Abiding Quaker

^{So . . . they that are in old Adam are old creatures; and are in their old things, old ways, old worships, and old religions, and have the old garments, and the old bottles, that hold the old wine, and cannot endure the new; and have the old, rusty, moth-eaten treasure. And they that are in Christ, the heavenly and spiritual second Adam, who maketh all things new, are new creatures, and spiritual men, and are heavenly-minded, and are new bottles, that hold the new wine and the new heavenly treasure, and have the new clothing, the fine linen, the righteousness of Christ, and are the new and living way, over all the dead ways.—George Fox} 

^{Although the warning Jesus gives his disciples to “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” will not appear in this book for another six chapters (Mark 8:15), it is in this chapter, chapter 2, that we are given several examples of this false form of spiritual edification, along with Jesus’s opposition to and correction of the error.1 In this essay, I will be examining the chapter’s conflicts one-by-one to show how Jesus challenges the misuse of the tradition by which the religious authorities hinder the very thing the tradition was intended to foster, i.e. the spiritual rising to life in Christ. At the end of the essay, I will touch upon the appearance of this same problem in modern-day Quakerism.}  

^{Hearing the call (13-14)} 

^{The first scene in this chapter positions Jesus at the seaside: a vast, undifferentiated landscape where he teaches a vast, undifferentiated multitude. One verse later, the scene has shifted: Jesus is walking along, and he sees and calls an individual. It is a tax collector, one recognized by all as separate from society. “Follow me,” Jesus says to Levi, the son of Alphaeus, and the man, named and individuated, “arose and followed him” (14). The lesson to be taken from the first two verses in this passage is Christ teaches the multitude, but it is the individual whom he calls to follow him, i.e. to find and take up his way of being. Each person—we are being told—must locate and follow the truth within his own heart, regardless of the personal or social ramifications that surely will follow. He or she must honor the integrity of his God-given soul and reject the stance that he is justified by unsubstantiated, traditional ideas or by fitting into his social group. Those who do so will fail to hear the Light, Jesus Christ’s transcendent call within to follow him.} 

^{Needing the physician (15-17)} 

^{In verses 15 through 17, the setting has moved to the house of the called one, where “many publicans and sinners” who “followed” Jesus dine with him and his disciples. Here near the start of his ministry, Jesus’s conflict with institutional religion shows itself: the religious authorities imply that eating with publicans and sinners is a violation. Jesus disregards not Mosaic Law but the “tradition of the elders” (7:3): religious precepts long held necessary for righteous life.2  Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ challenge:} 

^{They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance (17).}  

^{In but a few words, Jesus not only sets out his healing mission (introducing the metaphors of health for salvation and sickness for sin) but rebukes those who proudly, erroneously refuse to see their own soul’s sickness (their unrighteousness), and thus exempt themselves from recognizing their need of the physician. Only the humble self-aware who feel their alienation from God (i.e. sin) will welcome the physician’s care and thus be restored to health and wholeness.}   

^{Isaac Penington spoke of “the physician [who] is come inwardly and spiritually”3 when he wrote the following:}  

^{the broken and humble-hearted ones (who have felt the inward power of life to change their natures, and to preserve them in that which God hath begotten in them), the grace prevaileth to save in every dispensation.4}  

^{For seventeenth-century Friends, the willingness to recognize the truth of one’s inward condition was the crucial requirement through which the soul was prepared for salvation.}  

^{Again, Penington describes Jesus Christ and his work:}  

^{[H]e inwardly heals and restoreth his people, faithfully seeking after the sick, the distressed, the broken, the wounded; pouring oil into their wounds, and healing them. But there are some who are so sound and whole in their notional apprehensions and practices, that they have no need of the physician, and them the physician passeth by, as unworthy of him, and whom he intendeth shall have no share with him. “Ephraim is joined to idols” (he is well, he hath enough, he hath no need of me) “let him alone,” saith the Lord.}5

^{The Bridegroom (18-22)} 

^{In this passage, the authorities reproach Jesus for lack of holiness by calling attention to his disciples’ failure to fast, as do their own disciples and those of John the Baptist (18). Implied is their assumption that fasting, or asceticism, evinces holiness. Rather than downplaying his disciples lack of ascetic practice, Jesus capitalizes on it: By referring to himself as “the bridegroom” (19), he alludes to the wedding ceremony where feasting, not fasting, is in order. Jesus’s use of the bridegroom metaphor would rile the authorities further in that it would suggest to them that Jesus was making himself equal to God. For in their Scriptures, “bridegroom” was used metaphorically to signal God’s relationship to the soul: “[A]s the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isa 62:5b).}  

^{In speaking immediately after of “a piece of new cloth on an old garment” (21), Jesus appears to continue his reference to Isaiah, where in 61:10, the prophet refers both to the marriage ceremony and to “the garments of salvation” (italics mine):}  

^{I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.}  

^{As do the religious authorities, Jesus knows the tradition. He uses his knowledge, however, more deftly than they because he understands the true intent and purpose of the tradition and thus goes beyond their mere retention of its words and history.} 

^{Priorities (23–28)} 

^{The final episode in this chapter features many of the same circumstances that have already been reviewed in this essay: the Pharisees challenge Jesus for his disciples’ failure to honor the tradition (24), and Jesus retorts by showing not only knowledge of the tradition but his superior, irrefutable understanding of its intent and function (27). The tradition’s intent has always been to prepare souls for unity with God, which unity is a person’s health and salvation. The tradition was never to be an end in itself: a stand-alone prescription for righteousness that the religious authorities have made of it. The last verse in this chapter presents the maxim that shows the precedence given to the salvation of man—to become “the Son of man”—over traditional practices, such as the sabbath, that were put in place as a means to that end: “the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (28).} 

^{For religious communities to make secondary principles and virtues their guidelines for righteousness is a human tendency that extends throughout history, and so Jesus’s exposure and correction, as shown in Mark 2, is needed in every age. In our own Quaker communities, such erroneous principles take the form of what Lewis Benson called “cults”: “the cult of love and good will,” “the cult of the Power of Non-violence,” and “the Cult of the Beloved Community” being a few examples that Benson identifies.6 These take precedence over the call to truth and righteousness that must be promoted, as the Discipline of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Conservative) states.7 Before truth and righteousness can be promoted, however, they must be sought, known, and followed—as Levi followed Jesus in this passage (14). Devotion to secondary principles that supplant the pursuit of truth and righteousness—such as notional ideals of peace, love, and community—is shown to be idolatry when challenged by the writings of Scripture or seventeenth-century Friends writings. Those who idolize the virtue of love ironically exhibit the greatest enmity when challenged and, like the Pharisees, will often conspire against those who honor truth. Laid bare, the foundation of their faith is found to be not the God of Truth but the aspiration to replace Him with their own notional ideals.}  

^{Yes, peace, love, and community are fine qualities and valued among Christians and Quakers, but they must be authentically received, a consequence of coming into the knowledge of God; they cannot be attained through man’s aspiration, which can only be a facsimile that is rooted in pride, to “be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5).} 

^{To know and honestly admit to one’s state is the essential thing: has one known that Spirit of Christ or has one not known that Spirit? This is an essential act of discernment that requires a truthfulness that too many in Quaker communities would prefer not to venture into, and so they don’t. The prophet helps others to see when that essential self-reflection has not yet been undertaken, as Jesus shows the Pharisees and scribes in this passage. In any age, those who undertake the same work can expect the same resistance and personal attacks that Christ’s prophets have always endured.} 

 ^{The Christians formerly (in the first day of the breaking forth of God’s power) had Christ in them, the living Word; they opened their hearts to him, received him in, felt him there, found him made of God to them their wisdom, their righteousness, their sanctification, their redemption. They had the thing that those words signify and speak of, and knew the meaning of the words by feeling of the thing. But Christians now, in the apostasy, have got several apprehensions from the words, without feeling the thing the words speak of; and there lies their religion. And now the heir is come, holding forth the thing they have all been talking of, all sects upon the earth are mad against him, and would fain kill him. They would not have the living substance . . . but they would have their dead apprehensions from the words live, and their dead forms and practices owned; and the heir of life must come in their way . . . or they will not own him.}8 

1 Epigraph. Fox, Works 8:157. The King James Version is used throughout this essay.  

2 ^{“The Greek word . . . translates “a giving over,” either by word of mouth or in writing; then that which is given over, i.e. tradition, the teaching that is handed down from one to another. The word does not occur in the Hebrew Old Testament (except . . . [when] used in another sense . . . ) but is found 13 times in the New Testament . . . . It means, in Jewish theology, the oral teachings of the elders (distinguished ancestors from Moses on) which were reverenced by the late Jews equally with the written teachings of the Old Testament, and were regarded by them as equally authoritative on matters of belief and conduct. . . . [These include] some oral laws of Moses (as they supposed) given by the great lawgiver in addition to the written laws. (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, vol.5, ed. James Orr and company (Grand Rapids, Mich. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939), p. 3004.}   

3 Penington, Works 3:278. 

4 Penington, Works 2:349. 

5 Penington, Works 3:278. 

6 ^{Wallace, None, 56–58. Benson writes: “They are all notions and collectively they absorb and deflect the interest, energy, and devotion that should be conserved and redirected if we are to fulfill the purpose for which God called us to be a people.” None Were So Clear, ed. T.H.S. Wallace. Camp Hill, PA: New Foundation, 1996, (56–58).} 

7 ^{“Make it your aim to promote the cause of truth and righteousness, and to spread the Kingdom of God at home and abroad. Be ready to take your part fearlessly in declaring His message and in witnessing to His power” (Ohio Yearly Meeting [Conserviative] Advise 13.) https://ohioyearlymeeting.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Advices.pdf  Accessed 1/20/25.} 

8 Penington, Works 8:157. 

Study for “The Quaker,” 1975 Andrew Wyeth

^{I knew then that w-a-t-e-r meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free.—Helen Keller}  

^{This brief account tells of the moment in which Helen Keller apprehended reality external to herself. Though Keller became deaf and blind while she was yet a toddler, her still-intact sense of touch allowed her to experience the fluidity and coolness of water. Identifying water—and the potential to identify any other thing in existence—was not Keller’s only discovery in that glorious moment. Through this event, she grasped something that was both more basic and more far-reaching. In the flash of an instant, Keller discovered the uniquely human ability to form an idea: to know, to comprehend the correlation between her sensory perception and that which existed apart from herself. It is intriguing that Keller describes this newfound power in spiritual terms: “That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free.”1} 

^{Keller’s discovery that material existence can be sensed; named; and ideated, that is, mentally recalled as an idea, offers us a clear analogy to what our tradition calls “the second birth” or “being born of the spirit,”2 for these are two of the names given to the sudden revelation of spiritual reality, which, once given and sensed, our natural mental powers allow us to name and call to mind. Prior to receiving a sense impression of Grace, however, we humans are as spiritually blind as Keller was physically and mentally blind: we are in a spiritual darkness that cannot see the reality of God and His Christ; nor can we accurately speculate upon the attributes of that reality, that Truth, by employing thought or the five senses, all of which are gifts bestowed by nature, the powers of the first birth.} 

^{A case can be made that Keller’s story is similar to the opening verses of the First Epistle of John, in that each tells of a new thing in consciousness that has been evoked through an impression made upon our natural faculties, the senses. In Keller’s case, it was literally the sense of touch that evoked the ascent in her awareness. Figuratively, the apostle John lists several senses (hearing, sight, and touch) that were employed in his coming to know the new thing that has appeared within. By presenting a list of sense impressions, John tells us that his testimony is as valid as testimony evidenced by the natural senses. He strengthens his testimony by listing not one but three senses, thereby claiming his testimony is not only valid but is emphatically conclusive:}  

^{That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (1 John 1:1).3} 

^{Interesting to note is the distinction made in the apostle’s description of the sense of sight: “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon” (1). The distinction between the “seen” and “looked upon” is not negligible: for the latter phrase is one of agency while the former is not. This telling distinction encapsulates the overall effect caused by the inward shift in consciousness: there is a movement from passive reception of the Word of life (“seen with our eyes”) to active participation: to directing the gaze with intent and mental acuity (“we have looked upon”). The writer’s juxtaposing these two states hints at—–and to the enlightened mind alludes to—the passage from the first birth and into the second, from darkness into light, from spiritual deadness into eternal life. With that light, one can see; with that life, one can move and act; and one can—and must—testify.}  

^{Additionally, in the accounts of both Keller and the apostle, the naming of the thing follows the sensing of it. Keller learns the word “water” by having its letters written on the palm of her hand; she could then tie that word to the cool flow she had felt. Likewise, the apostle at first gives no name but refers obliquely to “[t]hat which was from the beginning.”4 It is only after telling of his sensory perceptions that John gives a name to that which was perceived: “the Word of life.” In both Keller’s story and in the opening lines of this epistle, the sensation prompts the human power to name (Gen. 2:19-20).5} 

^{It is not only the act of naming that the sense experience calls forth; the apostle proceeds to tell his readers what more must follow one’s witnessing to and naming of the Word to the Church. The minister must give It context: “[we] shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us” (2b). No longer are we humans to be alienated from God, creatures driven from His Presence (Gen. 1:23); we are instead to be “with the Father.”} 

^{After reminding his readers that his declaration is based upon sense experience (“[t]hat which we have seen and heard”), John identifies the intent of his witness: “that ye also may have fellowship with us” (3a). John once again reminds us that his fellowship is “with the Father,” and should another person also be in fellowship “with the Father,” that other will likewise be in fellowship with John himself.6 The apostle is here identifying the true, sole qualification of those who comprise the Church: first, fellowship with the Father, “and with his Son Jesus Christ” (3b), and through that alone comes true fellowship among the members of the Church. Absent this qualification, there is no true fellowship and no true Church.}  

^{George Fox shows his agreement (and perhaps refers to this same verse) when he writes: “The true Christians’ fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, by whom all things were made and created, and all fellowships below this will come to nothing.”7 Isaac Penington notes that it is the individual soul which must be in fellowship (covenant) with God; no longer can the community be considered the entity with whom the Father joins in covenant relationship. Penington writes: “What is the New Covenant? It is a new agreement between God and the soul, different from the former agreement, which was between God and that people of the Jews.”8} 

^{Finally, the apostle concludes his introductory statements in this first epistle by telling of his intent to benefit his readers: “And these things write we unto you that your joy may be full” (4).}  

^{1. Epigraph. Keller. The Story of My Life, accessed 12/12/24,} 

https://www.holloway.com/g/helen-keller-the-story-of-my-life/sections/chapter-iv.

^{2. In this book alone, we’re given several references to spiritual birth: 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; and 5:3-4. Other books containing references to the spiritual birth include John (1:12–13; 3:3, 5-7) and 1 Peter (1:23).} 

^{3. This citation and all subsequent ones are from the King James Version.}  

^{4. The word “beginning” connotes birth or creation as well as pre-eminence (Gen. 1:1).} 

^{5. To reverse this order—to know the name without first having received the sense impression within—is to fall into the category early Friends designated as befitting the aggressive, cultural “Christians” they encountered: “professors not possessors.”} 

^{6. An example may clarify the meaning of this statement: If George is in relationship with the Father and Margaret is in relationship with the Father, then George and Margaret are in relationship with one another. Conversely, if George is in relationship with the Father, and Ross is not in relationship with the Father, then George and Ross are not in relationship with one another.} 

^{7. George Fox, The Works of George Fox (Philadelphia: Marcus T. C. Gould, 1831), 6:242.} 

^{8. Isaac Penington, Works of Isaac Penington (Farmington, Maine: Quaker Heritage Press, 1997), 4:19.} 

John the Evangelist, 1428 Donatello

With part 3 of this series, Evan Knappenberger’s and my discussion on shame and the mixed blessing, as presented in Ezekiel 36, concludes. In this essay, Evan traces the evolution over time of shame’s appearance within the Hebrews’ culture, thus providing a scholarly context for the stark dichotomy between the rationales behind shame, either worldly or heavenly, that were identified in part 2. Following Evan’s essay, I briefly respond to his contribution and bring this series to a conclusion.

Evan wrote:

Now I am fully submerged in this interpretive question of Ezekiel 36, a state of intellectual engagement with the text which is the natural end result of serious reflection upon the spirit of the text. Too long and too detailed for meeting for worship, our commitment to this iterative message between sister Patricia and I nevertheless requires more of us. It is becoming easy for me to see how some Orthodox Jews believe it is necessary to devote all their time and energy to studying and interpreting the scriptures. Without writing a whole treatise on the issue, however, I will try to once more to forge an association or two between our contemporary Quaker practice and the inspired words of one who, long ago, was given a message to proclaim to the empty wastelands of Judea (Eze. 36:1-6).

Central to our discussion is a distinction between shame and sin. A brief perusal of scholarly literature on the topic of shame in the Old Testament is enough to convince me of its centrality to the exilic context. Several perspectives emerge in the scholarly work, not least of which is the Honor-Shame paradigm, an almost universal thinking which shapes the ancient semitic understanding in a unique way. In this system, shame has many roles and serves sociality as a mechanism of control; it is contrasted with honor, both of which enable a certain attributional thinking among human beings. Honor and shame form a dyad whereby either is susceptible to idolatry, both in ancient and in the modern contexts — witness “honor killings” of disobedient daughters in some cultures. This interpretation of shame is helpful to contextualizing our passage in Ezekiel, as well as many other places in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms. However, despite the fact that there are more than three dozen Hebraic words centering shame, it is something distinct (if not altogether different from) the concept of Sin. More importantly, Ezekiel clearly complicates post-exilic ideas of shame and sin — in chapter 36 alone, there are about three different approaches to the same idea.

Again, this is not the place to derive a study of the differences between Sin and Shame, though one of the best sources on this I have seen is purely historical (not theological.) Kyle Harper’s From Sin to Shame, (2013), details the fascinating cultural shift in the Roman world wrought by Pauline Christianity. According to Harper, early Christian notions of sinfulness were almost totally focused on sexual sin, and operated in a way that tended to appropriate and contrast pagan sexual ethics with the Christian concern for mutuality, respect, and love-of-neighbor-as-self. The notional development of Christian sexual ethics of course parallel not just Judaic notions of shame and sin, but worldly forces of honor and shame as well. As Quakers we are doubly aware of notional shame, which is written into the very appellation “Quaker.”

As a historian I am trained to seek the “forces of endogenous historical transformation” — those seeds of change which are planted in the psychic soil of any given place and time, which grow and bear fruit and often transform society in unexpected ways. It is easy in our case to see an axial transformation of shame in several stages: a primitive semitic honor-shame evolves with the Hebraic cultus into notional Sin, something more attributional which can only be cleansed by blood sacrifice; this further evolves in the post-exilic period into a systematized transactional atonement whereby Mount Zion is covered in a never-ending gore of blood that is alien to the prophetic conscience. (Here we are tempted to enter into the great contemporary debate on atonement on the side of James Alison and Ted Grimsrud, who emphasize the prophetic denial of sacrificial atonement which plays out in both Old and New Testaments.) Finally, the “seeds of endogenous transformation” come to fruition in a transcendence of sacrifice through the transformational death of Jesus on the Cross, his deconstructive wearing of our shame or “bearing of our sin” — and lastly in the late-Pauline doctrinal apologetics of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

In the first iteration, the Hebrew peoples formalize semitic shame, which crystallizes into Sin. The prophetic awareness maintains a minor interpretation of both shame and sin which foretells their negation through the transformative act of the Lord. (Witness, that in the Genesis 2 account of the Fall of Humanity, there is no mention of Sin, original or otherwise; only of the shame of nakedness.) While in exile, new generations of Israelites begin to understand shame and sin in a complex series of ritualized ethnic and social constructions which cannot resist oversimplification. The prophets, including Ezekiel, maintain their minor theology, even through the exile. By the time of the second temple and of Jesus of Nazareth, the ascendency of transactional shame and attributional Sin is complete. Jesus comes to a humanity almost entirely entrenched in its understanding of Sin, its reliance on the Letter of the Law which is death, and its ritualized reliance on death and shame upon which it builds a world order.

All of this is context for our interpretation of Ezekiel 36, with its insistent mixed blessing (which I lately realize is foreshadowed by Jacob’s lower back trouble marking him as blessed.) And it all points to Jesus’ embracing/deconstruction of shame and sin by which the foolishness of the wise is laid bare. It shows us a way to maintain our own minor interpretative theological awarenesses in the face of Anselmian sacrifice-Atonement and other like imperial constructions. Finally, it is for us Conservative Friends to uphold a prophetic ministry which opposes both worldly shamefulness and churchly Sin. May we continue to read scriptures like this deeply and enrich ourselves in them and the Lord.

Evan

Patricia wrote:

Thanks, Evan, for providing a scholarly outline of the evolving demeanor of “shame” among the Israelites. Chapter 36 in Ezekiel puts the dichotomous opposition of sin and faith before us when the prophet replaces the false cause of shame—heathenish reproach—with the true, sole cause of shame: alienation from God, i.e. sin. The chapter becomes relevant to present-day readers when we realize that the “heathenish reproach” can stand for all the worldly catalysts of shame, including religious institutions, ordinances, mores, and values. It is important to identify and know “the one thing needful” that keeps us from sin, for should Christ be known and heeded, all false measures that would induce shame go by the wayside.

Let’s conclude this discussion on Ezekiel 36 and look forward to future examinations of our faith through the wonderful resources offered within our Quaker tradition.

The Prophet Ezekiel Writing, 1465, Medieval manuscript in National Library Netherlands