William J. Abraham, Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Perkins School of Theology, argues that the quadrilateral's categories are of no use in framing a theology:
As a pedagogical device, the quadrilateral indeed has merit. ... However as a formal proposal in the field of religious knowledge, the quadrilateral is an absurd undertaking, for only an omniscient agent could seriously undertake to run our proposals through the gamut of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Only God could use the quadrilateral and, thankfully, God doesn't need it. What actually happens, of course, is that folk make a good faith effort to meet this grandiose standard, but the considerations are so diverse and complicated that the result is a wild array of alternatives. The quadrilateral is much like a kaleidoscope. Each time you shake Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, a different configuration emerges. The result is doctrinal chaos and incoherence. Even Albert Outler, the great architect of the Methodist quadrilateral, was disturbed by its misuse, and late in life expressed reservations about its logic. (Abraham 14)I agree. Wesley, for example, was too much of an Anglican to think of tradition in the same way that Anabaptists do, as collective experience, as telling our story. [[cover the right half of the diamond]]. I would argue that he, although not Wesleyans today, thought of tradition -- such as the Thirty Nine Articles -- more as received rather than experienced. That's why Luther [[cover the left half of the diamond]] asked to be convinced by Reason and by Scripture. I am not using the quadrilateral prescriptively.