Wesley's pneumatology and the primacy of Scripture in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral

¶ … Thorsten's argument is that Wesley developed a pneumatology in crafting his Wesleyan Quadrilateral and that understanding this pneumatology would enable one to most accurately understand Wesley's intentions, therefore approach the Scripture in a more accurate and appropriate manner.

John Wesley proposed four methods for evaluating the Scriptures. These came to be called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral and refer to the four elements that John Wesley saw as fundamental for theological method: experience, reason, tradition, and Scripture.

The quadrilateral for Wesley serves as God's message to humans. It is through these four ways that one can best approach and understand God. However, oftentimes, invoking all four at the same time as evidence for one's argument, or commingling them into theoretical debate, can be confusing since one or more of the ways can be non-complementary to the other. It is, partially, this that has resulted in dissension between scholars and different churches through the ages, and when evangelical and liberals quote the quadrilateral as defense of their views, confusion can be seeded.

Thorsen attempts to demonstrate that Wesley saw Scripture as being the primacy approach and that the other three elements, reason, tradition, and experience were secondary to -- and off shoots from - scriptural interpretation. In other words, that the other three elements served to elaborate on, serve as analogy to, and apply scriptural truths to life.

Discovery of and clarification of this pneumatology bridges relations between evangelical and liberal Christian viewpoints rather than exacerbating dissention. This does not mean that scriptural perspective is the exclusive method of interpretation as per contemporary evangelism, bur rather that it denotes the primary lens of interpreting the Bible. There is a big difference between the two. At the same time, Thorsen tells liberals that Scriptural interpretation is supposed to, per Wesley, direct other means of interpreting the Book.

The originality and strength of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, per Thorsten, lay in the fact that it gave each and every Christian his or her own individual way of approaching God. There was no one specific doctrine that was THE TRUTH, rather each Christian could understand God and attain the Holy Spirit in his or her way by using the 4 methods as described by Wesley's Quadrilateral. This provided a theological method as contrasted to a systematic theology, and is another indication of the ecumenical spirit that Thorsten sees pervades Wesley's work, and that may be traced back to his Methodist roots.

An examination of each of his four recommendations in turn will give us insight into his theological method as delineated by Thorsten:

Scripture

Here, Scripture stands primary whilst Christian experience, reason, and tradition may be used as lens for relaying the Scriptures to one's own experiences and understanding it better. Experience, reason, tradition are complementary to the scripture; they have a complimentary relationship one to the other whilst being deployed in better understanding of their arch-objective -- the Scriptures.

Wesley asserted that the "written word of God [was] the only and sufficient rule both of Christian faith and practice" (Thorsen, 142). His enthusiasm for scripture was legendry. One of his sayings was: "O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri" (Thorsen, 139). Wesley believed that the Holy Spirit infused the Scriptures: that it was the Holy Spirit that inspired the writers to write the Book and that it is the Holy Spirit, likewise, that accords readers -- those who have true intent -- to understand the Script.

Tradition

For Wesley it was likely Methodism that he saw as constituting tradition (Thorsen, p. 152.). He describes Methodism as the 'old religion' (ibid.), the one that closest linked itself to the early Christian Church. The Holy Spirit infused tradition as it did the writers of the Scripture, and therefore, discovery of true understanding could of the work of the Holy Spirit could be reinforced by linking oneself to tradition, specifically to tradition that wound its way back to Christianity's earliest beginnings.

Experience

Wesley saw Christian experience somewhat in the way that William James was to later see it as a mystical immediate experience / encounter with God (or a Godly presence). This is a synergism that involves feelings and intuition and again, as Wesley believed was peculiarly marked by its suffusion of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that awakens, purifies, stimulates, inspires, and reinforces man to follow His creator; it is, in other words, the primary agent in religious experience in general and Christian experience in particular.

Quoting Romans (8:16), Wesley empathized that it is the Spirit that tells us that we are children of God, and that serves to vivify the words of Scripture for us and confirm its teachings. Stated in other ways, the Spirit represents an experiential relationship where man through Jesus Christ or thoguh the Divine can enter into an immediate encounter with God and experience the Divine.

The four methods serve as one heuristic for obtaining holiness in spirit and mind. Each circle or orbit is infused with the Holy Spirit, but the sense of the Holy Spirit is strongest and most objective in its source, i.e. In the Scriptures, and it was, therefore, that Wesley recommended that individuals adopt that as their primary means of gaining comprehension of and closeness to God, and use the other three strategies as tools for reinforcing and vivifying that commitment. It is in this way, too, that Wesley refrained from offering a creed or catechism for he felt that practical relevant and applicable theology was more important (Thorsten, p. 16.).

Wesley's quadrilateral, when used within that understanding, leads to greater faithfulness to the Scriptures, greater mergence with the traditions of the early Church Fathers, and to a Christian experience that is infused by enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, and responsible use of reason. When interpreted by Thorsen's understanding it gives a more ecumenical drift to the theological conversation joining liberal with evangelical perspectives in the argument that reason, experience, and tradition are not contradictory to one another but, rather, serve as assistance to scriptural understanding -- which is foremost - in explicating and endeavoring to understand the Word of God.

Reference

Thorsten, D. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience as a Model of Evangelical Theology. Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, 1990.