The mind is able to comprehend God to a fair degree. Wesley’s quadrilateral of Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason is a helpful guide in comprehending God. Scripture itself is revelation of God in that it is God-breathed; as one scholar put it, “to grasp God’s revelation is to grasp God himself” (TDNT). Tradition connects the modern person to the church of the past, and all sorts of people who have gotten their own grasp of God through the areas of the quadrilateral. Experience is an avenue through which God is revealed. Finally, reason implies that truth exists and it is possible to seek such truth. These four areas in themselves do not establish that the mind can comprehend God to any degree, but establish that the mind is able to comprehend God.
Taking just two of the four—Scripture and reason—I will reflect on the extent of the mind’s ability to grasp God. Scripture is communicated using one of the most basic units of communication: words—specifically, words about God. These words are neither equivocal (without direct correspondence to what the words describe) nor univocal (a direct correspondence); rather, they are analogous and express truth in a manner that is accurate but does not give the full picture. Many truths and experiences are conveyed through the words of Scripture, and because the mind can comprehend these words to a fair extent, the mind can comprehend God to a fair extent.
Reason provides a means for one to think more deeply about God and his revelation. Because reason can allow one to think fairly clearly on many issues, one can expect the same when applying reason to God, Scripture, and experience. Reason can only go so far, but at the very least, the mind can think fairly well on the various ways God has been manifested to this world.
the archives near Emmaus 
I was thinking about this the other day. In Acts 10:9-23, Simon Peter has an “experience” that trumps “scripture” and a voice “reasons” with him when he hesitates to contradict “scripture” and go against “tradition.”
I’ve been told that scripture always trumps experience, tradition, reason, but scripture seems to be saying otherwise.
I am having difficulty comprehending God.
@Jeff: You present an interesting tension here. Although Bible-believing Christians have placed a high degree of weight on Scripture (sometimes the highest degree), Scripture itself points toward, within, and outside of itself. I think we need Scripture, experience, tradition, and reason, but they all must be balanced, although perhaps not all equally. I tend to find that those who claim to give most weight to Scripture give more credence, for example, to experience in practice. I myself am not sure exactly how to balance and weight everything, and it does tend to confuse things when trying to comprehend God.
@Jeff and @JohnDave: I don’t think Scripture should be placed on top of some sort of radical hierarchy. I like the quadrilateral because it acknowledges the complexity of the matter. For instance, can we understand Scripture without reason? No, as JohnDave discussed reason assist us in understanding Scripture. Can we understand God with reason alone? I don’t think so. This is where the Enlightenment goes wary and I think Scripture provides an important challenge to what could become a rationalistic Christianity because it reintroduces us to narrative which is essential to human thinking. Neither can we go without tradition because as all the various commentaries in a given library will show we all can read Scripture with different nuance so there must be more to Christian theology than every person for themselves. Finally, experience makes it holistic so that it actually is humans engaging God and not just brains in vats.
@Brian: I think you have given good reasons for the inclusion of all parts. How would you deal with someone who says something like, “If your experience doesn’t line up with Scripture, it’s not Scripture that’s wrong but your experience and so we need to get our experiences to line up with it”?
@JohnDave: I think my first response would be “How can we control our experiences?” Experiences are simply that, something we experience. What needs to be considered is whether or not we are rightly interpreting an experience. So if someone says they saw an angel who told them Jesus is not the Son of God then I think (A) we test it against Scripture to see if that experience should be embraced or if it should be something that the one experiencing it rejects as something evil; (B) use our reason to compare Scripture and the message of said angel; (3) use tradition to ask if the church would ever condone such a thing.
Now for a person outside the household of faith or a person who is a Lone Ranger this will collapse because they will ignore all the safeguards and at that point prayer will be their best hope (it would be before as well).
Now if an experience is legit it may be that (A) our understanding of Scripture is faulty; (B) our use of reason has been blinded by presuppositions; and (C) our understanding of tradition, or tradition itself, needs to be rethought.
Again, what we have here is a counterbalance that allows us to effect as many safeguards as possible.
Stated like a good Thomist, JohnDave 😉 ! The old dictum: “Grace perfects nature”, eh?
Of course you realize you just opened a can of worms with this post, right? I look forward to seeing how you intend to grab hold of said worms. 🙂
@Brian: I’m thinking along the lines of someone who would hold to Scripture, experience, reason, and tradition (somewhat). The hypothetical person might say, “In the Book of Acts, God healed abundantly. Now I’m sick, but that shouldn’t be my experience based on what Scripture says and the work of God throughout history—there have been miraculous healings! So just because I’m sick I shouldn’t despair. I just need to get my experience to line up with Scripture (and by implication experience, reason, and tradition).”
@Bobby: I wish I knew more of Thomas, but I do agree with the old dictum. 🙂 What can of worms did I open? If I knew where it was, I could try grabbing ahold of it. 😀
@JohnDave: In that situation we can point toward (A) the rest of the canon (e.g. the Apostle Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’); reason (e.g. the Book of Acts is obviously a highlight reel, so we shouldn’t judge every situation by it); (C) tradition shows that suffering, pain, and martyrdom are as much a valid part of the Christian life as healing. There are many more points and examples that could be made to show (at least here) that this person’s experience is not abnormal or insufficient, but very reasonable for a Christian.
@Brian: I would probably be afraid for an outlook like that, though. It seems that if such a person doesn’t get healed, they might blame it on lack of faith or something of that sort, like how some popular preachers have said that Paul didn’t get healed of his thorn because he didn’t have enough faith. 😕
@JohnDave, the can of worms is the question on the relationship between nature and grace. An interesting and related question to your post is; how do you define sin? Because how you define sin (or grace) will define how you define grace (vice versa), and this will further shape how someone understand the usage of “analogy.” Whether we will follow an “analogy of being” (like Thomas, and where what you are describing, traditionally, comes from), or whether we will follow what Barth and TF Torrance called an “analogy of faith.” Will we start with our reason as the epistemological ground for knowing God, or will we start with the ontology of God’s life in Christ for us as providing the ground from which to think about God? These are two drastically different trajectories, methodologically, and it will create rather seismic differences between the way we understand “Revelation” amongst other things.
@JohnDave: At that juncture I think it is out of our hands. I don’t think it is the fault of the argument, but rather that the person has determined their view to the point that they will hear no other voice. I had a friend who was this way and it was actually over this doctrine that I think our friendship eventually eroded. He was convinced that if we have faith there must be healing because of his interpretation of the Book of Acts. When I appealed to other Scripture he would circle around them (“Paul’s thorn was the memory of killing Christians, therefore it wasn’t something that could be healed.”). When I appealed to experience he responded that it was the lack of our faith. When I appealed to tradition he said the church had been corrupted. No where to go after that!
@Bobby: This has been my trouble with understanding Barth/Torrance. It seems like a word game to some extent. I haven’t read much of Aquinas, but I doubt that many who use the word “reason” in Christian circles are committed to everything being about “God in nature” rather than “God in Christ”. Also, I am a bit confused by what could be taken as the denial that our understanding of God in Christ includes reason.
In other words, is Barth/Torrance attacking what JohnDave is saying here or is Barth/Torrance attacking something that may sound similar but is disconnected?
@Bobby: Let me think on what you said and get back to you. The way I define sin and grace will probably differ from Aquinas. Where I would start would be with God’s life in Christ, but I’m unsure of Barth and Torrance mean by that. Perhaps the way I see things is a synthesis of various views. We shall see!
@Brian: A view like that really shuts down all the options. I’m afraid that there are more out there who carry this sort of view. I have actually heard it preached from a pulpit. It never really made sense to me.
@JohnDave: At my last Landmark Conference in 2005 I heard the preacher say that “by his stripes we are healed” means that there should be no sickness if one has enough faith. I walked out.
@Brian,
Its a matter of methodology, and then how one understands the extent of the “Fall.” What kind of noetic effect has sin had on man? Was it just the lower faculty of the affections that became defunct thus disordering the higher faculties of mind/will (but to some extent left untouched)? This is what Thomas would say. And it jives with what both Wesely and JohnDave are saying (its in that same tradition). If this is the case, then man has the ability to reason his way to God, until reason (nature) leaves off, and grace (revelation) enters the picture allowing man’s mind to become “perfect” (ultimately ending in beatific vision). This tradition has led to all kinds of problems, I think, one of those problems is exemplified in the current state of Biblical Studies vis-a-vis higher criticism. This problem, in particular, seems to think that “Revelation” is at our behest, that we can hold it in our hands, that we can parse it to our whims; and finally, discard it as Revelation and make it a mere projection of man’s reflections upon who they believed God to be per their historical constraints (i.e. history of religions etc) [Evangelicals, in general don’t do this, but if they feel constrained to move and breathe in this atmosphere, then I would suggest that functionally the Evangelicals only argument against this backdrop is mere assertion and nothing substantial or theological … it is rather neo-Occamist]. Anyway, my point is if nature becomes the “ground” of our biblical studies and theology; if we move our theory of revelation into the realm of philosophy and epistemology; then we only have our own subjective (even consensual) reason to stand on. There needs to be a thick and robust theological account provided for an ontology of Scripture, Revelation, etc. And so this is why I favor Barth/TFT, but John Webster and Vanhoozer more than the Thomist/Wesleyan trad offers.
I don’t think I’ll have the time or space here to persuade you otherwise, Brian; but I would suggest that other than Barth/TFT’s & co. apparent dissonance that they cause so many, that they actually have something substantial and constructive to say (in principle) about this very issue. Its interesting, because what JohnDave is getting at is very Modern in orientation. It seems fitting, then, to turn to some Modern theologians to try and weed our way through the implications of what JohnDave is saying.
@JohnDave,
I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
@Bobby: I can see the dangers to the Thomist/Wesleyan epistemology. Since I am not a classical “theologian” forgive me for the grid I import, but what does Barth/Torrance do with Rom 1. 16-32 where humans are guilty because they should have seen the Creator in the creation but instead the rejected what they knew in favor of idols? In one sense this is a way of saying every human reenacts Adam (made clear in 5.12-21); in another sense it supports what you say regarding the human mind being darkened. So it seems like if all people replay Adam than all people have that moment where God made sense to them through the things everyone know–his power and deity–yet everyone eventually rejects this and that is where revelation comes to play. In other words, I’ve always understood revelation to be more about God as person intervening in the lives of individuals for reasons only he knows rather that what seems to be a gnostic-like “knowing” in some Calvinist circles.
To restate that, I think the Pauline view corresponds to the Thomist/Wesleyan view in that it does say humans can know something about God through their knowledge but then it seems to correspond to Calvin/Barth/Torrance in that we all have our minds and consciences darkened and God must intervene for us to be brought back into the light (to use a Johannine concept).
Would Thomas and/or Wesley say that eventually a human can reach what needs to be known about God without God having a necessary part in drawing them to himself? Or would Calvin/Barth/Torrance say that the unregenerate can know nothing true about God? I am wondering if it is as stark a contrast across the board as you seem to be depicting it. For example, I don’t think JohnDave sees any possibility in people pulling themselves to God by their own intellectual bootstraps, but neither would he (nor I) see any reasoning with a non-believer to be fruitless. Paul himself reasoned with the Athenians and the Bereans using the wisdom of the world and Scripture with these two groups. I am sure Paul understood that the Spirit was necessary for them to understand the gospel, but he didn’t seem to think the Spirit would refuse his means of preaching and his use of logic and argument. It seems like there could be a real danger of divorcing the human agent from gospel proclamation in favor of highlighting God’s work in Calvin/Barth/Torrance just as there is a real danger in thinking humans can reason without divine intervention toward God as maybe some forms of Thomistic or Wesleyan thought provokes.
Also, I should add that both of us have been confronted with a Oneness Pentecostalism that is fond of words like “revelation” as a means of discontinuing discussion. When we deny that salvation consists of baptism only using the words “in the name of Jesus” and through speaking in tongues they say we and others don’t have “the revelation”. I think we’d both agree Oneness Pentecostalism is flawed in many ways, yet they seem to use the same rhetoric as Barth to avoid any debate/dialogue and so both of us see this as a real danger. How would evangelicals who adopt Barth/Torrance avoid falling into the same semi-gnostic trap where Oneness Pentecostalism resides?
Brian, I don’t think Barth/TFT are gnostic. I don’t think they just through the “faith” card out to avoid argument. And it is a mistake to throw Calvin in with Barth/TFT; Calvin had his unique version of a “natural theology” and his “sense of the Divine”. I will try to come back later and explain that a little further. It is also a mistake to mistake Barth for Barthians. I am not a Barthian, and I would agree with you that Barthians have their own lexicon (as do Wrightians et al). The main thing for Barth is that Revelation is Reconciliation; that this one and the same event that takes place in the incarnation of God in Christ. Your two Adams point can be accounted for in this paradigm. The question isn’t necessarily what the Text says prima facia, but what the Text presupposes theologically in order to say what it does in its occasional situation. Anyway, I’ll be back 🙂 .
Wesley’s quadrilateral is, I believe problematic. The notion that the scriptures, tradition, reason, and experience are a sets of distinct tools that all deliver knowledge of God seems an insufficient response to Robert Barclay’s insight (Quakerism deeply influenced Wesley’s thought in a number of ways):
“Seeing “no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son revealeth him”;b and seeing the revelation of the Son is in and by the Spirit; therefore the testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true knowledge of God hath been, is, and can be only revealed; who, as by the moving of his own Spirit, he converted the chaos of this world into that wonderful order wherein it was in the beginning and created man a living soul to rule and govern it; so by the revelation of the same Spirit he hath manifested himself all along unto the sons of men, both patriarchs, prophets, and apostles; which revelations of God, by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams, or inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the formal object of their faith, and remain yet so to be; since the object of the saints’ faith is the same in all ages, though set forth under divers administrations. Moreover, these divine inward revelations, which we make absolutely necessary for the building up of true faith, neither do nor can ever contradict the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or right and sound reason. Yet from hence it will not follow, that these divine revelations are to be subjected to the examination, either of the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or of the natural reason of man, as to a more noble or certain rule or touchstone: for this divine revelation, and inward illumination, is that which is evident and clear of itself, forcing, by its own evidence and clearness, the well-disposed understanding to assent, irresistibly moving the same thereunto; even as the common principles of natural truths move and incline the mind to a natural assent: as, that the whole is greater than its part; that two contradictory sayings cannot be both true, or false: which is also manifest, according to our adversaries’ principle who (supposing the possibility of inward divine revelations) will nevertheless confess with us, that neither Scripture nor sound reason will contradict it: and yet it will not follow, according to them that the Scripture, or sound reason, should be subjected to the examination of the divine revelations in the heart.”
-From Robert Barclay’s Apology THESES THEOLOGICAE Proposition II
The bottom line is everything in the end is subsumed by experience. I’m not sure how you would separate scripture from ones experience of scripture (Gadamer’s Truth and Method), tradition from ones experience of of tradition (Peter Berger’s work on secularism particularly The Heretical Imperative), reason from ones experience of reason (William Jame’s Pragmatism), or even a religious experience from ones experience of religion (Freud’s Totem and Taboo).
@Bobby: I look forward to your further response.
Brian, maybe I’ll write a post on this, and link back to it here. I think to try and explain all of this is definitely post worthy, if not paper. 🙂
@Bobby : Works for me.
@Dan: True, there are problems with the quadrilateral, but I think they are useful categories to speak of how one can comprehend God to some degree. While experience may arch over all the other categories, there is some sort of objectiveness to Scripture, reason, and tradition that cuts across personal, subjective, and cultural lines. So even if all the other categories are subsumed under experience, one can work to reach toward whatever objectiveness to which they may point.
@Bobby: I’ll respond here over the weekend, or if you write a post linking back, I may comment there.
@JohnDave: I’m not sure what you mean by ‘objectivness’ here, could you tease that out for me?