Authority of The Sun punctured by church (7)
I believe the answer is:
scholar
'authority' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'the sun punctured by church' is the wordplay.
'the sun' becomes 'solar' (I've seen this before).
'punctured by' means one lot of letters goes inside another (I've seen this in other clues).
'church' becomes 'ch' (common abbreviation).
'solar' placed around 'ch' is 'SCHOLAR'.
'of' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for scholar that I've seen before include "Person of learning" , "Academic, schoolboy" , "Pupil - erudite person" , "university type?" , "Man of letters" .)