From the very beginning, I have stressed and repeated unchanged that I was ‘without authority.’ I regard myself rather as a reader of the books, not as the author. ‘Before God,’ religiously, I call my whole work as an author (when I speak with myself) my own upbringing and development, but not in the sense as if I were now complete or completely finished with respect to needing upbringing and development.

On My Work as an Author (1851)

The problem with authority is that you always are speaking on someone else’e behalf. I think SK understood that in the religious sense. I have come to appreciate that I am completely without authority.