2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
At a recent “Sunday@4” gathering, we explored Methodist approaches to theology and the authority placed on Scripture.  It led to some rich and engaging discussions, so I thought I’d share with you here.
What does the Methodist approach to Theology look like?
According to the Methodist website, Methodists traditionally use a fourfold approach to learn about our Christian faith and apply it to contemporary issues and to our Christian practice:
Scripture : to discover the word of God through reading the Bible. There are different understandings among Methodists about the Bible's authority in our lives, so resources like different Bible translations, commentaries and Bible reading notes are helpful.
Tradition: the wisdom and creativity of Christians over time and across the world. It includes inspirational material like hymns, songs, prayers, poetry, Christian art and devotional books. There are formally agreed teachings like the creeds, the catechism, and statements and reports from Methodist Conference.
Reason: we are called to love God with our minds as well as with our hearts. We need to think things through in the light of reason, becoming aware of different points of view, and using our own critical thinking to make sense of God's world.
Experience: the importance of our own experience of God's grace working in our lives. We gain wisdom and maturity from life experience, especially when we pray and reflect about our story with other Christians.
We discussed the four images above that may help us understand these approaches.  Which images help your understanding of how to approach Theology?

• Perhaps you favoured the quadrilateral as a square.  You can start on whatever base you want.  It’s all the same.
• Perhaps you liked the three-legged stool with the three legs as a base for Scripture – or maybe you interpreted this to mean it can land anyway up and still holds integrity. 
• Perhaps none of them fitted your thoughts, and you have another diagram in mind.
• Others might add extra components such as Creation and how that speaks to us.

A Wesley scholar, Dr. Richard Heitzenrater[1], asked his class what they believed in and many answered, “We believe in the quadrilateral. It is what makes us distinctive.”  Dr Heitzenrater points out some problems with his students’ responses that we too need to be careful about:

1. We don’t believe in the quadrilateral. It is an approach to help us learn about our faith.  
2. It doesn’t make us distinctive because all Christians use scripture, tradition, experience, and reason in different combinations in different understandings.

In fact, we even need to be careful about using the term.  Albert Outler, a 20th C Methodist Scholar coined the phrase but warns us that “‘quadrilateral’ does not occur in the Wesley corpus—and more than once I have regretted having coined it for contemporary use since it has been so widely misconstrued.”
So how can we use the teachings of Wesley and his approach to theology to understand how to approach theology and the authority of Scripture in the 21st century?  Are all the approaches evenly weighted? Methodist church doctrine states that “Scripture is supreme in faith and practice” and that the other elements can help us understand what God reveals therein.  So, we are guided to place Scripture as paramount, using the other approaches to inform our interpretations. 
Wesley viewed the 4 approaches to learning about our faith and applying it in our lives broadly like this:

1. Tradition: For him tradition is a link through history to Jesus and the apostles, an unbroken chain drawing us into fellowship with our eternal brothers and sisters from every age and should not be too readily dismissed.
2. Experience: He is speaking of LIFE GIVING HOLY SPIRIT MOMENTS that speak into our encounters with the living God, letting you know what is true and what’s appropriate - a divine communication rather than meaning what we have practice or knowledge of.  
3. Reason: Wesley wrote: "Now, of what excellent use is reason, if we would either understand ourselves, or explain to others, those living oracles"[2]. He is saying that without reason we cannot understand the essential truths of Scripture. BUT we need to ask for assistance by the Holy Spirit if we are to understand the mysteries of God. If our “reason” does not stack up with Scripture, then there is error in our reason and its source.
4. Scripture: Wesley held that Scripture is the word of the living God and has ultimate authority. He writes, “The scripture of Old and New Testament is a most solid and precious system of divine truth. Every part thereof is worthy of God; and all together are one entire body, where in is no defect, no excess.  It is the foundation of heavenly wisdom, which they who are able to taste, prefer to all writings of men, however wise or learned or holy… This is a lantern unto a Christian’s feet, and a light in all his paths.  This alone he receives as his rule of right and wrong, of whatever is really good or evil.  He esteems nothing good, but what is here enjoined (modern word: instructed or commanded), either directly or by plain consequence; he accounts nothing evil but what is here forbidden, either in [plain] terms,  or by undeniable inference[3].”

So whatever our personal preference, Wesley urges us not to treat all four sources as being of equal authority. Scripture has always had a place of as the “supreme rule of faith and practice.”
Why should we treat Scripture as the “supreme rule of faith and practice?”
When Rich (my husband) and I were dating, we played our first game of Monopoly together.  I’d played Monopoly plenty as a child, BUT I’d not really read the rules and my sister and I made it up as we went along.  We had no idea of mortgaging or how to get out of jail.  Richard on the other hand, had a VERY sound grasp of the rules and stuck to them rigidly!  He spent most of the game referencing the rule book to make sure we stayed on track.  He couldn’t cope with how much I’d developed rules that suited, it was confusing and we argued (mostly about money and free parking…).
Monopoly was created in 1903 by a lady named Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips[4]. She wanted to illustrate the consequences of private monopolies, and the rules are carefully designed to do this. Richard respected the creator of the game, and played by her rules, even when they didn’t suit him. I made things up when the rules looked too hard to understand, or too harsh and took short cuts. 
I believe that God set up Christianity a certain way with His own intentions and purposes. If we alter His rules, we’re, at best, not lined up with those intentions and purposes, and, at worst, not practicing Christianity at all. If we really want to honour God, grow in Christ, and truly be practicing biblical Christianity, we’ve got to play by His rules. Even the ones we don’t particularly like or understand.
If we don’t dig deeper into Scripture and take it as God’s Revelation to us, then we don’t get God revealed to us, and we are in danger of being largely ignorant of the Creator and His purposes and intentions, the things He wants to teach us. And what sort of witness is this to the world?  Scripture says those who truly belong to Christ will have a heart to keep His word[5] then we can be salt and light.
I found a different picture of the “quadrilateral” (the lower image at the start of the article) that best explains to me how Wesley presented the approaches to theology.  Scripture is fully embraced within truth, whereas the others are open to error in our interpretation of God’s revelation.  If our reasons, experience and traditions pull us away from God’s Divine Scripture then we need to ask ourselves – does this fall inside or outside Truth? Am I following God’s plan or making up my own alternative?
Wesley said, “Try all things by the written word and let all bow down before it.  You are in danger … every hour if you depart ever so little from Scripture[6]”
When we decide our beliefs based on our opinions, feelings, and subjective personal experiences rather than the written word of God, and the teaching and ministry of Jesus, what we say is, “I know better than the almighty, all-knowing God of the universe.”
Paul assures us that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” We will stumble along the way. We will sometimes mistakenly believe things we shouldn’t.  We are fallible, so I pray that as we explore difficult issues together, we are reminded of our human capacity for error in our reason, experience and traditions and are called to submit to God’s unchanging, constant and ageless revelation to us through his Word.  Let Scripture be our golden standard in how to follow Jesus. 


[1] http://www.jonathanandersen.com/the-myth-of-the-wesleyan-quadrilateral/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesleyan_Quadrilateral

[3] From “A Lamp to my feet and a Light to my Path”  A paper to Methodist Conference 1998.

[4] https://michellelesley.com/2017/02/17/basic-training-the-bible-is-our-authority/

[5] John 14:23-24   Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.

[6] in his book, Christian Perfection” 1758

We have been very aware that our old website has been outdated for some time and in need of review.  So today, I took it upon myself to learn how to build one.  I've used Weebly and its been pretty intuitive.  I've been able to get all the basics in and embed calendars and files so uploading and managing notices will be faster.  
I'll have to ask Rich how to move the URL from the previous website over, then its all set to go live!  Please pray for this venture - that it would truly reflect our church and our calling in Monmouth and enable others to meet Jesus too.
If you would like to contribute as a blogger to this site, please ask me and to be added as an administrator.  It would be great if people can use this forum as a place to post news and reflections.