4 Resources for Theological Reflection

When I was 30, I read the book, Original Blessing, by Matthew Fox. I’m not sure why I bought the book. Perhaps I was intrigued by the title. I grew up in a religious tradition that talked a lot about original sin, so what, exactly, was this original blessing.

It was a book that changed my life in many ways. In the book, I encountered imaginative ways to think about the faith I grew up in. New ways to think about who God was and how God related to the world. New ways to think about the meaning and significance of Jesus: his teachings, his actions, his death and resurrection. New ways to think about doctrines like grace and salvation.

Many of Fox’s ideas were so imaginative that I had never even considered them. And yet, as I read, I did not feel disturbed or threatened. These new ideas were puzzling, but they resonated with me. Original Blessing was so important to me that it was one of the few books I kept when I retired from the church. I hadn’t read it in years. I wasn’t going to read it over and over again. It just felt important to have that book in my life.

My encounter with Fox’s book is a personal example of a moment, which I described in a previous post, where I moved from an embedded faith to a deliberative faith.

Embedded faith is the faith that we grew up with and has become an almost unconscious, or at least unobserved, part of us. But then things happen in our lives that challenge us to reflect more carefully (deliberately) on this embedded faith. It can be a significant event or crisis, but it can also be the natural process of deepening our relationship with God. But this deliberative faith leads us to question some part of what has been taken for granted.

Fortunately, the Christian faith has given us four resources that we can use for this type of deliberate reflection: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience.

1. Scripture

While there may be significant disagreement about understanding and applying the truths of scripture, all Christians would agree that scripture is an important part of theological and spiritual reflection. In fact, because of its importance, scripture as a resource for theological reflection may seem to settle the matter, because well, it’s the Bible. There is an authority that we give scripture, as we should.

But it is not a matter of the Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.

The Biblical text does not speak for itself. We must interpret what we read or hear how others interpret it. There is a diversity of views within scripture: We will have to make decisions about how its diverse contents contribute to the message of God’s involvement in the world.

This diversity is what makes it difficult to make the Bible the only resource or authority for theological and spiritual reflection, even if we wanted to. Often an appeal to what one passage says on a particular subject can be met by a counterclaim based on another passage that says something different. So, you end up with the idea that “you can prove anything with the Bible” sort of like you can prove anything with statistics.

This diversity requires you to be clear about the authority of scripture and the role it plays in your life. Do you see the Bible as a book of propositional truths that you can apply clearly to every situation in your life? Do you see the Bible as the foundational story in which you live and from which you derive meaning in your life?

2. Tradition

Throughout its history, the church has passed on the truths of faith from one generation to the next. This is the resource we call tradition.

When you think of tradition, you may think of doctrines and creeds and teachings. But tradition also includes things like prayer, poetry, hymns, and visual arts. It includes rituals and practices and worship.

Tradition as a resource for reflection suggests the interplay between continuity and change. We embrace what has been handed down to us. And yet, all that is handed down goes from one generation to the next. It goes from one context to another. And because each of those contexts are different, there is the possibility of reinterpretation. We see things differently and so live differently as people of faith.

Tradition can ground us enough to keep us from following any new idea that comes along. And yet, we cannot accept everything that tradition has to offer. You can see this by looking at some of the issues that the church has faced throughout its history. For many years, the tradition in some churches supported the practices of slavery and the absence of civil rights. But when those traditions became a part of deliberative faith, it changed.

Tradition reminds us that our faith is dynamic. It reminds us that God’s work in the world is ongoing, and our understanding and experience of that work will change.

3. Reason

The use of reason in theological reflection involves two things. One, it has to do with being aware of how we think about our faith. In our reflections, it is important be as clear, coherent, and well-informed as we can. We don’t just express an opinion. We are aware of what is shaping and forming that opinion.

Two, a way to make our reflection well-informed is the use of other disciplines and practices like natural sciences, social sciences, history, philosophy, or literature. It is easy to respond emotionally to many of the issues and areas of concern in our daily living. Reason can be one factor that keeps us from being controlled by our emotions, especially when that emotional reaction finds its source in a particular way of looking at an issue.

4. Experience

All of life, including the life of faith, is meant to be experienced. We don’t just have beliefs about God. We experience God. We are aware of God’s presence in the significant and simple moments of our lives. We also live in a very specific time and place that offers us a variety of encounters with other people, cultures, and ways of looking at the world.

Often, it is one of these encounters that leads us to deeper theological and spiritual reflection. We encounter someone who sees the world very differently. In fact, we may have been taught that their way of living is wrong. But they seem to find meaning and joy. We know them. We like them. So the experience of them in our lives invites us to a place of reflection.

Giving space for our experience honors the fact that all of life — spiritual, emotional, cognitive — is relational in nature, and it is important to honor that.

The Wesleyan tradition has taken these four resources and framed them as a quadrilateral.

I like this image. It suggests that all of these resources have a place in our reflection. To be sure, different religious traditions may emphasize one of the resources more than the others. But when the voices of the other resources are silenced, our spiritual lives lose some of their texture and genuineness.

In a future blog post, I will show how to use these resources to reflect on a specific issue.