Throughout
centuries of church history, there have been four methods of
obtaining truth: Scripture, tradition, reason and experience.
Clearly, in Jesus' time, experience would have been a big method of
obtaining truth. Because the twelve disciples literally walked with
the Lord of the universe, they had the benefit of experiencing Jesus
teaching through all five senses. However, they still very much
relied on the written scriptures that actually vetted that Jesus was
who He said He was. After Jesus ascended and as time went on,
tradition became a huge source of truth. After all, those closest to
Jesus understandably knew quite a bit, and so future disciples would
rightly wish to imitate them as much as possible. Unfortunately, with
the expansion of the church and introduction of geopolitical power,
the sinful flesh distorted truth and instead “tradition” easily
became what the current pope decided it would be, even divorced from
Scripture. By the time of the reformation in the 1500's, “tradition”
devolved into mere traditions of men that deviated largely from the
scriptural foundations, which produced a massive split in the church.
Reason
is also a source of truth, given by God to help us understand and
work through information. Unfortunately, some have underestimated
that God's ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9), and so
reasoned things like the resurrection of Christ right out of their
theology. As mentioned earlier, experience is another method of
obtaining truth, although it looks a bit different than it did in the
days of the disciples walking with Jesus. The Holy Spirit now lives
in each one of us and we can operate in signs, wonders and miracles
(John 14:12), experiencing the joy of the Lord, angelic encounters
and a whole host of other supernatural experiences, which can be
doorways into the revelation of God. Unfortunately, many have taken
these “doorways” without heeding scriptures, thus opening
themselves up to following angels more than God. Thankfully, we are
still able to utilize tradition, reason and experience, as these are
gifts of God useful to bring us deeper into knowledge of Him.
However, these forms of revelation must always be subservient to the
written Scriptures, the primary means that God has given us to judge
truth claims that we obtain through other methods.
