Balance
Illustration Courtesy of Andy Stoddard
Jan. 9, 2024
My seminary experience was a unique and beautiful one. The seminary I attended, Memphis Theological Seminary (MTS), is unique in many ways. It is the official seminary of a smaller denomination, the Cumberland Presbyterian church, but the majority of the students are United Methodists, and when I was there, the majority of the United Methodists were from Mississippi. It was a wonderful seminary, and I am thankful for many things from my time there.
But the primary gift that MTS gave me was this – the gift of theological reflection. What I mean by that is we learned to think through everything we do in ministry, and frankly through most of our lives, theologically. How does what we believe impact what we say, how we preach, and how we love our families? Our theology must have practical application to our lives, or it remains simply lofty thoughts lost in the clouds. In the inverse, this gift of theological reflection also pushes us to think about everything we do through the lens of theology. Does the ministry of our church reflect what we believe? Does the way I help the poor, share the Gospel, or work with my team reflect what we believe?
Our theology must have practical application to our lives, or it remains simply lofty thoughts lost in the clouds.
Theological reflection is just that. It is the act of reflection on what we say and do through the lens of what we believe. It is a method that causes us to be less reactive and more reflective. It is a path that causes us to ask more questions than to be certain we have all the right answers.
It is a path that asks why. It asks: does this help me become a better disciple of Jesus Christ? Or perhaps more importantly, because I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, what is the right choice for me to make here? Theological reflection, in this world we live in, may be the most important, forgotten discipline that the church universal has.
As I think through the importance of this discipline, I have come to realize that one of the gifts the United Methodist Church offers to the wider world is our United Methodist “ethos.” It is how we deeply tie our holiness to love and God and Neighbor through our theological reflection. We are a people of method. In this method, we begin our theological reflection the only place that it can possibly belong, by examining Scripture. But we look at scripture through the gift of proper interpretation, through the lens of Tradition, Experience, and Reason. This method is often called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, and it is one of the keys to understanding how we “do” theology.
We believe that our emphasis on Scripture—as interpreted by Tradition, Experience, and Reason— along with our understanding of the open table, produces Christians of a generous spirit that our world so desperately needs today. This method of Biblical interpretation, where Scripture is primary but is rightly interpreted through the Tradition handed down to us, as well as our Experience, and Reason, is at the foundation of how I understand and interpret God’s Word. Our understanding of the Holy Scripture is at the very core of how we understand God, the world, and, well, everything. How we understand the Bible and how we share the Good News of Jesus is what has drawn many to United Methodism. And it continues to do so today.
The key doctrines of our church are found within our Book of Discipline, specifically within the Articles of Religion. Article V says this of Scripture:
"The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."
This is a beautiful statement of what we regard Scripture to be. Scripture has within it all things necessary for salvation. I always think of that statement in this way: if it is so important that your eternal salvation rests upon it, God will make it clear in Scripture. God is not playing hide and seek with His will. He wants us to know His will as much as we do. So He will give that truth to us through Scripture. He will reveal that truth.
So our theological reflection must start with Scripture. It is primary. Colossians 1:15 tells us that Jesus Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. To know the Father, we must know the Son. But how do we know the Son? Through Scripture.
Now we must ask ourselves what is the purpose of Scripture? John tells us in his Gospel that he has written this so that we may come to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Scripture is not a complete world history or a book of all accumulated knowledge. It is a very specific story. It is the story of the creation of all things, including humanity (Genesis 1-2), the fall of humanity and its effect on everything (Genesis 3), and God’s plan to restore what sin has corrupted through relationships or covenant (everything else). It shows us who we are (made in the image of God and sinful) and the lengths that God will go to save us, ultimately in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ. We come to repentance, conversation, and sanctification through the power of the Holy Spirit. We are made right with the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. Our very salvation is an act of the Trinity, and Scripture lays this all out for us.
Wow, what a gift Scripture is!
Scripture is not a complete world history or a book of all accumulated knowledge. It is a very specific story. It shows us who we are (made in the image of God and sinful) and the lengths that God will go to save us, ultimately in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Therein lies the rub. If Scripture is primary, how do we know what it means?
But as one of my professors at MTS used to say, therein lies the rub. If Scripture is primary, how do we know what it means? How do we interpret it rightly? As we affirm, the essentials for our salvation are made plain within Scripture, but what about the rest? What of the things that are not issues of primary importance but remain important nonetheless? That is where the gift of interpretation comes into play. Every theological tradition interprets scripture through its lens. So you can have two “Bible-believing Christians,” one of whom believes in predestination and one of whom believes in free will. The Bible forms our theology, but our theology forms our interpretation of the Bible.
For me, therein lies how we “do” theological reflection. We interpret Scripture through the lens of Tradition or the historic teachings of the church. What does the early church say? What about Wesley? What about the UMC? What about other traditions? What can we learn from the wealth of knowledge of those Christians who have gone before?
We interpret scripture through the gift of Experience. What have we observed in others? Where have we seen the fruits of the spirit? Where has our lived experience of our very lives shaped our understanding? For me, it was in becoming a father that I truly understood unconditional love. Our experiences shape our understanding of the scriptures.
And finally, we interpret Scripture through Reason. We are called to love the Lord our God with our heart, our soul, and our mind (Luke 10:27). We are thinking persons. God has given us a mind to use to think through Scripture. We bring our intellect to the table. We are not called to turn off our brain when we read; we are called to “reason together,” as Scripture says (Isaiah 1:18).
Now, each of these lenses are imperfect. As we said earlier, sin has corrupted everything, even our Tradition, Experience, and Reason. That is why Scripture is primary. But these lenses, these methods, this Wesleyan Quadrilateral, produce people who walk with balance. People who are deeply formed by the gift of God’s Holy Word, but who read it well, ponder and reflect upon it, and let the word richly dwell within them (Colossians 3:16).
It is this gift of Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason that we should apply to all of our lives: to our families, to our service, to our community, and to all we are. We should think through these activities through these lenses, and we should allow what we learn through them to shape us. When we do this, we walk well. We walk with balance. We are well-formed disciples who, through God’s grace, can love God and love our neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40).
In a world spinning far too fast and far too wildly, we need balance. I believe that is the gift that our United Methodist Church’s tradition of theological reflection offers to the wider world. It offers balance.
The Rev. Andy Stoddard
Photo Courtesy of St. Matthew's UMC, Madison, Miss.
The Rev. Andy Stoddard serves as Lead Pastor at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church in Madison, Miss. This post is republished with permission from his WordPress blog, revandy.org