Today the pastor talked about the Wesleyan quadrilateral. This means our discussion of issues in Christianity has these four sides to them: The Bible, experience, reason, and tradition. The result was some thinking on my part how much I employed these things myself. I would estimate the weights I give to them as follows.
Experience 10
The Bible 7
Reason 5
Tradition 1
If the Bible didn’t agree with experience I would pay it no attention at all. The use of reason is difficult, because the results depend far too much on the premises we start with. So by itself, it gives us nothing really. Its role is to make sure conclusions are consistent with the things which do matter to us, and that is important of course. Not having been raised Christian and starting with science, it is difficult for me to see much value in tradition. It looks mostly to me like a way of perpetuating error. But it may provide conventions in things where it is more important to have a decision than what the decision is. It can provide structure which we can make meaningful according to what is important.
However… Perhaps there is another side which has been included in tradition. This consists of what we have learned over time regarding what works and what doesn’t work. The problem is, too great an emphasis on tradition can be an obstacle to learning. So I think this really needs to be fifth side to the equation different from tradition.
Interesting to think about. We are studying a book regarding doctrine that discusses the WQ a bit, but places more weight on scripture and having the other three legs as secondary features. Not sure what I think of it, as when someone uses scripture as their base of support, it is still very dependent on how they read it in light of their experience, tradition, and reason, despite any protests to the contrary.
How does your 5th leg proposed differ from that of experience? sounds much the same.
I think the point is that some portion of church tradition consists of things learned by experience in the history of the church. So it is not a matter of your own personal experience and much more likely to be included under the label of tradition.
Does science qualify as “reason”? How about ancient studies?
That’s my problem with the Wesleyan scheme: to me, the other three all involve reason, for example the Bible is useless without reason, and experience is nearly so, but then Experience can be judged by reason and the Bible and even by Tradition, while Tradition gets judged by reason and the Bible, and so on.
I learned recently from a video lecture by an Orthodox scholar that the East categorizes tradition: There is universal tradition that applies to the whole church, local tradition that applies to anything from a single church to a patriarchate, then there’s long-term versus short-term tradition. His claim was that it is very difficult to get something into universal tradition, though it has happened accidentally as illustrated by the practice of giving communion with a spoon.
This Sunday, my sister and brother attended a church (Lakeshore Baptist in Grand Haven), where the pastor reminded everyone how not to get over upset about politics. He cited Psalm 2, “Why do the nations rage.” They (and my son, who was visiting), felt it was a great message.
My own pastor reminded us of how hard it is to fear or dislike someone in a petty way, if we actively pray for them as people.
I emailed my pastor to tell him my appreciation for his wisdom.
Our pastor also had a great meassage He has been doing a series on the overarching story of the Bible, and this was his final one on eschatology. Interesting as he emphasized how the end times started with Jesus’ resurrection, and how the warnings about deception,conflict, false leaders who claim to be Christian, etc. apply today, saying how it is easy to identify those who are up front with their opposition to Christianity, but far more dangerous are the anti-Christs within. I anyone wants a link to the sermon, PM me. sort of a dangerous sermon in these political times, but can easily apply it to either side of the political aisle.
Both use reason just as do lawyers, politicians, and used car salesmen. Reason depends on the premises you start with, and so by itself reason tells you nothing.
It is not a problem because a quadrilateral need not have equal sides. It is only a problem if one of these plays no role whatsoever in your thinking and decisions. Is that the case for you?
We continue to lift those prayers together today and tomorrow (and after!).
Yesterday I listened through a holy post interview of policy strategist, Christ Crawford, (who works with Project Democracy), and learned a few interesting (and reassuring) things about our U.S. elections and election laws. Sorry that the interview itself is behind a registration wall - if you’re a Holy Post subscriber, you can get to it. Anyway - one of the things he reminded us about is that even with a normal and fair election, it isn’t reasonable to expect (especially if it’s a close election) that we’ll know winners already on Tuesday night. So many different states have different kinds of counting systems in place (some of which require them to wait till election day to begin the process of counting all the early ballots, etc) - and some have different (faster or slower) methods of determining, checking, and certifying their counts. So we just need to prepare ourselves to have patience. And to know that in that window of uncertainty, there will be bad actors - perhaps both domestic or from abroad - who will attempt to sow doubt and mistrust about the whole process. But the system works - and worked in 2020. Any suspicions of widespread fraud that have any evidence to back them up are taken seriously. And no evidence of anything widespread enough to influence outcomes was there in the last elections - despite the many attempts to find such things.
We can pray though (no matter which way the outcome goes) that all of us whether our wished-for candidate won or didn’t, will still make a way to come together with our friends and neighbors who themselves will also be needing to deal with either triumphalism or else feelings of defeat and likely continued anger. It’s hard to prepare oneself, when there’s so much uncertainty which side of that you’ll be dealing with for yourself. But one thing is certain - no matter which way it goes, you will still be living with your community and neighbors, and have the oppotunity to give and maybe receive grace from all those friends. I hope people latch onto that intention and live into it in the coming weeks and months.
It was encouraging to hear nothing about the election or politics in church yesterday. There was some talk about football, mostly resignation and defeatism on the part of Texas Aggies.