Borrowing a Tool from John Wesley

The Methodist Quadrilateral, sometimes named the Wesleyan Quadrilateral after the father of Methodism, John Wesley, is a simple, effective tool which provides an easy-to-use formula to establish dialogue among four formative factors: Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reason. I like to call these the Fantastic Four, and join authors Howard W. Stone and James O. Duke in shamelessly admitting to have borrowed the basic idea from the United Methodist Book of Discipline.[1]

More recently, I've been promoting the idea of a Unity Quadrilatetral: Scripture, Tradition, Experience and Reflection, the latter category divided into intuitive insight and intellectual analysis. Think of the Quadrilateral as a way of processing any religious or spiritual idea. Simply feed the concept into this handy theologizing machine and see what kind of insights you can achieve with your head and heart. The four parts are as follows:

1) Scripture—What did the authors of the foundational documents of the faith say to their target audiences, and what does that mean today?

2) Tradition—What have others thought about this, and how has it been incorporated into the life of the Church?

3) Experience—What have the events of my life and relationships taught me about this; what has science (including the social sciences) taught me about the world?

4) Reflection— In my earlier books, I invoked the exact language of the Quadrilateral (scripture, tradition, experience and reason). Now I am persuaded that the last category is better expressed by the word reflection, rather than reason. The term reflection better expresses the sense of this process, because theological thinking has a dual dimension, intellectual and intuitive/inspirational. Theological reflection really does have those two dimensions, intellectual and intuitive.

a) Intellectual Reasoning. What sense can I make of this by thinking it through logically and requiring it to remain consistent with other knowledge?

b) Intuitive Reflection. What imaginative insights come to me as I let these ideas play in my mind?[2]

Assuming the Bible contains a wealth of wisdom and Truth, which is a reasonable deduction when considering its positive influence through the centuries, one must nevertheless decide how to interpret the words of scripture to access those treasures. The first factor which comes into play when reading the Bible is the Scripture itself—the plain sense of the text. However, first the text had to be copied and recopied, edited and translated. Next is the whole history of how people have read and understood the passage (tradition). People also bring personal, cultural and societal experience to the reading of biblical texts. Finally, humans apply their power to refelect both critically and creatively, which includes intellectual reflection and intuitive vision.

This four-fold process can help with more than just biblical texts. One can use Scripture-Tradition-Experience-Reflection when mulling over any religious, socio-political, interpersonal, or ethical concern. For example, when attempting to locate the authentic Jesus in the contradictory and sometimes unpleasant gallery of gospel portraits, the Fantastic Four can provide some handy tools.

Every image of Jesus drawn from the New Testament must face the four-fold test. Is it really found in the scripture text or simply a cliché which interpreters have superimposed on the original words? Asking what others have said, written or done about Jesus in the past helps people to understand better today. The interaction of scripture and historical reflection on its words brings the second factor to bear, tradition.

Christian churches of all types share a rich tradition of biblical and theological reflection going back to the earliest days of the faith, a pluralistic tradition which speaks with a multitude of voices. For example, the tradition of mysticism insists that God can be known directly. One form of this is Christian monism, which recognizes only One Presence/One Power in the Cosmos. Add to this a belief in spiritual evolution, which discovers this Presence and Power at work within every sentient being to transform human consciousness into Christ consciousness, and the result is a creative process which moves from Divine Mind, to a self-perfecting expression in sentient beings like humans. This is effectively summarized by Charles Fillmore as Twelve Powers, the spiritual-mental centers from which flow gifts such as order, zeal, strength, power and love.

Naturally, looking at Jesus of Nazareth through the lens of One Presence/One Power means applying principles like these to any interpretation of his nature and person. Yet, anyone applying these concepts—even something as fundamental as OP2 itself—must dialogue with the evidence presented in Christian scripture as reflected upon by centuries of sincere, God-seeking people. Like any form of “the Way” which has come down to us since Jesus walked this Earth, a practical, post-modern understanding of Christianity cannot simply invent new religious principles and call them Christian without sacrificing its intellectual and spiritual integrity.

All who identify with Jesus Christ must allow both Scripture and Christian tradition to speak its mind and heart, allowing the writers and thinkers who came before our time to declare their truths authentically in the context in which they were created. Only after the voices from the past are given their due can Christian theology today apply new insights from its reflection upon the ancient faith. This is not an appeal for uncritical acceptance of scripture and tradition; it is an appeal for clarity, for taking the past seriously enough to hear what others actually have said when formulating contemporary theology.

Life brings learning, and no one can doubt that the experience of post-modern life has shaped the way we look at Jesus. His praise of the peacemakers, his love of truth, his blessing and approval of children, his acceptance of foreigners and outcasts in his stories, his willingness to speak to women as equals—these qualities come through the scriptural picture of Jesus only because life experiences have allowed us to see these qualities today as virtuous. That has not always been the case.

In the past, Jesus has been invoked as the avenging god of Christian warfare. His cross emblazoned the Crusader shields as the self-appointed warriors of God pillaged their way across Europe to rescue the Holy Land from the heathen Muslim. “Jesus loves the little children…” goes the popular hymn, yet in other eras children were physically abused in the name of maintaining “Christian” standards, like the parents of Martin Luther, who beat him for minor offenses until the blood flowed.

Like all the great prophets of the Hebrew tradition, Jesus called upon people to care for the orphan, the widow, the poor and downtrodden, yet until relatively recent times beggars and debtors were tossed in prison in Christian Europe, women had no rights, and even the mildest offenses merited death by hanging. Childhood had no meaning until the abolition of child labor, and African slavery made a mockery of the Sermon on the Mount with its “Blessed are the poor…” Only after humans had lived through these tough times did they begin to see in the words of Jesus a better way, thanks to the divine-human power of reasoned reflection, which combines understanding, judgment, and imagination and represents both an intellectual-analytical and intuitive-creative component.

The Unity Quadrilateral is a great tool for thinking theologically about matters metaphysical.
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[1] Howard W. Stone and James O. Duke, How to Think Theologically, Second Edition (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), 43ffl.
[2] IBID., 34-38