Sources of Authority for What We Believe and How We Live

How do we determine what we, as Christians, are supposed to believe?
What are the appropriate sources of authority for Christian living, ethics, and virtues?

Protestant Christians, having no teaching magisterium to hand down correct doctrine, are left to discover answers to these questions via other means. Even though his use of what is called "Wesley's quadrilateral" is debated, it is most often assumed that Johns Welsey, the founder of Methodism implicitly relied on four sources of authority: 1) Scripture, 2) Tradition, 3) Reason and 4) Experience. The devil, of course, is in the details. My concern is not so much how did Wesley use them (although the answer might be instructive), but how do we? How might we?

The two diagrams above picture two ways of using of the four sources. Which of the two diagrams most accurately represents the way you approach theological reflection? Why do you approach things as you do?

One of the earliest memories of my life in church is learning the slogan: "Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent." That is to say (in good Campbellite fashion), Scripture trumps everything else. If my intellect demands a view contrary to that espoused in Scripture, the Bible wins. The same holds true for tradition and experience and anything else one might envision as a potential "authority." I'm not claiming that we actually practiced this when it came right down to it, but that was the un-stated, but nonetheless very clear belief of my childhood church. Wesley's four fold approach would have been seen as dangerous.

1. What are the differences between the two diagrams of Wesley's Quadrilateral?
2. What are the strengths of each of the two approaches pictured above?
3. What are their potential weaknesses?
   
4. Is it a given that we will use each of these four sources?
5. How do the four interact with each other in your theological reflection?