctrine of the supreme authority of Christ not only upholds the work of the church, it is the central message that the church preaches. “Jesus is Lord” is good news! Joey Shaw is the International Field Office Director for the Austin Stone Community Church and a regular contributor at Verge. Joey and his family live outside the United States where they serve unreached peoples for the glory of Christ.

For much of Christian history, greater focus has been paid to Jesus’ death than to his three years of ministry, and his crucifixion has often been understood primarily as a means to salvation in heaven. But retired pastor Tim Lehman contends that we’ve drastically missed the point by not looking closely at and learning from Jesus’ words and actions before his death. As a result, we lose out on the joy and freedom of living fully as his disciples and experiencing salvation already in this life on earth. In this broad study of Matthew’s Gospel, Lehman challenges readers to view Jesus’ death in light of his life. He urges us not just to believe in Jesus, but to believe Jesus—to take seriously all that he taught and how he lived. As Lehman leads readers along a carefully laid path, Christians and non-Christians alike will have to rethink long-held assumptions: the place of violence in the Christian life; the givenness of division in our modern world; the meaning of “atonement,” “salvation,” and “the kingdom of heaven”; and more. But along the way, we are sure to learn, grow, and, hopefully, come to know more deeply God’s unconditional love for all.