Most formal god-talks have a chapter or two up front dealing with the question of how it is that we could come to know anything at all about god. More to the point, they lay out which ways of god-knowing are correct and which are incorrect. (Theology tip: if you can throw out your opponent’s way of knowing god at this point, you can use it against her later.)

I was raised Methodist (among other things), and last century Methodist god-talkers synthesized founder John Wesley’s disparate thoughts on god-knowing into what’s known as the “Wesleyan quadrilateral.” (Wesley’s god-talk was written on an as needed basis, so he was never so sytematic as to have spelled it out just so.) And you thought you’d never use geometry.

The quadrilateral sets out four methods of god-knowing. All four methods should be used, each in the way appropriate to it. The four methods check and balance each other. The four methods are scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Wesley makes scripture the first and last method used; all disagreements among the other methods are ultimately resolved via scripture. If you think as the quadrilateral as a baseball diamond, scripture is home base. If the primacy of scripture is his nod to Protestant influence, then his inclusion of tradition is a nod to his catholicity. (Wesley died an Anglican priest.) Wesley’s understanding of reason and experience stems from John Locke, which we might today understand more narrowly as logic and sensory experience. (You could group the two together as early modern empiricism.)

For starters, I propose we make each corner of the quadrilateral plural: that is, scriptures, traditions, reasons, and experiences.

Still, “scriptures” is a bit problematic since it connotes revelatory authority. Most god-talks assume that God™ must reveal himself first in order for us to know God™–the rest is just a matter of how we go about it. Almost always, revelation is “closed”–limited to a certain book, a certain period of history and/or a certain exclusive club. I say prove it, prove that god is interested in entrusting the goods within a certain pamphlet, a certain timeframe, or a certain country club. How do they know God™ has “closed” revelation? Because God™ said so. See how that works? Most people call that a circular argument, but my grandpa called it biting yourself in the ass.

So we’ll take it down a notch and call it “sacred texts.” In religious studies, “sacred texts” means just about any text that any organized religious group regards as sacred. This gives a loose, diverse canon (or collection of sacred texts) that delightfully disagrees with itself at every turn. Not to get ahead of myself, but you could also include texts that you personally experience as sacred. We would then talk about “personal canons” and “community cannons.” Since revelation is not closed, we won’t let it be home base anymore either–it’ll just have to get used to being one among many.

“Traditions” comes next. I understand traditions to include rituals, sacred music, spiritual disciplines, god-talks, and other intentionally cultivated “spiritual habits.” Traditions are practiced in that they are often rehearsed and often played but rarely mastered. Most traditions are handed down from one person to another, from the adept to the initiate. Traditions do not need to be old; new traditions arise all the time. But most would-be new traditions either end up failed attempts to reinvent the wheel or else serve their purpose before fading from memory. The healthy cultivation of a tradition (trans)forms the self, making it more whole, more empowered. It is possible that some traditions could be better at empowering and making whole. It is possible that some traditions can only cause harm. Most traditions can be practiced to either effect.

My understanding of “reasons” leans heavily upon Richard Rorty and Alisdair MacIntyre. I won’t go into the Rorty since you can just follow the link. What I draw from MacIntyre (and what he draws from Aristotle) is that there are multiple reasons: each thing has its own “rationality” which is proper to it. The “reason” of a tree is “to tree,” and to do that (whatever it is) well. The “reason” of a scientific experiment is quite different. Both are good reasons in their own way, but you will never get them to be consistent with one another–they just don’t have enough in common. Reasons might thus be incommensurable with each other. The trick then is for reasons to be congruent, that is, internally consistent. Once we’ve got that down, we can go on to argue whether any particular rationality is worthwhile–an ethical discussion. For the purposes of god-talk, reasons help us put the cards on the table and weed out some of the doosies. Anyone crying about “logic” is selling you a chess game.

Finally, we end up with “experiences.” I’ll keep the Lockean notion of empirical experiences. But we can also add the Romantic sense of intuitive, emotional experiences of the natural world. From the existentialists, we learn of crisis experiences that put our very selves in peril and peak experiences that pull it all together in a moment of life-renewing awe. Liberation theology begins from the experience of poverty. In a more personal vein, “life experiences” add up over the years, for good and for ill. We could also bring in psychological experiences, biological experiences, sexual experiences, social experiences, economic experiences and so on.

Experiences are primary. There is never a living moment when we are not experiencing, though there are moments when sacred texts, traditions, and reasons are not within our horizons. In fact, we can only engage sacred texts, traditions, and reasons through experience. They challenge our understanding of our experiences, and our experiences challenge our understanding of them. Self-awareness itself could be understand as the experiencing of our own experiencing. Experience is not home base, because we are always “on experience.” In real life, home base moves: sometimes that puts points on the board, other times it sends us to the showers.

The primacy of experience does not mean that anything goes, that we each live in our own private Idaho. Solipsism is an infantile way of god-knowing. If they are not adolescents, those who imagine their most recent “peak experience” is the end-all-be-all revelation of god are either delightfully (if temporarily) naive or else actively avoiding learning that no one gives a damn about their “church camp high” except their mother and their church camp counselor. Experience is multiple and often contradictory. It’s no coincidence that god-knowing is too.