The Wesleyan Quadrilateral

 The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is a set of four sources of legitimate theological knowledge. They are:

1. Scripture

2. Reason

3. Tradition

4. Experience

They are not co-equal sources of knowledge. Rather, they are ranked in the order I have just listed them. This does not mean that the lower sources are only legitimately consulted when the higher do not give a verdict, but rather, that, if there is conflict, we defer to the higher-ranked sources.

Our experiences do affect how we pick up on traditions, how we reason, and how we read Scripture. Similarly for the other three sources of knowledge.

Deconstructing Christians are sometimes criticized for relying too heavily on experience. Part of my goal in this post is to push back against that. For one thing, over-reliance on experience lies behind much discounting of what has been called the deconstructionist literature. The dismissal of critiques as inapplicable to *my* church because *I* don't experience those harms there is very much a reliance on experience over reason. It might not be a reliance that gets one to the wrong place--further argument might show that one is right, but those further arguments are necessary if we are to properly use the quadrilateral.

On the other hand, consider the deconstructing Christian as they consider how to relate to their erstwhile church. They may be confused: they have had many good experiences at this church, others in the church think they are wrong about the harms, and generally they don't feel that their experiences at the church give a clear indicator as to whether this church is one of the bad ones. What can they do? Here is a reflection one might take in such a circumstance: they may ask what kind of company the church keeps. Are they associated with, say, 9Marks or other groups about which one already has many arguments regarding the toxicity? One might suspend judgment on the present state of the church--such matters are complicated--but decide, out of an abundance of caution, to break with them because one sees, in the company the church is comfortable keeping, signs that the church is not reliably safe.

Another way of putting this is that the deconstructing Christian, rather than relying on personal experience, turns the biblical exhortations to remove the great sinner from the midst of the assembly against those who often abuse it, charging them with a failure to consistently apply the biblical principle to their relationships, and thus breaks with the church.

Furthermore, if one is uncertain about how to interpret one's community--and even, to some extent, if one is--it seems reasonable to apply a broader understanding. If one is convinced that many, or even most, communities which broadly resemble one's own are subject to certain criticisms, then inferring that those criticisms are likely to apply to one's own community is (defeasibly) rational. This is part of why the responses by many to criticisms of, say, the SBC, are focused on arguing that the highest levels of leadership are not representative of the people in the pews and the pastors in the typical congregations. Insofar as that response works, I think it just changes the glaring problem in the SBC to one of failures of representation, but I won't pursue that here. For the time being, the point is simply that a broad criticism of a culture across America can be a premise in a reasonable argument for being at best mistrustful of people associated with that culture in one's own area.

I am not saying that everyone everywhere should accept such an argument, that such arguments are knock-down arguments that no one could possibly respond to. As I mentioned last week, the pursuit of such arguments is not required for rationally departing a tradition or a culture, and we are always dealing with arguments that we should take seriously despite there being things a reasonably interlocutor might say in response. My point here is that deconstructing Christians are not simply elevating experience over tradition, reason, or Scripture. Often, deconstructing is caused by the realization that Scripture says more, reason says more, and tradition says more, and thus beginning to interrogate one's prior understanding of one's own experience.

From within deconstruction, it is the conservative anti-deconstruction voices which seem to rely overly much on their own experiences: of the goodness of their churches, the flourishing permitted by complementarianism, the possibilities for happy living as a LGBTQ+ Christian without questioning the "traditional sex ethic," and so on. Deconstruction involves asking for more attention to Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, broadening experience beyond one's own to seek out what others' experiences might say, to augment our own limited perspectives with a binocular vision in the body of Christ.