The Doctrine of FAQ

We have this coffee maker that was leaking and I consulted the owners guide frequently asked questions (FAQ). There is something satisfying about FAQ’s in my life. Not only do I get the satisfaction by getting an answer to my question, I feel normal because I discover that the problem that I have is not unique to me. Others have had the problem and have asked the question so often that smart people generated a list of these questions and provided satisfying answers. FAQ’s are great for coffee makers, but not for Christianity.

Many of us in the Christian faith approach the faith as a sort of ultimate FAQ. As though the Bible is a set of Jeopardy board answers and all we have to do is find the correct question:

“The Lord is my Shepard” - What is security?

“Do not worry about tomorrow.” - What should I do with my anxiety?

I am asked for scripture for a number of situations all of the time. It is not a problem that we turn to the Bible for guidance but the Bible is not an FAQ. It is not “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth.” It is more a little library curated over centuries than a single book written on one subject.

Many times we turn to the Christian faith as a sort of FAQ on what is happening in their life and the world. It makes sense to look to tradition for guidance because we can learn from the past, but we are not held hostage to the past.

It is not just the Bible that is treated as a FAQ, it is also Christian doctrine. It is assumed that there are some questions that have been asked over the years, for instance, “What did the death of Jesus do?” There is a lot of Christian doctrine that attempts to answer this question. There are some very good responses to these questions. Doctrine is helpful and very informative, however doctrine is not an FAQ the the Christian faith.

Doctrine is a point of entry to the faith, not the point of arrival. Doctrine is a street that takes you to new places, not a cul de sac of certainty. It is a thought and responses to life’s questions using a Christian perspective, but the Christian perspective is not monolithic. There is no singular “Christian Perspective”. Do not let anyone tell you that this must mean that if there is not a singular Christian perceptive, then it must mean that ALL perspectives are Christian. This is a false choice because clearly there are many perspectives that are not Christian (colonialism, imperialism, racism, antisemitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, patriarchal, consumerism, etc.).

I offer up one Christian perspective on doctrine - doctrine is not a FAQ and it is harmful to all to treat it as such.

Tradition - Handing On/Handing Over

In a section of the book "Invitation to Research in Practical Theology, the authors write the following about tradition.

Tradition is a key religious word. It is an ambiguous word: carrying etymologically the meaning of ‘handing on’ but also ‘handing over’ - passing on or betraying: ‘traditio’ in Latin, ‘paradosis’ in Greek. Paul hands on the witness he has received to the death and resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:3) and to the Last Supper (1 Corinthians 11:23); Judas hands over Jesus to the authorities (Matthew 26:45-46).

They go on to explore how we wrestle to be faithful to develop traditions so to not hand them over (betray) but to hand them on to the next generation.

Photo by Justin Main on Unsplash

What stirs in my soul is not just the ways we are to be faithful to not betray tradition and how we ought to faithfully hand tradition on to the next generation, but the ways that tradition betrays us.

Traditions hand us deep wisdom and knowing that is valuable and important. We tend to idealize and romanticize the tradition of the past. Everyone has “golden years” they remember as the best times of their life and many of us work hard to try to get back to those times or lament that we are no longer in those glory days. And this is where tradition can betray us.

Tradition, like other living things, do not like to change and are biased toward self preservation. Tradition’s evolutionary advantage, if you will, is to convince us that they are powerful and that change is deadly. For instance in the United States the tradition that argues the Civil War was not about slavery is still very much alive and those who would change this tradition are faced with very harsh words and actions. (For those outside the United States, the Civil War is complex like all wars, but it was chiefly about slavery.)

Tradition is a big reason that I am dedicated to the Church. I love the tradition and believe there is deep wisdom and Truth contained within them. But until I come to grips with the reality that traditions are not just handed on but they also hand us over, they can betray us, they can enslave for their own existence.

Do not forget that tradition is never dead, it is alive and tradition is using every advantage it has to breathe and spread. Let us not be fooled, tradition is powerful and beautiful. But tradition can also betray us, leading us down a dark road, for the sake of it’s own survival.

A UMC Problem: Authorities in an Age of Authority

Church historian Phyllis Tickle (1934-2015), has argued that every 500 years the culture goes through an upheaval, and the last upheaval was called the Great Reformation. For those of you counting, this year marks the 500 year mark since Martin Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenburg door. If Tickle is accurate, then we are right in the middle of a new upheaval (which she calls a "new rose"). 

Tickle also makes it clear that a core issue in these upheavals is the question, "Where now is our authority?" Here is a three minute video that makes the point from Tickle herself:

If you did not watch this video, Tickle sates that Luther's theses were at their core an argument that the Pope was not the authority any longer because the office had become corrupted. As such, Luther argued, the old authority is not longer authoritative. What he offered as the new authority was the scripture (Sola Scriptura).

This new authority has held, according to Tickle, for 350 years but is now facing the same situation the Pope faced with Luther. Sola Scriptura is no longer culturally identified as authoritative as it was because it has become used by so many for corrupt purposes. (Note I am not saying scripture or the Pope are corrupt but have been used for corrupt purposes).

Now that we are in the middle of this 500 year upheaval, the question is the same - "Where now is our authority?" And just as Luther offered a new locus of authority, others today offer their own sense of where the authority is now. Here is a short list of examples as I see them (please note these are generalities and I am aware of the shortcomings of making generalities):

• Non and Post-denominational Christians elevate scripture as sola authoritative [When a church calls itself a "Bible Church" (as though other Christian churches are not) it is sort of a give away.]
• Secularists and Democrats elevate science as sola authoritative
• Academics and Technocrats elevate reason as sola authoritative
• Conservatives and Catholics elevate tradition as sola authoritative
• Pentecostals and Relativists elevate experience as sola authoritative

Again, there are great exceptions to this short list, and truthfully I am sure that I can be wrong on the diagnosis, but I believe the point stands - in the upheaval, every camp is claiming an authority and the more there is unrest the tighter each camp will cling to their declared authority. Which leads to the problem in the United Methodist Church: The UMC does not claim an authority. The UMC claims authorities.

The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, was a man who placed a preimum on Scripture, but also understood there were other authorities that were valid and gifts from God. Wesley was a priest who did not want to break from the Anglican Church (thus upholding tradition), he was a product of the Enlightenment (thus upholding reason) and he had a number of powerful personal encounters with God, such as when his "heart was strangely warmed" (upholding experience). Wesley knew of the value of holding these authorities in tension and the danger of putting all authority in one source.

The UMC faces the problem of holding onto the community of authorities that guide us while living in a time where people want/need/desire to collapse all authority into one source. When things are complex, there is a desire to simplify things and seek one authority source. The Christian witness of the Trinitarian God is that the mystery and interconnection of a community of authority is where we find God.

Now if we could just hold on.

Quadrilateral Egg/Chicken Dilemma

In some parts of the global church there is a thing called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. The quadrilateral is a way of talking about four sources that are used in the pursuit of Truth. Those four sources are Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience. 

There are many ways to visually describe the quadrilateral which you can see with a google image search. Some people talk about all four sources as equal in weight, while others talk about Scripture being heavier than the other three. The debate between if Scripture is "heavier" is not as heated of a subject as how much heavier is Scripture. Are we a Sola Scriptura or a Prima Scriptura people? 

The element that I have not heard in this conversation is the Chicken/Egg Dilemma inherent in the quadrilateral. Here is what I am talking about:

If we take Scripture as first and primary, that is well and good. However, Scripture did not fall from the sky. Scripture is what it is because a particular Tradition won out over time. That is to say, the Biblical canon is what it is in the UMC because of the tradition of Martin Luther not the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. With the chicken/egg metaphor, Scripture could be the chicken and Tradition could be the egg. 

Tradition was also not created out of thin air. Tradition comes out of a lived experience that reveals what is valued by the person(s) generating the Tradition. Luther had experiences that led him to believe that some books of his Bible were not canon-worthy (we call those the deuterocanonical books). In this thinking, Tradition could be the chicken and Experience could be the egg. 

We can't forget that a person's Experiences receive meaning through the filter of that person's own Reason. For instance, Luther did not think that books like Hebrews or Revelation should be in the canon because his Reason argued that they were not in his understanding of the Christian Tradition to be considered Scripture. Here, Experience could be the chicken and Reason the egg. 

Finally, the role of Reason filtered out stories and experiences that were not "of God" to a community as far back as oral Tradition - thus dictating what stories were told and ultimately having a chance at being Scripture. Is Reason the chicken and Tradition the egg? How does scripture fit into this analogy?

And we are back at Scripture.

Currently some in the UMC are debating the role of Scripture. Some sections of the UMC cannot tolerate anything on equal grounds as Scripture (example). I am not saying that anything should be. Here's a question worth pondering: Does the insistence of Scripture as "heavier" results in a dismissal of "lighter" sources? Maybe making the sources more equal does not result in taking Scripture lighter, but understands the Egg/Chicken dilemma.