Anglican Bible Study

Two Different Quadrilaterals, Commonly Confused

If you have read about Methodist Bible study you have met the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which describes four sources for theological reflection: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The Anglican Quadrilateral is a different document about a different question, and the shared word causes regular confusion.

The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral was adopted by the House of Bishops in Chicago in 1886 and approved with modifications by the bishops of the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference of 1888. It is not a method for interpreting a passage. It is a statement of the four things Anglicans considered essential as a basis for reunion among divided Christians.

What the Quadrilateral Actually Says

The 1888 Lambeth wording lists four articles. First, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation, and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith. Second, the Apostles' Creed as the Baptismal Symbol, and the Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. Third, the two Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, ministered with unfailing use of Christ's words of Institution and of the elements ordained by Him. Fourth, the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the Unity of His Church.

The earlier 1886 Chicago version put the first article more briefly, as the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revealed Word of God.

Read that first article closely, because it does two distinct things. It says scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, which is a claim about sufficiency. And it says scripture is the rule and ultimate standard of faith, which is a claim about authority. The creeds, sacraments and bishops appear in the list as essentials of the church's life, not as rival standards by which scripture is measured.

Reading on a Schedule Rather Than by Mood

The most practical difference between Anglican Bible reading and much of Protestant devotional habit is that the schedule is not yours to pick. The prayer book and the lectionary set out what gets read, in what order, across the Christian year. Over time you are carried through large portions of scripture, including the parts you would have skipped.

That has an obvious cost and a real benefit. The cost is that you will regularly meet a passage you did not choose and are not in the mood for. The benefit is that the text sets the agenda rather than your preferences, and difficult books do not quietly disappear from your reading.

This is where a plain-language tool earns its place. When the appointed reading lands on an unfamiliar prophet or a dense stretch of an epistle, paste it into WordDecoder for the historical setting and the plain sense before you sit with it. The schedule chose the passage. Nothing says you have to face it cold.

Anglican, Episcopal, and the Range Inside the Tradition

Anglican and Episcopal generally name the same tradition in different places, with Episcopal the common term in the United States and Scotland. Beyond that, the Anglican world contains real internal variety in how scripture is read, from strongly evangelical congregations to strongly catholic and liturgical ones, and there are separate Anglican bodies in North America with different alignments.

This page does not adjudicate between them, and you should be wary of any page that quietly does. What can be stated from the tradition's own formal documents is what the Quadrilateral says about scripture's place. How a given parish reads a given passage is a question worth asking that parish.