The sources of theology: Scripture, tradition, reason, experience

On what grounds?

Whenever theology says something about God, a question follows close behind: how do you know? On what grounds do you say it? Through the centuries the church has learned from four places: Scripture, the word of God; tradition, the faith the church has received and handed on; reason, the mind God gave us; and experience, the life of those who walk with God by faith. Almost every Christian tradition draws on all four in some way. The differences lie in how they relate to one another, and in which has the last word when they seem to disagree.

Evangelical theology answers plainly: Scripture is the norm by which every other source is judged. Paul writes to Timothy:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

Human opinions come and go, but "the word of our God stands forever" (Isaiah 40:8). When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness he answered each time from Scripture: "It is written" (Matthew 4:4). Luke even praises the Jews of Berea for checking an apostle against the Scriptures:

Now the Bereans were more noble-minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true.

Acts 17:11

The teacher they were checking was Paul himself. Matthew Henry comments, "The doctrine of Christ does not fear inquiry" Matthew Henry.

John Wesley adds that the Spirit who gave Scripture also helps us read it: "The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer" Wesley. What it means for Scripture to be God's word is the subject of the doctrine course's lesson The inspiration and authority of Scripture.

Tradition: the faith handed on

Tradition simply means ‘what is handed on’, and the gospel itself first came that way. "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance," Paul says (1 Corinthians 15:3), and he urges the Thessalonians to "stand firm and cling to the traditions we taught you, whether by speech or by letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

In the second century this handed-on faith became a bulwark. The Gnostic teachers claimed that the apostles had passed secret teaching to a chosen few, and they read the Scriptures to fit their own systems. Around 180 Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, answered by pointing to the faith the church had received from the apostles and kept, though scattered across the world, as if it lived in one house and had one heart: faith in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.10. Irenaeus called it the rule of truth; it is often called the rule of faith. It was not a new teaching beside Scripture but the plot of Scripture itself, and it grew into the creeds, the Apostles' and the Nicene (see Nicaea).

Around 434 Vincent, a monk of Lérins, granted that the Scriptures are complete and sufficient, but observed that people interpret them in every direction; so we should read them with the common mind of the church, holding to what has been believed ‘everywhere, always, by all’. Doctrine may grow, he said, as a child grows into a man, but it must not change into something else Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory.

What, then, are the ‘traditions’ of 2 Thessalonians 2:15 for us? The Catholic and Orthodox churches read the verse as showing that apostolic teaching came by word of mouth as well as in writing, and that the church has kept both. Protestants answer that what the apostles preached and what they wrote was one gospel, and that it now reaches us securely in their writings, the New Testament. Wesley notes on the verse, "He preached before he wrote" Wesley, and Matthew Henry adds, "We have no certain proof of any thing having been delivered by the apostles, more than what we find contained in the Holy Scriptures" Matthew Henry. Since Jesus warned that human tradition can "nullify the word of God" (Mark 7:13), Protestants test every tradition by Scripture. The Catholic Church, for its part, also distinguishes the apostolic Tradition from the many customs and devotions that have grown up in the church over time Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Reason and experience

God made us able to think, and he speaks to us in words we can understand. Promising to wash his people clean, he says, "Come now, let us reason together" (Isaiah 1:18). Reason is needed to understand what Scripture says, to compare one teaching with another, to set them in order and to see whether they hold together; Anselm's ‘faith seeking understanding’ from the last lesson is reason at work within faith. But reason is a servant, not a master. Paul speaks of taking "captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5). When reason sits as judge over God's word, deciding what to keep and what to discard, it has left its place.

Experience is real too. "The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children" (Romans 8:16). Wesley treasured this witness: the Spirit testifies "With the spirit of every true believer, by a testimony distinct from that of his own spirit, or the testimony of a good conscience" Wesley. Yet the same Wesley, on the command to "test the spirits to see whether they are from God" (1 John 4:1), writes, "We are to try all spirits by the written word" Wesley. Experience may confirm the word; the word judges experience.

The twentieth-century Methodist scholar Albert Outler called Wesley's way of using these four together the ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’. The name is Outler's, not Wesley's. Outler explained that Wesley put Scripture first and used tradition, reason and experience alongside it, and he came to regret the term because it was so often taken to mean four equal sides Albert Outler, The Wesleyan Quadrilateral in Wesley. Wesley, a tireless reader of many books, called himself ‘a man of one book’ (homo unius libri).

How the traditions answer

The Catholic Church teaches that Scripture and Sacred Tradition flow from the same divine wellspring and form one sacred deposit of the word of God, which the Magisterium, the church's teaching office, interprets with authority. That office, it says, is not above the word of God but serves it Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum. The Orthodox churches often describe Tradition as the life of the Holy Spirit in the church, with Scripture at its heart as its highest witness, read with the Fathers, the councils and the church's worship.

The churches of the Reformation confess sola scriptura, Scripture alone (see the Reformed Faith course's lesson Scripture alone). This never meant reading the Bible without the church. The Reformers confessed the Nicene Creed and quoted the Fathers constantly. It meant that Scripture alone is the infallible final judge, and that creeds, Fathers and councils, precious as they are, stand under Scripture and are tested by it. Evangelicals differ among themselves on how much weight confessions carry: Presbyterian and Lutheran churches receive their confessions as church standards, while some free-church traditions prefer to bind themselves to no document but the Bible.

So we read Scripture first; we read it with the church of every age; we read it with our minds awake; and we read it with our lives. When the four seem to pull apart, we let Scripture have the last word. For more, see How does God speak? and How do Catholics and Protestants differ?.

Practice