The Arminian Magazine--Fall, 1996

SPIRITUAL GEOMETRY
Evaluating the Wesleyan Quadrilateral
--Vic Reasoner

In the late 1960s Albert Outler coined the phrase "Wesleyan quadrilateral" as a paradigm for the four-fold guidelines of authority in Wesleyan theology. This phrase has been so widely misconstrued that Outler later expressed regret that he coined the term.

The phrase was intended to refer to the primacy of scriptural authority, complimented and corroborated by tradition, reason, and experience. However, if this is conceived geometrically the tendency would be to view all four as equal bases of authority. Instead of protesting the dual authority of Roman Catholicism, Wesleyanism is perceived as having four authorities!

If there is any value in illustrating the source of spiritual truth from the discipline of geometry, then the Word of God is the only source of spiritual axioms. Tradition, experience, and reason cannot be the basis or starting point for an adequate theology. They do not carry any weight of authority, but have value in clarifying our interpretation of Scripture and illustrating the axioms of Scripture.

An axiom is a given; an established principle which is received without further proof. John Wesley explained in an introduction to logic, "The principles of Divine faith are those, and those only, which are contained in the Scriptures . . . . An axiom is a proposition which needs not, and cannot, be proved. . . . Absolute faith is due to the testimony of God."

Contemporary Wesleyan theology tends to construct doctrine from multiple sources. For example, a Wesleyan theologian wrote, "The quadrilateral communicates simply and clearly that more than one source of religious authority is at work in the task of theology."

Yet the Bible is the only infallible source of doctrine. We need an appreciation for the full inspiration of scripture, the absolute authority of scripture, and the sufficiency of scripture. We must preach the Book, the whole Book, and nothing but the Book!

Our publications frequently cite the writings of John Wesley. We respect John Wesley as a godly scholar who was generally accurate in his interpretation of the Scriptures, but our faith is based upon the Word of God.

We also quote Wesley to demonstrate that the modern holiness movement, which claims to be Wesleyan, is not. Our greatest concern, however, is that at many points the holiness movement, both conservatives and liberals, have departed from Scripture.

We are Bible Christians first and Wesleyans second.

The Bible and Tradition

Along with Wesley we have a deep respect for our Christian heritage. With Wesley we believe the Holy Spirit guided the early ecumenical councils. Yet those early statements of the Christian church were not judged to be true because of a majority vote. They were true because they were accurate summaries of a higher authority. Some council decisions actually contradict the decisions rendered by other councils. They are only true so long as they do reflect biblical teaching. Wesley wrote, "If by catholic principles you mean any other than scriptural, they weigh nothing with me: I allow no other rule, whether of faith or practice, than the Holy Scriptures."

When Marcion first raised the question in the second century concerning which books were canonical, church councils did not arbitrarily make that decision. Instead they made a statement recognizing which books had already been received and used as God given. The church did not determine which books to include as scripture. While Liberals teach that the church produced the Scriptures, conservatives teach that the people of God are those who responded in faith to the Word of God.

An over-emphasis upon tradition will lead to legalism. According to Mark 7:1-13 it is possible to zealously uphold human traditions while at the same time setting aside the commands of God's Word. As much as we may respect certain traditions, liturgical forms, or styles of dress, nothing is binding for the Christian except the authority of Scripture. Wesley taught, "Enjoin nothing that the Bible does not clearly enjoin. Forbid nothing that it does not clearly forbid."

A holiness publication declared, "We all believe in repentance and restitution, in confession and forgiveness, in adoption and regeneration, in entire sanctification as a second definite work of Divine grace, in holy living, in the second coming of Christ. Is not this enough of a common ground? Does not this provide sufficient basis for fellowship?" Apparently it was not sufficient because two paragraphs later the same writer announces what will and will not be allowed to appear on their platform and concludes his list of requirements by saying these rules have "distinguished the convention from the beginning - and we expect them to be distinguishing marks forever." Either their basis of fellowship is based on scriptural authority or it is based on tradition. Perhaps the inherit contradiction has been a contributing factor to the group's demise.

The latest multi-volume Wesleyan theology is the three volume theology by Thomas Oden. It is an attempt to state Christian doctrine on the basis of a historical consensus. Oden has tremendous faith that the Holy Spirit is the conservator of orthodoxy within the church, but has little faith that the Holy Spirit could inspire an infallible Bible. Francis Schaeffer pointed out this weakness:

Since, however, [Oden] does not accept the full authority and inerrancy of the Bible he is still left with a serious problem - namely, upon what will he finally base his faith? Without the objective truth of the bible as his foundation, Oden is still left without any way to appropriate with confidence the truth of the Scriptures, nor really to sort through the mixture of truth and error in the life and theology of the church through the centuries. Thus we can commend Oden for rediscovering the stream of historic orthodoxy, but we must say that his theology is still seriously deficient with regard to his understanding of the authority of the Bible.

The most recent statements of Wesleyan theology are uncertain regarding the authority of Scripture. It is assumed the Bible is the primary source of doctrine because the Church has declared it so to be. While we applaud the re-discovery of the early Church fathers, we anticipate a time when our leading theologians go beyond the fathers to the apostolic foundation and rediscover the power and authority of the Scriptures undefiled by higher criticism.

The Bible and Experience

We believe in heart-felt salvation, but we are not interested in seeking any experience the Scriptures do not command us to seek. We contend for the direct witness of the Holy Spirit, but we do so on the basis that it is promised in the New Testament. I have no authority to preach my experience and you are under no obligation to seek my experience. Contrary to the modern charismatic emphasis, Wesley counseled that if a person sought after anything other than more love, he was seeking amiss.

The original Wesleyan position was, "I don't care what your experience is, if you are not walking according to God's law you are in deception." Colin Williams observed that "in Wesley experience is not the test of truth, but truth the test of experience."

Pentecostalism puts experience above God's Word. Someone wrote these words on the flyleaf of their Bible, "I don't care what the Bible says, I've had an experience." This is humanism; man setting himself up as God. It leads theologians to say that the Bible has mistakes in the area of reason, but it can provide a nonrational existential experience anyway. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:14, "And if Christ has not raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an objective historical fact in time and space, then your experience is meaningless.

The holiness movement got off track by claiming God led them to do things contrary to His Word. It adopted pentecostalism minus the tongues. Our faith is not an irrational leap that demands we claim something in order to receive it. We are not required to say we believe before we have been given faith. A holiness missionary wrote about a convert seeking to "get sanctified." "He is really struggling with faith. He can't see how to believe before he believes. I am at the end of advice. I just tell him to claim the promises and keep reading the Word." This advice is neither scriptural, Wesleyan, nor rational. We believe faith is the gift of God given to those who meet biblical conditions.

There can be a danger in reading the biographies of great Christians. A young preacher who had read John Hatfield's book, Thirty-three Years a Live Wire, told Hatfield, "I tried to do some of the things you wrote about in your book, but they didn't work out like that." Hatfield replied, "I only wrote about the things that worked."

Biographies can give a false impression. We are not all intended to be "live wires." Our danger is that we seek their experience rather than to know God. I have known people who described wonderful experiences of God and yet never did much for the cause of God.

There are books which try to prove entire sanctification as a second work of grace by demonstrating that famous Christians have commonly received such experiences. We are to believe in entire sanctification because it is taught in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (and elsewhere) and not because of a celebrity's experience. While Wesley said he would revise his understanding of Christian perfection if experience contradicted it, he assumed that the Holy Spirit would not lead sincere people contrary to the Scripture.

The Roman Catholics claim healing through the Virgin Mary, Mormons have spoken in tongues, the Hindus have powerful experiences of Krishna, women used to faint under the influence of Father Divine, some have claimed to experience as many as six works of grace. How do we know who to believe? John Wesley wrote:

Try all things by the written word, and let all bow down before it. You are in danger of [fanaticism] every hour, if you depart ever so little from Scripture; yea, of from the plain, literal meaning of any text, taken in connection with the context.

Our experience must be based on Scripture. If we will not receive the message of Moses and the prophets, we will not be converted by the sensation or even the supernatural (Luke 24:32). Wesley wrote in his Journal of a conversation with a Mr. Simpson. While Wesley believed him to be sincere, he said Simpson "is led into a thousand mistakes by one wrong principle, the making inward impressions his rule of action, and not the written Word."

The Bible and Reason

You do not check you brain at the door when you go to church. Wesley appealed to reason and common sense in his preaching. Yet we are not rationalistic. We are not saved by logical deduction. When we could not find God through our rational powers, God revealed Himself through His Word. We believe in God, not because He is the product of our rational processes, but because He has spoken to us through His Word.

Wesley once wrote the editor of the London Magazine to say that he was not longer sure of everything except "what God has revealed to man."

American theologians such as Gordon H. Clark and B. B. Warfield seemed to believe that the power of reason is sufficient to argue a nonbeliever into faith. While we would not discount the value of apologetics, neither would we inflate its worth. We are not gnostics who are saved by what we know. Salvation is not the impartation of information, but grace. Men do not reject Christ because of what they don't understand, but what they do understand. With Anselm we echo, "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: for this I also believe, that unless I believe I will not understand."

We object to the rationalism of Phoebe Palmer and her influence upon the American holiness movement. Palmer reduced sanctification to a syllogism. Put you all on the altar. Christ is the altar. The altar sanctifies the gift. Therefore the seeker is sanctified.

Faith teachers within the modern charismatic movement have adapted the "name it and claim it" error of Phoebe Palmer. She applied the logic to sanctification; they applied it to material prosperity. It all amounts to mental gymnastics and word games which leave the seeker disillusioned.

CONCLUSION

Kept within their subordinate role, tradition, experience, and reason illuminate and apply scriptural truth. However, we cannot build a theology upon any of them. We must grasp the priority and primacy of Scripture. We cannot have a dual authority or theological pluralism.

Unless we contend for the sufficiency of scripture we will eventually be proving our positions on the basis of tradition, which can lead to legalism; experience, which tends toward charismaticism; or reason, which leads to a gnostic rationalism.

What we need is a revival of Bible preaching and holy living.

"I cannot find anything in the Bible of the remission of sins past, present and to come." John Wesley in The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained

WAS CHRIST REALLY MADE SIN?
--Joseph D. McPherson

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." So reads the King James translation of 2 Corinthians 5:21. Mr. Wesley, Mr. Fletcher, and Dr. Adam Clarke all take strong exception to this translation. The following is to them a much preferred rendering of this verse: "He made him who knew no sin (who was innocent), a sin-offering for us. . . ." The following comments of Dr. Adam Clarke defend well this latter translation while pointing out the dangerous teachings that have resulted from the former.

The [Greek] word harmartia occurs here twice: in the first place it means sin, i. e. transgression and guilt; and of Christ it is said, He knew no sin, i. e. was innocent; for not to know sin is the same as to be conscious of innocence; so, . . . to be conscious of nothing against one's self, is the same as . . . to be unimpeachable.

In the second place, it signifies a sin-offering, or sacrifice for sin, and answers to the chattaah and chattath of the Hebrew text; which signifies both sin and sin-offering in a great variety of places in the Pentateuch. The Septuagint translate the Hebrew word by harmartia in ninety-four places in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, where a sin-offering is meant; and where our [King James] version translates the word not sin, but an offering for sin. Had our [King James] translators attended to their own method of translating the word in other places where it means the same as here, they would not have given this false view of a passage which has been made the foundation of a most blasphemous doctrine; viz. that our sins were imputed to Christ, and that he was a proper object of the indignation of Divine justice, because he was blackened with imputed sin; and some have proceeded so far in this blasphemous career as to say, that Christ may be considered as the greatest of sinners, because all the sins of mankind, or of the elect, as they say, were imputed to him, and reckoned as his own. One of these writers translates the passage thus: God accounted christ the greatest of sinners, that we might be supremely righteous. Thus they have confounded sin with the punishment due to sin. Christ suffered in our stead; died for us; bore our sins (the punishment due to them), in his own body upon the tree, for the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all; that is, the punishment due to them; explained by making his soul - - his life, an offering for sin; and healing us by his stripes.

In order that he might make plain that sin-offering, not sin, is the meaning of the word in this verse, Dr. Clarke lists a total of one hundred and eight places from the Septuagint and the King James Version where the word occurs; and where it answers to the Hebrew words already quoted; and where the translators of the King James Version have rendered correctly what they render here incorrectly.

FROM OUR MAILBAG

As one who was not raised in the "holiness movement," but was always taught that the work of Christ on the cross was both to justify and sanctify (as do vast numbers outside the "holiness" circles) I must say my initial reaction was of utter astonishment that Albert Outler should ever have used the word "Quadrilateral" in connection with theological authority.

I find it disturbing that tradition, reason, and experience are even mentioned in the same breath as Scripture. Certainly the word "authority" has nothing to do with any of them.

I suspect that many "Wesleyans" would, in fact, pay lip service to the primary authority of Scripture. There must be a large proportion who state that the Bible is their authority. But the other three legs of the quadrilateral, especially tradition, have grown. In fact after Wesley they grew very quickly to alarming importance. This is a fundamental weakness in Wesleyanism as we now know it. And this is why so many of us tend to go to Calvinistic commentaries rather than Wesleyan and why when addressing Wesleyan groups we find their knowledge of the Word of God is lamentably slight.

May God use your group, not to get back to John Wesley, but to the Word of God!

Warmest good wishes,
Eileen Crossman

A SECOND LOOK AT THE SECOND COMING
--L. W. Ruth, Jr.

All agree that Christ is coming a second time. However, the events prior to his return are a point of difference, as well as the manner of His coming. Well meaning people have told us that we must expect things to grow gradually worse and worse, thus hastening the day of Christ's return. Some have gone as far as to say that the days of revival are over and we can, at best, expect only one now and then to be saved.

It is not unusual for some in expressing their opinions concerning the wickedness around them to say, "I don't see how God puts up with this." They seem to have a desire that He would come soon and "rapture" them out of all this evil.

If we believe that things are getting worse and worse and that this is what they are supposed to do, is it not reflected in our actions or conduct? Does it not leave us with little or no zeal for revival or the conversion of lost souls? How can we really pray for revival if we do not believe that there is time for one nor even the probability of one?

Along with this, do we not have some who spend more time in camp meetings or "revival" services telling us about the work and power of "Antichrist" rather than the true Christ and His power? This was the case in one such camp not many years ago and some of the congregation were heard to comment on how deep the messages were. In this same camp, there was other preaching which presented an opposite view, and this, too, was "deep preaching." Somehow, the congregation failed to notice the difference and "were swayed by every wind of doctrine." Since they were not really thinking about what they heard so that they could retain it, it did not really change their lives. There is a great need to preach the truth in such a way that people can get established in the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

Most who hold this belief are quick to say that Christ probably will come just any time and we are to expect a "secret rapture" of the saints, somewhere at the beginning or at least at the middle of a seven year period. This, supposedly, is the last of Daniel's seventy weeks. Incidentally, this week was completed with the first coming of Christ (see Adam Clarke's Commentary on Daniel 9 and The Works of the Reverend John Fletcher, 4:46-48).

This "secret rapture" is the first phase of the second coming. According to this theory, Christ is to come again with those "raptured saints" at the end of this "seven year" period.

Then, according to this view of the doctrine, He sets up His kingdom on earth and by some new method saves the nation of Israel and the gentile nations who have survived the "tribulation" and the many "awful things," which happen to those who were left behind.

If we accept this belief, we must find some answers to questions which arise out of necessity. The earth under this system will be inhabited by (1) the glorified saints, who are incapable of death, marriage, etc; (2) those who are in a mortal body, marrying and reproducing, still with the sin problem, and therefore in need of salvation. This second class is subject to death, so therefore, there must yet be sickness, disease, and all the other things which came upon man as a result of sin. They are still in a state of probation and in need of a savior and mediator. In addition they must either die and be resurrected or else be changed by some other means so that they become immortal. The Bible makes no provision for this.

When Christ comes the second time, according to Hebrews 9:28, He comes not as an offering for our sin. This He has already done when He came the first time. If we are to be saved, whether Jew or gentile, it must be through believing the truth of the gospel, being preached by mortal men.

In view of all that has been said, certainly our attitude toward Christ's return should be one of anticipation. But this anticipation can only be truly reflected in our laboring with prayer and faith for the salvation of souls. Our faith should be in the power of God, expecting Him to grant revival, and a gathering of souls. If we believe that the world can do nothing but grow worse, then obviously our faith produces actions which correspond to this belief. We are not likely to expect the lost to be saved and as a result do not pray nor labor effectively to this end. Our attitude becomes one of "well, they probably are not going to be saved anyway."

Reader, there is a world out about you which is unconverted and therefore unprepared to meet God at the judgment. They cannot be reached by a church which has not faith which works, hope without patience, and love which labors not. Will you allow this to challenge you to look beyond the conditions which seem to prevail and look to God in faith, believing His Word?

We have lived to see communism fall, even though it was supposed to be a threat to the Church. We have the assurance that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against" the Church. The stone which was cut out without hands shall surely become a great mountain filling the whole earth; a kingdom which shall break in pieces and consume all other kingdoms and stand forever.

This stone, this kingdom, is the triumphant Church. It is not a political kingdom, yet it has power over them. It is a spiritual kingdom, over which Christ now rules, and it has power over the kingdom of sin and darkness.

How does your belief in the doctrine of the second coming translate into your conduct? Are you more interested in hearing about the power of Christ or in looking for some "Antichrist"?