The Tradition of Scripture
An interesting online conversation I was in the other day got me thinking about the relationship between "tradition" and "scripture." In my theological training there was much made of the Wesleyan quadrilateral and the inter-relatedness of "Scripture," "tradition," "reason," and "experience." What I've been thinking a lot about, lately, those is the fact that Scripture itself is a tradition . What do I mean by that? Well, no one alive today was there when the texts of Scripture were written. Every one of us receive the text(s) of Scripture from someone else, who received them from someone else, who received them from someone else... and so on. They are passed from person to person, or more specifically from peoples to peoples, as a tradition. When we receive them we accept that they are treated as Scripture within the tradition in which we receive them and this we do so as an act of faith. That is, if they are indeed rece