What is authority? And what is free will? We talk about those things as if the words have self apparent meanings, but do they? There are so many views of free will that when I use the term I have no idea how I am being interpreted. People use words like "family values" or "sustainability" as if the meanings are self apparent, but often they convey special meanings -- and they are used in a manner pre-understood and pre-agreed upon. "Sustainability" is normally used to refer to something's effect on "the environment" and that is another concept which may look like two ordinary words, but it practice is an ideology which would require volumes to explain and debate. Whether such words are called "code language" or "trust cues," they illustrate the difficulty of communication.

Last night's whimsical remarks about my turtle's inability to disobey a sign (which made him more apparently obedient than school children) touched on the nature of human free will, and I thought about that in the context of Henry VIII's frustrations with the newly disseminated English (Tyndale) Bible.

Henry's struggles with the authority of the Catholic Church happened to coincide with the first translation by Tyndale and printing of the Bible into English. A tyrant by nature, he was quite perplexed by the Pandora's Box he had opened. No doubt he thought about man's free will and the nature of authority, and I would be willing to bet that it tormented him. It's easy to say that God was the authority, and God was supposed to be in charge, but how? By what process? Who were his legitimate agents? Or were there none?

So as I wondered not only about the nature of authority, I also wondered about the need. Does man need authority? Or does authority need man? If you tend towards a libertarian-anarchist view of the world and think authority sucks like I do, then you might understand why I was a bit envious of the turtle, who is freed from having to contend with any authority for the simple reason that he lacks human free will. He can neither obey nor disobey.

Which came first? Free will or authority? The phrase "free will" (which I use a lot, often in a less than thoughtful manner) implies that there is some sort of authority, otherwise, why would there be a will to be free, and what would the will be free from? ("Willfullness" of course implies disobedience.)

Henry VIII was willful, and he broke with the authority of the Church, which was the authority of the Pope, whose authority came from God. As a practical matter, this was because Cardinal Wolsey was unable to push through his annulment, to which Henry believed he was entitled because his marriage violated Leviticus. (He had married his dead brother Arthur's wife, although the Church took the position that the indulgence it granted superseded Leviticus.) In real life, he was frustrated over his wife's inability to produce a male heir, but that's not a ground for annulment. Once he broke with the Church, Henry had no choice but to sever the religious hierarchy and become the head of the Church himself, lest his authority be rendered illegitimate by his being a godless king. Thus it was necessary for him to overthrow Papal authority over the Church, and put royal authority in its place.

The Catholic Church took the position that ordinary people should not read the Bible, and Tyndale ended up being burned at the stake in Belgium. While Henry's henchman Cromwell did try to intervene on Tyndale's behalf, Henry (who had once courted Tyndale) had turned on Tyndale, as the latter opposed his annulment because of an interpretation of Leviticus different from Henry's:

When Tyndale finally considers the divorce itself, he explains that the curse of childlessness if a man marries his brother's wife (Leviticus 20.21) applies only when the brother is still alive--an interpretation that also explains the injunction (Deuteronomy 25.5) that a man must marry his brother's widow.

Here's how the Wiki entry puts it:

Tyndale's final words, spoken "at the stake with a fervent zeal, and a loud voice", were reported as "Lord! Open the King of England's eyes."[9] In a strange, but well received, rehearsal, the King of England ordered Tyndale's translation of the Bible to be printed in England and made available in every English church, as well as to the public. Thus, Tyndale's Bible translation became a basis for the unification of the English language, and his sacrifice had not been in vain.

Direct access to the Bible without any intermediary was thus inevitably seen as undermining authority and promoting anarchy. Interestingly, Henry VIII's and Tyndale's differing interpretations of Leviticus illustrate why, as I am sure Henry realized. It fascinates me how the translation and distribution of the Bible led directly and inexorably to the concept we call "freedom." It's very easy today to use words like "fundamentalism," but such code language obscures what was actually going on: each man was freed up to read (and therefore interpret in his own mind) a translation* of words in an individual search for authority. To obey or disobey, of his own free will, according to his own interpretation. (Or even to reject in its entirety.)

No wonder the authorities saw it as anarchy and tried to stamp it out, and no wonder it led to freedom. (Well, at least the concept.)

* It's probably worth noting that this goes to a primary difference between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism:

Muslims and most Western scholars of Islam believe that the Arabic Qur'an that exists today contains substantially the same Arabic that was transmitted by Muhammad. This often surprises scholars of the Bible, Judaism, and Christianity who in many cases assume that the Qur'an has substantially evolved over time (which is what scholars of the Bible --but not many believing Christians or Orthodox Jews-- generally agree on concerning the Bible).

In other words, while scholars of the Bible in the West have largely succeeded in convincing the community of scholars that the Bible we have today was not the very same "Word of God" that was revealed through the prophets and which was spoken by Jesus, scholars of Islam have generally not come to similar conclusions about the Qur'an.

Translations--however inspired they may be--are only shadows of the original. They should always be read with a healthy dose of skepticism concerning the degree to which they reflect the original. The gulf between the original and the translation is an important reason why Muslims must recite the Qur'an only in Arabic for the required daily prayers. A translation of the Qur'an is not the Qur'an; it is simply one person's interpretation of the Qur'an.

It's easy to see how such a belief system could lead to different notions of authority and free will.