Abiding Quaker

The evening of November 15^th, seven Friends met via Zoom to participate in a New Foundation Fellowship study group. We read and discussed the final section of George Fox’s Epistle 38, which can be found on pages 46—48 of volume 7 of The Works of George Fox (1831).

In these few pages, Fox challenges the unrighteous teachers of his time and their enablers by censuring them with language drawn from prophecy recorded in Scripture. Our discussion of Fox’s method and intent begins at 9:30 in the recording, and thereafter we move into the more general topic of present-day ministry: the circumstances in which we work and some particular attitudes and approaches that have been found to be beneficial.

Though the “letter” of Fox’s approach cannot – nor should not – be replicated today, the impetus for his ministry, the guiding Spirit of Christ Within, remains unchanged throughout every age.

The recording has been edited to minimize the time between speakers, and is close to 47 minutes long. 

This post features a recording of our monthly New Foundation Fellowship study of George Fox’s journal from volume 1 of the publication The Works of George Fox (1831). Five of us participated in last Saturday’s study, picking up on page 363 where we left off last month, and covering the next few pages to end on page 366.

This month’s discussion centered on ministry given by Fox at a yearly meeting in Bedfordshire, England in 1657. Specifically, much of our study focuses on Fox’s figurative term “to sit down”: meaning to settle upon a foundation or authority that decides or resolves one’s way of being. On page 365, seven options for sitting down are given by Fox. The first six describe faulty orientations and the problems that result with each erroneous choice. The list culminates in the seventh option: “[to] sit down in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. . .the safe sitting for all his elect, his church.” The reading of this passage begins at 6:39 in the recording, and its discussion starts at 16:40.

Occurring throughout our discussion are references to the role anxiety plays in moving us toward or away from resolution. We look at a passage in Luke for an illustration of our tradition’s calling forth the tension and discomfort that accompanies anxiety, and examine its intended beneficial effect. Through a personal story of a revelation from God (at 26:54), we are given an example of anxiety initially posing an obstacle to resolution.  

The Church being comprised of those who sit down in Christ Jesus is also discussed, beginning at 41:22.

(This post was first published on the 10th; since then, the audio file has been edited to eliminate the long pauses between speakers. As a result, the recording is now slightly more than half its former length.)  

This past Saturday, the 10th, we had our monthly New Foundation Fellowship Zoom meeting for reading and discussing Fox’s Journal. The reading at the beginning of the recording is from The Works of George Fox (1831) volume one, pages 358-63. The video will be available only until mid-day Sunday, the 18th, when we will need to make space on our Zoom account for our next Fox study session. An audio file will replace the video on Monday, the 19th. The session is one hour and 15 minutes long.

The passage we looked at on Saturday begins with Fox describing his encounters in Scotland in 1657. Particularly interesting is his recounting his ministry at the steeplehouse in Dunbar (360-1). The passage can be heard beginning around 8:50 minutes into the recording, and discussion on the nature of gospel ministry begins shortly after 24:15 minutes.

The topic of the what makes a gospel minister is taken up by Fox after his encounter in Durham with a man who intended to set up a college to make ministers. This passage occurs on pages 362-3, and 14:17 minutes into the recording. Our discussion on this topic begins around 35:00 minutes. Woven throughout this session is the contrast between the “religion of man’s making” and “the religion and worship which Christ had set up in spirit and truth” (361).

The following is a transcript of an email discussion that took place in mid-July with Ryan Hodges, a Christian from British Colombia. This is the second part of a two-part post; the first part, presented last month, looked at the apparent discord between depictions of God’s Will in Old Testament stories and the character normally attributed to Him. Continuing with the same topic of God’s nature and intent, this second discussion  centers on covenants. 

Ryan’s July 17^th email continues:

This post is a transcription of an email discussion that took place in mid-July with Ryan Hodges, a Christian from British Columbia who has been dissatisfied with nominal Christianity, and recently come across the writings of Quakers. In the following post, Ryan asks for information on early Friends position on the validity of the Old Testament atrocity stories, as he’s found the way God is represented in those stories to be not in keeping with his understanding of God’s character. A large portion of the second email exchange – which will be posted next week – will focus on particular thoughts about the relationship between God and man as represented in Scripture writings on covenants.

Thanks to Ryan for bringing up these ideas and also for his integrity of mind, which requires a seeking below the surface of doctrine for the reality of faith.  

July 13^th email from Ryan:  

Do you believe that God commanded people to kill other people… ever? When David says, “Blessed is the one who bashes the brains out of Edomite infants” (Psalm 137), do you believe that he was inspired of God to say this? I cannot see this as possible, my spirit recoils at the idea. Yet, murder and violence towards enemies is deeply embedded in the Old Testament narrative, and not just that people did it, but that the text specifically and often says God told them to do it. To say that this was somehow preparatory for the New Covenant, is to say that people “did evil, so that good may come.” As of this point in time, I cannot swallow that idea. The same people that said, “God gave us this cultus to follow”, also said “God often told us to commit genocide.” Why should I trust such voices? Did the Prophets ever specifically endorse the cultus? I am not aware that they did. On the other hand, there seems like much evidence to suppose that they could have been “anti-cultus” altogether. This is a preliminary question for me in reading up to page 16 in Benson’s “The Antipathy Between Prophecy and Religion”. I would like to hear your thoughts, or any other Quaker resources you may recommend that discuss this issue.

Patricia answered:

Ryan, in your July 13th email, you wrote: “Do you believe that God commanded people to kill other people. . . ever”? 

What early Friends ultimately sought in their reading of Scriptures was not lessons in history or ethics; what they found was information pertaining to God’s nature and intention, as well as types, figures, and shadows that articulated the righteousness they were to embody and the sin they were to shun.

What does God’s command “to kill other people” signify about God’s intent and nature? One, it signifies God does not tolerate idolatry in people, and one had better “kill” whatever idolatry exists in one’s own self, as formerly idolators were literally killed; two, if one chooses to persist in idolatry, God will not allow the soul to live; three, this life or death of the soul is a highly serious matter for human beings; four, the life of the body is not God’s primary consideration but the life of the soul and what it worships. No doubt there are other lessons too. I’m just trying to show that Friends did not confine their interpretation to the literal meaning; their use of Scripture entailed more. 

I saw death reigned over them from Adam to Moses, from the entrance into transgression till they came to the ministration of condemnation, which restrains people from sin that brings death. Then, when the ministration of Moses is passed through, the ministry of the prophets comes to be read and understood, which reaches through the figures, types and shadows unto John, the greatest prophet born of woman; whose ministration prepares the way of the Lord by bringing down the exalted mountains and making straight paths. And as this ministration is passed through, an entrance comes to be known into the everlasting kingdom [Journal,  Nickalls, 31].

Here is a passage taken from Fox’s journal, showing salvation history through time. Friends held that this grand-scale history was to be gone through by each person. I wrote more about moving beyond literal interpretation in an essay titled That They All May Be One.  That said, it was also Friends understanding that Scriptures could not be read and understood except in the spirit in which they were written, which underscores Christ’s admonition to seek first the kingdom and righteousnesss, and all things else will be given as well. 

A few days later Ryan responded:

In reading your email and your attached blog post (which I really enjoyed), I have this to respond with:

 “What early Friends ultimately sought in their reading of Scriptures was not lessons in history or ethics”;

So what was their take on the historical validity of the stories themselves? Doubtful? Possible? Accurate? Why do I ask this? Because I wonder if it is acceptable to use stories of genocide, even symbolically, to express the nature of God’s action in the world, or in the heart. It is fine not to take the stories “merely” as history, but should we not question whether the stories are historically possible with what we understand to be the character of God?

I have no recollection of reading that any of the early Friends thought that the Old Testament atrocity stories were anything but accurate. I don’t find them contrary to what I understand to be the nature of God to move humanity incrementally forward over the millenia from a condition that is brutal, violent, and lawless, and into the kingdom. There is great variation in the readiness to receive Christ among individual souls; God takes figuratively withered, cast forth branches and consigns them to the figurative fire (Jn. 15:6), or the Flood. Matthew 10:28 illustrates where the concern of God and His Christ is placed:

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Friends Library is a recently launched website that is dedicated to the “the preservation and free distribution of early Quaker writings.” At present, 106 books are available for free download in multiple editions and digital formats with a number also recorded as audio books.

Short essays describe the rise of Quakers in the 17th century and clarify some key concepts, such as the Light Within and perfection; practices, such as customs, language, and silent meetings; and circumstances, such as the persecution they endured.

Publications are available in different editions: original, unedited; modernized; and updated. Characteristics of each form are identified, and examples are provided to assist the reader in choosing which edition is most suitable for him- or herself.

There is a Spanish version of the site, and currently 14 books have been translated.

The website is attractive and easy to use with clear instructions at every turn. Friends Library promises to be a major resource for familiarizing oneself with and accessing this valuable material.

It’s good to see
Spring doesn’t stop
When confronted by Man’s
Adversity.

It’s good to feel
The fullness of life
When reminded of our
Fragility.

It’s good to know
The goodness of God
When taken aback by
Necessity.

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets (Rev. 10:5-7).

These verses from Revelation have a majesty about them. Something of gravity and magnificence is being revealed by this “mighty angel come down from heaven” (10:1). As such, his words are given the appropriate frame of reference: the earliest story we have in Scripture, the Creation story in Genesis. This passage from Revelation draws upon images and words that are recounted in the story of Creation. Thus we’re being told that the angel’s message is of highest importance – on par with Creation itself.

Not only do these verses from Revelation refer to the Creator and His first work, but they also develop particular elements found in the Creation story. For example in verse 5, the evangelist tells us that he sees the angel stand with one foot upon the sea and one foot on the earth. The statement alludes to the verse in Genesis where the land is divided from the sea:

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:9-10).

The angel bridges previously separated areas. Where there was division of land from sea, there is now connection through the angel’s stance: “his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth”(2). The act is of such portent that the words bear repeating, which the evangelist does in verse 5.

In Creation God differentiates one thing from another, such as land from water. (See other divisions in Genesis 1 in verses 4, 6, 7, 14, and 18.) Division separates; whereas “one” implies unity and resolution, “two” suggests movement, change, comparison, or activity: for example, up/down, lesser/greater, solid/fluid, left/right, etc. With the appearance of the angel, the division of two Earth surfaces—land and sea—is bridged: that is to say, figuratively they are made one. With his stance, the angel transcends the structure of Creation and presages unity and wholeness. When fulfillment is come, when “the mystery of God [is] finished”(10:7), there is unity; there is peace and rest.

Another item presented in the first chapter of Genesis and addressed in these few verses from Revelation is the element of time: (The angel swears “by him that liveth for ever and ever. . .that there should be time no longer”[6].) In Genesis, time is introduced through the numbering of days that follow each specific creative act. (See verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31.) For example, “And the evening and the morning were the first day”(5). Things are created in sequence, and time marks each change, activity, and division, like a poem’s refrain, anchoring and imbuing each stanza.

Verse 6 in the Revelation passage shows the power and authority the eternal God has over time: “that there should be time no longer.” The angel states God’s intent to eliminate that element of Creation which separates Him from His mortal creature. No longer is humanity to be a time-bound captive to death, and separated from life eternal. Fox wrote:

Ye coming out of that which was in time, ye come up to God, who was before time was. This is a mystery, he that can receive it let him (7:57).

Through his stance and words, the mighty angel tells us the coordinates of space and time, which have previously defined our life, set our bounds as creatures, these no longer hold sway. Where we have been formerly is not where we are now to be: outside of time and in unity with God.

A Precious State

In the following quotation, Fox identifies time as the element in which all “troubles, persecutions, and temptations” occur, and he presents the alternative: the safety of the everlasting power of the Lord. As one would expect, Fox’s understanding is in agreement with the angel’s message of moving beyond time into that power that is everlasting and over all.

All trials, troubles, persecutions and temptations, came up in time; but the Lord’s power, which is everlasting, is over all such things, in which is safety (Bi-centennial Edition of The Journal of George Fox, II, 418).

Upon awakening very early in the morning this past “time called Christmas,” I was surprised to receive a gift. It was an insight: All I had experienced in my life was to a single end, and that end was to know and be in unity with God. Taking this newly given, trustworthy certainty into my barely conscious mind led to a delightful first thought of the day: that all the calamities, tragedies, and effort, all the betrayals, injuries, and mistakes I had made and endured from others. . . all of it had been ultimately to good purpose. All the mini-narratives I had composed and accumulated—drawn from my earliest memory to those of yesterday—did not define my being but were instead a kind of school to bring me to everlasting life, where true being is known. Furthermore, whatever remaining trials were to come, I could accept with quiet assurance, lightly and gracefully, for all was in good order, and the end was, and would ever be, life in Christ.

He who feels the covenant in Christ and life streaming into his heart through the covenant, and the seal of eternal peace to his soul, and that he shall never be left nor forsaken by the fountain of mercy, but all that ever befalls him shall conduce towards the working out of the perfect redemption and salvation of his soul; this is a precious state indeed; and this is the state which the feeling of the faith, and the living obedience in the Spirit leads to (Works of Isaac Penington, II: 268).

Man is the land where. . . two kings fight; and whatever is good and holy belongs to the one king, and whatever is evil and unclean belongs to the other; and there is no communion or peace between them. . . . And where the fight is once begun between these, there is no quietness in that land, till one of these be dispossessed: but then there is either the peace of Babylon, most commonly under a form of holiness; or the peace of Sion, in the spirit, life, and power. – Penington, Works, 1:141

A few years ago, I was regularly attending worship at a meeting in Philadelphia. For some years, I went to this particular meeting because it was the only one I knew that still had several members with old Quaker surnames, and thus, there was still in evidence something approximating old Quaker theology.

As is typical in meetings, week after week Friends would settle into worship, each on a particular bench that had unobtrusively gained acceptance by all as that person’s domain, their perch year after year, and for a family, generation after generation. I – having been a Quaker for but a few decades – shared a bench with a longtime Friend (or he shared his bench with me) for a couple of years, during which time he informed me that this bench had been his family’s for more than a century.

This Friend was a neuroscientist, and though he had the old Quaker surname (and the bench), he did not have the old Quaker understanding. He was a positivist; and one of the ways he showed his stripes was by evaluating all ministry given during the hour using the sole criterion of time: the ministry was either the right length or it was too long. At the close of each meeting, he would – according to this standard – offer me his evaluation of the ministry (the ministry of others or of myself, if I’d ministered). Seeing his constancy in this practice, I gently expressed my amusement and let him know that there could be other standards to consider when evaluating vocal ministry.

There were, however, other discrepancies in understanding between him and me. In the occasional post-meeting discussion on some spiritual topic, we each would find the other’s perspective in need of further consideration . . . further consideration by the other. Following a number of disagreements over the months, I began to sense there could be no common spiritual ground between a positivist and a Christian. This slow-footed clarity arrived one Sunday morning following a particularly rigorous discussion after meeting for worship.

The exchange culminated while we stood near an open door of the by then empty meetinghouse. Over six-feet tall, the man towered above. Lowering and wagging his finger inches from my nose, he yelled, “There is no God! You have to stop believing that!”

More problematic than the man’s stated atheism was his shouted command: “You have to stop believing that!”

Some might claim that George Fox and other early Friends—perhaps this fellow’s ancestors—could be equally vehement when speaking for their belief, but that would miss the point. It was this man’s manner of persuasion that was foreign to and had no place in early Friends’ practice. Convincement occurred when Friends preached the gospel. “That which may be known of God” (Rom. 1:19) was evoked, and often their hearers were inwardly transformed. A new sense of life, of dignity, power, and responsibility was known when the “life [that] was the light of men” appeared within. The soul at last knew its worth; the person was edified: he or she had become inwardly established.

In contrast, this positivist’s hope rested upon closing down another’s inward life: closing down the high human capacity for discernment and discovery, thus reducing a human being to something less than a person.  His sole “convincing” power was a fiat delivered with a tone and gesture of violence, a tactic of depersonalization.

Unbeknownst to him or to me that morning, we each embodied a force that in relation to the other, as Penington wrote, had “no communion or peace between them”; these forces contend (like the two kings referred to in the epigraph) for the soul of humanity: to edify or to destroy. Though this Sunday morning incident involved only two people in an empty meetinghouse, it was, nevertheless, the Lamb’s War: a skirmish in which the powers clashed, powers which when pitted against one another on a grander scale determine history.

In the following lengthy excerpt from his lecture series Christianity and Civilization (1946-48), Emil Brunner, a Reformed theologian of the mid-twentieth century, summarizes the slow devolution of a civilization that is based upon the Judeo-Christian understanding that man is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). The transformation of the civilization was slow, beginning during the Enlightenment and taking several centuries, during which, some Christian doctrine and values were retained, though not their ground. In time, even these vestiges of faith were lost, and with them, confidence in human dignity, an intrinsic part of the Christian worldview. Brunner attributes the rise of corrupt, destructive political systems to a growing unbelief and the slow erosion of faith’s influence that inevitably followed.

Being Swiss, Brunner saw close-hand the outcome of centuries of anti-spiritual forces at work, as countries encircling his own fell into totalitarianism in the 1930s. Those bastard political systems – Fascism and National Socialism – were born and bore the marks of their spiritual progenitor, whose countenance was eventually recognized and named: nihilism. Here Brunner gives a short history of the long travel from faith to fascism: [italics mine]

The mere fact that more than half a century ago a man [Jakob Burckhardt] thoroughly awake to the character of his time was able to foresee the catastrophe we have experienced indicates that the eruption of inhumanity, lawlessness, and depersonalization, which we have experienced during recent decades must have had its deep historical roots. True this eruption of anti-spiritual and anti-cultural forces as they appeared first in the Bolshevist, then in the Fascist, and finally in the National-Socialist revolution came to the rest of the Western world as a complete surprise and left it in utter bewilderment. Still looking back on these events, this feeling of complete surprise and horror is not altogether justified in view of the fact that the spiritual evolution during the last centuries was a slow and invisible but none the less indubitable preparation for this outbreak. If we ask, as certainly many during these years have asked, how all this inhumanity, this lawlessness, this collectivist depersonalization was possible, the answer cannot I think be in doubt. The last three centuries seen from the spiritual point of view represent a history in which step by step the central and fundamental idea of the whole Western civilization, the idea of the dignity of man, was undermined and weakened.

For more than a thousand years, Western culture had been based on the Christian idea that man is created in the image of God. This central biblical idea included both the eternal spiritual destiny of every individual and the destiny of mankind to form a free communion. With the Enlightenment, this idea on which the whole structure of Western life was rested began to be doubted.

At first, the alternative to the Christian idea was still a religious although no longer distinctly Christian theism. Then further from the Christian foundation, there came a transcendentalism or idealism, which still remained metaphysical although no longer explicitly theistic. In the middle of the last century this idealistic humanism was replaced by a positivist philosophy of freedom and civilization, which acknowledged no metaphysical but merely natural presuppositions. It is not surprising that this positivism, in its turn more and more, lost its humanistic contents and turned into a naturalistic philosophy for which man was no more than a highly developed animal, the cerebral animal, and this was a conception of man within which such things as the dignity of man, the rights of man, and personality no longer had any foundation.

Benjamin Constant, that noble Christian philosopher of freedom of the early nineteenth century, has comprehended the essence of this whole process of modern history in three words: “De la divinité par l’humanité à la bestialité” [from Divinity by humanity to bestiality]. The totalitarian revolutions with their practice of inhumanity, lawlessness, and depersonalizing collectivism were nothing but the executors of this so-called positivist philosophy, which as a matter of fact was a latent nihilism and which, towards the end of the last and the beginning of this century, had become the ruling philosophy of our universities and the dominating factor within the worldview of the educated and the leading strata of society. The postulatory atheism of Karl Marx and the passionate antitheism of Friedrich Nietzsche can be considered as an immediate spiritual presupposition of the totalitarian revolution in Bolshevism on the one hand and National-Socialism or Fascism on the other. That is to say, the prevalent philosophy of the Occident had become more or less nihilistic. No wonder that from this seed that harvest sprang up which our generation reaped with blood and tears, to use once more Mr. Churchill’s words.

In Brunner’s summary, which ties forms of political order to the Zeitgeist, or the spiritual condition of the age, we note that our own nation was begun at a propitious time. Our founders were eighteenth-century people of the Enlightenment, proponents of reason, who enjoyed the benefits that had accrued from a Christian civilization with its doctrine of man being made in God’s image, and therefore deserving of dignity. This worldview had so long prevailed that the idea of man’s inalienable rights could be “truths [held] to be self-evident,” and as such, individual rights were engrafted into our Constitution, and the rule of law upheld in recognizing that document’s authority.

Without the undergirding Christian worldview, civil rights are not self-evident. With the loss of Christianity and the Enlightenment’s residual cultural assumptions, our social order is threatened. Its continuity rests upon links thin and attenuated, ready to snap. Precedence, tradition, law, and the moral character of our government officials and citizenry are what now stand between us and brutal tyranny that commonly overtakes societies.

These past three years, our attention has been held by the drama of corruption, scandal, and deceit played out by the federal government’s chief executive, and now we hear tyranny growling in the wings awaiting his cue to pounce onto center stage. May the House managers succeed in ridding us of this bad actor who has undertaken an unprecedented assault upon our Constitution, our nation’s long-adhered to script of civic rights and order. We take heart in legislators’ determination to present evidence and argue soundly against the travesty of Trump remaining in office.

From New York representative Jerrold Nadler comes this January 24 statement before the Senate:

President Trump is an outlier. He is the first and only President ever to declare himself unaccountable and to ignore subpoenas backed by the Constitution’s impeachment power. If he is not removed from office, if he is permitted to defy the Congress entirely, categorically, to say subpoenas from Congress in the impeachment inquiry are nonsense, then we will have lost (the House will have lost, and certainly the Senate will have lost) all power to hold any President accountable. This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all powerful; he does not have to respect the Congress; he does not have to respect the representatives of the people; only his will goes. He is a dictator. This must not stand. And this is another reason he must be removed from office.

In early November, I received an email from Sergio de Moura, an adjunct professor at a university named UNILAB, which is located in Redenção, Brazil. Sergio informed me that although Brazil has more than 200 million inhabitants, the country has no Friends meeting. Having long considered becoming a Quaker himself, he wanted to publish writing from a Quaker perspective for others in his country who were likewise interested in the faith, and so was requesting permission to translate my essays into Portuguese and to publish them. Though he was particularly interested in the Quaker way of worship, he also asked if I would answer some general questions about Friends faith and life in a questionnaire that he intended to send out to a number of Friends from different areas. The following is a copy of the completed questionnaire that I returned to him.

1. Who is Patricia Dallmann? How have the Quakers’ teachings influenced your life? When did this journey start?

I first became interested in spiritual matters in my early teens, and would discuss ideas with my grandfather and also with friends. I began to read about various world religions at this time, and a few years later, began reading philosophy and literature that addressed spiritual questions. I continued to follow this interest in college where I studied literature. Throughout this entire time, my heart was heavy because I had no certain understanding of truth that could provide a foundation for my life, and so I felt ungrounded and lacked confidence and hope. I identified as an agnostic and felt no interest in or drawing to religious practice or belief.  I became deeply depressed in my late 20s and remained near despair until age 32, when a specific, powerful revelation of eternal Being was given to me. Though inwardly changed from that time, I began to seek religious affiliation only a year and a half later. (I believe I needed time to accustom myself to this new way of being before taking any outward action.) I then found the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and began attending meetings each week, and began to read Isaac Penington and later George Fox, both 17^th c. Friends. Both men’s writings powerfully expressed my experience and understanding, as revealed in that initial epiphany and thereafter in worship. I became very active in the spiritual work of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (the Quaker organization in this geographic area) at the local and regional levels, and continued this work for a decade and a half. During that time, I became convinced Liberal Quakers (whom the yearly meeting comprised by and large) had little understanding of or interest in the original Quaker mission and message, and I withdrew my membership. In the past decade, I’ve continued my work as an essay writer (see my blog Abiding Quaker at patradallmann.com), and take opportunities to share fellowship with those who fear God and are committed to the Truth. I have worked with New Foundation Fellowship (which promotes early Quaker understanding) since the early ‘90s; NFF’s website is nffquaker.org.

2. “To have a relationship with Jesus” is a notion so widespread by many Evangelicals, so much present in their religious culture and deeply rooted in their theology. As a Quaker, how do you see this idea? Does it work in a Quaker setting or how far do Friends agree or disagree with this conception?

My understanding of Evangelical Christianity is that it differs theologically from the faith of 17^th c. Friends, the faith that I affirm. A shorthand distinction is this: Evangelicals identify their faith with the affirmation that Jesus Christ is their personal Lord and Savior: they choose to accept Jesus. The Friends of the 17^th century did not choose to accept Jesus; Jesus chose to accept them (Jn. 15:16). In other words, faith is not an act of will but a gift from God (Rom. 9:16). Friends derived their name from the verse preceding the one aforementioned, i.e., Jn. 15:15:

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.

This verse centers upon the choice of Jesus to make himself, the Word of God, known to us: that he does so is the “continuing revelation” that is the primary Quaker distinctive.

3. About “the light within” and “that of God in everyone,” how do these concepts work for Friends and specially for you?

The light within is experienced inwardly; it purifies and sanctifies my being. It is what I seek, expect, and hope for as I sit in silence; it informs my conscience, making me better able to live in a way that sees and thus glorifies God. Knowing its availability, I can act with strength and virtue, even when my natural inclination would have me do otherwise. It avails me of peace, order, joy, and every goodness I could want; it is the pearl of great price. As for the other phrase you’ve chosen (that of God in everyone), I caution you that this phrase has been taken by Liberal Friends from Fox’s writing and used in a way Fox did not intend nor would agree with: Liberal Friends use the phrase to mean that which is virtuous and of value to the first-birth nature. There is no room in Liberal understanding for the second birth, which Jesus tells Nicodemus (Jn. 3:3) must occur.

4. Do you think of Friends as an “exclusive group” or as taking part in a “selective club”? I ask this considering that: When compared to other Christian or not Christian groups, Quakers represent a very little spark of the religious culture. I mean, they are a reduced small group.

Did Jesus see those who understood his teaching to be an “exclusive group” or “selective club”? No, he did not; however, he did say:  Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Mt.7:14).

(a) A lot of people out and faraway of the Quaker mainstream centers are eager for that kind of comprehension about the light within, while Quakers seem to have decided “to hide themselves” from the world.

It is the concern of like-minded Friends that people who are far from Quaker centers are not likely to hear of the Quaker faith. We are hopeful that the technical advances in communication that have taken place in recent decades will enable more of these people to discover the existence of this precious faith that is being practiced among us, and they will get in touch.

(b) It seems that a culture of secularization reached many religious settings, including Quakers. It implies perhaps that there has been a loss of interest for spirituality and it has reduced the numbers of adherents in Christian meetings.

I have found secularization to have taken place in Liberal meetings, and for this reason I withdrew. The Liberals’ culture is secular in that social justice issues are given attention, and Christ is not known or heard. In any religious group, the members often make an idol of the community and their acceptance within it. This has always been a problem, as can be seen in Jesus’s dealings with those in his religious community: religious culture usurps the primacy of inward life, and this can be seen among Christian groups as well as among the Liberals.

5. For some people, suffering and pain are proof that there is no God, once a good God shouldn’t permit their creatures to suffer. How far the “light within” can help someone to deal with this assumption? What’s your opinion about this affirmation?

The book of Job examines and responds to the question of suffering by having God assert his wisdom in having ordered creation the way in which He did. The light within does give us understanding (wisdom) and acceptance of (and gratitude for!) the way creation is ordered, and we can glorify God for so ordering it, even though there is suffering. It is through holding to the truth while enduring suffering that we become prepared to receive the light of Christ within. We have Jesus’s work on the Cross as an outward example of the inward work that we ourselves must undergo. This is the Quaker understanding of the cross: it is suffering for the Truth’s sake.  George Fox wrote:

[T]he eternal God knows and his son Christ Jesus, IT IS FOR HIM ALONE AND HIS TRUTH’S SAKE THAT WE SUFFER. . . . And so the Lord hath given us “not only to believe but also to suffer for his name and truth’s sake” (The Works of George Fox, 8:251).

The truth is we humans are limited, finite, mortal beings, and we do not have the power to prevent ourselves from undergoing loss of all kinds throughout our lives; to accept inwardly this truth is to die to any false notion of self.

6. What is the Bible and the four Gospels for Quakers? Are they a light or do they just introduce the light to us? Would there have been a Quaker movement unless George Fox had had the insight of “the light within” right from the gospel of John?

Barclay’s third proposition identifies the Scriptures as

esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty; for as by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify, that the Spirit is that guide by which the saints are led into all Truth: therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader (Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity).

Fox found that the Scriptures confirmed his inward experience of the light within:

Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, but they were very precious to me, for I was in that spirit by which they were given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterwards found was agreeable to them (Journal of George Fox, Nickalls, 34).

7. About Jesus:

(a) Did He die on the cross for our sins? Is He our savior?

(b) Is He God, the Son of God or just a prophet?

The following quotation from Fox emphasizes the coming into unity with Christ, which is the one true atonement. Although Quakers held that Jesus “taste[d] death for every man” (Heb. 2:9) on the Cross, they asserted none was redeemed but through the inward knowledge of and unity with Christ. Here’s the quotation:

Christ saith. . . “No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him” (Jn. 6:44). Now what is the means by which God doth draw people to his Son, but by the Holy Spirit. . . God doth draw people from their unrighteousness and unholiness, to Christ, the righteous and holy One, the great Prophet, in his New Covenant and New Testament, whom Moses in the Old Covenant and Old Testament said, God would raise up, like unto him, and whom people should hear in all things. . . . They that do not hear the Son of God, the great Prophet, do not mind the drawing of the Father by his Holy Spirit to his Son; but to them that mind the drawings of the good spirit of the Father to his son, the Spirit giveth understanding to know God and Jesus Christ. . .Then they know that Jesus Christ is the way. . . and that none can come unto God but by and through his Son. . . they know that Christ is their Mediator and. . . their High Priest. . . and is able to save to the uttermost all that come to God by him (The Journal of George Fox, Bi-centennial Edition, II: 458).