Graham, Walton and Ward explains how Theology by Heart is about the nature of God and the impact of God on people and their lives. Reflection allows us to reflect upon ourselves, and on our experiences of God to form our own identity. Through applying journal-writing, personal letters, spiritual writing and other forms of creative writing as a means to ‘turn-life-into-text’. These texts are described as ‘Living human documents’ as they depict peoples personal experiences with God throughout their lives. These documents can be analysed and read to help understand the nature of God.
James shows the initial principle of Theology by Heart: ‘I do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophical and the theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue.’ Thus reflection does not begin with philosophy or doctrines instead it sparks with our feelings and experiences in life. It is not an academic subject as such but more of an intimate and emotional reflection upon our lives and encounters with God.
This principle is mirrored in Wesley’s public spiritual journal. Whose ‘heart strangely warmed’ by his experience with God. His trust in Christ led to him being saved from the law of sin and death, as God gives peacefulness on assurance by salvation. His journal relayed his life, thoughts and his own theological reflection upon his relationship with God. Likewise, Rack explains
‘Despite their stress on practical piety and the religion of the heart rather than mere theological correctness as regards the doctrines of grace and faith it is not surprising that the Moravians should have stressed that salvation cannot come by ‘works’ but only faith.’
This implies that religion should remain in the heart and be built upon our own experiences rather than looking at whether or not the doctrines display any truth within them. We can only fully understand theological reflection by looking at our own faith rather than the written work of doctrines.
Forming our own identity we ask all kinds of theological questions such as who are we?/ am I supposed to be the person God wants me to be? Reflecting critically on our own personal identity, we often ask ourselves how do I picture myself? Yet the majority of us are concerned with impostership, making us form an identity to protect ourselves. However, the concept of theology being based on forming our own identity creates criticism such as the notion of pietism which shows that theology that concerns itself with the self does not focus on political/social justice. Some consider this method of theology as self-centred ad self-obsessed.
Theology by Heart is the method used to find our own identity through our experiences in life by using creative writing to reflect upon them.
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