Experiencing Doctrine

"Experience must always be tested by doctrine, not doctrine by experience." I read these words in a journal article I was reviewing during sermon preparation. It got me thinking about my own experience. There have been times when what I experienced did not jive with what the Bible teaches. For example, the Bible insists in multiple places spanning both Testaments that God "will never leave or forsake" his people. There was a time in 2006 when all my senses and all of the circumstances of my life were shouting out to me, "God has left you; He has forsaken you!" Looking back, I see that even though my experience told me God had left me high and dry, in reality He had not. It was a test, a peirasmos in the full sense of the word (for all you Greek scholars out there), and it was what I needed to get serious about this whole Christianity thing. What I thought was God's utter lack of care for me was in actuality the most caring thing God could have done for me. I don't know how to put this other than...my experience was wrong, but doctrine was right.

This month's Toastmasters magazine quips, "We are all bad judges of ourselves." I would agree and go a step further: We are all bad judges of our immediate experience. I look back on many events in my life that I didn't think were beneficial at the time, but in 20/20 hindsight I can now see how they were indeed a part of God's plan for me. I wouldn't have all the wonderful things I have now--Jessica, Brodie, and my faith--without them. My doctrine allowed me to understand my experiences in the proper context. But had I let my experience define my doctrine, where would I be now?

We live in a very experiential age. I don't mean to say that experience is null and void, because obviously that is just plain silly. And I don't mean to say that one should unquestioningly assert biblical precepts, experience or no. But I do mean to say that we should interpret our experiences in light of revealed Truth (for that is what the biblical metanarrative is) and not vice versa. In our postmodern era, this is a counter-cultural call. It isn't popular. It isn't what itching ears want to hear. But it is the truth.

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, a though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. - Habakkuk 3:17-18

The Goal, or How Much Further Have I to Go!

...It is not just those who plan to enter the academy professionally who need to have training in philosophy. Christian philosophy is also an integral part of training for Christian ministry. A model for us here is a man like John Wesley, who was at once a Spirit-filled revivalist and an Oxford-educated scholar. In 1756 Wesley delivered "An Address to the Clergy..." In discussing what sort of abilities a minister ought to have, Wesley distinguished between natural gifts and acquired abilities. And it is extremely instructive to look at the abilities that Wesley thought a minister ought to acquire. One of them is a basic grasp of philosophy. He challenged his audience to ask themselves,

Am I a tolerable master of the sciences? Have I gone through the very gate of them, logic? If not, I am not likely to go much farther when I stumble at the threshold...Rather, have not my stupid indolence and laziness made me very ready to believe, what the little wits and pretty gentlemen affirm, "that logic is good for nothing?" It is good for this at least,...to make people talk less; by showing them both is, and what is not, to the point; and how extremely hard it is to prove any thing. Do I understand metaphysics; if not the depths of the Schoolmen, the subtleties of Scotus or Aquinas, yet the first rudiments, the general principles, of that useful science? Have I conquered so much of it, as to clear my apprehension and range my ideas under the proper heads; so much as enables me to read with ease and pleasure, as well as profit, Dr. Henry Moore's Works, Malbranche's "Search for Truth," and Dr. Clarke's "Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God?"

Wesley's vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy and the science of his day. How do the pastors graduating from our seminaries compare to this model?

Taken from Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations For a Christian Worldview, p. 4