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f you find out you
have a debilitating disease, you’ll probably turn to an expert doctor instead
of your great-aunt Helen’s home remedy. If your car breaks down, you’d probably
rather go to the best mechanic in town instead of your brothers
do-it-all-for-$10-and-hope-it-works repair shop – regardless of how sentimental that might be. If you happen to have any left-over assets and you want to invest,
you’ll probably turn to a reputable money manager with a proven track record in
place of something like Ken’s Qwick Cash.
I think we all intuitively understand this principle, but have you ever stopped
to think about why?
At first glance, it’s
probably because it assures us that we will get the best results. If I want to
return to fullest health, I talk to a doctor with expertise regarding my
ailment. If I want my car to work, I go to an expert mechanic, etc. I get best
results from the best people.
But why do I get the
best results from these people? It seems to me that I get these optimal results
because these people have the best information – they are my best available
sources. Now, a similar question needs to be asked when we consider theology.
What sources do I look to when I am thinking about God? Who/what am I listening
to as I build my ideas about God, the church, Christian living, etc.?
For the longest time,
Christians believed that the proper source was some amalgamation of Scripture
and philosophy. Eventually that ran its course and Christians the primary
source of theology became reason. On this model, only those things, which were
justifiable by rationality, could be considered legitimate content for
theological construction. Ultimately, that too seemed insufficient to account
for certain religious necessities and many Christians turned to feeling or
experience to legitimate their claims about God. (Just as an aside, for all you
historians of Christianity, I do realize this overview is hopelessly
reductionistic. However, I do think it serves the point I am trying to make.)
In our present day, we
now have a funny admixture of folks doing theology in the church on both the
professional and popular levels. Some folks hold fast to foundational sources
(i.e. the Bible) while others are continuing to explore other sources for
Christian claims (i.e. experience, etc.).
As I have mulled over
some thoughts about legitimate sources for Christian theology, I seem to have
arrived at three that I cannot get away from.
I think an argument can be made that all three of these sources are
necessary to the task of theology because all of them have God somehow closely
related to them. Here they are in no particular order:
1) Scripture
Classically speaking,
this has been a source for theology that, in one way or another, has never
quite gone away. People have ridiculed it, pulled it apart, canonically
reshaped it, etc. but it has held its ground and seems to me to be a pillar of
Christianity. Exactly in what way, I may not be exactly sure. However, I do
know that the Holy Spirit is present in/with/through the Scriptures and
therefore it must be acknowledged as a proper source for Christian thinking.
2) Tradition
I know I might lose
some of my protestant, evangelical friends at this point, but bear with me.
Where does tradition come from? The church. What is the church? The body of
Christ in the world. Who is promised to be with the body of Christ? The Holy
Spirit. It seems to me that, even though tradition might be a little bit messy,
it is still a vibrant expression of the God in the world. Therefore, whatever
church tradition might say, it behooves us to pay attention. Not because we
have some servile attitude toward a Roman hierarchy, but because we recognize
that God’s spirit is within and among the people of God.
3) Experience
This is something that
I think Evangelicals have been all over the place with. Some of us despise
“personal experiences of God” because you can’t quantify them. Others are all
about experience, but don’t really take time to interpret those experiences
according to Scripture or tradition. So here is my take on it. Experience is
absolutely legitimate. This is one of the beautiful things about Christianity –
God is personally present to His children. Therefore, we need to explore what
it might look like to utilize our own experiences or those of a particular
sub-group in the construction of theology.
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