Across Christianity, Islam and Judaism, where does the last word lie when belief or practice is in question — in the sacred text itself, in tradition and its teachers, in reason, in personal experience, in conscience, or in the gathered community? This long-running question sits behind most of the reforms and splits in Abrahamic history, and it cuts across denominations: two people in the same church, mosque or synagogue can place authority quite differently. This asks where you lean, with each source described even-handedly and none held up as the right one.
In the Abrahamic faiths the question of where final authority rests — in the sacred text, in tradition and its teachers, in reason, in personal experience, in conscience, or in the community — lies behind most reforms and divisions, from the Reformation's appeal to 'scripture alone' to the place of the Oral Torah in Judaism and the sources of law (usul al-fiqh) in Islam. The four classic Christian sources — scripture, tradition, reason and experience — were named the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' by Albert Outler (1964); the Islamic sources are set out by Kamali (2003). This is an even-handed self-description of where you lean, not a measured trait, and no answer is treated as the correct one. Shared only if you choose. (Sources of religious authority: the 'Wesleyan Quadrilateral' (Outler, 1964) and the sources of Islamic law, usul al-fiqh (Kamali, 2003))