reason

So other classes may be suspended for Labor Day, but not ours! Today we’re going to discuss revelation. Not the Book of but how God is revealed to humans. (As an aside, one of my professors once told me to remember that the biblical book is the Book of Revelation, not Revelations. Now every time I hear someone say Revelations, I think, “Oh no!” and now you will too!)

Anyway, when Christians talk about revelation (not the Book of) they’re talking about how they receive knowledge about God that is authoritative. We all know how hard it is to get truthful knowledge about other things—enter Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s marriage—so imagine how much harder it is to evaluate what’s true when it comes to an ineffable, abstract, possibly-non-existent being! That’s why Christians have said there are several reliable places in which God is revealed. These vary slightly from denomination to denomination, but I am going to talk about four common ones here: Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. Together they are known as the Methodist Quadrilateral, and they are commonly accepted sources in many traditions. [click to continue…]

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