Forest of Authority
This is quite long. It is a piece I have written to explain a new metaphor I am using to teach the different faith traditions. It is also the first part of an examination on where I believe we stand as Methodists in conflict with one another.
In the years that I have been teaching church history, I have commonly used the analogy of a tree. It helped to point out the development of the different “branches” of the Christian faith. It was easy to show how one denomination is related to or different from, other denominations. In the last few months, I have begun to shift the analogy. Now I use the image of forest instead of a single tree.
The move to a new picture has come as a result of preparation for Bible study in 1 John as well as the ongoing institutional and philosophical crisis of the United Methodist Church. I began to see that one source was not sufficient to understand the current reality of the Church universal. I felt that a different picture has become necessary to draw out the distinctions and the relationship of one Christian group to another. Every denomination is experiencing some level of institutional and philosophical crisis. I feel that the primary issue at stake is one of source or sources of authority.
In the one tree analogy, all denominational branches necessarily spring from one source. In my teaching, I used the source of the early church. All manifestations of faith practice in Christianity developed from the Acts fellowship following Pentecost. What isn’t represented as clearly in the single tree, or family tree, model is the nature of branching from the single source of authority trunk. The image of a forest, or orchard, may better represent the intentional points of separation a little better.
As a faith line developed farther from the Pentecost origin point, regional and philosophical points of divergence influenced how people in the Church responded to the past and to the context of ministry. One clear example of this is the division sparked by Henry VIII with the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope refused to extend a divorce to Henry in his effort to secure a male heir to the English throne. Henry elected to forego the authority of the Church, represented in the Pope, and establish a religious seat of power in the throne; his own throne. We have seen similar points of divergence throughout the history of the Church. In the biggest areas of divergence, we have seen new branches develop around the different sources of authority.
Historically, four sources of authority have been identified within the Church. The United Methodist Church has encapsulated these four into a theological framework. The four identified sources are Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. Scripture is recognized as the canonized books of the Bible, even though different branches have slightly different finalized canons. Tradition represents the statements of faith that were formed over the length of the life of the Church from the present extending back into the earliest days of the formation of the Church. Experience is the personal and corporate subjective connection people have with God’s presence and revelation. Reason is the capacity for using the mental and emotional capacities we possess to arrive at knowledge and wisdom. Every branch of the Church calls upon these four sources of authority to varying degrees. The difference in the primary source is the basis divisions separating faith traditions. It is also necessary for the forest or orchard analogy to express these divisions more clearly.
When an orchard or forest begins, a few trees are planted. Those trees carry the basic building blocks of what will become the final life of the bigger body. As in animal biology, the basic building blocks of different trees are unique among trees. They are also influenced by external circumstances to change over time. A forest may be composed of one type of tree, but each tree is unique even within its uniformity to the whole. So are the faith expressions of denominations that have produced the forest of the Church universal.
Allow us to assume that God establishes the forest by laying down the foundation of the witness of Jesus Christ. The ground that each seed is planted in is the witness of the disciples watered by the Law, Wisdom, and Prophets. What springs forth from that fertilized soil is the beginning of the growth of the church’s authority. That authority is founded in the experience of those who were direct witnesses to Jesus and his ministry.
The opening chapter of Acts points out that among the disciples, only those who were among the followers of Jesus from the beginning were eligible to be chosen as one of “the twelve”. At the end of the second chapter of Acts, the rest were “devoted to the apostle’s teachings”. It would seem that the earliest authority of the church was based on those who had experienced Jesus’ life personally. The scriptures of the Law and Prophets were fundamental in supporting the claim of who Jesus was as the son of God and the chosen Messiah. It was not, however, possession of knowledge or understanding of the Scriptures that decided who was eligible for speaking for the new faith development.
As the church began to spread beyond the local oversight of the Twelve, and as the apostles journeyed to the “ends of the earth”, the authority recognized by the Church wasn’t just first-hand experience with Jesus. Authority was also granted under recognition of the experience of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was manifested on all flesh, according to Peter’s sermon, but the Holy Spirit seemed to prepare others directly to be voices of authority for the right and proper ways of belonging and believing within the fellowship of The Way.
The clearest example of this shift is discernible between the work of Peter and John in Jerusalem and the sending of Barnabas and Saul to Antioch. Eventually, Paul would be recognized under that same authority without the oversight of Barnabas, yet Paul’s faith was clearly not of the first generation’s experience of “seeing with our own eyes” as the writer of 1 John establishes. Paul’s authority as an apostle, by his own attestation in the letters and the historical reference in Acts, was challenged by some around the church. His authority becomes most clearly challenged on the issue of the authority of tradition and the integration of the Gentile Greeks into the fellowship of The Way.
The Twelve were all most likely examples of the tradition of the Jewish faith. They appended their faith of Christ into their tradition as Jews. The earliest form of the church leaned heavily on retaining close ties to the Jewish faith. They still attended synagogue and Temple. They observed the Sabbath and festivals. There were dietary and cleanliness laws that were maintained to some degree.
When Paul contradicts these in the missionary journey among the Gentile Greeks who come to believe in Jesus as the Christ, he feels it necessary to challenge this authority in the council of Jerusalem. When Paul emerges with a letter of orthopraxy for Gentile Greek Christians, the authority of experience is affirmed. If a believer experiences the witness of the Holy Spirit, manifested after a declaration of faith, baptism, and sometimes with signs, then they are truly within The Way. If they continue in the faith and show gifts appropriate to the task, they can claim the authority of the church through the witness of the apostles.
As the witness of the Twelve continued, they began to run into opposition. According to tradition, many of the original Twelve were martyred or died in areas of mission. It was now necessary to shift from the “we were there” authority to a different source. The next movement of authority also takes place as the Church continued to spread and the center of power shifts from Jerusalem to other places around the known world.
Three areas of influence begin to emerge around the northern edge of Africa, the region of Asia Minor (especially Ephesus and later Constantinople), and around Rome. As stated earlier, the spread of Christianity to further corners allowed for deviations in local practice that influenced doctrine. This decentralization of doctrine contributed to an identification with the centers of power. Each of these centers of power developed slight, but significant, differences in polity, practice, and even some theological viewpoints. The experience of the Holy Spirit was still paramount to Christian faith and witness. However, when theological viewpoints began to differ greatly, voices of authority stepped in to counter growing deviation. The result of this was an authority that began to develop as the tradition that was passed down from the apostles.
Heresy, defined as a deviation from the standard course, needed a standard course clearly established to be measured against. This standard was built firmly on the witness of the apostles and the teaching that they handed down from generation to generation. By this time the New Testament writings were beginning to be accepted as having some authority to teach and guard the Church against deviations too far outside of the norm. In many ways, the letters and accounts of the life of Jesus were still insufficient to form strong enough boundaries against a wide deviation. The early church authorities of the second century, and into the third, called upon the passing of those theological distinctions that had been maintained as closest related to what had been originated in the teachings of the apostles.
In many ways, the roots of authority based on Scripture are being established at this point. At the same time, disagreement existed in the second two centuries over what could be considered official canon. The Church is moving toward forming the recognized canon, but there are still original documents that are being produced, and content integrated, into the letters and historical materials of the Church. The ultimate source of authority during this period is found in the word of the bishops representing the tradition of the witness of the apostles.
In the West, that tradition was embodied in a singular focus on Simon Peter. The tradition of Simon Peter’s role in the early Church takes precedence to a degree that a singular voice of authority, the pope, becomes the preferred form of operation. In the East, the voice of authority remains located among the common expressions of the local communities of faith. In North Africa, bishops seemed to hold the voice of authority. Individual bishops were the leading voice against deviant ideas as they arose. Overall, the catholic nature of the Church is maintained among the three leading areas of Christendom. This catholic nature continues into the period of official recognition of the empire of Constantine.
When Emperor Constantine grants the seal of official religion to Christianity, there is also a new development in the source of authority. The finalized canon is established. This clears the way for the official councils of the Church to be utilized to clarify issues of deviation from the standard course of the Church. Those Old and New Testament writings that are included mark the “official” boundaries of what is deemed authoritative for the faith. It does not, however, cease the challenges to what those writings mean. In order to clarify the meaning and Christian understanding of revelation, councils continued to be called where the standards of what is or is not part of Christian beliefs. Instead of changing the approved scriptures, creeds and statements of faith are issued that form a new layer of authority. This second source of authority was the formal development of the source of Traditional authority.
At this point, we see people who have (and continue) to call upon Experience as their authority overruled by the Tradition. Bishops and communities of faith turn away doctrines that are contrary to the creeds and faith statements issued from the Councils. Individuals or communities that challenge the creeds, and the authority they represent, have been deemed as heretical. Many of these heretics were merely offering a different interpretation on words or concepts that they found in their study of Scripture and the witness of the early church experience. They felt that their faith witnessed in the presence of the Holy Spirit was clearly enough authority to make their case. The tree of Experience is now transformed through circumstances and location. The offspring has mutated into the tree of Tradition.
With the forest of authority expanding to include a second family, it is important to recognize that the tree of authority, Experience, did not pass away. It continued to find its life in the church. The influence of the power centers of Constantinople, Rome, and Northern Africa pushed those communities of faith that relied on Experience as their authority into seclusion or exile. Monastic communities developed with a reliance upon the experience of the individual being more critical to faith. The mystic path is one of experience over tradition. Some who felt too enclosed by their traditional counterparts wandered into the wilderness to find the expression of their faith.
The new development of authority, Tradition, fits well within the approval of the political system. The Councils provided clear boundaries and positions of acceptance or rejection. The government could work with those to neutralize ideologues that were rejected. Persecution became the tool of the government, ordained through Tradition. What was once a tool used by the government against the Christian believers was now being turned against believers who differed from one another. Eventually, the Church in diverse expressions would claim the use of persecution, ordained by the government, to maintain Tradition as a source of authority.
This remains the landscape of the forest for many centuries. The Eastern Church laid claim to Experience supported by Tradition. The Western Church emphasized Tradition supported by Scripture as its authority. The path of the mystic and the heretic was built from the pure Experience source of authority partially supported by Scripture. It will not be until the 1600’s that Scripture rises as an authority of its own standing.
Martin Luther and John Calvin set the new seedlings of Scripture alone as a source of authority. As both of them fight against different perceptions of abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, they begin to strip away the authority of Tradition. All of the extraneous additions from the Church could not be justified by the Bible, according to the priest and theologian. They began to establish that it is Scripture that identifies all that is necessary for the fundamental experience of salvation. No other requirements not found in the Bible can be added to what a person must do in order to be saved. Faith alone is the only viable means to experience salvation.
Paired with the invention of the printing press, the Bible was being translated into the regional languages and put into the hands of “mere” educated people. The lower classes were still vastly uneducated. The Bible was still something read to them. It was no longer read in the Church’s Latin. The use of regional language was nothing new in the Eastern Church. They were much more sensitive to making the Scriptures approachable in the language of the culture. The Roman Church had stuck to Tradition so tightly, though, that it would not relinquish the authority of the priesthood in reading and interpreting the Bible to the community. The Protestant Reformers put the Scripture into the reach of the people in the West. For the next 150 years, Scripture was the single authority the Protestant Reformation was built upon. During the 1700s the Age of Enlightenment brought a new philosophical outlook and with it a new source of authority: Reason.
Every person has the capacity to use reason. Descartes “I think, therefore I am” is a testimony to the fact that we are thinking creatures. The Age of Enlightenment took reason as a capacity within humanity and elevated it to a thing outside of human control. Reason became an objective standard that could be related to. With regard to religion, thinkers turned against the sources of Experience as too subjective. They criticized the authority of Tradition as being too locked into false concepts of moral superiority of the institution. The Bible itself was examined with Reason and the long-standing understandings of the Scriptures were unraveled. Reason became a source of authority, inside and outside of faith, to which people began to turn.
This was where John Wesley arrived. He saw all of the trees that made up this forest of authorities. The Anglican Church, the inheritor of the Catholic Church’s source of Tradition, was where Wesley felt natural at the beginning of his ministry. Encountering the Moravians and reading in the Eastern Church exposed Wesley to an understanding of the role of Experience in a vital faith life. Raised in the Oxford environs at the height of the Age of Enlightenment, Wesley was formed by the skills of Reason based thinking. Of course Wesley was never diminished in his understanding of Scripture as the ultimate authority. Yet, he applied all four sources of authority to his view of faith.
Scripture was the necessary starting point for anyone to discover how God has moved toward us to be saved. That message of salvation has to be a true Experience, personally encountered and transform the person in real ways. The ongoing pursuit of that transformation was to be carefully maintained within the accountability structure of Tradition, specifically the use of the Sacraments and regular ongoing participation in the community of faith. Finally, as God has granted every believer the gift of Reason, it should be applied to the pursuit of faith, thinking through what the believer does and says.
I like to think Wesley didn’t form a new source of authority. The Quadrilateral is a tree house. It is cut from the trees of the different parts of the forest. It is also tied into all of the different kinds of trees. As the trees in the forest of authority are stabilized by roots that are intertwined in the witness of the apostles and the early church, so is the Methodist tradition rooted to all four sources of authority. As the forest is watered in the word of the Law, Wisdom, and Prophet, the house that Methodists were born and raised in is constructed from the application of Scripture, Experience, Tradition, and Reason.
The forest is a necessary change of metaphor. The family tree has been split enough times to justify a different metaphor, but we are likely in another age of great relocation of authority. We are in a time of transition of authority as significant as the major transitions we have experienced in Church history. This is on par with the movement from Experience to Tradition in the first centuries. This is equal to the division of Experience versus Tradition between East and West. This is a movement from one state to another as the movement from Tradition to Scripture as the sole voice of authority. It is just as personally powerful as the incorporation of Reason as its own authority.
We are entering an age where Experience is once again being given primacy among all of the other sources of authority. Tradition is being found lacking due to the injustices against persons and people groups that have been championed by the Church. Reason is given a higher degree of authority than Scripture in trying to uncover the “historical” faith of the early Church and the one it was built upon - Jesus of Nazareth. Experience of the one true God is a subjective matter that cannot be dismissed easily. Scripture is used against Scripture fighting over opinions and positions that do not have the weight of authority. As conflict has marked every period of great transition, so we now see the Church in conflict in all areas.
I don’t know how helpful the use of a change of metaphor is to the conflicts. I realized for myself that I need to use a different image to help others understand the great differences in our faith traditions. We are a beautiful creation, the Church. We are not all the same in how we believe or the authority we submit to. So instead of seeing ourselves as a family in a single tree, let us claim to be a forest of unique but related trees, growing out of a common soil and source of life.
This is quite long. It is a piece I have written to explain a new metaphor I am using to teach the different faith traditions. It is also the first part of an examination on where I believe we stand as Methodists in conflict with one another.
In the years that I have been teaching church history, I have commonly used the analogy of a tree. It helped to point out the development of the different “branches” of the Christian faith. It was easy to show how one denomination is related to or different from, other denominations. In the last few months, I have begun to shift the analogy. Now I use the image of forest instead of a single tree.
The move to a new picture has come as a result of preparation for Bible study in 1 John as well as the ongoing institutional and philosophical crisis of the United Methodist Church. I began to see that one source was not sufficient to understand the current reality of the Church universal. I felt that a different picture has become necessary to draw out the distinctions and the relationship of one Christian group to another. Every denomination is experiencing some level of institutional and philosophical crisis. I feel that the primary issue at stake is one of source or sources of authority.
In the one tree analogy, all denominational branches necessarily spring from one source. In my teaching, I used the source of the early church. All manifestations of faith practice in Christianity developed from the Acts fellowship following Pentecost. What isn’t represented as clearly in the single tree, or family tree, model is the nature of branching from the single source of authority trunk. The image of a forest, or orchard, may better represent the intentional points of separation a little better.
As a faith line developed farther from the Pentecost origin point, regional and philosophical points of divergence influenced how people in the Church responded to the past and to the context of ministry. One clear example of this is the division sparked by Henry VIII with the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope refused to extend a divorce to Henry in his effort to secure a male heir to the English throne. Henry elected to forego the authority of the Church, represented in the Pope, and establish a religious seat of power in the throne; his own throne. We have seen similar points of divergence throughout the history of the Church. In the biggest areas of divergence, we have seen new branches develop around the different sources of authority.
Historically, four sources of authority have been identified within the Church. The United Methodist Church has encapsulated these four into a theological framework. The four identified sources are Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. Scripture is recognized as the canonized books of the Bible, even though different branches have slightly different finalized canons. Tradition represents the statements of faith that were formed over the length of the life of the Church from the present extending back into the earliest days of the formation of the Church. Experience is the personal and corporate subjective connection people have with God’s presence and revelation. Reason is the capacity for using the mental and emotional capacities we possess to arrive at knowledge and wisdom. Every branch of the Church calls upon these four sources of authority to varying degrees. The difference in the primary source is the basis divisions separating faith traditions. It is also necessary for the forest or orchard analogy to express these divisions more clearly.
When an orchard or forest begins, a few trees are planted. Those trees carry the basic building blocks of what will become the final life of the bigger body. As in animal biology, the basic building blocks of different trees are unique among trees. They are also influenced by external circumstances to change over time. A forest may be composed of one type of tree, but each tree is unique even within its uniformity to the whole. So are the faith expressions of denominations that have produced the forest of the Church universal.
Allow us to assume that God establishes the forest by laying down the foundation of the witness of Jesus Christ. The ground that each seed is planted in is the witness of the disciples watered by the Law, Wisdom, and Prophets. What springs forth from that fertilized soil is the beginning of the growth of the church’s authority. That authority is founded in the experience of those who were direct witnesses to Jesus and his ministry.
The opening chapter of Acts points out that among the disciples, only those who were among the followers of Jesus from the beginning were eligible to be chosen as one of “the twelve”. At the end of the second chapter of Acts, the rest were “devoted to the apostle’s teachings”. It would seem that the earliest authority of the church was based on those who had experienced Jesus’ life personally. The scriptures of the Law and Prophets were fundamental in supporting the claim of who Jesus was as the son of God and the chosen Messiah. It was not, however, possession of knowledge or understanding of the Scriptures that decided who was eligible for speaking for the new faith development.
As the church began to spread beyond the local oversight of the Twelve, and as the apostles journeyed to the “ends of the earth”, the authority recognized by the Church wasn’t just first-hand experience with Jesus. Authority was also granted under recognition of the experience of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was manifested on all flesh, according to Peter’s sermon, but the Holy Spirit seemed to prepare others directly to be voices of authority for the right and proper ways of belonging and believing within the fellowship of The Way.
The clearest example of this shift is discernible between the work of Peter and John in Jerusalem and the sending of Barnabas and Saul to Antioch. Eventually, Paul would be recognized under that same authority without the oversight of Barnabas, yet Paul’s faith was clearly not of the first generation’s experience of “seeing with our own eyes” as the writer of 1 John establishes. Paul’s authority as an apostle, by his own attestation in the letters and the historical reference in Acts, was challenged by some around the church. His authority becomes most clearly challenged on the issue of the authority of tradition and the integration of the Gentile Greeks into the fellowship of The Way.
The Twelve were all most likely examples of the tradition of the Jewish faith. They appended their faith of Christ into their tradition as Jews. The earliest form of the church leaned heavily on retaining close ties to the Jewish faith. They still attended synagogue and Temple. They observed the Sabbath and festivals. There were dietary and cleanliness laws that were maintained to some degree.
When Paul contradicts these in the missionary journey among the Gentile Greeks who come to believe in Jesus as the Christ, he feels it necessary to challenge this authority in the council of Jerusalem. When Paul emerges with a letter of orthopraxy for Gentile Greek Christians, the authority of experience is affirmed. If a believer experiences the witness of the Holy Spirit, manifested after a declaration of faith, baptism, and sometimes with signs, then they are truly within The Way. If they continue in the faith and show gifts appropriate to the task, they can claim the authority of the church through the witness of the apostles.
As the witness of the Twelve continued, they began to run into opposition. According to tradition, many of the original Twelve were martyred or died in areas of mission. It was now necessary to shift from the “we were there” authority to a different source. The next movement of authority also takes place as the Church continued to spread and the center of power shifts from Jerusalem to other places around the known world.
Three areas of influence begin to emerge around the northern edge of Africa, the region of Asia Minor (especially Ephesus and later Constantinople), and around Rome. As stated earlier, the spread of Christianity to further corners allowed for deviations in local practice that influenced doctrine. This decentralization of doctrine contributed to an identification with the centers of power. Each of these centers of power developed slight, but significant, differences in polity, practice, and even some theological viewpoints. The experience of the Holy Spirit was still paramount to Christian faith and witness. However, when theological viewpoints began to differ greatly, voices of authority stepped in to counter growing deviation. The result of this was an authority that began to develop as the tradition that was passed down from the apostles.
Heresy, defined as a deviation from the standard course, needed a standard course clearly established to be measured against. This standard was built firmly on the witness of the apostles and the teaching that they handed down from generation to generation. By this time the New Testament writings were beginning to be accepted as having some authority to teach and guard the Church against deviations too far outside of the norm. In many ways, the letters and accounts of the life of Jesus were still insufficient to form strong enough boundaries against a wide deviation. The early church authorities of the second century, and into the third, called upon the passing of those theological distinctions that had been maintained as closest related to what had been originated in the teachings of the apostles.
In many ways, the roots of authority based on Scripture are being established at this point. At the same time, disagreement existed in the second two centuries over what could be considered official canon. The Church is moving toward forming the recognized canon, but there are still original documents that are being produced, and content integrated, into the letters and historical materials of the Church. The ultimate source of authority during this period is found in the word of the bishops representing the tradition of the witness of the apostles.
In the West, that tradition was embodied in a singular focus on Simon Peter. The tradition of Simon Peter’s role in the early Church takes precedence to a degree that a singular voice of authority, the pope, becomes the preferred form of operation. In the East, the voice of authority remains located among the common expressions of the local communities of faith. In North Africa, bishops seemed to hold the voice of authority. Individual bishops were the leading voice against deviant ideas as they arose. Overall, the catholic nature of the Church is maintained among the three leading areas of Christendom. This catholic nature continues into the period of official recognition of the empire of Constantine.
When Emperor Constantine grants the seal of official religion to Christianity, there is also a new development in the source of authority. The finalized canon is established. This clears the way for the official councils of the Church to be utilized to clarify issues of deviation from the standard course of the Church. Those Old and New Testament writings that are included mark the “official” boundaries of what is deemed authoritative for the faith. It does not, however, cease the challenges to what those writings mean. In order to clarify the meaning and Christian understanding of revelation, councils continued to be called where the standards of what is or is not part of Christian beliefs. Instead of changing the approved scriptures, creeds and statements of faith are issued that form a new layer of authority. This second source of authority was the formal development of the source of Traditional authority.
At this point, we see people who have (and continue) to call upon Experience as their authority overruled by the Tradition. Bishops and communities of faith turn away doctrines that are contrary to the creeds and faith statements issued from the Councils. Individuals or communities that challenge the creeds, and the authority they represent, have been deemed as heretical. Many of these heretics were merely offering a different interpretation on words or concepts that they found in their study of Scripture and the witness of the early church experience. They felt that their faith witnessed in the presence of the Holy Spirit was clearly enough authority to make their case. The tree of Experience is now transformed through circumstances and location. The offspring has mutated into the tree of Tradition.
With the forest of authority expanding to include a second family, it is important to recognize that the tree of authority, Experience, did not pass away. It continued to find its life in the church. The influence of the power centers of Constantinople, Rome, and Northern Africa pushed those communities of faith that relied on Experience as their authority into seclusion or exile. Monastic communities developed with a reliance upon the experience of the individual being more critical to faith. The mystic path is one of experience over tradition. Some who felt too enclosed by their traditional counterparts wandered into the wilderness to find the expression of their faith.
The new development of authority, Tradition, fits well within the approval of the political system. The Councils provided clear boundaries and positions of acceptance or rejection. The government could work with those to neutralize ideologues that were rejected. Persecution became the tool of the government, ordained through Tradition. What was once a tool used by the government against the Christian believers was now being turned against believers who differed from one another. Eventually, the Church in diverse expressions would claim the use of persecution, ordained by the government, to maintain Tradition as a source of authority.
This remains the landscape of the forest for many centuries. The Eastern Church laid claim to Experience supported by Tradition. The Western Church emphasized Tradition supported by Scripture as its authority. The path of the mystic and the heretic was built from the pure Experience source of authority partially supported by Scripture. It will not be until the 1600’s that Scripture rises as an authority of its own standing.
Martin Luther and John Calvin set the new seedlings of Scripture alone as a source of authority. As both of them fight against different perceptions of abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, they begin to strip away the authority of Tradition. All of the extraneous additions from the Church could not be justified by the Bible, according to the priest and theologian. They began to establish that it is Scripture that identifies all that is necessary for the fundamental experience of salvation. No other requirements not found in the Bible can be added to what a person must do in order to be saved. Faith alone is the only viable means to experience salvation.
Paired with the invention of the printing press, the Bible was being translated into the regional languages and put into the hands of “mere” educated people. The lower classes were still vastly uneducated. The Bible was still something read to them. It was no longer read in the Church’s Latin. The use of regional language was nothing new in the Eastern Church. They were much more sensitive to making the Scriptures approachable in the language of the culture. The Roman Church had stuck to Tradition so tightly, though, that it would not relinquish the authority of the priesthood in reading and interpreting the Bible to the community. The Protestant Reformers put the Scripture into the reach of the people in the West. For the next 150 years, Scripture was the single authority the Protestant Reformation was built upon. During the 1700s the Age of Enlightenment brought a new philosophical outlook and with it a new source of authority: Reason.
Every person has the capacity to use reason. Descartes “I think, therefore I am” is a testimony to the fact that we are thinking creatures. The Age of Enlightenment took reason as a capacity within humanity and elevated it to a thing outside of human control. Reason became an objective standard that could be related to. With regard to religion, thinkers turned against the sources of Experience as too subjective. They criticized the authority of Tradition as being too locked into false concepts of moral superiority of the institution. The Bible itself was examined with Reason and the long-standing understandings of the Scriptures were unraveled. Reason became a source of authority, inside and outside of faith, to which people began to turn.
This was where John Wesley arrived. He saw all of the trees that made up this forest of authorities. The Anglican Church, the inheritor of the Catholic Church’s source of Tradition, was where Wesley felt natural at the beginning of his ministry. Encountering the Moravians and reading in the Eastern Church exposed Wesley to an understanding of the role of Experience in a vital faith life. Raised in the Oxford environs at the height of the Age of Enlightenment, Wesley was formed by the skills of Reason based thinking. Of course Wesley was never diminished in his understanding of Scripture as the ultimate authority. Yet, he applied all four sources of authority to his view of faith.
Scripture was the necessary starting point for anyone to discover how God has moved toward us to be saved. That message of salvation has to be a true Experience, personally encountered and transform the person in real ways. The ongoing pursuit of that transformation was to be carefully maintained within the accountability structure of Tradition, specifically the use of the Sacraments and regular ongoing participation in the community of faith. Finally, as God has granted every believer the gift of Reason, it should be applied to the pursuit of faith, thinking through what the believer does and says.
I like to think Wesley didn’t form a new source of authority. The Quadrilateral is a tree house. It is cut from the trees of the different parts of the forest. It is also tied into all of the different kinds of trees. As the trees in the forest of authority are stabilized by roots that are intertwined in the witness of the apostles and the early church, so is the Methodist tradition rooted to all four sources of authority. As the forest is watered in the word of the Law, Wisdom, and Prophet, the house that Methodists were born and raised in is constructed from the application of Scripture, Experience, Tradition, and Reason.
The forest is a necessary change of metaphor. The family tree has been split enough times to justify a different metaphor, but we are likely in another age of great relocation of authority. We are in a time of transition of authority as significant as the major transitions we have experienced in Church history. This is on par with the movement from Experience to Tradition in the first centuries. This is equal to the division of Experience versus Tradition between East and West. This is a movement from one state to another as the movement from Tradition to Scripture as the sole voice of authority. It is just as personally powerful as the incorporation of Reason as its own authority.
We are entering an age where Experience is once again being given primacy among all of the other sources of authority. Tradition is being found lacking due to the injustices against persons and people groups that have been championed by the Church. Reason is given a higher degree of authority than Scripture in trying to uncover the “historical” faith of the early Church and the one it was built upon - Jesus of Nazareth. Experience of the one true God is a subjective matter that cannot be dismissed easily. Scripture is used against Scripture fighting over opinions and positions that do not have the weight of authority. As conflict has marked every period of great transition, so we now see the Church in conflict in all areas.
I don’t know how helpful the use of a change of metaphor is to the conflicts. I realized for myself that I need to use a different image to help others understand the great differences in our faith traditions. We are a beautiful creation, the Church. We are not all the same in how we believe or the authority we submit to. So instead of seeing ourselves as a family in a single tree, let us claim to be a forest of unique but related trees, growing out of a common soil and source of life.
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