Believing things 'on authority' only means believing them because you have been told them by someone you think trustworthy. Ninety-nine percent of the things you believe are believed on authority. I believe there is such a place as New York. I could not prove by abstract reasoning that there is such a place. I believe it because reliable people have told me so.
Every historical statement is believed on authority.
None of us has seen the Norman Conquest or the defeat of the Spanish Armada. A person who balked at authority in other things, as some people do in religion, would have to be content to know nothing all his life. L.S. Chafer, True Evangelism , p. 55-6. Of unchurched Americans, two-thirds believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ and that he was resurrected from the dead. The belief that Jesus Christ will return to earth someday is held by 62 percent of all Americans.