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!
Go to VIDEO
[iii] United Methodist
Church (2004). The book of discipline of the United Methodist Church. Nashville,
Tennessee: Abingdon Press. p.77
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