Many mainline denominations have several sources of authority beyond the Bible. For example, Episcopalians have the “three-legged stool” of Richard Hooker which is Scripture, Reason, and Tradition. United Methodists add one and see Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience as authoritative when considered together.
There’s often incredible tensions between two sources of authority. The Bible has elements that conflict with scientific reason. The tradition of the church has interpreted the Bible in sometimes erroneous ways – or at least contextual ways that did not stand the test of time.
But in my experience, none of the tensions compare to the tension between experience and Church tradition. 2000 years of loosely coherent interpretation and theology seems a staggering obstacle to overcome when one’s personal experience is counter to it. Women and Queer people who experience the call of God on their hearts to preach have to overcome two millennia of church tradition that says it is only for straight men. Even for a local church, the experience of newcomers to the faith may be quite different than the traditions of that local church, and that leads to tension. Nevermind the fallback position of claiming “that’s not orthodox” when such a claim is dubious.
In our age of seeing the Bible as less authoritative for our daily life, it is important to live into the tension between sources of authority. To help with this, I found a lot to think on with Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr’s Daily Devotion on October 29th and his take on experience v. tradition. Take a read:
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Paul trusts his experience of God and of Christ over his own upbringing, over the Twelve Apostles, over Peter, and over the Jewish Christians. Paul doesn’t follow the expected sources of outer authority in his life, neither his own Jewish religion nor the new Christian leaders in Jerusalem. He dares to listen to—and trust—his own inner experience, which trumps both of these establishments. It’s amazing, really, that institutional religion makes him the hero that it does, and almost half of the New Testament is attributed to him, because in many ways he’s a rebel. He’s not by any definition a “company man”—anybody’s company in fact! In terms of human biographies, he is almost in a category all his own.
It is ironic that the ability to trust one’s own experience to that degree has not been affirmed by the later church, even though both Jesus and Paul did exactly that. They trusted their experience of God in spite of the dominant tradition. And the church came along and domesticated both Jesus and Paul. We were never told to trust our own experience. In fact, we were probably told not to have any experience. It was considered unnecessary! (Yet the Church still produced people like Augustine, Francis, Teresa of Ávila, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Teresa of Calcutta—who trusted their own soul experience against the tide.)
Once you know something, you can’t deny that you know it. You don’t need to dismiss outer authority—its intuitions are often correct—but you’re not on bended knee before it either. The church’s fear of inner authority has not served the Gospel well and has not served history well either. I am afraid this has to do with those in charge wanting to keep you co-dependent. I don’t think Paul wants to keep you dependent upon him at all. He is the great apostle of freedom—a scary freedom that much of tradition, and most clergy, have not been comfortable with at all (Galatians 5:1-12, Romans 8:20-23).
~ Richard Rohr
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Thoughts?
- How would the church be different if it held inner authority to be less of a challenge to traditional authority? Or have both terms been too narrowly defined?
- What is your life example of a clash between experience and tradition?
Sound off in the comments!
I think that while the point may be valid it is always a slippery slope. Hear me out before I am cast as the orthodox protecting his place. If I believe God told me distinctly that I should kill all the people older than 50 in the church, I experienced God telling me this directly, should I do it? One would generally say absolutely not. One can either have a perceived divine experience – or claim to – and this can move to having no right to challenge it. I think this idea is very “American” in that it reveals that my experience is valid by itself and no one can tell me my experience is not valid.
Now that being said, there is a difference in my opinion between that and choosing to have a different interpretation of scripture than the Church Tradition is. For example – you may choose to say that there is little basis for women to not preach and interpret Paul’s scriptures (those primarily used to say women cannot preach) differently than some tradition would.
It is for this reason, of course, that I do not hold experience as a valid source of Truth by itself. I believe experience should be measured against scripture first and tradition second, do discern the experience and it’s meaning. I do believe in an enemy who is deceitful and can just as easily be the source of an experience.
Tyler, I think you’ve hit upon something that was in my head but I didn’t include it in the intro of the post: experience is always best when it is corporate experience not just an individual’s experience. When a community has an experience and holds its people to that account, then it has less of a chance of falling off the deep end like you wrote in your first paragraph. So if a community of women (perhaps across geographies) consistently felt the call to preach, then they have more authority to seek that change. So many of our names in women’s preaching suffrage had entire communities behind them.
So I think the best way to have it not be individualistic is to see experience as a communal property that is cared for and nourished, even if it is across geographic lines. That sort of shared inner authority, I think, Rohr would recognize as well.
And with that clarification I am in greater agreement then lol I would still say it should be measured against scripture. My same example could be used to say that if a group of people found they had the same experience of killing all older people above 50 in the church, that does not make it right. This should still also be balanced against “love your neighbor as yourself” and other verses and how does this meet the standards set forth by God.
Scripture, Reason, Tradition, AND Experience should all be considered not any one alone. We should not blindly follow Experience apart from tradition, reason, and Scripture. We should not blindly follow tradition apart from scripture, reason and experience. We should not blindly follow our own reason (reason of man is folly), apart from Scripture, tradition and experience. And finally, we should not follow Scripture alone apart from our own reason, tradition, and experience. As you can tell, I am not a “sola scriptura” guy, but I do feel that one must rely on all things together and not any one isolated. Making a group reason, or a group tradition, or a group experience alone does not make something theologically sound or morally right.
Amen to that. I agree with your balanced approach.
Other than the Holy Spirit, I wonder what ways are humans able to bring an individual (or church–or even denomination!) back from the brink after relying too heavily on one of these sources of authority for too long…