Wesleyan QuadrilateralPastor Harold Long

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

• John Wesley did not formulate the succinct statement now commonly referred to as the Wesley Quadrilateral.•They were built on Anglican theological tradition.

•Wesley added a fourth emphasis, experience. The resulting four components or "sides" of the quadrilateral are (1) Scripture, (2) Tradition, (3) Reason, and (4) Experience.

Albert Outler – Methodist Guru

•Albert Outler on his formulation, “There is one phrase I wish I had never used: the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It has created the wrong image in the minds of so many people and, I am sure, will lead to all kinds of controversy.”

•People will think all four parts are equal, which is totally false, scripture is the primary source, and Tradition, Experience and Reason hang from the cornerstone of Scripture.

Colossians 3:16-17

• “16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Scripture

•For United Methodists, Scripture is considered the primary source and standard for Christian doctrine.

• In addition we use Tradition, Reason, and Experience to help up understand scripture.

•“My ground is the Bible. Yea, I am a Bible-bigot. I follow it in all things, both great and small.”

God Revealed Through Scripture

•Wesley believed the Bible was the unique revelation of God. It was one of the most fundamental convictions of Wesley's theology.

•He believed that there is a God and that God has revealed Himself in a Book.

•He believed that man could only understand that Book as God Himself revealed it by His Spirit.

Scripture Continued

• "I am a spirit come from God and returning to God.”

• “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven... God Himself has condescended to teach me the way... He has written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God!”

•Wesley believed in the full or total inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. The Bible in its totality was God’s Word to man.

Wesley vs The Critics

• In his journal Wesley states his view concerning inspiration and refuses to believe with the critics that because the Bible came through human instruments they made mistakes or errors.

•“If there be any mistakes in the Bible there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book it did not come from the God of truth.”

Oxford Club

•The members of the Oxford Club. organized by Wesley, were all determined to be Bible Christians. However, their Bible study was preeminently practical and their Bible study was primarily for devotion not doctrine. They used the Bible as their authority for both rule and practice.

A Mother’s Influence

•His preaching was marked by this masterly use of the scriptures, taught at his mother’s knee. At times for more than an hour, he preached weaving Scripture after Scripture into the message until more than half of it was Scripture explaining. proving, driving home the truth of the Word. His mind was thoroughly impregnated with Scripture.

2 Thessalonians 2:15

•“15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”

Tradition

•The cumulative wisdom of the Christian community. Or, God speaking to us through our God Consciousness.

•The sum total of what the church has passed down over time from the church’s past.”

•Tradition is experience and the witness of development and growth of the faith through the past centuries and in many nations and cultures.

Luke 10:27

•“27He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

What is Reason?

•Discerning truth from error by critical thinking, and logic.

• The power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

• Through reason the individual Christian brings to bear on the Christian faith discerning and cogent thought.

• BUT: Reason has limits and doesn’t carry the same authority as scripture.

Reason

•Wesley believed that the path to spiritual truth was threefold: Scripture, reason, and experience. The Bible was always first, but reason and experience were the checks in proving the Spirit or discerning the Word. Wesley believed that since God is rational, interpretation of Scripture, if true, should be reasonable and must agree with other phases of revelation and so states it in his sermon, "Free Grace", volume I, page 488.

1 Corinthians 2:9-10

•9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined,what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

Experience

• Experience is the individual's understanding and appropriating of the faith in the light of his or her own life.

• Experience is a means of confirming truth.

• Listening to others is a way for us to test our own theological understanding.

• Listening to others helps us correct our blind spots.

Spiritual Experience

•“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience… We are spiritual beings having a human experience…”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

• Recognizing the filters as we move toward the goal.

• These four elements taken together bring the individual Christian to a mature and fulfilling understanding of the Christian faith and the required response of worship and service.

• “When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God as revealed to me.”

Takeaways

•We believe in the Quadrilateral, but John Wesley did not “coin” the phrase.

• Scripture is our primary source for everything.

•Next we lean onTradition, Reason, and Experience.

• I encourage you to be able to explain, in simplistic terms, what the Quadrilateral means.

•Our Methodist heritage is awesome, and you have every reason to be proud to belong to our Methodist family.