Quadrilateral support of ****sexuality?

[Trinity]

Originally Posted by Jet

Hi everyone. I'm new to the forum, and hope that I'm able to articulate my words adequately.

I'd like to focus on the pillar of Experience, since it's apparently the least popular...

We cannot exist outside of our experiences. The way we see the world is tinted by the experiences we've had (this is called bias). When we swear our allegiance to Christ, he does not magically take away our biases. Through intentional practice, we can lessen our biases, but we'll never completely be free of them.

Therefore we ascribe to some sort of Christian lifestyle because we've experienced it to be good and true. Hopefully none of us are Christians merely because our father and his father were Christians, but because we've experienced God directly or indirectly.

I'm claiming that experience is the beginning of our faith, and continues to build our faith.

Sometimes how we interpret scripture does not match our experience of life, of reality. This is where most of us would chime in to say, "we must regard scripture's version as more authoritative, and submit our experience."

But it is not that simple. It is common practice to confuse "what God said" with how we interpret "what God said." And we interpret "what God said" using the lens of our experiences. That is, we're biased in how we read scripture. So those of us who say, "well I just believe what the Bible says," seem to be in denial that they have the propensity to read their own biases into scripture. ...in fact, it would take an act of God for them to be mistaken ("The ONLY way that you can have legitimate authority to mitigate what God stated is to find a direct statement when [God] said 'Oopsie! I really did not mean that.'".

Back to Experience not matching Interpretation of Scripture... luckily we have Tradition to help us. Often our experience does not match our interpretation of scripture until we see how this person or that church lived out the scripture, and then our experiences allow for the interpretation. But this is a beautiful picture of the Quadrilateral balancing itself.

Without a balance, people will claim the Bible means something it doesn't, and then even if it defies our experiences, there's no check for the claim. It is common throughout history for widely-accepted interpretation of scripture to change because so many's experience with reality did not match the interpretation (for instance, the issue of slavery).

Another reason I hold Experience so dear is that Biblical characters commonly base their lifestyles of faith on it. From Abraham to John, it is their experience of the living God that shapes their life (and no doubt their interpretation of scripture). Jesus says, "blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God." A heart is purified through experiences of conviction, practice, patience, repentance, earnestness, sincerity, diligence... If closeness to God is closeness to truth, we cannot discount the pillar of Experience, for it is a vital means of pursuing truth.

This is a very interesting post. There is some gems.

I agree with you that the cognitive experience, the culture, nationality, ethnicity, genealogy, political and sociological environment, and our own structured philosophy of life can distort our perception.

Truly, Christians living in United States, or in Canada, or in India, or in China, or in Japan, or in Ethiopia are not the same. Christians living in the modern time are not even alike to those who were living in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance. There is even generational distinctions throughout the centuries.

Trinity

[Trinity]

Addendum

Even the perceptions of the Christ or about the Virgin Mary have moved throughout the centuries. If Martin Luther could come back on earth today, he would have been rejected by the modern evangelical churches. He would have been too much Catholic for them.

Ex:
Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture
by Jaroslav Pelikan
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Through-...8020010&sr=1-7
Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture
by Jaroslav Pelikan
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Through-C...8020010&sr=1-9

Trinity

[asdf]

Originally Posted by Trinity

This is a very interesting post. There is some gems.

I agree with you that the cognitive experience, the culture, nationality, ethnicity, genealogy, political and sociological environment, and our own structured philosophy of life can distort our perception.

Truly, Christians living in United States, or in Canada, or in India, or in China, or in Japan, or in Ethiopia are not the same. Christians living in the modern time are not even alike to those who were living in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance. There is even generational distinctions throughout the centuries.

Trinity

You're exactly right, Trinity. If we're going to claim Tradition as a source of authority (and this goes for the other sources as well), we're going to have to have the intellectual honesty to admit the vast and sometimes contradictory range of interpretations over the entire span of Christian history and geography.

I think that the bond of faith that unites the Church Universal is not conformity and uniformity on doctrinal (or even praxis) issues. Rather, it is inclusion, membership in a family. In my opinion, this diversity which may seem at first glance to undermine the validity of Christianity is actually one of its greatest strengths.

We read that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female [may I add: gay nor straight, 'liberal' nor 'conservative', western nor eastern, Protestant nor Catholic...], for you are all one in Christ Jesus." I don't believe that Paul was intending to undermine cultural, socioeconomic or gender differences between people, but rather to highlight the unity that is found within that diversity existing within the family of God.