Experience...the First Leg

Passerby,
In your seminary experience, did you run across the ‘Three-legged Stool’ analogy?”

“No. I missed that one.”

“Well…Several denominations, including the three largest Christian denominations, have, over the last 500 years, endorsed the three-legged stool analogy attributed to Anglican theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600) to describe the source of authority particular to their tradition. The analogy goes like this: The three-legged stool, unlike a four-legged stool, which is often subject to teetering, is always in perfect balance and is never subject to being unstable as the teaching of the church needs to be. Also, it takes all three legs to provide that stability, so no one leg is more important than any other. Therefore, three elements of theological focus have been settled on, corresponding to the stool’s three legs to best describe the particular traditions’ focus.

In the tradition of the Roman church, those legs are scripture, tradition, and church. For Eastern Orthodox, Tradition, Scripture, and the Fathers. In Anglicanism, scripture, tradition, and reason. Evangelicalism, Gospel Story, Gospel Announcement, and Gospel Community. Calvinism includes: Man believes, God Draws, and God Elects. But does God draw everyone? No, god is selective. And so on….Hmmmmm.

From the prophetic, wisdom, and mystic perspective—the glaring omission of the three-legged stool analogy is the personal experience of an intimate relationship with the Sacred Spirit. The very thing humans are created for, the stool analogy and church traditions, miss.

Love is not a spectator sport.

If we were going to consider a three-legged stool analogy suitable to the perennial wisdom tradition, mystics, and prophets that describe our tradition, it must first include experience. The legs on my three-legged stool would be Experience, Study, and Reality (Creation).

Passerby,
I recommend reading Marcus Borg’s ‘Convictions.’ Chapter three, in particular, wherein he describes his conversion experience. I think you will find much in common with his journey.