The final authority in the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is Reason. John Wesley and the Methodist movement is very much a product of the Age of Reason. Wesley contended that human beings were given an intellect as a gracious gift of God. God therefore expects us to use our minds, along with our other gifts, in ordering our faith. Remember the words of Mark 12:20, in which Jesus says,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
Jesus here indicates that the mental capacity is as valuable in faith as a person's spiritual ability. True faith is informed by a believer's ability to apply the discipline of reason to religious matters. There appear in news stories from time to time accounts of misguided individuals or groups who have taken an uncritical view of some isolated Scripture passage. They often lift these verses out of their biblical contexts. As a result, they take their interpretation to ludicrous or even dangerous extremes. This all takes place because they don't apply a little common sense — a little reason - -to their practice of faith.
It is the power to reason which sets us apart from the rest of Creation. It is the ability to reason which marks the passage from immaturity to responsibility. The gift of reason helps human beings to use all the gifts of God in order to help us discern the presence of God.
The peace of the Lord be with you.
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