"the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own"

Truett, Baylor

"[Albert] Outler[, who invented the so-called 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral,'] was a brilliant historian but a dilettante in philosophy.  Despite his vast learning, he had no real need for issues in theory of knowledge, and this shows up dramatically in the original version of the thesis.  Hence he completely missed the extent to which Wesley was a medieval figure in his treatment of Scripture.  For Wesley, Scripture mattered because it mediated divine revelation; and, like Aquinas, he was more than ready to come to the aid of revelation with sundry appeals to the tradition of the church, philosophical arguments of one sort or another, and experience—religious and otherwise.  This, of course, looks like the Quadrilateral; but the resemblance is entirely superficial.  Outler misread both the content—involving as it does an appeal to revelation—and the structure—involving as it does a keen sense of the utter sufficiency of revelation on its own."

     William J. Abraham, "What Should United Methodists do with the Quadrilateral?," Quarterly review 22, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 86 (85–88).