Do We Need A Pentagon? Reconsidering the Wesleyan Quadrilateral
If one spends enough time in the United Methodist Church,
they’ll eventually hear something about the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”—a
four-fold hermeneutic of authority John Wesley utilized in his development of
the movement that would later become known as “Methodism.” The four components
of Wesley’s quadrilateral are 1) scripture, 2) tradition, 3) reason, and 4)
experience. These, for Wesley, were the authoritative lenses through which the
Christian faith is fostered in each person. And while he engaged extensively
with each of these components in his writings and sermons, he never explicitly
laid out the organized concept of the quadrilateral as we know it today. That language
came much later from American theologian, Albert Outler.[1]
However, while for many Methodists the
quadrilateral feels relatively specific to our tradition, it’s actually not
something unique to Wesley. Coming from an Anglican context, Wesley would have
been more than familiar with the “Anglican Triad.” This is the same kind of hermeneutical
framework that exists within Methodism with one notable exception: experience.
This final component of the Wesleyan quadrilateral was incorporated by Wesley himself
as a result of his famous Aldersgate experience where he found his heart to be
“strangely warmed.” Experience became, and remains, an important part of the
Christian life for Methodists, thus rounding out the hermeneutical architecture
that Wesley had deemed incomplete.
What I’d like to recommend, though,
is we do the same thing to Wesley’s quadrilateral that he did to the Anglican
triad. In the same way that Wesley “updated” the triad, so I suggest it’s time
to “update” the quadrilateral by adding an additional point: liberation.
Methodism—like most Protestant traditions—falls into the prima scriptura
camp, taking scripture as its primary point of departure when considering the
Christian faith. The question we must contend with, then, is how we differentiate
between two different prima scriptura churches or denominations who both
are utilizing the same hermeneutic towards contradictory ends. The easiest
illustration of this might be found in the days of American slavery when
scripture was being used both as a tool of oppression by some and a tool
of liberation by others. The same could be said of German Christianity during
the perpetration of the holocaust.
One way we can further distinguish
between these is to affix an additional hermeneutical layer to Wesley’s method
and take that as our primary point of departure rather than scripture as
such. Womanist biblical scholar and theologian, Renita Weems, suggests as
much when she encourages people to “judge
biblical texts, to not hesitate to read against the grain of a text if needed,
and to be ready to take a stand against those texts whose worldview runs
counter to one’s own vision of God’s liberation activity in the world.”[2] By allowing
our responsibility to the liberation of the oppressed to dictate our use of
scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, we already approach the Christian
faith from a preventative posture that doesn’t allow for any of those four
components to be utilized for oppressive or unjust purposes.
If
Wesley could update and rearrange the Anglican triad for the purposes of his
context, then why can’t we do the same for our quadrilateral? Using Wesley’s
own framework suggests that these tools aren’t above reproach; they’re not
immutable or inerrant. It’s possible they can be improved upon, and I contend
that incorporating another element under which everything else is subsumed will
not only update Wesley in a necessary and important way, but aid Methodists in
living into their vow of accepting “the freedom and power God gives them
to resist evil, injustice and oppression.”
[1]
See Albert C. Outler, “The Wesleyan Quadrilateral in John Wesley,” Wesleyan
Theological Journal, 20.1 (1985), 7-18.
[2] Renita Weems,
“Re-Reading for Liberation: African-American Women and the Bible,” Womanist
Theological Ethics: A Reader, eds. Katie Geneva Cannon, Angela D. Sims, and
Emilie M. Townes, (Louisville, KY: WJK Press, 2011), 61.
*Note: image credit to Hillsdale United Methodist Church.
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