Scripture, Tradition, Experience
Christianity in most of its history has largely relied upon outer authority. But we must now be honest about the value of inner experience, which of course was at work all the time but was not given credence. Thomas Keating
Gregg’s Reflection
Carl Jung said, “I don’t know if I believe in God anymore, I know.” When our wedding gifts burned up in a fire two weeks after we were married, we took the insurance and bought camping gear, and took off on a road trip through the mountains and deserts of the American West and Canada. We were the only people camping at the Grand Tetons, and it got to 5 below that night.
God revealed Godself to me in those Rocky Mountains. I had been searching for God as I read of the world’s religions, and waded into the spiritual beliefs of Native Americans. But, it was the experience of God that made me know, echoing Carl Jung’s quote.
Years later, I had an experience of Spirit at Cursillo, during worship as the sun rose over a lake. I knew that this was the same Spirit that had touched me in the Mountains of the West and drew me to God. So, it was my experience that brought me to faith.
I was baptized by a Charismatic Lutheran Pastor, Vernon Luckey. Charismatics I knew yearned for the lived experience of the holy as Spirit touched them.In the next years, the charismatic movement became controversial in our church. The implicit message from the traditional folks was, “Don’t trust your experience.”
I found that message implicit in the teaching and preaching I heard for decades. As I continued to experience flashes of the Spirit, I shared some experiences with pastors, and kind of freaked them out. I learned not to talk about such things.
In decades of work with pastors, I came to realize not all of them have had a deep inner experience of God, and therefore, could not be reliable guides to my experience of God.
So, when I first heard Richard Rohr say, “We filter all we learn of Tradition and Scripture through the lens of our experience. Let inner experience be the teacher.” He went on to describe Inner Experience as the front wheel of a tricycle, and while Scripture and Tradition carry the weight, the front wheel directs the path of our spiritual journey. I was blown away. Finally, someone confirmed the value of my own inner experience.
When I first described this idea to dear pastor friends, they had a skeptical response. Their theological training was all focused on Scripture and Tradition, and they did not have a frame of reference for Inner Experience as the guiding force.
Thomas Keating says it this way, “The two wheels of Scripture and Tradition can be seen as sources of outer authority, while our personal experience leads to our inner authority. I am convinced we need and can have both. Only when inner and outer authority come together do we have true spiritual wisdom.”
So, read on and discover how your inner experience of God is to be trusted, and is the pathway to wisdom.
Blessings, Gregg
Scripture
When the Lord finished speaking To Moses on Mt. Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.
Exodus 31:18. First, the experience of God, then came the law
He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets.
Deuteronomy4:13
I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than daily bread.
Job 23:12. Now, the law becomes tradition
As soon as Jesus was Baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.” Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Matthew 3:16-4:2. Jesus’ ministry was preceded by the Spirit leading him into the wilderness, and then affirming him at his baptism
Having been buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Matthew 3:13. Jesus being resurrected changed everything
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a sabbath.
John 5:8-9 Everyone healed by Jesus’ touch experienced God in their midst
Is not the cup of Thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?
1 Corinthians 10:16
Ancient Writings
If it’s true, it’s from the Holy Spirit.
Thomas Aquinas
Grant me, O Lord my God, a mind to know you, a heart to seek you, wisdom to find you, conduct pleasing to you, a faithful perseverance in waiting for you, and a hope of finally embracing you.
Thomas Aquinas
Modern Writings
Everything is a grace, everything is the direct effect of our Father’s love—difficulties, contradictions, humiliations, all the soul’s miseries, her burdens, her needs—everything, because through them, she learns humility, realized her weakness. Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift, Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events—to the heart that loves, all is well.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
All religion derives from a mystical experience, transcending thought, and seeks to express this experience, to give it form, in language, ritual, and social organization.
Bede Griffiths
Experience is the forerunner of all spiritual teachings.
Daniel Goleman, The Meditative Mind, p. 39
People fear new experiences, more than most anything else.
D H Lawrence
I don’t know if I believe in God anymore, I know.
Carl Jung
Trusting Our Inner Authority
The two wheels of Scripture and Tradition can be seen as sources of outer authority, while our personal experience leads to our inner authority. I am convinced we need and can have both. Only when inner and outer authority come together do we have true spiritual wisdom.
Christianity in most of its history has largely relied upon outer authority. But we must now be honest about the value of inner experience, which of course was at work all the time but was not given credence. Information from outer authority is not necessarily transformation, and we need genuinely transformed people today, not just people with answers.
I hope my words—written or spoken—simply invite readers on their own inner journey rather than become a replacement for it. I am increasingly convinced that the word prayer, which has become a functional and pious thing for believers to do, was meant to be a descriptor and an invitation to inner experience. When spiritual teachers invite us to “pray,” they are in effect saying, “Go inside and know for yourself!”
The chief thing that separates us from God is the thought that we are separated from God. We fail to believe that we are always with God and that God is part of every reality. The present moment, every object we see, our inmost nature are all rooted in God. But we hesitate to believe this until our personal experience gives us the confidence to believe in it. . . .
God constantly speaks to us through each other as well as from within. The interior experience of God’s presence activates our capacity to perceive the divine in everything else—in people, in events, in nature. We may enjoy union with God in any experience of the external senses as well as in prayer.
Thomas Keating, Open Hearts, Open Minds, p. 44
Theology has made it complicated to trust your own spiritual authority.
Kathleen Singh, The Grace in Living, p. 236
Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.
Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit!
Contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole” (see Matthew 8:13; Mark 5:34; Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” and often did not belong to the “correct” group! They were people who affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it!
Richard Rohr, Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi , p. 1–2, 4.
Inner Experience (front wheel), Tradition, Scripture,
We were most raised up in Imperial Christianity. Not much was healing, liberating or loving, Inner experience was discouraged, not trusted. Instead, trust the hierarchy (until we find out most of the clergy didn’t have much of an inner experience). The Pentacostal movement brought inner experience out of the realm of superstition and made it available to the masses. We have the tools like no other generation to both affirm and critique ourselves.
We filter all we learn of Tradition and Scripture through the lens of our experience. Let inner experience be the teacher. When you don't have an inner life, you will be obsessed with creating an outer life. The steps to maturity are necessarily immature. Don’t judge, transcend and include.
When the three wheels of the tricycle can move together, can balance each other, can challenge each other, then you have a basis for wisdom, beyond knowledge. Makes us more compassionate with the young and immature.
Tradition is the larger category than scripture. Scripture came out of tradition. The Bible is a collection of texts from different centuries that create a way to connect the dots. How did God become real to so many people? We were all born into a secular culture where the predominant posture is doubt.
Stages of religion by Ken Wilbur: Cleaning up, Growing up, Waking up, Showing up. Most of today’s religion does not get beyond Cleaning up. Any religion that is basically a reward/punishment system, it is early stage religion. Alternative Wisdom emerges from those who have experienced a “Transcendent Vantage Point” by reason of:
Authentic God experience, the Spirit descending, God as mercy and compassion.
The conventional wisdom failing them and for whom life is not logical, just, ordered, fair, consistent or even meaningful
Being victims, the excluded, the minorities, in any sense. They always have a head start! “The way everybody thinks” has shown itself to be wrong in their experience.
Richard Rohr, Living School Teaching
This is a foundational belief of the ministry of spiritual direction: everyone has access to an inner experience of God, but we don’t always recognize those experiences for what they are. We may be too busy, too bored with our church services, or too “bought in” to the narratives of our consumer culture. A practice of slowing down, of reflection, of asking “big questions” about our desires, our wounds, our values, and our relationships helps us to discover and trust in the truth and authority that lies within us.
Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 5, 7.