Dear Reader,
I apologize for the hiatus from writing. 'Tis an unhealthy relationship which doth not have at least a weekly contact (Actually, according to Preach My Gospel, you should have daily contact with important people). But alas, I digress. Our purpose today is to explore the question that came to mind while watching the 186th General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this past weekend. I'll have to look at my notes to see exactly when this question came to mind, "What is the difference between authority and power?"
Through many years of teaching about the restoration of God's priesthood, I have used those two words almost interchangeably. However, my ways have been erroneous. You see, power and authority are used all the time within the church. It is taught that the authority of God is given through his priesthood power. Kind of ambiguous, right? Let's see what Miriam Webster's Dictionary has to say:
POWER: The ability or right to control people or things
AUTHORITY: The confident quality of someone who knows a lot about something or who is respected or obeyed by other people.
Based on those couple of definitions, let's take a deeper look at the connotations. Power is simply the capability of someone to perform an action. Authority is the permission to perform that action. When we say that God restored his power and authority to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith, it is the same as saying the capability and permission of God were restored to the earth.
It sometimes gets confusing because in some contexts power can be used in place of authority but the reverse is not nearly as common. For example, "I have the power to build a house on that land" is different from "I have authority to build a house on that land." Authority can replace power in the first sentence, but not the other way around.
To clarify this confusion, I believe the idea of keys is inspired. Keys imply the use of authority or permission. This makes it clear when one has the power and when one has the authority. In the church, it is often said that the priesthood keys were restored to the earth. I know that those keys are essential to performing the ordinances for salvation like baptism, temple sealing and confirmation. I know that it requires God's permission to perform these ordinances.
The last comparison I would like to make about these terms comes from their translation to Spanish. In every translation site investigated, power translates to many different ideas like strength, potential or energy. Word Reference alone has 20 different possible translations depending on context. However, authority almost always comes out as autoridad which is a direct translation. From my poking around, there are few exceptions to the translation of authority to some other idea.
In essence, I would conclude that power is necessary to have authority, but one does not need the latter to possess the former. In fact, many people have great power. Just like Uncle Ben says in Spider-Man, "With great power comes great responsibility." I submit that with great authority comes even more responsibility.
I apologize for the hiatus from writing. 'Tis an unhealthy relationship which doth not have at least a weekly contact (Actually, according to Preach My Gospel, you should have daily contact with important people). But alas, I digress. Our purpose today is to explore the question that came to mind while watching the 186th General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this past weekend. I'll have to look at my notes to see exactly when this question came to mind, "What is the difference between authority and power?"
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| Image via ldsmissionaries.com (Original Source: www.missiongeek.net) |
POWER: The ability or right to control people or things
AUTHORITY: The confident quality of someone who knows a lot about something or who is respected or obeyed by other people.
Based on those couple of definitions, let's take a deeper look at the connotations. Power is simply the capability of someone to perform an action. Authority is the permission to perform that action. When we say that God restored his power and authority to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith, it is the same as saying the capability and permission of God were restored to the earth.
It sometimes gets confusing because in some contexts power can be used in place of authority but the reverse is not nearly as common. For example, "I have the power to build a house on that land" is different from "I have authority to build a house on that land." Authority can replace power in the first sentence, but not the other way around.
To clarify this confusion, I believe the idea of keys is inspired. Keys imply the use of authority or permission. This makes it clear when one has the power and when one has the authority. In the church, it is often said that the priesthood keys were restored to the earth. I know that those keys are essential to performing the ordinances for salvation like baptism, temple sealing and confirmation. I know that it requires God's permission to perform these ordinances.
The last comparison I would like to make about these terms comes from their translation to Spanish. In every translation site investigated, power translates to many different ideas like strength, potential or energy. Word Reference alone has 20 different possible translations depending on context. However, authority almost always comes out as autoridad which is a direct translation. From my poking around, there are few exceptions to the translation of authority to some other idea.
In essence, I would conclude that power is necessary to have authority, but one does not need the latter to possess the former. In fact, many people have great power. Just like Uncle Ben says in Spider-Man, "With great power comes great responsibility." I submit that with great authority comes even more responsibility.
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