Saturday, May 17, 2008

New Name for my Blog

I've been thinking about changing the name of my blog for some time. I started the blog back in 2004. That was back when I was doing "Deep Christian Thoughts" for IWU's Friday night live. "Schenck Thoughts" seemed like a fair enough name for a blog that, for the most part, was read by IWU students who found out I had a blog.

Over time it's become a bit more serious. I shoot off my mouth a little less than I used to, which of course means the blog is less entertaining. I mostly talk about politics elsewhere these days (I won't say where :-). The days of the Asbury presidential crisis are over, although those entries are still some of the most visited (they helped me not get a job offer too once upon a time).

But since no one knows who "Schenck" is, I've decided on a new name that reflects me and what I blog about just a bit more. I picked "Quadrilateral Thoughts" because it reflects the fact that I come from the Methodist tradition. Like the so called Wesleyan quadrilateral, Scripture is the primary focus of my blogging. Yet Christian tradition, reason, and experience are also essential components of our pursuits on the blog.

Wesley of course never called his hermeneutic a quadrilateral, and I make no claim to be imitating his approach to Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. In particular:

1. It is impossible to say "The Bible says" without reason playing the definitive role in integrating disperate biblical material together.

2. It is impossible to arrive at a Christian understanding of Scripture without allowing Christian tradition to guide that integrating reason.

3. We cannot ultimately divorce the way our reason works from the experience that has formed us as individual and corporate thinkers... and authentic experience of the Holy Spirit is a sure path to truth.

The URL remains kenschenck.blogspot.com. Links under the old name should still work. But perhaps links to this "biblioblog" will invite a tiny bit more interest than "Schenck Thoughts" would.

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