Clarifying the Quadrilateral 2: Scripture and Tradition

If anyone read the previous version of this post, I thought it might be too much of a shock to the system, so let me present its basic point in a more palatable version

2. Scripture and Tradition
Because words are capable of multiple interpretations, the Biblical text itself is susceptible to many interpretations that are not strictly Christian. For example, recent days have seen interpretations of Paul arguing that Jews could be saved apart from Christ, that only Gentiles needed Christ's blood for atonement. Others interpret Paul in such a way that we should not think of contemporary Judaism as a different religion from Christianity, that we should speak of ecumenical discussion not just between Protestants and Catholics, but between non-Christian Jews and Christians.

Without going into detail, let me suggest that Christians--without even realizing it--have an intuitive and mostly subconscious system of interpretation whereby the text takes on orthodox meanings. The extent to which this process takes place would be clear to us if we were able to go back and see the writings of the Bible in their full historical context.

Take the book of Hebrews. When we read the book of Hebrews, we are not surprised to find it telling us that Christ's death has put an end to the Old Testament sacrificial system. We are further not surprised to find that Old Testament sacrifices did not really take away sin. We intuitively declare this the "biblical" position on atonement and Old Testament sacrifices. We intuitively know that this is the Christian position as well.

But if we could see Hebrews in its original setting, we might just find that this message was highly controversial--perhaps even in the church. Acts 21 implies that James urges Paul to pay and participate in a vow of several early Christians. In other words, James is urging Paul to participate in temple sacrifices and Paul agrees. According to Hebrews, such sacrifices are no longer necessary.

What this means is that the same text of Hebrews can not only take on different meanings--its overall significance can very depending on its context. It had a certain significance when it was first written, when many Christians may have actually disagreed with it. And it has a "canonical" significance, a significance it takes on in the light of Christian history, Scripture-as-churched. The canonical significance of Hebrews is that Christ is the final atonement, indeed the only atonement. It does not matter whether any other New Testament author might have thought differently, for Hebrews is the controlling text the church has "chosen."

There are any number of other instances where we are prone not to realize how little of the New Testament takes a position of great importance to us as Christians. For example, only two chapters of the New Testament mention the virgin birth--an essential belief for us as Christians. Yet the virgin birth does not seem to play much of any theological role in the rest of the New Testament--including the rest of Matthew and Luke. The canonical importance of the event is disproportionate to its biblical importance.

Similarly, very little of the New Testament references Christ's pre-existence. For example, some notable scholars, such as James Dunn, believe that the phrase "form of God" in Philippians 2:6 is a reference to Christ being a second Adam, not a reference to Christ as pre-existent deity. While he is in the minority with this position, he demonstrates that it is possible that many biblical texts that we tend to see in a certain light because of later orthodoxy, may not have had the same original connotations as we intuitively see in them post-Nicaea.

Many New Testament scholars see the Gospel of John as unusual in its "high Christology" of pre-existence and equation of Jesus with Yahweh at the burning bush (cf. John 8:58). Many indeed would suggest that John's community was considered unorthodox among early Christians, that it was a sect within Christianity itself. Whether these claims turn out to be true or not, they demonstrate the possibility that we read and connect the biblical texts to each other in ways that are quite distinct from the meanings and connotations these books had originally. They suggest that without even realizing it, Christians read the Bible with canonical glasses on.

It is thus my suggestion that the meaning of Scripture in the Quadrilateral should, in the first place, be the canonical meanings, meanings that fit with the way the mainstream church came to understand these Scriptures. The meaning of Scripture in the Quadrilateral is thus Scripture-as-traditioned or better Scripture-as-churched.

3. Conclusion on Clarifying the Quadrilateral
The healthy operation of Wesley's Quadrilateral is thus not to see Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience working in isolation from each other.

For example, it is not the rarified original meaning of the biblical books that we should primarily have in view but the Bible as Scripture, the Bible with the significance that the creeds and consensus of the church have given it. The consensus of the church is the safest organizing and prioritizing principle, the safest controlliing element in determining its meaning and significance for Christians.

Many traditions of interpretation of varying weight flow smoothly from the words of Scripture. These range from ones that most churches hold to others that seem the special emphases of smaller Christian groups. Some of these may be God-ordained emphases of particular bodies of believers. Others may be idiosyncratic and not ordained of God.

Reason and experience will always play a role in sorting out all these things, for all human knowing passes through the human mind, the content of which comes through our experiences. True Wesleyan integration will accordingly involve the intermingling of all these components in an organic fashion.