Tuesday, March 19, 2019

A Little More Light - Part 1

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord….  Isaiah 1:18a(KJV)

Albert Outler was a Methodist scholar who, in 1964 first coined the phrase Wesleyan Quadrilateral.  He understood John Wesley to have a system of understanding God through four connected sources available to humans, Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience.  Of the Wesleyan tribe, the United Methodist Church is one descendant that still (in various degrees) holds to this theological approach, which is laid-out quite clearly in its book of faith and practice, The Discipline:
Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason. Scripture [however] is primary, revealing the Word of God 'so far as it is necessary for our salvation.[iii]
For the next few days I’d like for us to talk about these as a means of doing theology…the human activity of thinking about God.  And, while Scripture is primary (supreme in Wesley’s words), we begin today with Reason.
The “founding fathers” of this nation were men of strong reason.  Among the most respected was James Madison.  Although a man of genuine belief in God, and a man who painstakingly applied himself to conforming his life to integrity, morality, and obedience to Godly principles, Madison’s intellectual prowess sometimes stood as a roadblock to accepting that there is something beyond human reason upon which we must count for interpreting Scripture, the words of God.  It was not until later in life James Madison finally came to accept the fact that reason, if rested firmly in faith, and without doubt in Scripture, would be vivified in experience, and validate conforming to the tradition of the church.  In other words, it would all fit together!
In a letter to his good friend David Hume, Madison wrote:
Reason can only take us so far – it is mystery arising from the darkness of the human sight.
Hume replied:
The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery.[iv]
In doing theology, thinking about God, Madison and Hume understood correctly that life’s mystery is chiefly not “understandable” merely in the human capacity to explore our human social environment, evident life, and this universe.  Without revelation from God, (or mystery) human reasoning has earth-bound limitations.
So, what is the importance of reasoning?  In concert with human personal experience (the whole of humanity, not just one or a few individuals), and tradition of the church (doctrine concerning God), reasons’ task and possibility is to respond to the faith God places within each of us in examining the culture in which we find ourselves.  Given that, reason helps us apply God’s truth to bending that culture back to God.  It is Godly reason, informed by tradition and experience with which we evangelize our environment.  Reason, born of faith, sheds a little more light on our purpose (loving God and each other), and the pathway of the journey towards our eternal home.
For You Today
Letting God shed light on your reasoning…that’s reasonable!
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[i] Title Image:   Pixabay.com
[ii] Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The New Living Translation©
[iii] United Methodist Church (2004). The book of discipline of the United Methodist Church. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press. p.77
[iv] Lynne Cheney, James Madison, a Life Reconsidered, (New York, Viking Press, 2014), p.43

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