Theological Methodology

We're off!  I was struck this week primarily by the Maddox text.  I know that this may be a little outside the rules of the class, and I promise I'll stick more closely to the sermons in the future, but Maddox's portrayal of Wesley was so refreshing to me.  In his introduction, Maddox talked about Wesley's fundamental orientation toward theology, and his status as a "real" theologian.  Maddox called Wesley a "folk theologian", but tried to make this into a positive move, rather than a negative one.  He locates Wesley among the practical theologians, but also suggests that academic theology should not be elevated above practical theology.  I have often felt this tension between academic and practical theology in my own life.  This tension is why I haven't really picked a career path yet.  I know that I have a love for theology, but I also feel a disconnect between theology and the church.

Maddox (or rather, Wesley) attempts to reframe the task of the theologian.  Rather than seeing the theologian as someone to seeks to search out and organize knowledge about God, the theologian shapes the underlying commitments which inform and empower Christian living.  Theology, in this sense, is not concerned with knowledge for its own sake.  Theology is interested in enabling people to truly live as God intends for them to live.  I love this.  I long to be a theologian in that vein, a theologian who is immersed in the church and whose theology is a service to the church.  I have long felt that my theological studies have helped empower my spiritual life, and that there is a serious need for this type of "intellectual enabling" in the church today.  The way people act, feel, and love is not separated from their beliefs and thought patterns and the church has so much to offer in this area, if only we could connect and communicate our academic theology to real people in real situations.  Maddox seems to equate this theological method with the way it was employed by Wesley (sermons, hymns, liturgy, etc.), but I wonder if this is a necessary connection.  Is there room for some sort of middle ground between Wesley (pastor-theologian) and the academic theologians in their ivory towers?  Might career theologians occupy this secondary space, or should theology always be done by those in active, ordained ministry?

I was also interested to read about Wesley's theological method.  I grew up with the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, and so I was interested in Maddox's re-interpretation.  I quite like the idea of the "source" of theology being always located in God's gracious self-revelation (primarily in Scripture/Christ, but also in nature) and the other three (reason, experience, tradition) as a kind of hermeneutical triangle.  The question of natural theology and theological epistemology has been much on my mind of late, as I have recently read Feuerbach.  It seems to me that Wesley's appeal to God's gracious self-revelation is the only possible source for theology which avoids Feuerbach's critique, but I also appreciate that he doesn't completely reject the validity of reason and experience.

I will be interested to see the extent to which Wesley appeals to the "spiritual senses" that Maddox identifies.  You can already see evidence of this internal sense of spiritual realities in "Circumcision of the Heart" when Wesley discusses faith.  Wesley is clearly a good pietist, even this early, for faith in this sermon is an internal conviction and feeling, a sort of intuition of Christ's love for us personally.  My question for Wesley is how we are to discern this feeling.  What constitutes authentic experience of God?  I suspect that Wesley would suggest a testing of experience by Scripture, reason, and tradition.  In that sense, I think Wesley's method is wonderfully circular (perhaps holistic would be a more positive word).

One last thought.  I am usually a systematic thinker.  I like to see the big picture and seeing how everything fits together.  Is that the best way to read Wesley's sermons?  Maddox, and Collins, provide a sort systematized whole that seeks to make sense out the entirety of Wesley's corpus.  My natural tendency would be to take each sermon and try to fit it into the whole somewhere, but I wonder if maybe I should take each sermon on its own terms.  I almost feel like I've read too many textbooks, systematic theologies, and analytic philosophies, and so I'll read Wesley unfairly.  I'd like to talk about it on Friday, how you guys approach and engage each sermon.

I think its also an interesting question for our own preaching.  Do we seek to create something larger than an individual sermon?  Do we seek to build something in our congregation over time, always adding layers and filling it out with each individual sermon contributing to the whole?  Or, do we determine our "one thing" as DeeDee pointed out, and then let each sermon sort of stand on its own, allowing our underlying concern to provide whatever level of continuity is necessary?  Maddox seems to suggest that speaking to a context demands this second approach, that coherence is somehow impossible for the "folk theologian".  Do we agree?