The Wesleyan Quadrilateral Needs to Stay: A Response to The Wesleyan Quadrilateral Needs to Go
Recently a friend of mine, David Wiesner wrote a fantastic article titled “The Wesleyan Quadrilateral Need to Go”, detailing past and current voices in the Methodist movement, along with his own arguments as to why the term coined by Albert Outler should cease to be a framework for theological discernment in the Methodist-Wesleyan tradition. I think he has a very compelling argument, and there are certainly points that I agree with him, and his sources on. Yet, I have my own reasons that I think support the notion that the Quad should stay as the framework for discerning theology and consensus in our pan-Methodist world.
To lay the groundwork, I will quote from Wiesner’s article concerning the origin and definition of the quad, and take specific note of the historic foundations of this framework that Wesley would have derived from his Anglican heritage:
“Outler created the phrase “Quadrilateral” as a way of trying to describe how Wesley came to his theological conclusions and thus as a means for Methodists to likewise do the same. Outler selected scripture, reason, tradition, and experience as the four “legs” of the Quadrilateral based on his understanding of Wesley’s writings and his perception of how Wesley thought, not from anything explicit that Wesley said. Insofar as Wesley remained a devoted Anglican his entire life, it’s more than fair to say Wesley was familiar with the use of scripture, reason, and tradition because (as noted in the quote above) that was and remains the Anglican Trilateral formulation (or Triad) for discerning theology, and adding experience to the mix certainly reflects the importance Wesley placed on spiritual or converting experience within the Christian life.”
There are two arguments of the seven made in Wiesner’s article that I wish to address, and in the order that he did as well. The first, and what I think is the most compelling of these arguments is the misuse of the Quadrilateral. One of the most obvious realities to anyone with eyes is that the United Methodist Church abused and bastardized the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. I am not mincing my words here because there is no way around it. The theological desolation and rejection of Christian orthodoxy that has been seen in the last generation is a result of theological liberalism abusing the quadrilateral to bend orthodox interpretation of Scripture using experience.
Because of this, the Global Methodist Church (GMC) has taken steps away from the quad. This is witnessed in the sourcing of David Watson and others in Wiesner’s article. And I totally and completely understand this move. To see how Outler’s synthesis was abused to allow for everything it did (something Outler himself admitted and regretted towards the end of his life), it makes sense to want to separate from that synthesis and move to a different framework.
That being said, the abuse or misuse of something does not delegitimize the value or goodness of that thing. Just like people blame the Church for the ills and wrongs done to them presently and historically, that in very many cases is true, does not make the Church bad. But it does show the need we have for Christ. And, I would argue the same is true for the quad. The misuse of it by the UMC and others does not negate the need and goodness of it. As we examine its misuse and abuse, we see how its wrong application has wrought the fruit we see now.
The primary problem was how Scripture was relegated to the same level as the other elements of tradition, reason & experience. To understand the quad with Scripture as equal is to not understand the Protestant theological framework, nor is it to understand how Wesley would have understood how to come to the right understanding and doctrine.
I am not in the Sola Scriptura camp. To be of the Anglican heritage, having the synthesis of theologians such as Robert Hooker in his Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, which would have been foundation to Wesley and his framework (thus the three-legged stool) is to know that the issue is not the truth and reliability of Scripture. The place of diversion comes down to the interpretation of said Holy Scriptures. Hooker at the time of his writing was primarily locked in a theological back and forth with the Puritans who were dogmatically grounded in Continental European Calvinistic theology, and thus if it wasn’t plainly in Scripture then it was wrong (a simplification, but fundamentally true).
Rather, Hooker wrote, “What Scripture doth plainly deliver, to that the first place both of credit and obedience are due; the next whereunto is whatsoever any man can necessarily conclude by force of reason; after these the voice of the Church succeedeth.” (Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity). He also wrote, ““It sufficeth therefore that Nature and Scripture do serve in such full sort, that they both jointly and not severally either of them be so complete, that unto everlasting felicity we need not the knowledge of any thing more than these two may easily furnish our minds with on all sides.” In providing this framework, we see that the issue is not the authority of Scripture, but what we do with interpretation, and with things that scripture does not expressly address.
The reason we must have an avenue of theological synthesis is because heretics use the same Scripture we do. If you listen to the Road to Nicea podcast, or go deeper down the rabbit trail and actually read the Church Fathers (something I think EVERY pastor should be required to do), you see how the argument of the heretics such as the Arians, Gnostics and the like have their root in Scripture. As wrong and faulty as their theology is, it is the interpretation of Scripture that leads to the wrong theology.
So again, the issue is not Scripture itself, but how we come to understand what Scripture is teaching. Because if you have talked theology with someone with aberrant or heretical theology (like I have), they quote Scripture left right and center until their faces are blue. The diversion is that what they believe is not found in the Grand Deposit of faith, handed down to the saints by the saints who have come before, ultimately found in the teaching of the Apostles. That is why we need the Quadrilateral.
It is with this understanding that our conception of the Quadrilateral needs realignment. Scripture must be the unrivaled head of the quad. Yes, tradition, reason & experience are used in the synthesis of what Scripture is saying, but they can never go against what Scripture plainly teaches. And so my encouragement for both David, and those in the GMC (I have both family and dear friends apart of it), is that the problem is not the quad in and of itself, it is the abuse of the tool. Correct the imbalance in the framework of interpretation, don’t jettison the baby with the bathwater (don’t get me started on the paedobaptism discussion, I’m always ready to defend this Scriptural and historic Christian practice!).
Then we come to the second main augment that Wiesner makes, “The reality of how the Church determines theology is a collective and Spirit-infused enterprise, and we should encourage that corporate method instead of the implicitly-individualized method of the Quadrilateral”. My biggest contention with this is that I feel this is a category error. Wiesner commits a category error if he assumes the Quadrilateral’s purpose is to describe exactly the procedural forms the apostles used in Acts, rather than to articulate a method that makes the Spirit‑infused and corporate enterprise of the church intelligible and applicable today.
Again, the concern of this argument is the over individualization of the process that I believe is corrected by right weighting of Scripture as the highest authority, and then I would even posit that experience is the bottom of the pile, with it needing to be ultimately subject to Scripture first, then tradition & reason, before we interject what our experience says.
Part of the reason I am so ardent about this is because I grew up in a theological landscape that had no real and discernable process for making or synthesizing theological decisions outside of the personal experiential authority of a few key leaders. It was not a process or a framework that anyone would be held to if they deviated away from it. Just like how every Sunday in my church’s liturgy we declare the Nicene Creed following my sermon. And, I have explicitly told my congregation the purpose of doing so is that if I preach something contrary to the truths we are declaring, I am to be held to it and corrected.
The quad, I believe, is supposed to function as such for us in the pan-Methodist world. It is a framework that we run ideas, concepts and theologies through to see if it is in concert with true Christian doctrine. As an example, I can take the new Social Standards that the UMC passed just a few years ago following the mass disaffiliation to the new GMC and other similar denominations (like my own parish!). We don’t actually have to go any deeper in the quad than Holy Scripture to see how what was passed is in direct violation of the clear teachings and passages (granted, when you buy into process theology and open-theism, anything is possible). But let’s explore the other elements if we correctly use the quad as intended. As soon as you look at tradition, you will then see that the changes are in clear and direct violation of what the Church has ALWAYS taught, with no grey areas or equivocation. Then with reason and experience, the same conclusion remains: these revisions do not represent a deeper or more faithful reading of Christian truth, but a departure from the settled witness of the Church, the moral logic of Scripture, and the lived moral discernment of the Christian tradition. In other words, when the Quadrilateral is used properly, it does not become a license to baptize novelty; it becomes a means of testing whether a proposed teaching can actually stand within the whole Christian inheritance, and in this case it cannot.
It should be acknowledged that the Church has never discerned theology in a vacuum. Councils, synods, and canonical processes are all legitimate expressions of the Church’s corporate, Spirit-led judgment, and they provide an essential check against purely individual interpretation. The point of the Quadrilateral is not to replace those ecclesial realities, but to give them a coherent theological grammar: Scripture remains the final authority, while tradition, reason, and experience serve the Church as shared and accountable means of discernment. In practice, then, the Quad works alongside the Church’s conciliar life rather than against it, helping to ensure that theological judgments are not merely private opinions, but conclusions tested within the common witness of the body of Christ.
Part of my concern is what is the alternative if the Quadrilateral is done away with? My argument is that the Quadrilateral represents how the Holy Spirit works collectively to bring us to the true doctrine of Christ’s Church. There is a lot of uncharted water if we go a different direction. I have been on the Charismatic/generic Evangelical side of the aisle, where if it process was written down honestly, it would look a heck of a lot like the Quadrilateral. Just like in the Church we need structures and frameworks to operate (like the episcopate), we likewise need to same for discerning how the Holy Spirit is speaking and working in the life and belief of the Church. And I believe the Quadrilateral best represents that vision.
And so, as Methodism in the 21st Century is seeking to figure out who we are, we need the Quadrilateral more than ever. Correctly contextualized and utilized as we seek to determine and define the truth of “the faith entrusted once for all to the saints.” (Jude 1:3 BSB).
