it's the second to last week of classes and i finally have something to say about my homework

as i read cone, i thought that i was recognizing something in his emphasis of Christology's source, i.e. scripture, tradition, and social existence. then it hits me (as it would hit any good methodist!) that he's following the wesleyan quadrilateral. the wesleyan quadrilateral is a paradigm regarding authority in theology. the elements of the quadrilateral are scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. ahhh, now you're seeing where these line up with cone. three are explicitly expressed in his arguments and the fourth, the unmentioned reason, is obviously what the task is. cone is reasoning through theology on the basis of scripture, tradition, and experience. oh man, if i had known that cone was a wesleyan, maybe i would have read him sooner! it's my own fault obviously ... i mean there is no reason i shouldn't have noticed sooner, especially when he consistently makes reference to an a.m.e. church.

maybe this is a good time for a confession. i haven't really wanted to read cone (or ruether for that matter) this semester. it's not that i don't want to consider liberation (or feminist) theology. quite the contrary, i want voices that haven't been heard to be heard. in fact, i love gutierrez. so, why then did i have an aversion to cone? well, i based it off some excerpts i read at the very beginning. i thought that all the book was really about was bashing white people and showing how all white people are jerks and have messed up christianity. and it is about that at times, but not entirely. i didn't want to read someone who was attacking a group of people because they were attacking a group of people. it seemed highly hypocritical and unintellectual to me. but yesterday and today, as i did my first complete reading of cone, i realized that once i got past that, there were definitely things i could learn. for example, a part of the assigned reading was titled "Jesus is black". that was the part i really didn't want to read at all. i just knew i would hate it. au contraire ... it was my favorite part. i'm not going to presently disclose why i liked it so well in the hopes that maybe i will have something to talk about in precept this week. hopefully i still remember by friday! as for ruether and why i didn't want to read feminist theology, it is the same kind of reason that i didn't want to read cone paired with the (unreasonable) stereotype i associate with feminism. but today is ruether tuesday so maybe i'll have some more insights to write about later this evening.