GOOD AND EVIL
To Monica, with our love and thanks. In memory of Rachel Jenkins, friend and educator.
Good and Evil Quaker Perspectives
Edited by JACKIE LEACH SCULLY Newcastle University, UK and PINK DANDELION Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in association with the University of Birmingham, UK
© Jackie Leach Scully and Pink Dandelion 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Jackie Leach Scully and Pink Dandelion have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GU11 3HR England
Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Good and evil : Quaker perspectives 1. Society of Friends – Doctrines 2. Good and evil – Religious aspects – Quakers 3. Good and evil – History of doctrines I. Scully, Jackie Leach II. Dandelion, Pink 289.6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Good and evil : Quaker perspectives / edited by Jackie Leach Scully and Pink Dandelion. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-5621-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Good and evil. 2. Society of Friends–Doctrines. I. Scully, Jackie Leach. II. Dandelion, Pink. BJ1401.G66 2007 241’.0496–dc22 2006029281 ISBN 978-0-7546-5621-0 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire.
Contents List of Contributors
vii
Part I – Introductory Section 1 2
Introduction Pink Dandelion Continuing Revelation – Gospel or Heresy? Paul Anderson
3 15
Part II – Historical Perspectives 3 4 5 6
George Fox’s Witness Regarding Good and Evil Douglas Gwyn Early Quakers and Divine Liberation from the Universal Power of Sin Carole Dale Spencer Beyond Depravity: Good and Evil in the Thought of Robert Barclay Hugh Pyper John Woolman and Good and Evil Mike Heller
31 43 59 71
Part III – Present-Day Perspectives 7 8 9
Mental Illness, Ignorance, or Sin? Perceptions of Modern Liberal Friends Margery Post Abbott Giving Thanks to God in All Things: Good and Evil in Conservative Quaker Experience Deborah Shaw The Publishers of Truth and the Enemy of Truth: Evangelical Friends Consider Good and Evil Johan Maurer
83 97 107
Part IV – Contemporary Reflections on Good and Evil 10 A People of Unclean Lips: Reclaiming an Anthropology of Complexity David L. Johns
121
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11 12 13 14 15 16 17
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Quakers and Coercion in a World of Good and Evil Phil Smith Evil: The Presence of Absence Corey Beals Driven By Darkness, Drawn By Light: The Progression of Faith in the Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier William Jolliff Good and Evil in an Ecumenical Perspective Janet Scott ‘It is worse to be evil than to do evil’: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Challenge to the Quaker Conscience Rachel Muers Looking Within: A Nontheist Perspective David Boulton Darkness and Light Rex Ambler
131 141 153 163 173 183 193
Part V – Towards Paradigms of Quaker Approaches to Good and Evil 18 Good and Evil: An Epistemological Paradigm Arthur O. Roberts 19 The Secular Ethics of Liberal Quakerism Jackie Leach Scully
209
Bibliography Index
233 245
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List of Contributors In her writings, Margery Post Abbott draws on her personal spiritual journey and her practical experience among Friends. She has co-authored or edited four books: Walk Worthy of Your Calling: Quakers and the Traveling Ministry (2004); The Historical Dictionary of the Friends (Quakers), 2003; A Certain Kind of Perfection: An Anthology of Evangelical and Liberal Quaker Writers (1997); and Planning for the New West: the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (1997). Other writings on Quakerism include Mysticism Among Friends (1998), and An Experiment in Faith (1995) and numerous articles. Margery has been the Willson Lecturer at Earlham School of Religion in Indiana and the Ward Lecturer at Guilford College in North Carolina, as well as a speaker at the 1997 International Quaker consultation on Identity, Authority and Community held in Birmingham, England and contributor to the publications resulting from that gathering. Rex Ambler taught theology at Birmingham University, England, for over thirty years. He published mostly on practical theology, e.g. Agenda for Prophets (1980) and Global Theology (1990). Since taking early retirement to study Quaker faith and practice, he has run workshops on the early Quaker experience, Experiment with Light, and published two books close to that theme, Truth of the Heart: an Anthology of George Fox (2001) and Light to Live By: an Exploration in Quaker Spirituality (2002). Paul Anderson is Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies at George Fox University, where he has served since 1989. His books, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel and The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus have received international engagement, and he is author of over 130 published articles and essays, including ‘Petrine Ministry and Christocracy’ (a response to the Vatican, published in One in Christ, January 2005). He served as editor of Evangelical Friend from 1990–1994, and has edited Quaker Religious Thought since 2000. He received his B.A. from Malone College, his M.Div. from the Earlham School of Religion, and his Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow. Corey Beals is an assistant professor of philosophy and religion at George Fox University. He received a B.A. from George Fox College, an M.A.R. in Philosophical Theology from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University in New York. Corey has written a number of articles in philosophy and theology and has authored a forthcoming book entitled Levinas and the Wisdom of Love.
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David Boulton is a journalist, author and broadcaster, former Head of News and Current Affairs at Granada Television, and former Editor of Sea of Faith. He has contributed to The Guardian, New Internationalist, New Humanist, Political Theology and several Quaker publications. A dozen books include studies of conscientious objection in World War One (Objection Overruled, 1967), paramilitaries in Northern Ireland (The UVF, 1966–1973: an Anatomy of Loyalist Rebellion, 1973) and corporate corruption (The Lockheed Papers, 1978, and The Grease Machine, 1978). Recent books on Quakerism and theology include Gerrard Winstanley and the Republic of Heaven (1999); Real Like the Daisies or Real Like I Love You?: Essays in Radical Quakerism (2002); and The Trouble with God (2003, reprinted 2005). David also contributed to Searching the Depths: Essays in Being a Quaker Today (1996). Pink Dandelion is Reader of Quaker Studies and directs the work of the Centre for Postgraduate Quaker Studies, Woodbrooke and the University of Birmingham. He edits Quaker Studies and acts as Series Editor for the Edwin Mellen series in Quaker Studies. His books include Introduction to Quakerism (2007); The Liturgies of Quakerism (2005); The Creation of Quaker Theory (2004), the co-authored Towards Tragedy/Reclaiming Hope (2004) and The Sociological Analysis of the Theology of Quakers: the Silent Revolution (1996). He is currently working on an Oxford University Press short introduction to Quakerism and an edited collection on the sociology of British Quakerism. Douglas Gwyn has researched and written on George Fox and early Friends for more than 25 years. He has taught at the Pendle Hill and Woodbrooke Quaker study centers and he currently serves as pastoral minister to First Friends Meeting, Richmond, Indiana. His major publications on early Quakerism are Apocalypse of the Word: the Life and Message of George Fox (1986); The Covenant Crucified: Quakers and the Rise of Capitalism (1995); Heaven on Earth: Quakers and the Second Coming (with Ben Pink Dandelion and Timothy Peat, 1998); and Seekers Found: Atonement in Early Quaker Experience (2000). Mike Heller teaches American literature, autobiography, courses relating to nonviolence, and nonfiction writing at Roanoke College in Virginia. He edited The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman (2003), and co-edited, with Sterling Olmsted, John Woolman: A Nonviolence and Social Change Source Book (1997). David L. Johns is Associate Professor of Theology at the Earlham School of Religion. David’s most recent book is Mysticism and Ethics in Friedrich von Hügel (2004). His essays and reviews have appeared in such publications as Quaker Religious Thought, Friends’ Quarterly, The Journal of the Friends Historical Society, Quaker Life, Ecumenical Trends, Cross Currents, and Studies in Spirituality.
List of Contributors
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William Jolliff, chair of the Department of Writing and Literature at George Fox University, holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from Ashland Seminary and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Ohio State University. He introduced and edited The Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier: A Readers’ Edition (2000). He has published reviews and criticism in such journals as Christianity and Literature, Studies in Short Fiction, and Appalachian Journal, along with over 300 poems in literary and scholarly periodicals. Johan Maurer is a writer and Friends minister. From 1993 to 2000 he was general secretary of Friends United Meeting. In 2003–4 he was Ferguson Quaker Fellow at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham, England. His Quakerrelated publications include chapters in Friends and the Vietnam War: Papers and Presentations from a Gathering for Recollection, Reappraisal and Looking Ahead (1998) and Led by the Voice of the Light: Friends’ Public Ministry in the 21st Century (2004), as well as numerous articles, interviews and book reviews in Quaker Life, The Friend, Evangelical Friend, Friends Journal, The Canadian Friend, Spiritual Circle, and Kvekeren. Rachel Muers lectures in Theology at the University of Exeter. She studied theology at Cambridge, and was a research fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. Rachel is the author of Keeping God’s Silence: towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (2004) and co-author of Towards Tragedy/Reclaiming Hope: Literature, Theology and Sociology in Conversation (2004), and has published numerous articles and reviews in contemporary theology and ethics. Hugh Pyper is a member of Carlton Hill Meeting in Leeds. He is currently Senior Lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. He co-edited the Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (2000) and has written widely on contemporary biblical interpretation. As a fellow Scot, he has a longstanding interest in Robert Barclay’s thoughts. Arthur O. Roberts is a Friends’ minister whose primary venue has been George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. He lectures widely and has written books of history, poetry, Quaker studies, and spirituality, including Messengers of God: the Sensuous Side of Spirituality (1996; rev. ed. 2006), Early Quaker Writings (with Hugh Barbour, 1973; rev. ed. 2004), Exploring Heaven (2003), and Tomorrow is Growing Old: Stories of Quakers in Alaska (1978). Janet Scott is currently the Director of the Centre for Ecumenical Studies in the Cambridge Theological Federation. She is also Director of Studies for Theological and Religious Studies at Homerton College, Cambridge. As a Quaker, she gave
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the Swarthmore lecture, on Quaker theology, in 1980, and is currently Clerk of the Britain Yearly Meeting committee on Christian and Interfaith Relations. She represents Friends worldwide on the WCC Faith and Order Plenary Commission. Jackie Leach Scully is Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at the University of Newcastle, UK. She studied molecular pathology at Cambridge and held postdoctoral research positions in Lausanne and Basel, before turning her attention to bioethics. Her research interests are in social constructions and evaluations of bioethical issues, feminist ethics, disability, and moral psychology. She has been a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow, was Britain Yearly Meeting’s Swarthmore Lecturer in 2002, and has twice served as Clerk of Switzerland Yearly Meeting. She is the author of Quaker Approaches to Moral Issues in Genetics (2002) and is currently working on a book on ethics and disability. Deborah Shaw is a recorded minister and a member of Friendship Friends Meeting, North Carolina Yearly Meeting – Conservative and currently serves as Recording Clerk of the yearly meeting. She serves on Pendle Hill’s general board, and recently finished six years’ service on the executive committee for the Friends’ Association for Higher Education. In 2003, Deborah completed the two-year spiritual nurturer program with the School of the Spirit (Philadelphia Yearly Meeting). Deborah has been employed as Worship and Discernment Coordinator/Assistant Director of Friends Center at Guilford College since 1993, where her primary responsibilities include overseeing the spiritual formation year of the Quaker Leadership Scholars Program and working closely with the worship life on campus. As well as numerous articles, Deborah presented the 2005 Michener Lecture, Being Fully Present to God (2005), and contributed a chapter to The Quaker Bible Reader (2006). Phil Smith is professor of Philosophy at George Fox University. He is a lifelong Friend, raised among evangelicals in Northwest Yearly Meeting. He is a graduate of George Fox College (1977), Fuller Seminary (1981), and the University of Oregon (1991). He has pastored two Friends’ churches and is a philosopher who writes primarily on topics in ethics. He is the author of The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics (2002). Carole Dale Spencer teaches Christian History and Spiritual Formation at George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Portland, Oregon, USA. She is a recorded minister in Northwest Yearly Meeting of Friends Church and serves on the pastoral team of Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon. Carole received her Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Birmingham, UK. She has authored a number of articles and book chapters on Quaker history. Her book, Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism is forthcoming from Paternoster Press.
PART I
Introductory Section
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Chapter 1
Introduction Pink Dandelion
In this multi-disciplinary collection we ask the question, ‘What did, and do, Quakers think about good and evil?’ There are no simple or straightforwardly uniform answers to this, but in this collection, we draw together contributions that for the first time look at historical and contemporary Quakerdom’s approach to the ethical and theological problem of evil and good.1 Within Quakerism can be found Liberal, Conservative and Evangelical forms. The book therefore uncovers the complex development of metaethical and thought by a religious group that has evolved with an unusual degree of diversity. But in doing so, it also points beyond the boundaries of the Religious Society of Friends to engage with the spectrum of thinking in the wider religious world. Early Friends had a clear notion of both the nature and the source of good and evil. These articulations were given in conventional Christian terminology even if the theology was distinct from Christian orthodoxy of the time. The founder of Quakerism, George Fox, for example, described his vision of the oceans of darkness and light, while the theologian Robert Barclay wrote of the sense of the good being raised up. The historical record also indicates that early Friends were not hesitant about identifying, and challenging, evil. The modern Quaker world contains diverse strands of thought that are more or less characteristic of the major traditions. Thus Liberal Quakers are likely to be increasingly alienated from biblical or church formulations of good and evil in human life; evangelical Friends may have easier access to these formulations, but still struggle to know how to approach presentday experience, or the wider world; while Conservative Friends rely on the Quaker tradition to find present-day formulations that meet today’s needs. The contributors to this book unpack these diverse Quaker understandings of good and evil. Can we identify anything that is uniquely Quaker about their understanding? How does a group that emphasizes ‘that of God in everyone’ and universal salvation construct a theory of evil? What have the key Quaker writers said about good and evil? What, exactly, did and do these terms refer to? How do Friends consider them now – as phenomena, processes or behaviours? Do Quakers distinguish between different kinds of good or evil? How do ‘good/evil’ and ‘right/ 1 Whilst this book is unique, we are grateful to Joanna Kirkby for putting good and evil back on the Quaker studies agenda through the publication of her popular Quaker work, The Two Oceans (2002). More recently, Quaker Quest have produced Twelve Quakers on Evil (2006), which provides a Liberal viewpoint that accords with Abbott’s analysis in this volume.
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wrong’ relate to each other? Is there a contemporary Quaker theodicy, or is Quaker theology only able to deal adequately with good? What are the nuances of approach of the different kinds of Quakerism, historically and today, and what do they tell us about the religious landscape in general? There is plenty of work on Friends’ experiences working for good/against evil in particular concrete settings (war, aid work etc.). This collection has a different and original aim: to take a scholarly look at contemporary and multi-disciplinary Quaker thinking in this area of metaethics. For the first time, the diversity of approaches, across time, and across present-day tradition, are brought together in a single volume. Not only does this illuminate the diversity of Quakerism. It also models the division between Liberal and Evangelical approaches to good and evil in the Christian tradition as a whole. Thus Quakerism can serve as a critically useful case study for anyone interested in Christianity’s response to the problem of evil. Quaker Theodicy and the Shape of the Book Whilst a dualism of moral and immoral, truth and untruth, good and evil is intrinsic to most conceptions of religion, theologizing about evil has also proved to be one of the most problematic areas of belief. Within Christian theology, the idea of a God who is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving leads to difficulties explaining suffering and evil in the world. One of the three attributes needs to be over-ridden, absent, or fallible in the face of a countervailing force. The concept of human ‘free will’ being given precedence over divine intervention may account for human evil, but not for satanic evil or suffering through ‘natural’ disasters. The idea that God allows this other type of suffering to exist so humanity can learn and grow is popular but has also met with much scepticism. Theodicy, the way theologians have accounted for evil and suffering, remains a variously resolved (or unresolved) issue within contemporary Christianity. Either classical theism is problematic or humans have too much free will. Another possibility is that only humanity’s perception of suffering is wrong, that God actually does work and the world would be much worse otherwise. However it is easy for sceptics to ask if an all-powerful God could not at least reduce the suffering a little more. And if a little more, why not a little more? Or, in John Hick’s terms, after Ireneus, that suffering is about soul-making, a necessary part of God’s maturation of humanity (1985). This still raises the question as to why such maturation requires such a degree of suffering. Again, apologists of this position then need to modify the attributes of God, for example saying that God only persuades and that humans can resist God’s power and plans, or that God learns and creates alongside humanity. Thus it is for the Quakers, a Christian sect of the 1650s which developed into a variety of branches in the nineteenth century. Either modern Quakers ignore the traditional triad of God’s attributes, or God, or they have to seek other ways to understand the lingering dilemmas of theodicy from within Christianity. Quaker theologizing about evil has varied across time and tradition but centres on three common aspects: the centrality and emphasis placed on continuing revelation; an emphasis on ‘functional theology’ rather than metaphysical thought; and a common
Introduction
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element of placing human choice and agency in attempting to understand good and evil. These three common aspects are woven throughout all the chapters.2 In Chapter 2, Paul Anderson examines the nature of Quaker authority through the centrality of continuing revelation for Friends. Quakerism, in term of its theology, began in 1647 when the twenty-three-year old George Fox, born in Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire but already much travelled, had reached a low point in his search for true spirituality. Now after I had received that opening from the Lord that to be bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not sufficient to fit a man to be a minister of Christ, I regarded the priests less and looked more after the dissenting people... As I had forsaken all the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition (Fox, 1952, p. 11).
Fox had already become convinced that the university-trained priests were not of any particular or necessary help to him in his spiritual quest. Consequently he had spent time with the dissenters, a year in London and time moving around the army camps, which were where the most radical religious ideas of the day were circulating (Ingle 1994, pp. 34–40). However, no-one he had met had been able to respond adequately to his search. Only when thrown onto the inward as opposed to the outward did the young Fox feel met in his struggle. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy (Fox, 1952, p. 11, my emphasis).
‘How do we know what is of God?’ is a key question for all religious groups. Here, Quakers had their answer. It was in their experience of Christ’s direct revelation that authority lay. Fox discovered that one, even Christ, could speak to him directly. This wasn’t simply an adequate answer for Fox. It was a radical and revolutionary experience, which cut across much church teaching of the time. It became foundational for the emerging Quaker movement and has remained central even in its later, multiple and diverse forms. The reference to ‘outwardly’ is significant. Creasey highlights the use of spatial terms in early Quaker writing, in particular distinctions between ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ (1962). The inward was the authentic, the mode of true spirituality and discernment of the good. The outward was connected with ‘the world’, the human, the material. Fox continues: Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, 2 These dominant themes are also evident in the proceedings of the Friends Consultation on Overcoming Sin and Evil, held in Richmond, Indiana in 1987. This was an event with participants invited from across the Quaker traditions, the only recent major Quaker event on this topic.
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Good and Evil and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the preeminence who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus, when God doth work who shall let [i.e. hinder] it? And this I knew experimentally (Fox, 1952, p. 11).
In other words, the fact that Fox had drawn a blank with human teachers was no accident. Rather, it was the logic of the truth of a more interior spirituality, one of direct revelation (‘faith’s inner voice’: Dandelion et al. 1998, pp. 27–32), and of the apostasy of humanity, all ‘shut up in unbelief’. Critically, this experience of direct revelation and the transforming experience that accompanied it, was not to be limited to Fox. This was not a revelation akin to Paul’s who was the last to have encountered the risen Christ, ‘out of due time’ (1 Cor. 15:8). Rather, this was a revelation available to all. Significantly, whilst Fox and others founded and led the movement in the 1650s and 1660s, the egalitarian nature of this foundational insight, the priesthood of all believers, allowed him to make himself redundant before his own death. When Fox died, Quakerism was not plunged into a crisis of leadership. Quakerism was to model a collective apostolic succession, requiring neither priests nor the primary authority of text. It was this experience of 1647 that was the foundation stone for what was to become the Religious Society of Friends. All else was a subsequent interpretation of context and experience deriving from this intimacy with Christ. This relationship of direct revelation is foundational and definitional of the movement. Thus, Quaker authority is based on this direct and inward sense of revelation. Fox claimed that this revelation never contradicted scripture for he always found it confirmed by scripture even when he was neither looking for it nor needing it (Fox, 1952, p. 33). Nevertheless, the relationship between the authority of revelation and the authority of Scripture has been one of the key variables in the Quaker history of theology. Each acts as a check or balance upon the other. Where either check and balance has been lost, as happened particularly in the nineteenth century when Quakerism began to schism, innovative forms of Quakerism have arisen as a result. These innovative forms have been susceptible to individualism or a corporate belief system uninformed by intimacy with Christ. In Part II of the book, the thinking of seventeenth and eighteenth century Friends, when the tradition was still singular, is highlighted. Four chapters from Douglas Gwyn, Carole Spencer, Hugh Pyper and Mike Heller look in various ways at how Friends in this period created and lived by a theology which located God-given good within each person, as well as the ability to choose to turn away from this gift of grace. George Fox was not a trained theologian but was, rather, an excellent preacher. In Fox, we find the utopian phraseology of apocalyptic expectation rather than a finely tuned systematic theology. This early Quaker preaching is the result of a ‘convincement’ experience, i.e. a conviction by the Light of Christ of the sinful life combined with the ability to repent and live a regenerated life. As Gwyn states, convincement represents an epistemological break with worldly ways of knowing, a break which is itself at first dreadful. These first Friends claimed they experienced the prelapsarian state of being able to resist evil. After the experience of direct revelation in 1647, Fox was to have a second experience in 1648 when he claimed:
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Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God. All things were new, and all creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell … But I was immediately taken up in spirit to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus that should never fall (Fox, 1952, p. 27).
Here, we have the return to Eden through the flaming sword of Genesis 3, into a state of all things being new (Rev 21:1), but also the passage to a higher state, the sinlessness prophesied by Paul (Dandelion et al., 1998, p. 83), a clothing of humanity in Christ. This is the power to resist temptation rather than not be tempted at all, but it puts Fox and the other early Friends who reached this state into a space of spiritual evolution beyond Adam, and indeed beyond all those yet to experience this process. As Gwyn writes: ‘With the return to Eden, Fox came to know a perfecting moral power in the light of Christ.’ According to Gwyn, Fox definitely finds sin and evil to be realities in the world. Nevertheless, evil is grounded in illusion, unreality. Satan is not equal to eternal God, but exists in time and feeds on human energy. Satan will die in time. Meanwhile, only transgression places humans under Satan’s sway. Satan rules in the outward mind, but Christ begins to overcome through an inward revelation. The light of Christ lets one see oneself as one really is, and then gives power to overcome sin in concrete circumstances. As Carole Spencer, following Gwyn, shows, perfection was a key aspect of Quaker thinking. The claim of perfection was based in part on Matt. 5:48, Romans 6:14 and 1 John 3:9. Fox wrote that the Lord told him that his name was ‘written in the Lamb’s book of life’ (Fox, 1952, p. 33). This sense of being part of a vanguard elect led to one of the grand claims of Quakerism and the one that was to bring them into most dispute with others. In 1660 Fox outlined this doctrine in Bristol: ‘He who was perfect comes to make man and woman perfect again, and bring them again to the state God made them in’ (Fox, 1952, pp. 367–8). We believe that the saints upon earth may receive forgiveness of sins, and may be perfectly freed from the body of sin and death, and in Christ may be perfect, and without sin, and may have victory over all temptations by faith in Christ Jesus (Burrough, 1657).
Whilst the whole of humanity would be brought to this state, some had already done so whilst others were still shut up in unbelief. When Fox was on trial at Derby, he was asked whether he was sanctified. ‘I said “Sanctified? Yes” for I was in the Paradise of God. They said, had I no sin? “Sin?” said I, “Christ my Saviour hath taken away my sin, and in Him there is no sin”’ (Fox, 1952, p. 55). William Dewsbury, like Fox, felt a cleansing aspect to his convincement: ‘through the righteous law of life in Jesus Christ I was made free and clean from the body of sin and death, and my garment is washed, and made white in the blood of the Lamb’ (Dewsbury, 1689, p. 51). Fox criticized the hireling ministers for ‘preaching up sin’ (Fox, 1952, p. 688), while in counterattack the anti-Quakers criticized the spiritual arrogance of this position. Richard Baxter wrote: ‘the devil himself has less pride or less ignorance’ (1655).
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What is interesting is that this perception of being beyond temptation did not lead to a relaxed life. Gwyn has made the point that one of the attractions of Friends was their strict moral line (Gwyn, 1995, pp. 111–18). Another of the 1650s sects, the Ranters, also claimed a regenerated life, an intimacy with God, and a state beyond sin. For them, though, this mean that even those activities perceived before regeneration as sinful were now permissible, and accounts of their worship mention drunkenness and orgies (Gwyn, 2000, p. 167). This can be called a ‘practical antinomianism’, that nothing can count as a sin (Moore, 2000, p. 100). In contrast, Fox taught that convinced Friends could resist sin and his view is not antinomian in a doctrinal sense as such. Fox’s sense that the perfected life should be visible to all as such was misinterpreted by some and on one of his travels to America he stayed with two Quaker couples who had abstained from sexual relations for years believing it to be part of Quaker practice (Mack, 1992, p. 227). Spencer’s chapter highlights the centrality of the idea of perfection to the traditional Quaker understanding of the dualism of good and evil within the individual and the similarity with the patristic idea of theosis, that ‘God became man so man could become God’. As she describes, perfection was the culmination of the Quaker triumph over evil. It was both individual and corporate and was manifest in everyday life. Fox’s phrase ‘the ocean of light and the ocean of darkness’ is a starting point for much Quaker writing about good and evil but did not form part of a comprehensive theology of good and evil. That job would fall to Robert Barclay, second-generation Friend. Hugh Pyper shows in detail how Barclay’s university training taught him to construct a theology of good and evil that refuted the Calvinism that took away all personal choice, while also avoiding the heresies of the day such as Pelagianism, Arminianism, and Socinianism. Barclay managed to craft a theology based on the authority of direct revelation that combined the reality of original sin, God’s grace and free will, and the possibility of perfection for all with the possibility of falling back from perfection. Unlike the earlier Friends who had expected the unfolding of the new Jerusalem within their lifetime, Barclay had to account for the death of the unrepentant sinner and the untransformed believer. In other words, he had to construct a theology that allowed for mortality before the Second Coming had been fully realized. He was involved in a far more theologically delicate situation, writing to defend Quakerism to the professors and scholars. Barclay had a stronger conceptualization of original sin than Fox (although he claimed infants only appropriated original sin by their own transgression) and he changed some of Fox’s thinking, especially with the introduction of a singular ‘day of visitation’. This was a single moment of grace which, if missed, denied the individual the possibility of salvation. Thus human agency is at the heart of the denial of God whereas salvation is God’s unhindered work. Mike Heller, in his chapter on the ‘Quaker saint’ John Woolman, follows Spencer’s sense of manifest perfectionism with his analysis of the journal of John Woolman for clues of a functional theology of everyday life. Woolman was ardently concerned with the abolition of slavery as well as many other aspects of social reform and justice work. As Heller shows, Woolman’s sense of good and evil is clearly a communal one. Barclay’s concern for individual diligence and salvation might have led to an individualistic Quakerism in the eighteenth century but the
Introduction
9
corporate ‘peculiarities’ (a sectarian set of practices that separated Quakers from the world such as their plain dress and plain speech, the numbering of days and months, and the refusal to use the socially differentiated ‘you’ to address anyone) maintained a strong communal sense. Equally, the practice of discerning God’s revelation was necessarily corporate to guard against the danger of individual imagination. Heller’s chapter shows very well the balance Woolman achieved in his own sense of right and wrong and the corporate responsibility to discern and witness to good and evil in the world. It is a functional theology far more concerned with daily life than the technicalities of salvation. We had hoped to include a chapter on women Quaker ministers and their formulation of good and evil within this historical section. Unfortunately, for various reasons none of the potential authors were free to contribute at the time. We are aware that this leaves a significant gap, and a gender bias, in the section. Part III of the book consists of three chapters that consider present-day concepts of good and evil within the Liberal, Conservative and Evangelical traditions of Quakerism. In 1827 a ‘great separation’ took place, resulting in two forms of Quakerism. Further schism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the influences of wider culture as the peculiarities were relaxed, ultimately led to the development of the three main traditions of Quakerism. Today they are spread through more than seventy autonomous ‘yearly meetings’ (national or area groupings), most with their own ‘book of discipline’ (an authoritative book of doctrine and practice, regularly updated in line with fresh discernment). Liberal Friends are theologically the most permissive. Emphasizing revelation over and against scripture, they have created a Quakerism of personal theological interpretation whilst maintaining a strong allegiance to the traditional form of Quaker worship and other practice. Non-Christian and non-theist Friends sit alongside Christian Quakers in this tradition and the formulations of Liberal Christianity that underpinned the start of this tradition at the start of the twentieth century have themselves given way to a more ‘universalist’ conceptualization of the divine in which God, god, and gods can be variously described or even absent. Margery Post Abbott interviewed sixty Friends to develop a typology of attitudes towards good and evil amongst this branch of Quakerism. Liberal Friends respond to personal evil, she concludes, in terms of illness, ignorance, or sin, where sin equates to falling short or a separation from God. They also recognize the presence of institutional or systemic evil. The Conservative tradition is much the smallest of the three and consists of about 1000 Friends worldwide. In North America, the Conservative Tradition is based mainly in three yearly meetings. Deborah Shaw, having defined what Conservative Friends seek to conserve, outlines the key texts on good and evil in the books of discipline of these three yearly meetings. This is complemented by personal accounts of redemption including one of spiritual exhortation. This personal narrative is an example of and provides a link to Heller’s account of narrative theology in the third section of the book. For Quakers of all persuasions, individual agency is central: Fox placed it there and Barclay and succeeding generations of Friends have retained it.
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Good and Evil
This is affirmed by Johan Maurer’s description of how contemporary Evangelical Friends understand good and evil. Evangelical Quakerism developed throughout the nineteenth century and has become the majority form of world Quakerism. It continues to place direct revelation as an important aspect of church life but balances it explicitly with the authority of scripture. Mission is fundamental, as it was for the earliest Friends. It is interesting then, that Maurer talks of a deficit of explicit theology of good and evil, which he traces back to a lack of metaphysical thought in the Quaker tradition generally. Nevertheless he is able to develop a typology comparable to Abbott’s for Liberal Friends. Whilst the categories differ – Maurer analyses Evangelical Quaker thought on good and evil in terms of a Quaker understanding of original sin, evil as substantial reality, and the victory of good over evil – the Barclayan fine line between Pelagius, Arminius and Calvin, is still maintained: the interplay of good and evil is a blend of human agency and God’s grace. Part IV, looking at examples of contemporary Quaker thinking about good and evil, is the most interdisciplinary. It is also a blend of Evangelical and Liberal Quaker thinking. The first four chapters in this section are written by Friends associated with the Evangelical Quaker tradition. First, David Johns picks up Niebuhr’s twentiethcentury criticism that Quakers are utopian. Johns concurs that this has been a problem for Quakers throughout their history. Whilst the first Friends believed the Second Coming to be unfolding within and around them, the second generation had to maintain the utopian vision without such a vivid experience. Johns argues that ensuing generations of Quakers have each failed to adjust the theological vision – remember Spencer’s chapter on perfection – to account for a different theological and cultural reality. The optimism of the idea of universal salvation and of human agency as a key part of sanctification has its own dangers, Johns warns. For instance, although Kenyan Quakers are unusually explicit about the reality of evil, others, as Abbott shows in her chapter, can dismiss it as ignorance or illness: given the chance, humans are essentially good. As well as this denial, Johns highlights other ways in which the faithful avoid facing the challenges of evil. Theodicy itself – wondering how God could allow such things – is, Johns argues, a way of devolving responsibility. Focusing on systemic evil or deterministic approaches, blaming the devil or one’s genes, are equally problematical in terms of eschewing responsibility. Johns suggests the Prophets offer an alternative model of balancing one’s own sinful state with the potential for a faithful life. As Johns concludes: ‘the experience of opening to grace means that it is also true that sin is not the complete truth about humanity and, therefore, evil alone will never be the final word about the human situation.’ Phil Smith takes up this theme of living in the world in tension, focusing on pacifism and the issue of coercion. As he claims, early Friends carried on in their lives ‘in spite of evil’. Their pacifist stance could be part of what Johns would label as utopianism. Certainly it was the type of pacifist position held by Friends, based on a high regard for human nature that Niebuhr challenged most harshly. Smith claims Friends have become confused in their zeal for pacifism and allowed a careless slippage in the twentieth century from the testimony against war to a testimony for peace. This shift (Jiseok, 2004, pp. 34–57) has led to a broadening of anti-war
Introduction
11
sentiment to embrace non-violence, and subsequently a conflation of violence and coercion. Smith argues that coercion need not betray the traditional testimony against war, but can be helpful when facing evil in the world. Corey Beals similarly charts what a contemporary Quaker response to evil might look like. He revisits the theme of Quaker utopianism and challenges the idea that evil is an illusion (a link with Abbott’s chapter), and critiques the idea of evil as substance (a link to Maurer) and the traditional sequitur of such a view that, as a good God cannot create evil, there must be two creators. Beals’s third approach to evil is of evil as absence. Beals understands Fox’s theology of the Light in this way. Those who love the Light cannot help but be in the Light, transformed by it in Spencer’s terms, but equally there are those who turn from the Light, who live in the shadow. Human agency, again, is central to this theology of evil as privation, given the Quaker emphasis on the universality of the possibility of salvation. Beals then answers the objections often levelled at this theological stance, that it means evil has no substance or power. Beals ends up in a place similar to Johns, that Quakers can acknowledge the reality of evil whilst also being in relationship with a Christ who does not condemn. It is place of tension and challenge, not utopianism or denial. To exemplify this, Beals talks of his personal experiences in Rwanda and his encounters with those who had experienced the genocide there. He recounts moving stories of courage to help save others, of forgiveness, and the clue of common humanity, remorse on the part of those who had done the killing (picking up without realizing it on Raimond Gaita’s influential use of remorse as key in an integrated approach to good and evil (2004)). Seeing evil as privation helps see everyone as belonging to a single humanity rather than as friend and enemy, or better or lesser. It helps towards forgiveness and ultimately places all in a position of faithful humility. William Jolliff’s interest is in the life and thought of the nineteenth-century Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Whittier, in Jolliff’s view, did not so much analyse evil as work constantly against it (echoes of Woolman here) particularly in his work for the abolition of slavery. However, and following Beals, Jolliff goes on to argue that Whittier saw evil as privation or what takes place when goodness fails. Jolliff uses Fowler’s stages of faith development to analyse the route that pushed Whittier from the darkness towards the Light to which he was drawn. The chapter provides an excellent case study of Beals’ view of evil drawn across the life of a highly concerned and articulate individual. The remaining chapters in this fourth Part come from authors more associated with Liberal Quakerism. Janet Scott looks at biblical interpretations of sin and suffering. The commonest two in the Hebrew scriptures are of suffering as punishment, or of the purpose of suffering being beyond the grasp of individuals, such as in the case of Job. In Ecclesiastes, the attempt to comprehend the purpose of suffering is portrayed as flawed: everything has its time and season beyond our control or understanding. Another version of this is that understanding will come later, possibly in a next life. Quakers took this eschatological approach but creatively understood it as unfolding in the present. The next life, as it were, was now for those who had accepted and experienced convincement. Other Christians linked their theology to the idea of suffering as punishment, with Christ’s sacrifice redeeming all of humanity from the fruits of their sin. As Scott suggests the kingdom can be plotted on twin
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Good and Evil
axes depending on timing and on the degree to which it is gift and/or task. For early Friends it was ‘already’ and ‘task’: their job was to bring everyone else to it. However, ecumenically, we can see Christians today in a greater variety of positions. Scott uses the example of responses to HIV to illustrate this. Finally Scott challenges Quakers, Liberal ones in particular, to understand the reality of the sacraments, even whilst they are experienced inwardly within the Quaker tradition, as one way to encompass a fuller ecumenical partnership in the face of suffering in the world. Rachel Muers also challenges Liberal Friends. Her chapter examines the analysis of good and evil in the later work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) to question two standard frameworks for thinking good and evil in liberal Quakerism: attention to conscience and adherence to historic testimonies. Bonhoeffer’s reading of both conscience and principles as a means of avoiding the evil act, while potentially neglecting the evil situation or character, are used to interrogate recent and contemporary Quaker thinking on involvement in political life. In particular, what might be termed ‘dogmatic liberalism’ in Quaker approaches to political and religious conviction are questioned. Muers argues that the theological basis of Bonhoeffer’s analysis is in fact deeply conversant with important strands of Quaker thought, and that these can be recovered through attention to the Meeting for Worship as the focus for discernment of good and evil. Bonhoeffer emerges very much as Johns’ ideal type as someone living with the balance between faith and courage, humility and action. In defence of Liberal Quakerism and non-theism in particular, David Boulton explores the thought of Gerrard Winstanley. Winstanley was an important precursor of and influence on Quakers (whom he eventually joined). Writing in the 1640s, he was the most explicit of the English Revolution radicals in his separation of good from an external God and evil from an external Devil. Boulton focuses on the weakness of his central idea, the identification of good with a vague cosmic benevolence which he called ‘Reason’, and of evil with resistance to it. He also explores the positive ways in which this idea fed first into Enlightenment thinking and later into current explorations of a humanistic, nontheist Christianity in general, and Quakerism in particular. This a-theistical conceptualization of good and evil circumvents theism and theodicy. There is no innate sin or innate goodness. In this modernist view, we see perhaps some of the underpinnings of Liberal Quaker theology, as expressed by Abbott, even if not all Liberal Friends would wish to differentiate God from good. In the final chapter of Part IV, Rex Ambler argues that we can get a clearer view of this troubled area of good and evil if we think it through in conversation with early Friends. We can then see that the Quaker understanding is quite distinctive, because it (1) arises from the experience of evil in the self, as illuminated by the Light; (2) traces evil, not to rebellion as in classical theology, but to deceit and ignorance; (3) recognizes that humans have a choice, even though they are immersed in darkness and cannot see, for the light of God is always in them pressing on their conscience – they have only to turn; and (4) regards the good as arising spontaneously from humans as and when they are illuminated by the Light and responsive to its truth. This understanding is rooted in the Bible, especially in the writings of Paul and John, yet it is opposed to the orthodox attempt to objectify Christian truth in the form of doctrine. Quakers are not (historically) committed to beliefs, such as the belief that
Introduction
13
God is all-good and all-powerful, which inevitably conflict in this area, but rather to the personal knowledge gained by opening one’s heart to the truth and sharing it with others. Thus Quakers claim they come to understand evil only in the transcending of evil in our own experience. This analysis is developed in rapport with the Bible, but in a distinctively Quaker way, by its grounding in their own situation. Goodness is seen as part of nature, once humanity allows it to be free from the images and selfidentities falsely imposed on it. Like evil, goodness is rooted in spiritual situations, so it is in the spiritual arena that the battle with evil has to be fought. The conclusion of the book – Part V – contains chapters by Arthur Roberts and co-editor Jackie Leach Scully. The devotional and confessional aspect of some of the Evangelical Quaker writers in this collection, such as Smith, Beals, Johns and Jolliff, is mirrored by Roberts’ passionate description of a new faith-framed model for understanding good and evil. It is not so much a concluding analysis of evangelical Quaker thinking on good and evil but an expression of revelation itself, forming a bridge back to Paul Anderson’s introduction to Quaker authority at the beginning of the volume. This piece is avowedly of its time and place, and works as an example of the way that for evangelical scholars, the fruits of the academy can never be divorced from the need to be faithful and obedient. Woolman would surely have approved. Scully writes from an understanding of the Liberal tradition and in particular the experience which led to the formulation of this volume. In the mid-1990s, she conducted research amongst British (Liberal) Friends on how they carried out moral decision-making, using genetic testing decisions as a case study. She found what she describes as a collage approach: a lack of a singular theological or ethical language, and overall a neglect of traditional theological tools, replaced by a more eclectic selection from secular normative ethical approaches. Liberal Quaker metaethics are complex, and reflect their metaphysical and anthropological theories about the relationship between Inward Light, goodness, and human nature. They also reflect the Quaker focus on functional over dogmatic theology, and a more specifically Liberal Quaker enactment of metaethical belief through the procedures of Quaker corporate decision making. If Maurer is right, Evangelical Friends may still lack an explicit detailed theology of good and evil even whilst they find unity on a set of basic ideas. However, as the chapters by Beals, Johns, Smith and Roberts show, plenty of thinking is being done about these matters within the evangelical tradition. What emerges from the evangelical context is clear teaching and views on what constitutes good and evil, how God operates in the world, and how God wants humanity to act within that reality. Scully’s chapter shows how Liberal Quakerism, and liberal religion in general, in trying not to over-define a God who cannot (and perhaps therefore should not) be described, can run the risk of losing a shared theological language. What is left then is the inability to articulate shared understandings of what good and evil are. However, Scully also argues that it is the absence of defined views on good and evil, and the concentration on ethical procedures rather than ethical content, that enable Liberal Quakerism to survive its own internal tensions and to remain in conversation with purely secular approaches to ethical evaluation. In terms of the philosophy of religion, Quakers have arrived at their own distinctive answer to the problem of evil. Philosophers and theologians have tended
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Good and Evil
to focus on the contradiction between an omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving God and the presence of suffering in the world through human agency and ‘natural’ disaster. Within Quaker thinking, as we have seen, the traditional three attributes of God are emphasized far less than the role of human agency in the degree to which good triumphs over evil. In Barclay’s conception, human passivity allows God to work unhindered and human action contrary to that work is the basis of transgression. In Johns’s, Smith’s, and Beals’s work, emphasis is placed on the human role in understanding faith and dealing with evil and evil-doers fully and authentically. Far less is written here on the nature of God than on the nature of humanity’s response. For some Friends, particularly Liberal Quakers, are less interested in the metaphysical than the metaethical. In this way, these Quakers circumlocute philosophical anxieties about the credibility of theism and to a large degree theodicy itself. In other words, they are less concerned about how evil can happen within their belief systems than with what humanity is to do with the challenges of good and evil. This is not so true for Evangelical and Conservative Friends, whose ethics are based in a direct experience of the metaphysical. There is a complex theology of personal transformation and perfection in Fox and Barclay, but more recent Quakers of all persuasions focus more on the effects of that transformation and the stance against evil it entails. Woolman and Whittier embody eighteenth- and nineteenth-century examples of this. There are some very clear aspects to Quaker thinking on good and evil that we find shared by all the Quaker traditions: the centrality of direct revelation as at least part of the way humanity is to understand what God requires of it; the ability of humanity to respond to or reject God’s gift of grace, and God’s guidance through revelation; ultimately a stronger emphasis on what to do about good and evil in daily life and the corporate responsibilities entailed by those questions than on abstract theologizing. If anything characterizes a Quaker approach to good and evil, these do. We can conclude two things. First, that whilst Quakers may be as utopian as other Christians, their attempts to get on top of the questions of good and evil fall foul of Johns’ critique that too many systems of thinking devolve responsibility elsewhere. The Quaker thinking described in this volume, contrary to Johns’s plea, does entail this devolution: humanity is very much God’s hands and feet in the path to individual, corporate and ultimately global perfection. Second, whilst the twin or triple cultures resulting from Quaker schism have very different emphases, which can help us understand the way wider religious culture can experience sharp divisions and conflicts, the commonalities of Quaker theodicy across Liberal, Conservative and Evangelical traditions come through in the final analysis as stronger dimensions. Quaker identity remains stronger than Christian sub-cultures.
Chapter 2
Continuing Revelation – Gospel or Heresy? Paul Anderson
Sometimes evil results from seeking to do particular harm or general malevolence, but usually this is not the case. Evil, perceived or actual, is often a factor of moral compromises made in the name of furthering an alternate good. Deception, violence, incompetence, dishonesty, greed, coercion, intemperance, and such biblically-named vices as lasciviousness, concupiscence, and licentiousness, get rationalized in the name of good. Even such positive virtues as family, home, nation, religion, progress, defense, and liberation get yoked to questionable means, and this is the only way evil can be tolerated. It does not cease, however, to be evil, which is why this subject is vitally important. This chapter considers the role of appeals to continuing revelation in the furthering of good and the legitimation of evil. Any type of authority will be prone to use, and also abuse,1 but appeals to continuing revelation have a special set of vulnerabilities. Because personal inference is the primary means of discerning the Divine Will, other checks and balances are too easily forfeited. Innocent of historical awareness or theological sophistication, ‘novel’ understandings of the Divine Will are unencumbered by the wisdom of informed reflection; without Scripture as an objective referent, subjective impressions too easily become projections of personal needs and agendas; without corporate accountability, the individual too easily falls prey to myopic and autocentric perspective; and without rational analysis, flawed thinking too easily substitutes for critical reason. Apart from particulars of content, whether continuing revelation is gospel or heresy depends on how it is ascertained and attested. Where it aligns with other modes of revelation and is subject to corporate accountability, it is most often experienced as good news; where it goes against them – either by default or design – appeals to its authorization fall rather short. A particularly deceptive feature of any claim to revealed authority is that its advocates feel their stance is divinely ordained, and thus immune to objection. Where the dogmatist often goes wrong is to assume the teaching of the organization stands above reason; where the biblicist often goes wrong is to argue a particular principle to the exclusion of experiential wisdom; where the communitarian often goes wrong is to refuse to listen to the leadings of the individual; and where the rationalist often goes wrong is to neglect the experiential element in aspects of theory and practice. 1 This thesis is developed in the author’s essay, ‘Religion and Violence – From Pawn to Scapegoat’ (Anderson, 2004).
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Good and Evil
Likewise, where the appeal to personal revelation often goes awry is to raise the authority of internal and individual measures of truth above external and corporate ones. While Friends have long maintained the conviction that God still speaks to humanity, particular claims to personally revealed authority often result in trouble, and this can be seen throughout the history of the Quaker movement. Continuing Revelation as an Aspect of Gospel among Friends The Quaker interest in continuing revelation did not emerge out of a vacuum. It is deeply rooted in the experience and conviction that ‘Christ is come to teach his people himself’, and not only was this claim made by George Fox and early Friends: it is directly taught in Scripture. It was the rediscovery of this central Christian teaching, however, that became the hallmark of the Quaker discovery, whereby the immediacy of Christ was experienced powerfully and proclaimed faithfully. As Fox says in his Journal (1952) in 1647: As I had forsaken all the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy (p. 11).
While the transforming reality of direct spiritual encounter with Christ is here juxtaposed to other forms of religious authority, Fox is at times wrongly understood to be posing the direct leadings of Christ against Scripture. At the occasion leading to his first imprisonment in 1650, George Fox interrupted a biblical preacher at the Nottingham church, saying: ‘Oh, no, it is not the Scriptures…’ but the ‘Holy Spirit, by which the holy men of God gave forth the Scriptures…’ that doctrines and judgments were to be tried. From the context of 2 Peter 1:19–21, however, it is evident that Fox was not disparaging the authority of the Bible; rather, he was citing it.2 Fox was here correcting the speaker’s exegesis based upon his having known the passage by heart. Rather than inferring here a Scripture-versus-revelation dichotomy, Fox opposed the supplanting of Spirit with Scripture upon biblical grounds, not against them. Another point worth noting here is the explicitly Christological understanding of revelational immediacy. It is the Light of Christ, apprehended inwardly, that is referenced (John 1:9), not an inward source of enlightenment, proper. Likewise, it is the imperishable Seed of the word of God that stirs to spiritual life within (1 Peter 1:23; 1 John 3:9). Therefore, divine disclosure in the understanding of early Friends cannot be separated from its scriptural basis and from a Christocentric understanding of the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. The Light is real because of Christ’s working through the Holy Spirit involves an eschatological Visitation across the boundaries of time and space. 2 See Fox’s Journal (1952, p. 40). References to this incident and its implications may also be found in the author’s articles (Anderson, 1991; Anderson, 2001).
Continuing Revelation – Gospel or Heresy?
17
What Fox described experientially, Barclay developed theologically. In his first book, A Catechism and Confession of Faith, Robert Barclay challenges the dogmatic character of the Westminster Confession with multiple biblical texts arguing for immediate revelation.3 He develops this conviction further in An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, where he argues that the fountain and source of revelation is prior to its collected pools in terms of purity and spiritual vitality. Especially in Proposition 2, ‘Inward and Unmediated Revelation’, Barclay argues for attending the human–divine relationship above focusing on either Scripture or church authorities, and yet he also acknowledges that Scripture serves as an authoritative referent by which to check subjective leadings. In that sense, Barclay maintains a high view of final biblical authority while emphasizing the priority of spiritual encounter as a first-order experiencing of ongoing revelation. Barclay also lays out clearly the fact that immediate revelation is well supported throughout church history. Citing the writings of such Christian leaders as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Augustine, Gregory the Great, St. Bernard, Melanchthon, Luther, and Calvin, Barclay points out that the doctrine of continuing revelation is not only biblical, but that it is supported by the major leaders of the Church. In so doing, he first emphasizes that while the revelatory work of the Holy Spirit is infallible, humans are not. Therefore, discernment must be used in all humility and modesty. Second, authentic revelation will not go against Scripture or reason, so these are to be applied to the discernment process. Finally, in emphasizing the way the Spirit bears witness with our spirits (1 Jn. 5:6), Barclay declares, ‘this inward, unmediated, objective revelation is the only sure, certain, and immovable foundation of all Christian faith’ (1991, p. 43). Therefore, Fox and Barclay alike held up immediate and continuing revelation as a central feature of the Christian Gospel. Continuing Revelation as a Factor of Conflict among Friends In addition to being a central aspect of the Friends’ message, however, appeals to continuing revelation and an inward locus of authority became a central feature of most of the major controversies and divisions among Friends. Where matters of faith are concerned, heresy is the charge; where matters of practice are concerned, the danger is sacrilege. Within the first Quaker generation, each of the four most notable crises involved some aspect of a claim to continuing revelation. Likewise, continuing revelation played a pivotal role in the three primary crises and separations of Friends in the nineteenth century. Understanding more about how this has been so might clarify the strengths and weaknesses of such a doctrine and its implications. 3 In the first two chapters in his Catechism, he outlines the ‘true and saving knowledge of God’, which is direct and unmediated revelation, followed by a treatment of the inspired character and basis of the Scriptures (Barclay, 2001, pp. 19–26). In his Confession, the two longest sections are Article 11, ‘The Light that Enlightens Everyone’ (ibid., pp. 121–2), and Article 16, ‘The Church and Ministry’ (ibid., pp. 125–6). The point is that immediate revelation, authoritative Scripture, reasoned thought, and corporate accountability are interwoven here, from the start. These are even more fully laid out interconnectedly in his Apology (Barclay, 1991).
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The Nayler Controversy. The incident with James Nayler, who in 1656 rode into Bristol on a horse, as his followers sang ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel!’ led not only to his arrest, but also to a trial before the House of Commons – the debates of which lasted for nine days. As punishment, he was beaten publicly in London and Bristol, his forehead was branded with a ‘B’ for blasphemer, his tongue was bored through with a hot iron, and he was imprisoned for several months. The Nayler incident brought a great deal of embarrassment to Friends, but several aspects of its development relate directly to aspects of continuing revelation. From a positive angle, Nayler appears to have been bearing witness to the conviction that Christ was indeed come to the world – in his own life and in the lives also of others – a testimony to incarnational Christianity. Beyond that point, though, several other issues became problematic. Motivations surrounding this incident from the start appear suspect. First, Martha Simmonds4 and others, who convinced Nayler to stage the event and who laid their garments on the ground in front of the procession, were apparently motivated by something of a competition between Nayler and Fox. Second, in his defense Nayler was unwilling to question the women’s motives or to disavow their having been led to ask him to do such a thing. Third, as proceedings continued, Nayler also claimed to be the Son of God, despite distinguishing himself from Christ as ‘a sign of his coming’ otherwise. While many were impressed with Nayler’s witness, the ensuing events and his refusal to question their inspired character not only led to his torture and eventual death, but it caused Fox and other Friends leaders to distance themselves from this and other cases of enthusiastic excess. The Nayler incident directly evoked intensive resistance to Quakers legislated over the next three decades. Boldness was taken for blasphemy, and because it was legitimated by appeals to continuing revelation, that part of the Quaker message was also subjected to even more rigorous scrutiny than it would have been otherwise. Quaker leaders were therefore forced to defend their orthodoxy and biblical soundness in far greater measure than is seen in the first decade of Quaker writings. It forced Fox, who had criticized the ‘chapter-and-versing’ of others, to cite biblical references explicitly as his engagements with Christian leaders developed. The Nayler incident also played a role in the establishment of corporate organization and structured order. As the movement continued to grow, Fox introduced structures of accountability and organization within the local monthly meeting, and elders were appointed to shoulder responsibilities of discernment and pastoral nurture. The first meeting of London Yearly Meeting was held in 1660, and quarterly meetings were also organized. Separate women’s meetings were organized to insure their voices not be drowned out by those of men. The Kendall Fund was established to support travel in public ministry among Friends, and traveling minutes eventually became means of attesting the validity of the minister’s message. In these and other ways, Friends developed means by which leadings and inspired ministry could be tethered to corporate accountability. 4 Martha Simmonds apparently had played early Quaker leaders against one another. According to William C. Braithwaite (1970, pp. 241–8), having been reproved by Howgill and Burrough, she sought to align Nayler against them, and later against Fox.
Continuing Revelation – Gospel or Heresy?
19
John Perrot and the Question of Authority. John Perrot illustrates another problem intrinsic to the Quaker emphasis upon pneumatism. If continuing revelation was to be the basis for the movement, and if Friends were to eschew all conventions and forms of worship, should they be tolerated within the Quaker movement? And, if Friends were to challenge human authorities as levelers of God, why should they tolerate some Friends being raised up above others? As an Irish Quaker who had formerly been a Baptist, John Perrot traveled with John Luffe to Rome seeking to witness to the Pope. Luffe was sentenced to death in the Inquisition, and Perrot was confined to an insane asylum for three years – not exactly a missionary success story! When Perrot returned to England in 1661, he challenged Fox and his authority. Perrot refused to show deference to Fox, and he opposed the respectful removing of one’s hat while others prayed, including Quakers.5 He objected to any sort of formality, including the shaking of hands at the close of meeting. He likewise opposed the setting of times for worship, to the effect that some Friends under his influence neglected to come together at all. The familiar Quaker challenging of conventions had now been levied at practices common among Friends, and his influence became a threat to the leadership of Fox and the unity of the Quaker movement. The Perrot controversy threw into sharp relief questions of authority and consistency when advocating continuing revelation. Therefore, the need for the establishing bases for Gospel Order and personal authority became evident to Friends, as it had to other Christian groups before them. The Wilkinson–Story Separation. The Wilkinson–Story separation was an especially costly one for Friends. John Wilkinson and John Story had been leaders in the Quaker movement from the beginning and were numbered among the Valiant Sixty. They resisted the aggregation of authority toward particular elevated leaders, seeking to maintain egalitarianism as the norm. Seeing that local authorities come to use the Quaker Laws as a means of putting a damper on the movement, they also opposed the conviction of other Quakers that Friends should be willing to meet openly. They saw no point in setting themselves up for incarceration or programmatic persecution, and they also opposed the setting up of separate women’s meetings. For these and other reasons, they and their followers began separating from the larger Quaker movement; they refused to be subject to the authority of Fox, claiming their own sense of leading and traditional correctness. The Wilkinson–Story separation was especially poignant, as it involved a breach among the original founders of the Quaker movement. It was precipitated by reactions to structural and personal adjustments made in response to the Nayler and Perrot incidents, as letters of correction were sent by Fox and his supporters to those 5 D. Elton Trueblood’s insight on the Perrot–Fox contention is significant, here (1980, p. 98): ‘Because extreme spirituality makes public worship no longer possible, George Fox felt forced to oppose Perrot’s supposed “revelation”. The Christian ideal is not that of the elimination of forms…. The ideal, rather, is to know the difference between the forms and the reality, to be ever aware of the danger of allowing the forms to take the place of reality, and to employ only those forms which lead to reality.’
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whose actions were thought to be questionable. Further, Margaret Fell’s management of the Kendall Fund – supporting some ministry ventures but doing so selectively – provoked resistance among sympathizers with Perrot. A conciliatory meeting was called in April of 1676, drawing together leading Friends, including William Penn. It was held at Draw Well near Sedbergh, just a few miles from Firbank Fell – the place where Fox had preached to over 1,000 for three hours, marking the public beginning of the Quaker movement. Wilkinson and Story were later reconciled to Fox at Swarthmore Hall, but separations continued nonetheless. The Keithian Controversy. While the first three crises among Friends reflect problems particular to the honoring of continuing revelation, the Keithian controversy betrays a reaction in the opposite direction. The concern was that Friends had moved away from the central tenets of Christianity, becoming an enthusiastic sect rather than an instrument of radical Christian renewal. While George Keith was at first one of the leading Quaker apologists, having even been something of a mentor of Robert Barclay, he later came to oppose Quakerism with equally apologetic zeal. Unlike most other Quaker leaders, Keith had a degree in theology, thus giving his arguments a theoretical foundation that his partners in dialogue did not possess. Despite the fact that Keith was disowned by Friends in Philadelphia (1692) and in London (1695), the issues at stake are perhaps the most misunderstood of any of the Quaker controversies. Keith opposed the Quakers’ embrace of continuing revelation because he felt it subjugated the authority of Scripture and the clear teachings of Jesus to secondary status. He railed against Quakers’ appeals to the Inward Light, calling them heretics or worse. This led to counteraccusations that he was just the same. He was also accused of having a bad temper and of seeking to usurp the place of Fox as the leader of the Quaker movement. Keith’s subsequent joining the Church of England and becoming the first traveling minister of the Anglican Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, seemed to confirm suspicions of his closet Anglicanism. He moved back to America in 1702, and not only did he encourage others to withdraw from the Quaker movement, but he also wrote virulent apologetic tracts against it. Keith has been roundly accused of lapsing back into the Established Church as one who never really was convinced of Friendly truth. According to Elfrida Vipont (1977, p. 131), He held that by stressing the importance of the Light Within they were neglecting the historic Christ; moreover, he denied the possibility of salvation for any, however enlightened, to whom Jesus Christ had not been made known. Some of his suggestions for the improvement of the discipline were reasonable and might have been considered, had he not urged them in so contentious a manner; others involved the adoption of a creed which, however exemplary, can never be acceptable to those who believe in a continuing revelation.
Certainly, from the perspective of British Friends, Keith rejoined the adversary, which placed him in the camp of biblical and ecclesial authority versus continuing revelation – the lynchpin of Quaker conviction. Thus, in his disownment, continuing revelation ‘won the day’ within Quakerism against Scripture, credalism, and ecclesial
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authority.6 From the perspective of David Holden, however, the political factors in the Keithian saga suggest a different narrative. First, Keith was the first among Friends to oppose the institution of slavery in written form,7 as he saw it as contrary to the Gospel – a factor of principle rather than outcome. Second, Keith’s first major contention in Pennsylvania resulted from his opposition to the Quaker magistrates turning a blind eye to the use of force in putting down a pirate who had stolen a ship in Philadelphia and had raided sites in the Delaware Valley.8 He accused them of being unworthy of being called true Quakers because of their failure to live up to the Peace Testimony. On matters of social concern, Keith saw himself as the faithful Quaker against those who would compromise Quaker convictions, and technically he was correct. Third, it was these accused officials who then issued a statement in 1692 against Keith and had it signed by the Governor of Pennsylvania, seeking to discredit him as a means of justifying their conduct. From there the issue was taken up in the Yearly Meeting, and what was at first a largely political set of contentions became outlined in theological terms. Ironically, the preliminary concern was not one of continuing revelation versus the Bible, but the political compromising of the Quaker Peace Testimony and the refusal to stand with the peaceable teachings of Jesus as revealed in Scripture. Keith saw his as the authentic Quaker position, and he challenged his opponents’ appeals to continuing revelation as justifying the abandonment of Friendly principles for political expediency. From Keith’s perspective, Quaker leaders’ appeals to the Inward Light functioned to excuse their sacrificing of Quaker Testimonies in order to maintain worldly power, functioning to legitimate the endorsement of evil. This is why he challenged the divorcing of the timely teachings of Jesus from the timeless work of Christ. Without tethering the leadings of Christ to the clear teachings of Jesus, even such clear teachings as the nonviolent love of enemies, stand to be lost if it seems inconvenient. The Hicksite–Orthodox Separation. The era of Quietism among Friends produced something of a classic Quaker culture. To maintain a number of Quakerly conventions, those who transgressed them were disciplined, even to the point of disownment. While most of the disownments of the eighteenth century involved matters of praxis, a few involved matters of faith. Particularly notable was that of John Bartram (1758) 6 Note, however, the particularly creedal character of the May 1660 declaration of a peace testimony to Charles II, where Friends declared the conviction that this revelation would not be overturned by alternative claims to revelation: ‘…The Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move us unto it…’ On this matter, Friends articulated a greater commitment to tradition, as a repository of faithful revelation, over and against a commitment to continuing revelation if it involves a departure from the former. This is not unlike Catholic and Protestant commitments to orthodox tenets of faith versus their more problematic alternatives. The difference, though, is that Friends maintained a self-perception of noncreedalism while creedal tenets were in the process of developing. 7 This claim is made by David Holden (1988, p. 31). 8 For political issues underlying the Keithian controversy, see Holden (1988, pp. 25–33) and Dodds (2001).
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of Darby Meeting in Philadelphia, who was accused of failing to believe in the humanity and divinity of Christ. Several decades later, although her home meeting in New York had at first provided a traveling minute, Hannah Barnard was denied a letter of endorsement by London Yearly Meeting for the support of further travel to Europe due to her refusal to believe in the inspired authority of Scripture. When she returned to America, her home meeting asked her to discontinue her public ministry, and when she refused she was disowned in 1802. She later became a Unitarian. According to Holden (pp. 52–3), within a few years others were being disowned for questioning the authority of Scripture. Traveling ministers from Britain visited America, and orthodox teaching was emphasized in the interest of correcting error. Advocates of spiritual renewal saw their efforts as a progressive willingness to introduce new methods of education and fresh means of inspiration to Friends, and their efforts were received warmly by urban Friends. Some rural Friends, though, resisted the innovations as perceived departures from traditional Quakerism, and they were also offended at the ostentatious manner of Friends who were better off economically and who came across as denying Quaker simplicity. An elderly minister, Elias Hicks became the lightning rod for the great division that would ensue. He appealed to the interiority of authority rather than external sources such as Scripture, historic Quaker writings, and the Elders of the Yearly Meeting. Hicks had already begun preaching against wealth and immodesty in 1819. By 1823 ‘Extracts’ from the sayings of early Friends were being used against him to emphasize the Christ-centered and biblically based character of historic Quakerism (Holden, 1988, pp. 54–6). The split in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting came in 1827, and splits in other yearly meetings followed the next year. At issue was the appointing of Clerks who would call upon some to speak, refusing others, especially those whose theology was thought to be questionable. Given that the Orthodox Clerk was up for a second term, the followers of Hicks rallied to the meeting in which the appointment would be made, and this led to an unfortunate set of events in which the two groups became irretrievably polarized. Analyzing effectively the precipitating issues within the Hicksite–Orthodox separations is difficult. Theologically, the Hicksites advocated continuing revelation – the Inner Light as a trustworthy means of divine guidance; the Orthodox saw Scripture as both informing and confirming apprehensions of inspired leadings, and they emphasized submission to the discipline of the community and its leadership. Sociologically, the Orthodox were more progressive – seeking to engage Friends in the spiritual renewal that was happening around them; the Hicksites were more conservative – desiring to hold onto their understanding of conventionally plain Quakerism. Theologically, however, the poles were reversed. Hicksite appeals to continuing revelation were done in the name of traditional renewal, while Orthodox efforts to tether enthusiastic claims to Scripture were carried out in the name of spiritual renewal. The result was a division which has continued among North American Friends for nearly two centuries. The Beaconite Reaction. The Hicksite separation in America caused a reaction among British Friends. Many saw the separations as a factor of giving continuing revelation precedence over other sources of religious authority, and markers of
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Evangelicalism emerged within the London Yearly Meeting as a result.9 Out of a concern that ‘Hicksism’ might be headed down the slippery slope of emphasizing the Inward Light over the authority of Scripture, Isaac Crewdson published A Beacon to the Society of Friends in 1835. This book listed side-by-side many points made by Elias Hicks, countered by passages from the Bible, and it labeled the doctrine of the Inward Light a ‘delusive notion’ (Vipont, 1977, p. 182). As a result of Crewdson’s challenge to the errant ways of Friends, a committee was appointed by London Yearly Meeting to elder the Manchester Meeting, and Crewdson was himself silenced. In protest about 300 Friends in Britain withdrew, forming a group called the ‘Evangelical Friends’. In time, most of them joined other evangelical denominations, especially the Plymouth Brethren, who had many sympathies with Friends. While the Beaconite reaction to Hicksism might be considered an extreme emphasis on the infallibility of Scripture versus continuing revelation, that assessment is too simplistic. Like the earlier Keithian and Hicksite separations, it was the silencing of a leading Friend that provoked much of the separatist sentiment. Among those who separated were 52 other members of Manchester Meeting, John Wilkinson (former Clerk of London Yearly Meeting), and Luke Howard (a leading figure in dealing with the Hannah Barnard controversy, earlier).10 As a result of the debate, however, London Yearly Meeting produced the following statement, siding with Crewdson and the authoritative place of Scripture versus appeals to the Inward Light: It has ever been, and still is, the belief of the Society of Friends, that the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testament were given by inspiration of God; that therefore the declarations contained in them rest on the authority of God Himself and there can be no appeal from them to any authority whatsoever; that they are able to make us wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus; being the appointed means of making known to us the blessed truths of Christianity; that they are the only divinely authorized record of the doctrines which we are bound as Christians to believe, and of the moral principles which are to regulate our actions; that no doctrine which is not contained in them can be required of any one to be believed as an article of faith; that whatsoever 9
Edward Grubb makes this point lucidly (1925):
Its main effect, from the point of view we are taking, was to intensify very greatly the Evangelical tendencies of the ‘orthodox’ Friends, both in Britain and America. Such would seem to be the inevitable result of a separation: each party is rendered more extreme by being deprived of the moderating influence of the other. From the accounts that reached this country, most English Friends were led to regard it as entirely due to an evil spirit of disbelief in the essentials of Christian faith on the part of Elias Hicks and his friends. This drove many to seek for safety in a clearer definition of those essentials, and in particular of the inspiration and infallible authority of Scripture; it even led some to question whether the ancient principle of the Inward Light was a safe foundation on which to build. There were not wanting those who pointed the moral of the Hicksite secession thus: ‘See what comes of trusting to the Inward Light!’ 10 See Holden (1988, pp. 70–71), and especially the longer analyses by Anna Braithwaite Thomas (1912) and Rosemary Mingins (2003).
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Good and Evil any man says or does which is contrary to the Scriptures, though under profession of immediate guidance of the Spirit, must be reckoned and accounted as mere delusion (Holden, 1988, p. 72).
London Yearly Meeting also lost evangelical members as a result of the controversy. Three decades after the visit of John Wilbur to England (1831–33), Fritchley Friends Meeting broke off and sought to form a General Meeting of Conservative Friends, although they stayed in touch with London Yearly Meeting Friends. They were reunited with London Yearly Meeting a century later, in 1967. On the other end of the theological spectrum, David Duncan of Manchester Meeting challenged Christian orthodoxy in the name of modern liberalism. By his own analysis, the one thing common to his essays and teachings was the Inward Light (Holden, p. 100). That had become for him a trademark of essential orthodoxy to which he held at the expense of other Christian doctrines. Upon being asked to recant his questionable doctrine at the request of a Yearly Meeting-appointed committee, he refused and was disowned in 1871. A dozen or so of his followers also broke off and started their own meeting. In America, the divisions were more thorough, producing separate Yearly Meetings with at least three distinctive identities – Hicksite, Orthodox, and Conservative Friends. The Evangelical Friends movement developed in the twentieth century. The Wilburite Protest. Two decades after the Hicksite Separations in America, protests against Orthodox Friends’ abandonment of several Quaker conventions, including plainness of dress and speech and modesty of carriage, led to the Conservative separations. While Joseph John Gurney, arguably the most influential Friend of the nineteenth century, had come to America to travel in the ministry from 1837–40, his energetic endeavors were not equally appreciated by all. Despite having a traveling minute from London Yearly Meeting, some had opposed his travel, and John Wilbur was aware of that dissent. He also felt Gurney was too materialistic and ‘creaturely’ in his approaches to things, and he followed Gurney’s ministry itinerary, preaching against what he felt were departures from the traditional ways of Friends – in particular, a high view of biblical authority.11 In response to his sowing disunity, New England Yearly Meeting appointed a committee to silence Wilbur, but his home meeting, South Kingston, refused to do so. The Quarterly Meeting dissolved the meeting, but it reconstituted itself and refused to discipline Wilbur. Feeling disenfranchised, John Wilbur and about 500 of his supporters withdrew from New 11 The Wilburite opposition, however, largely overlooked Gurney’s clear emphasis on immediate, revelatory work of Christ. In the 1834 edition of Peculiarities, Gurney adds a major contribution, ‘On Universal Light’ (pp. 49–74), in which he develops clearly the biblical basis for the universal access to the saving work of Christ, emphasizing that it comes from without, rather than from within the individual. On continuing revelation, Gurney describes the immediate work of the inward Guide: Now, with Friends…it is a leading principle in religion, that the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is not only immediate and direct, but perceptible. We believe that we are furnished with an inward Guide or Monitor, who makes his voice known to us, and who, if faithfully obeyed and closely followed, will infallibly conduct us into true virtue and happiness, because he leads us into a real conformity with the will of God (Gurney, 1834, p. 76).
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England Yearly Meeting, and over the next nine years until Wilbur’s death in 1854, separations transpired in several other yearly meetings, forming the Conservative Friends movement. While Conservative Friends still maintained a fairly orthodox approach to matters of faith and practice, embracing Scripture and Christ-centered living, their approach to the Inward Light was less suspect to evangelicals than that of Hicksite Friends. In that sense, rather than being excluded from the Orthodox Friends movement because of unsoundness of doctrine or praxis, the Wilburite Friends withdrew from the Orthodox Friends movement as a protest against perceived worldly and modern lifestyle compromises. They opposed the building of railroads and canals, as the Quaker industrialists were prone to do, and they sought to reverse the social progressivism of the Gurneyites. Departures from plain dress and the introduction of music were opposed by Conservative Friends on the basis of traditionalistic interests. The first four crises of Quakerism reflect the struggle for leadership-clarification in the first generation of Friends, and the three crises in the nineteenth century led to the four separate Quaker associations in America. While the separations themselves need not be regarded as evil, they nonetheless betray a painful set of realities within a movement otherwise dedicated to consensus and unitive corporate decision making. David Holden identifies five factors contributing to divisions and separations among Friends, including a) socially important issues, b) two groups taking different sides, c) links within groups growing to outweigh links between them, d) the introduction of a new issue that divides the groups acutely, and e) a concerted effort to justify one’s position and to garner support from others (1988, p. 148). It is characteristically on this final point that appeals to continuing revelation have become instruments of leverage, and thus factors of harm or even evil. Analysis In the light of such developments, an analysis of continuing revelation as a reality and an appeal lends itself to the following impressions. 1. When the theme of continuing revelation is applied to other Quakers as a challenge, it is often with divisive results. Rather than coming together and seeking a common way forward, leading Friends such as John Perrot and Elias Hicks posed their convictions in divisive ways. The likes of George Keith and Isaac Crewdson responded in equally divisive ways. In all of these cases, other significant issues deserved to be addressed (preferential honor, forsaking the Peace Testimony, materialism, heretical teaching, etc.), but appeals to continuing revelation or the Inward Light had polarizing effects. Forcible appeals to direct revelation are always problematic. When one’s position is rooted in a privileged ascertainment of the Divine Will, alternative views get regarded as going against God, inevitably resulting in division. 2. Appeals to continuing revelation that are used to defend sacrilege force a choice between one’s belief in spiritual leadings and a shameful or questionable action. Numerous factors affect the dilemma: especially the
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spiritual groundedness of the individual and the character of the action. In the case of Nayler, the fact that Martha Simmonds and others saw Nayler as competing with Fox cannot but have tainted the purity of the leading. And, since Nayler failed to explain the basis for the leading, his maintaining the revealed character of the action set up a dichotomy between his appeal to continuing revelation and a blasphemous act. In the larger public, continuing revelation lost, and this set back the advance of the Quaker movement. It certainly suffered embarrassment in the larger world, and later appeals to spiritual leadings could always be tempered by the memory of the Nayler incident. 3. When appeals to continuing revelation are used to excuse heresy and ignorance, it comes across as shallow and theologically irresponsible. Appeals to continuing revelation have greater weight when seasoned with wisdom and knowledge. In the case of Hannah Barnard, her rejection of the Bible was at least in part due to her rejecting the wars of the Old Testament. Rather than work through the exegetical difficulties, acknowledging the many appeals to peace and nonviolence in the Old and New Testaments, she disparaged the Bible claiming a superior revelation. In the case of Elias Hicks, his Christology was adoptionistic – an early heresy rejected by the Church for considered reasons. In these and other instances, appeals to continuing revelation fall flat when perceived to be excusing theological inadequacy – intentionally or unwittingly. 4. When appeals to continuing revelation are used to defend personal autonomy at the expense of corporate accountability, unity is forsaken, and fellowship is damaged. If one is genuinely led by God, that leading will be confirmed by others who are also in touch with God. Therefore, if one is unwilling to submit to the discernment of the group, one cannot be said to be seeking first the Divine Will. Even if one believes that God’s revealing work is unfailing, human apprehensions of it are not. The absence of shame or guilt does not mean an action is the right thing to do. While Paul believes the Gentiles have ‘a law unto themselves’, he also claims God sometimes ‘gives people over’ to their lusts and wicked ways so that they feel no conviction against their sinful practices (Ro. 1:18–2:16). Inspired individualism can be a reality, but it is extremely vulnerable to self-deception and to mistaking advantage, actualization, lust, greed, and pride for the good. This is where Quaker commitments to corporate discernment should indeed be put into practice. 5. Ironically, one of the most divisive appeals to continuing revelation has been in the defense of traditionalism and sectarianism. The Wilkinson–Story separations sought to preserve some of the earlier vision of Friends, and their concerns are well taken, as are those of the Wilburite challenge to the materialistic inclinations of wealthier Friends at the expense of modesty, accompanied by their testimony to plain living. Leading Philadelphia Friends wrongly opposed Keith, however, in his challenge to their compromising the Peace Testimony, and his well-founded critique was pilloried on the basis of his having departed from the ‘traditional’ Quaker stance on continuing revelation. His intemperate actions and attitudes, of course, aided his critics.
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This leads back to the first problem, though, in that when previous discernings of continuing revelation are contravened by later ones, the group faces a conflict in knowing how to proceed. Ways Forward In the light of the above analysis, several ways forward present themselves. 1. To deal with conflicting appeals to continuing revelation within the movement, Friends must develop means of testing leadings and subjecting them to evaluative criteria. Not all claims to religious authority are equally valid, and just as biblical and traditional Christian groups must find ways of reaching unity within their movements, so must pneumatic groups. The belief that, because Divine Guidance is indeed a reality everything done must be done on the basis of immediate revelation, is exaggerated. If revelation in the present is valid, so is revelation in the past. The new wine and new wineskins of today become the old wine and old wineskins of tomorrow, and this will always be so (Mk. 2:22). The point is to appreciate the practical-but-limited value of the wineskins, as the stirrings of the Spirit always have conventional implications. 2. To avoid excusing unbecoming actions performed in the name of continuing revelation, Friends need to distinguish between a genuine leading and appeals to such. What might have been perceived as a leading in the first instance is often regarded differently upon reflecting on the outcomes. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures will not lead in ways counter to them, either historically, or with immediacy. Therefore, such objective referents as Scripture and church history avail community and individual alike with appropriate resources for testing present leadings and particular actions. Even if there is no prohibition biblically, however, an action demeaning the worth of others or bringing embarrassment to the larger group cannot be regarded an authentic leading. 3. To deal with the problems of biblical ignorance and theological inadequacy, there is no substitute for acquiring the skills and knowledge required for religious leadership. This is especially compelling for those who feel inclined to claim access to continuing revelation. Fox was right in declaring that theological education in itself (being ‘bred at Oxford or Cambridge’) is insufficient for acquiring spiritual empowerment for ministry. He was not advocating, though, the willful neglect of Scripture, nor was he endorsing theological illiteracy. He knew the Bible by heart and was thus able to challenge those whose interpretations were wrong-headed despite formal education. Biblical, historical, and theological foundations for the discerning of continuing revelation are vital if those leadings are to live up to their fullest authentic potential. 4. If a leading is a true one, it should be able to be discerned equally by the individual and the group. The individual must therefore be willing to submit
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his or her sense of leading to the larger community. Only when one’s life is given totally and unreservedly to God can one expect to be in a trustworthy place for discerning continuing revelation, and only from the foot of the Cross can the way of Christ be discerned. This is also required of the community. Therefore, when conflicts arise, rather than allow individuals and groups to polarize and for discussions to evolve into win–lose situations, the discussion must be brought back to the singular aspiration of individual and community alike – minding the Divine Will. When minding the Light and following Christ is the common goal, all become equally involved in helping one another get there. Win–lose discussions are thus transformed into win–win explorations, providing a way forward without dissention or division. 5. Friends have rightly embraced the biblical and traditional good news that Christ leads authentic seekers of truth in life-producing ways, and this is a tenet of faith worth maintaining. Timeless truths, however, are expressed in timely ways, and distinguishing the value from the application is essential to retain the relevance of each. It is vital to refuse to allow appeals to continuing revelation, or accusations of its denial, to be employed rhetorically in the interest of an ulterior motive. Not all appeals to Scripture or theology imply dogmatic creedalism, and not all appeals to continuing revelation imply an authentic leading. Addressing why something is a concern, however, is helpful. A proper understanding of tradition distills the larger concern from its applications, and the distinguishing of the two maintains traditional vitality – even in terms of the traditional valuing of continuing revelation. Conclusion Although continuing revelation is a central part of the Christian Gospel recovered historically by Friends, it can also become a factor of evil. Where the Divine Will is discerned authentically, the result is life producing. Where continuing revelation is inadequately discerned or employed rhetorically as a means of furthering another agenda, however, suspicion and distrust are created. This is especially the case when continuing revelation is employed to excuse or legitimate heretical teachings or sacrilegious actions. Given the high value of continuing revelation within the Quaker movement, distinguishing its flawed inferences and rhetorical appeals from authentic discernment is essential. This can be done by testing subjective leadings against Scripture, historical tradition, theological reflection, and corporate accountability. The life dedicated to minding the Divine Will above all else will be willing to subject its impressions to other measures; the lack of willingness to do so negates the credibility of the professed leading. Despite its vulnerability to misconstrual or falsification, continuing revelation continues to be gospel where it is approached authentically. Anything less, while not necessarily heresy or sacrilege, can become a factor of evil, diminishing the authority of such appeals for future generations.
PART II Historical Perspectives
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Chapter 3
George Fox’s Witness Regarding Good and Evil Douglas Gwyn
George Fox (1624–91) was the central figure in the emergence of the Quaker movement in England during the 1650s. Many early Quaker beliefs and approaches to worship and ministry were prefigured by other radical groups that flourished in the preceding decade, during England’s Civil War. Such groups included Baptists, Seekers, Ranters, and Diggers. Many were informal, experimental, and ephemeral. It was Fox’s genius to integrate and synthesize various ideas and experiments of these groups into a coherent and lasting religious movement. His preaching and spiritual counsel gathered large numbers of these radicals. These included gifted leaders, men and women, who gained new clarity and empowerment through Fox’s message. The earliest names they gave their movement were ‘Children of the Light’, ‘Friends of the Truth’, and the ‘Lamb’s War’. (‘Quaker’ was an epithet bestowed by hostile outsiders, with reference to the intense shaking that occurred at times in their worship or during an individual’s conversion.) These names implied (among other things) Quaker understandings of good versus evil, truth versus deceit, light versus darkness, and New Jerusalem versus Babylon. This essay is an overview of George Fox’s understanding of good and evil, which was generally shared by the Quaker movement and is evident in the writings of its other leaders. Civil War and Aftermath The English Civil War, fought largely over issues of Church and state, produced no religious settlement by the end of the 1640s. But the War opened social space for an expanding array of religious and political ideas, alternatives, agendas. As a new Puritan ruling class attempted to consolidate its victory over Charles I, many common people felt betrayed. Many had supported Parliament and Oliver Cromwell in hope of achieving religious and civil liberties. Some had even believed that, with the beheading of Charles, perhaps Christ would return in glory, or that some other eschatological (end-time) promises from Scripture would be realized. By 1650, however, such hopes were fading. Religious and political radicalism collapsed as Cromwell and his generals moved to discipline Royalists and radicals alike. Losers in
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this struggle found ample opportunity to ponder the intractability and pervasiveness of evil in English society.1 The Quaker movement emerged as a recognizable phenomenon in 1652 in the North. There was no reason to expect a radical resurgence, but the movement rapidly expanded and escalated as a grassroots challenge to the new regime. Fox’s preaching tapped resentment against the established Church and gave new political voice to a traditional Northern bluntness. Early Friends boldly attacked both the political deceit and the religious conceits of England’s new ruling interests. Early Quaker witness combined vituperative denunciation of past and present rulers with the annunciation of a new spiritual and socio-political basis. Fox’s Apocalyptic Preaching Fox was an apocalyptic preacher.2 By ‘apocalypse’ I mean a revelation (the literal meaning of the Greek noun apokalypsis) available to all people. In biblical tradition, apocalyptic revelation has as its content the end, goal, destiny of the world. As such, this revelation is not metaphysical but metatemporal in character. It reveals the eternal status and ultimate destiny of temporal phenomena. It engages not only individual lives but entire societies, even the course of history. The biblical understanding of apocalypse is moral in character. It reveals God’s will and vindicates God’s justice on earth. (For example, Paul writes in Romans 1:17–18, ‘For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed [verb apokalypto] through faith for faith…. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth’.) Apocalypse reveals God’s judgment; it creates moral crisis (the Greek word for judgment is krisis) in individuals. Through prophetic confrontation with violent and unjust powers, this revelation also induces social crisis and conflict. These apocalyptic qualities of early Christian proclamation, found acutely in the ministry of Jesus, the apostleship of Paul and the Book of Revelation, are crucial to understanding the witness of George Fox and the character of the early Quaker movement. Fox’s central message was (with minor variations) that ‘Christ was come to teach his people himself and bring them off all the world’s ways and teachers to Christ, their way to God’ (Fox, 1952, pp. 78, 107, 143, 149–50, 236–7). This was a ‘second-coming’ message of Christ’s return, albeit not in the outward, physical manner typically expected. Fox proclaimed that Christ’s return is known through his light abiding in each person’s heart or conscience (see John 1:9). This universalist epistemology (basis of knowing) was foundational to Quaker spiritual and moral life, worship and organization, and egalitarian social ethics. In the earliest years of the movement, it was even advanced as the new socio-spiritual basis for national political 1 Christopher Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (1971) offers a revealing study of the problem of evil in Puritan and post-Puritan thought, following the movement of identifications of ‘Antichrist’, from foreign Roman Catholic threats, to domestic power struggles, to personal captivity. 2 For more on George Fox’s apocalyptic preaching and spiritual counsel, see Gwyn, 1986.
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life in England. But the broad scope of this apocalyptic vision was grounded in a relentless confrontation with deceit and evil in the human heart, and its accumulated conventions in religious, social and political life. The Actions of Christ’s Light Fox’s spiritual counsel helped disillusioned radicals and forlorn souls ‘turn to the light’ within them. In so doing, they saw themselves as never before. Fox counseled that the first action of the light is to reveal sin and darkness. Individuals were ‘convinced’ – that is, convicted by the light’s revelation. They became vulnerable children of this light, disowning themselves (i.e. the false, socially constructed self) in order to befriend and follow its truth. Only then could Christ rebuild their lives on the foundation of truth. Fox’s counsel appears to be patterned in part upon the advice of Jesus to Nicodemus, describing the apocalyptic day of judgment as the light coming into the world. People generally prefer the darkness, for their deeds are evil. But those who do the truth (or hunger to do it) come to the light and let their deeds be revealed (John 3:19–22). So we find a linking of terms: light–good–truth versus darkness–evil–deceit. Fox drew these terms from biblical sources, but developed them into an original regimen of spiritual counsel. In this apocalyptic spiritual formation, questions of good and evil are predicated upon an epistemological break with worldly/mundane ways of knowing and judging. Christ has returned in glory, but the glory is not seen through normal channels of human consciousness. And when it is first beheld, the glory is dreadful. The light reveals ways in which the individual’s mind and life have been alienated, estranged from God. When Fox first confronted the light within himself, the misery he had known as a forlorn Seeker only intensified. But ‘[t]he Lord did gently lead me along, and did let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, and surpasseth all knowledge men have in the natural state, or can get by history and books; and that love did let me see myself as I was without him’ (Fox, 1952, pp. 13–14). Later, as a spiritual counselor to other bewildered Seekers, Fox wrote, I am the light of the world [John 8:12], which do enlighten every man that cometh into the world’ [John 1:9], saith Christ…. This is the light that shows you the evil actions you have acted…. Now if you attend to this light it will let you see all you have done contrary to it; and loving it, it will turn you from your evil deeds … to Christ (Fox, 1891, vol. 1, pp. 274–5).
This painful revelation of judgment is where all must begin. It constitutes a Copernican revolution in human knowledge and being-in-the-world. It reorients normal, egoistic consciousness toward a previously repressed divine source. Loving the light, abiding in its painful revelation, is the beginning of a new construction of self. Again, this is an apocalyptic revelation, as it brings eschatological (final, endtime) judgment into present experience, and begins a divine work of new creation in the self. And, through the gathering of re-created selves, the light begins to shape a new social world.
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The light’s judgment also reveals the law of the Spirit, a teacher of righteousness: The law of the Spirit crosseth the fleshly mind, spirit and will, which lives in disobedience, and doth not keep within the law of the Spirit. I saw this law was the pure love of God which was upon me, and which I must go through, though it troubled me while I was under it; for I could not be dead to the law but through the law [Gal. 2:19] which did judge and condemn that which is to be condemned. I saw many talked of that law, who had never known the law to be their schoolmaster [Gal. 3:24] (Fox, 1952, p. 16).
This law of the Spirit is the substance of the laws revealed to Moses. One discovers God’s law inwardly, in the Spirit, and learns to act concretely in life by that law. Thus, only through the law does one become dead to the law in Christ. Hence, the light/Spirit instigates a troubling and intense process of moral circumspection and reformation. One must ‘take up the cross daily’ to follow Christ in fulfilling and ending the law. Friends were expected to live out certain corporate ‘testimonies’ of Quaker faith as a fulfillment of this law of the Spirit. These involved concrete behaviors such as plainness of speech and lifestyle, nonviolence, and egalitarian social relations. Puritans accused Quakers of adopting a legalistic righteousness through their peculiar codes of conduct. Quakers countered that Puritans ‘preached sin to the grave’ by emphasizing a righteousness imputed by Christ to individuals who can never overcome sin in this life. Slowly, this painful revelation begins to establish a positive righteousness: [I]n the light that shows you all this, stand; neither go to the right hand, nor to the left [Joshua 1:7]; here patience is exercised, here is thy will subjected, here thou will see the mercies of God made manifest in death … here thou wilt find a saviour, and the election thou wilt come to know, and the reprobation, and what is cast from God, and what enters; he that can own me here, and receive my testimony into his heart, the immortal seed is born up, and his own will thrust forth … for the first step to peace [Luke 1:79] is to stand still in the light (which discovers things contrary to it) for power and strength to stand against that nature which the light discovers: for here grace grows, here is God alone glorified and exalted, and the unknown truth, unknown to the world, made manifest, which draws up that which lies in prison [1 Peter 3:19], and refresheth it in time, up to God, out of time, through time (Fox, 1831, vol. 4, pp. 17–18).
The metatemporality of Fox’s apocalyptic spiritual counsel is audibly heard here, as he describes the eternal light’s work in relation to time. We will return to that aspect later. Note that, as ‘light’ evokes the epistemological aspect of Christ’s presence, the ‘seed’ of God raised up in the heart suggests the ontological aspect. The new being emerges from the painful death of the old self. Human effort in this transformation consists mainly in humility, patience, surrender, stillness in the light. Fox rejects the Calvinist teaching that God predestines/elects only some souls for salvation (that is, to receive Christ’s imputed righteousness). He instead insists that there is only one elect seed: Christ. To die to the false self and allow the seed of Christ to rise within is to come into the election.
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Christ the seed within becomes a new power, a new volition that can stand against temptation. ‘[F]or having a light from the word by which all things were made, and keeping the word, the power is received against all temptation …. Look not at the temptation, but look at Christ, and there thou wilt receive power’ (Fox, 1831, vol. 4, pp. 303–304). Because the light is the same word of God that created all things (John 1:1–5), it begins to establish the individual in right relation to the objects of creation, the dominion and stewardship for which humans were created: Fox teaches that the light will guide people toward conservation and moderate consumption in God’s creation (1831, vol. 8, p. 34; 1952, p. 206). So everyone of us, that is come into the seed of God, that bruiseth the serpent’s head [Genesis 3:15; Romans 16:20], that led man from God, who is … the author of separation from God, and the original of sin, which led man from his dominion over the handiworks of God [Gen. 1:26–27]; which the royal seed Christ destroys, and renews man again in the image of God, and brings him again into his dominion over the handiworks of God (Fox, 1831, vol. 7, p. 167).
So those who persevere through the light’s transformative work know in their own bodies the promises of God fulfilled, and the power of evil and temptation overcome. This sets humans in right relation to God’s creation. The light also creates a bond of unity among those who attend to it. This is the true foundation of Christian community and demands a radical reformulation of the Church. ‘It is one power that raiseth up the seed; and your faith being out of words, in the power, ye are all one, and that seed is one; which seed is Christ, and he is the master’ (Fox, 1831, vol. 7, p. 58). This inwardly gathered Church and the mercurial network of Quaker communities that developed in the 1650s posed a powerful alternative to the established Church and its enfranchised clerical class (see below). Fox witnesses the light’s transforming power in his life coming to culmination in 1648: Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God [see Gen. 3:24]. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell (Fox, 1952, p. 27).
With the return to Eden, Fox came to know a perfecting moral power in the light of Christ. The return to paradise is a protological motif common in apocalyptic spirituality, where protology and eschatology, beginning and end, come together in Christ, the Alpha and Omega. Indeed, Fox adds that he saw into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even unto a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall … in which the admirable works of creation, and the virtues thereof, may be known, through the openings of the divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made (Fox, 1952, p. 27).
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Particularly in his early years of ministry, Fox occasionally claimed to have attained that state of perfection in Christ’s Spirit. Such claims scandalized his Puritan contemporaries, leading to more than one imprisonment. As the light deepened Fox’s insights into himself and the human condition generally, he began to see into people’s spiritual states. This gift of ‘discernment’ served him powerfully over the years to come in his ministry as a spiritual counselor. But beginning to recognize so many forms of sin/evil/deceit in people was troubling at times. And I cried to the Lord, saying, ‘Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?’ And the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings (Fox, 1952, p. 19).
An Integrative Reading of Scripture in the Light Fox’s sense of Christ’s redemption integrated the biblical witness from Genesis to Revelation. In 1671 he had a vision of the New Jerusalem: The spiritual reign of Christ in this great city … is within the light [where] there is no place or language, but there his voice may be heard. The gate stands open night and day that all may come in here. … I am just in the city. … All that are within the light of Christ and his faith … all that come to this heavenly city, New Jerusalem … must come to the truth and light in their hearts (Fox, 1911, vol. 2, pp. 170–74).
One notices the experiential and moral grounding of Fox’s apocalyptic vision. It is not speculative or predictive. To walk in the New Jerusalem, the end of the world, is to walk here and now in the light. In Fox’s understanding, a faithful following of (and growth in) Christ’s light takes the individual on a spiritual path that recapitulates in personal experience the salvation history of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. That integrative, experiential reading of Scripture led Fox and early Friends to insist that the truth of any Scripture can be known only through personal experience. Otherwise, one only has opinions about it: I saw also how people read the Scriptures without a right sense of them, and without duly applying them to their own states. For, when they read that death reigned from Adam to Moses, that the law and the prophets were until John, and that the least in the kingdom is greater than John, they read these things without them and applied them to others without them, and the things were true of others without them, but they did not turn in to find the truth of these things in themselves. But as these things came to be opened in me, 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
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as this ministration is passed through, an entrance comes to be known into the everlasting kingdom (Fox, 1952, p. 31).
So the mystery of faith revealed by the light leads the individual to know personally the truth of the history of salvation recorded in Scripture. Conversely, the history coded in Scripture provides the template for understanding personal experience in the light. Truth and Deceit: Fox’s Reading of Genesis 3 We have seen the spiritual and moral dynamics of Fox’s teaching on the light’s work. We will now approach the question of good and evil from the other direction, delving further into Fox’s reading of Scripture and his experiential understanding of its witness. Fox’s radical, egalitarian epistemology is supported by his reading of the story of ‘the Fall’ in Genesis 3. His 1679 tract, Concerning the Living God of Truth; and the World’s God, in Whom There Is No Truth (reprinted 1831, vol. 6, pp. 3–37), reviews that reading. In what follows, I draw upon that tract, along with other writings of Fox. Fox used many of the names found in Scripture for the devil, such as ‘prince of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2); ‘god of the world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4), ‘father of lies’ (John 8:44), ‘deceiver’ and ‘accuser’ (Revelation 12:9,10), and ‘tempter’ (1 Corinthians 7:5) (e.g. Fox, 1831, vol. 7, p. 165). Fox affirms that Satan, the devil, is a creature of God. Satan was not created evil but became evil by going out from the truth (1952, p. 212), by falling from the light (1831, vol. 3, p. 102). Therefore, Satan’s words never proceed from the truth, but are grounded in deceit (1831, vol. 7, p. 133). Because Satan fell because of pride (see Isaiah 14:12–15), Fox calls Satan ‘the king of pride’ (1831, vol. 8, p. 268). He opposes the contemporary Ranter teaching that God reconciles the devil. Rather, God destroys the devil (1831, vol. 6, pp. 428–9), will crush the devil (1952, p. 212); will cast him into the lake of fire (1831, vol. 6, p. 265). So Fox’s view does not tend toward the monism of the Ranters. But neither is it dualistic, for the devil is not on equal ontological grounding with God. Satan is real, yet out of the truth. Fox teaches that, in rebellion from God, the devil envied the happiness of man and woman in Eden. Indeed, Satan envies all who are in the truth, and seeks to destroy them (Fox, 1952, p. 13) by drawing them out of the truth, by darkening them, separating them from God (8:90). Fox understands the story of the Fall in Genesis as a narrative portrayal of the inner condition of sin, so he treats it in an experiential manner. The serpent inspired envy in Eve by taking hold of the prohibition against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The serpent deceived Eve by telling her that God had lied: they would not die if they ate the forbidden fruit; indeed, they would become wise like God. Envy began to separate her from God. As she and Adam were drawn into temptation and ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, it turned their eyes to the outward, away from the inward knowledge of God. Then their eyes were cast downward, to see their nakedness and experience shame. Blame soon followed, as Adam blamed Eve for their error, and Eve blamed the serpent.
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Thus, Fox concludes, they were beguiled of their simplicity (see 2 Corinthians 11:3). ‘So man did eat: the eye out, the ear out, at last the mouth out too. … Man and woman: begot a wisdom by which in process of time they knew not God. And here came the Lamb to be slain from the foundation of the world’ (Fox, 1973, p. 503). Fox notes that they went on living outwardly, in a realm of outward knowledge. But they died inwardly. That is, they died from God’s image in them, losing intimacy with God and awareness of God’s wisdom. They were now imprinted with the image of the serpent, feeding henceforth upon lies and half-truths. They became not wise but fools. The curse on their existence extended to the ground, the creation over which they had been given dominion (1831, vol. 6, p. 10). Their outward-mindedness led them to worship the creatures as gods, making images and bowing down before them. In Fox’s view, human culture in general is a realm of proliferating idolatry, devotion to false gods, false images of reality, ‘the mind roving abroad among the creatures’ (1831, vol. 7, p. 71). This suggests a fundamental shift in orientation from the one to the many (1831, vol. 3, p. 493), from dominion over the creatures in God’s image to captivity under them (1831, vol. 4, p. 321). Fox defines idolatry broadly as service to the inventions of our own brains (1831, vol. 7, p. 325). This captivity is also a captivity in time. Fox stresses that the god of this world had a beginning in time and will also have an end in time. But ‘the living eternal God is … everlasting, immortal, eternal, who lives for ever, who is without time, and over time, and hath all times in his hand’ (1831, vol. 6, p. 15). True integrity, and the true unity of reality can be known only in God. Idolatry separates one quality or aspect from the whole, just as Eve was tempted to separate knowledge/wisdom out from wholeness of relationship with God. Fox does not embrace ‘original sin’ in the sense of a human taint passed from generation to generation in a quasi-genetic fashion. He refers to Satan as ‘the original of sin’ (1831, vol. 7, p. 165), the cause of every sin (1891, vol. 2, p. 435). But only disobedience, actual personal transgression, puts us under his power of alienation from the light, and places us under the power of death (6:21; 4:218). Nevertheless, a weight and momentum of sin passes from generation to generation through outward influences, as individuals grow up among alienated social norms and institutions. Fox affirms that the god of the world holds sways among these ‘principalities and powers’, these ‘high places in the earth’ (1831, vol. 6, p. 19). Fox utilizes the feudal legal term, ‘entailment’, whereby a line of inheritance runs indefinitely through the generations of a family, to assert that Satan ‘would have by entail, an inheritance of sin in man and woman, from generation to generation’. The outward laws of Moses do not reach deeply enough to cut off the devil’s entailment. The outward law can only take hold of the outward act of sin. Christ, the seed of the woman who crushes the serpents head (Genesis 3:15), truly overcomes (1891, vol. 1, p. 389). Christ’s inward law, known only by the Spirit, takes hold upon the inward condition of sin and overcomes it (1952, p. 22). Thus, it is crucial to ‘strike at the power that captivates’ (1831, vol. 3, p. 383). All the same, Fox can be very specific about actual sinful behaviors to be overcome through the light and power of Christ (e.g. 1831, vol. 6, pp. 20–21), because it is still actual, specific transgression that separates us from God.
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Fox suggests that Satan deceives us in two ways. First, he convinces us that we can go higher than God created us. This is the universal deception, portrayed in the story of Eden. Second, Satan deceives us that we can never regain paradise, because we can never overcome sin in this life. We are under his sway as long as we live in his world. This second deception is found in the Church’s own teaching, in its apostasy from the power of Christ’s Spirit to overcome sin. Here the protological, universal setting of Fox’s view of good and evil shifts towards the eschatological, ecclesiastical and revolutionary thrust of his teaching. Fox shows affinity here with the early chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Paul first addresses good and evil in the universal realm of the Gentiles, then revisits the same problem in the realm of historical revelation (the laws of Moses). Likewise, Fox shifts to the problem of the Church in his day. Christian Scriptures cannot save any more than the laws of Moses do. They simply become the objects of a specialized idolatry for an alienated human consciousness, no matter how piously motivated. Here, Fox’s Scriptural frame of reference shifts from Genesis to Revelation. The serpent’s subtlety in Eden is magnified to the dragon’s demonic power in society, particularly as it infects the Church in apostasy from Christ. Many radical individuals and groups had used the exotic images in Revelation to rethink English religion and politics during the Civil War decade of the 1640s. But, like most millenarian thinkers today, their ideas remained mostly speculative and predictive. Fox was a true apocalyptic visionary, whose reading of Scripture was fully engaged with personal experience in the light of Christ. He and early Friends claimed a moral authority and spiritual empowerment that made them not spectators but participants in the apocalypse. They were engaged as the forces of Christ, the Lamb, in cosmic conflict with the powers of the dragon. The Lamb’s War: Fox’s Reading of the Book of Revelation There is not space here to lay out adequately Fox’s engaged reading of Revelation (see Gwyn, 1986, Chapter 11). A few key identifications must suffice. Fox understood the various demonic portents in Revelation to be embodied in the Church–state complex of his own day. First, Babylon, the demonic prostitute, stands for Fox as a figure of adulterated religion generally. Her ‘wine of fornication’ inebriates and seduces men and women into idolatrous and false forms of religion. ‘This woman, the false Church … is whored from the spirit of God’ (1831, vol. 6, p. 158). But in Revelation 17:3, Babylon is seen riding upon the Beast. Fox interprets this conjunction as the state-sponsored Church, coercing human conscience, forcing men and women into false, formal religion. Thus, the Beast adds coercion to Babylon’s seduction. A second beast raised from the sea by the dragon, the False Prophet (Revelation 13:11– 18), causes the people to worship the Beast. Fox identifies this as the enfranchised clerical class, supported by state-enforced tithes, teaching people doctrines that keep them captivated in alienation from the light and power of Christ in themselves. Fox charged the national Church’s clergy with keeping the people in bondage to sin: ‘do not you and your false Church say, that people must sin while they be on the earth,
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and so preach up sin? … and what good doth your preaching do, if they must have sin while they are upon the earth?’ (1831, vol. 4, p. 188). Fox and early Friends viewed state-enforced religion as the key social evil to confront and overcome. So long as people’s consciences were benumbed by coerced conformity to formalistic faith, they would not be enlivened to reform themselves or social institutions generally. Quakers called their movement, particularly as it confronted false religion, the Lamb’s War. The name was inspired by the image of Christ the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, surrounded by a vanguard of men and women overcoming sin and standing with the Lamb against the dragon and his forces (Revelation 14:1–5). Fox represented the Quaker movement as that vanguard, taking on the full power of the established Church: [T]he Quakers are risen up in the night of apostasy, and discover you all what you are in, and what you went from, and what hath been lost since the days of the apostles. And an earthquake is coming upon you that hath not been since the foundation of the world [Revelation 16:18], out of which earthquake we are come into that which cannot be shaken (Fox, 1831, vol. 3, p. 99).
Friends understood the physical quaking in their meetings to be the earthquake of Revelation. It was the power of the Seed, Christ, shaking them out of the earth, out of the serpent/dragon’s captivity. Their confrontation with the established Church, parish by parish, was a nonviolent cultural revolution shaking the foundations not only of a violently enforced Church but of a violent and alienated social order generally. They suffered mob violence and state persecution for their relentless assault upon the national Church and the inequitable social order it sanctified. They understood these violent reprisals to be the continuing debauchery of Babylon, drunk on the blood of saints, martyrs, and prophets (Revelation 17:6) (Fox, 1831, vol. 8, p. 24). So, while early Friends steadfastly maintained nonviolent tactics in their Lamb’s War, they understood that radical social transformation is highly conflictual. Hatred and violence are predictable reactions when the devil’s deception and captivating regime are exposed. Conclusion Emerging at the end of the English Reformation, early Quakers shared with their Puritan contemporaries an acute consciousness of sin and evil. Many Seekers who became Friends were hyper-Puritans with debilitating fixations upon their own personal sin. They were unable to accept assurances from Puritan divines that they might be among the elect, that their sins might be ‘covered’ by Christ’s imputed righteousness. They longed for real victory over sin in this life. Fox’s apocalyptic preaching of Christ’s return by the light in their consciences gave these troubled souls a powerful experience of God’s power striking at the root of sin within them.3 As they gathered into communities that waited upon the Lord together, hearing 3 For more on English Seekers and the journeys of many of them into the Quaker movement, see Gwyn, 2000.
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and obeying Christ in concrete codes of behavior, they experienced victory in their own lives. They also formed a revolutionary vanguard of resistance to a clerical establishment that preached the inescapability of sin. Moreover, they founded egalitarian communities of faith living a peaceful and plain life that stood in stark contrast to (and radical critique of) the new, conspicuous consumerism of the nascent capitalist society around them.4 Fox clearly attests to the reality of sin and evil in the world. But more vibrantly, he witnesses to the overcoming power of God’s goodness, wherever men and women are willing to stand still in the light, wait upon the Lord, and see themselves clearly, and be led in new paths of righteousness. In a sense, evil does not exist for Fox. The devil is merely a pack of lies: [I]f there be no truth in this world’s god, the prince of the air, then what is in him? Nothing but chaff, corruptions, sin, deceit and lies, falsehood, envy, malice, theft, murder, death, darkness, bondage, ungodliness, unrighteousness and unholiness, from this foul, unclean spirit, by which he burdens and imbondages the creation, and makes it to groan, and all that obey him, and disobey God and Christ (Fox, 1831, vol. 6, pp. 18–19).
This ‘nothing’ is real by its effects, wherever men and women succumb to its temptation. The power of evil is the power we give it. But that makes it an enormous power in the world, reshaping all in its own image. So evil is not on the same ontological grounding with God’s goodness and God’s truth. God created all things good (Genesis 1:25) (Fox, 1831, vol. 6, p. 3). The devil is God’s creature gone wrong. He creates nothing, but is able to draw men and women (and with them the creation) out of ‘the hidden unity of the Eternal Being’ (1952, p. 28). He accomplishes this most fundamentally through the spirit of envy, the perception of separateness from the unity that is the true foundation of existence. Likewise, evil is not on the same metatemporal grounding with good. The devil’s regime began in time and will end in time. God and divine truth are eternal, comprehending time. The apocalyptic revelation of the light puts the unreality of the devil’s disorder in the perspective of eternity. It destroys sin and corruption by the very power of its revelation, breaking Satan’s spell upon human consciousness. By 1666 (a significant year for readers of the Book of Revelation), the Lamb’s War was being defeated and re-contained through state persecution and popular backlash against radical religion and politics. Quakers were forced to adopt a postapocalyptic, sectarian mode. They bargained with the Restoration government for religious toleration by re-presenting themselves as ‘harmless’. Their nonviolent cultural revolution had failed. Christ’s light in people’s consciences had not ended the world, had not unseated the world’s god. England embarked upon a prosperous, anti-utopian phase of colonial expansion and capitalist formation.
4
For more on the revolutionary politics of early Friends, see Gwyn, 1995.
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Chapter 4
Early Quakers and Divine Liberation from the Universal Power of Sin Carole Dale Spencer
Introduction George Fox confidently claimed that the Lord’s power was over all, including the sin and evil that infected the whole world. This optimistic view was revealed to Fox in a vision of ‘the infinite love of God’ which he described metaphorically as the ‘infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness’ (Fox, 1952, p. 19). Early Quakers did not generally debate the nature of evil, or speculate on its origins, or concern themselves with the question of theodicy. They did not dispute the traditional Christian claim that all human beings are sinners. They accepted without question the traditional belief that evil was a real and pervasive force in the world, personified by the Serpent. Quakers accepted the traditional Christian doctrine of humanity’s fallen condition. They disputed only one aspect of traditional Western Christian belief in ‘original sin’ in that they understood sin as being ‘original’ only in that it derived from the fall from perfection of the first human, Adam, but not that the guilt of sin was ‘imputed’ to infants at birth. But like all orthodox Christians they understood sin as universal, in that all human beings are prone to sin, and will inevitably sin, through the mind and the flesh. But infants are not born with a sinful nature nor are they born with guilt, they only become sinners when they join with sin. The Quaker doctrine of the Fall is found in Robert Barclay’s fourth proposition ‘Concerning the condition of Man in the Fall’ (Barclay, 2002, pp. 84–96). Against the dominating Western Augustinian tradition of total depravity, Quakers maintained instead a sense that all humans were deprived of the original holiness in which they were created in the image of God, and though fallen, still retained a divine Light within. This divine Light, when awakened by faith, reveals sin, convicts and purifies through a process of sanctification that restores the original image of God and original holiness. Their confidence that sin and evil could be overcome and holiness restored through the Light of Christ distinguished early Quaker belief from that of their Puritan contemporaries. But rather than their view of evil, it was the Quaker view of perfection that separated them from their co-religionists. This chapter will therefore focus on the distinct early Quaker belief in perfection as divine liberation from the universal power of sin. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how the traditional Christian view of sin and evil finds divine resolution in the Quaker concept of perfection.
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The Quaker view of sin and evil and the concept of perfection have more in common with the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, which asserts that the nature of good is stronger than the habit of evil (Lossky, 1976, pp. 128–9) than the Calvinist Protestant tradition in which Quakerism arose in the seventeenth century. (However, this goodness, just as in Calvinism and all Orthodox Christianity, is not the result of human goodness but the grace of God.) For early Quakers the goal of the spiritual life for every Christian is the recovery of the divine likeness, a process in the Eastern Orthodox tradition called theosis or deification, and often described as ‘perfection’. In perfection the diseased condition of sin (the old Adam) is healed when the new Adam is ‘disjoined from the evil seed and united to the Divine Light’ (Barclay, 2002, p. 85). In perfection the lost holiness and immortality that characterize God are rejoined to the human made in his image, and the human being is brought to a state even higher than of Adam and Eve in paradise. Biblical Perfection In the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ Jesus challenged his disciples with a vision of perfection in this life: ‘Be perfect therefore as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48). Quoting Jesus’ admonition, George Fox gave his interpretation of what perfection meant: … he who was perfect comes to make man and woman perfect again and bring them again to the state God made them in; so he is the maker up of the breach and the peace betwixt God and man. … But I told them Christ was come freely, who hath perfected for ever by one offering all them that are sanctified, and renews them up in the image of God, as man and woman were in before they fell; and makes man and woman’s house as perfect again as God had made them at first (Fox, 1952, pp. 367–8).
Fox understood perfection as the return to the original God-likeness in which humanity was created, which Christ had restored through his incarnation and atonement. Early Quakers found the call to perfection not just in the Sermon on the Mount, but everywhere in the New Testament. In the Pauline letters perfection is described as a state of being ‘in Christ’. To be ‘in Christ’ meant freedom from sin: ‘If Christ be in you, the sinful body is dead’ (Rom. 8:9). To be ‘in Christ’ meant to comprehend ‘with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height’, and to be filled, like Christ, with ‘all the fullness of God’ (Eph. 3:18, 29; Col. 1:19). In the Gospel of John, the most mystical of the New Testament writings, which could be called the ‘Quaker Gospel’, because of its frequency of use in early Quaker writings, perfection is a common theme, in which the state of being ‘in Christ’ is extended to one of mutual indwelling: ‘Thou in me, and I in you’ (John 14:20; 17:21) and expressed metaphorically as ‘the vine and branches’ (John 15:4–5).
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The Effects of Perfection Early Quakers believed that by God’s grace (a mystical gift) the divine would come to be immanent in them, and ‘original sin’ would no longer hold them in chains. They could overcome the world, the flesh and the devil, and the power of sin’s hold, which was universal, could be broken. They described the spiritual empowerment they felt as a transcendence of the ‘sinful body’, which was the old self or nature imprisoned in sin. They believed in perfection as a supernatural destiny, not instantaneous, but which included continual growth in grace, nevertheless a destiny that could be realized in this world. ‘Born-again’, ‘new man’, ‘new creation’ or ‘new birth’1 were the terms most often employed to describe this dramatic life-changing experience of transformation. ‘I witness I am regenerate and born again of the immortal seed’, exclaims William Dewsbury (1655, pp. 12–14). Francis Howgill, writing in 1656, graphically describes this process: … I became a perfect fool, and knew nothing, as a man distracted; all was overturned, and I suffered loss of all. In all I ever did, I saw it was in the accursed nature. And something in me cried, ‘just and true is his judgment!’ My mouth was stopped, I dared not make mention of his name, I knew not God. And as I bore the indignation of the Lord, something rejoiced, the serpent’s head began to be bruised … and as I did give up all to the judgment, the captive came forth out of the prison and rejoiced, and my heart was filled with joy … Then I saw the cross of Christ and stood in it … And the new man was made (Barbour and Roberts, 1973, p. 174).2
George Fox summed up his dramatic encounter with Christ with the phrase that became a by-word among Quakers, ‘… this I knew experimentally’ (Fox, 1952, p. 11). When Quakers spoke of being ‘experienced’ people, they meant radically transformed people who had directly experienced God. The spiritual world was as real as the physical world among the early Quakers. The infinite included the finite, and God’s infinity could be experienced in the finite. George Fox’s great discovery was that the Divine Creator and the human being could touch. The gap between the divine and human was not unbridgeable, but could be crossed. George Fox discovered that theophanies could still occur and endow their recipients with supernatural power. Fox described his mystical encounters as ‘openings,’ and indeed Quakers would have considered them openings of the door that hides the infinite from the finite. Most mainstream Protestants of the time might concede that a few rare individuals had fleeting glimpses of God, but they would never acknowledge that one could truly bridge the gap between the divine and human, or remain in such an exalted state of divine immanence permanently. Quakers however, were only rediscovering what Christian mystics had always known and taught. 1 Fox, writing of his conversion, states, ‘… the Lord said unto me: “Thy name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” … And as the Lord spake it, I believed, and saw it in the new birth’ (Fox, 1952, p. 33). 2 Howgill, The Inheritance of Jacob, in Works, The Dawnings of the Gospel Day, 1676, quoted. in Barbour and Roberts, 1973.
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Some Historical and Contemporary Influences Just prior to the birth of the Quaker movement in the seventeenth century, the writings of the Rhineland mystics – Ruysbroeck, Suso, and Tauler – and the Theologia Germanica, which all taught a doctrine of perfection, were enjoying a resurgence of interest among radical Puritans, with the availability of new English translations (Smith, 1989, pp. 107–43). All of these writings describe the process of union with God as deification, reviving the favorite concept of the Eastern Church Fathers. Tauler’s concept of union with God, for example, while using fourteenth-century language and imagery, contains elements that are reflected in the early Quaker experience of union with God: The Godhead bends and nakedly descends into the depths of the pure waiting soul, drawing it up into the uncreated Essence, so that the spirit becomes one with Him … No one can unite himself to God in emptiness without true love; no one can be holy without becoming holy, without good works (Inge, 1899, pp. 189–90, 194).
This description of union as both mystical and ethical holiness includes the Quaker emphasis on ‘pure waiting’ and a union of ‘one spirit’, the necessity of the apophatic emptiness, and the affective element of ‘true love’, and concludes with the essential fruits of holiness, the necessary outcome of which is ‘good works’. The teachings of the Spanish mystics of the sixteenth century, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, were found in the popular devotional manuals of the French and Italian Quietists, the best known of which were Molinos, Guyon, and Fenelon. Quietism as a form of lay devotion in France and Italy arose at the same time as Quakerism in England and elicited the same kind of suspicion and persecution as that of the Quakers. The Quietists taught a perfection possible through union with God via the ‘prayer of quiet’ by a somber emptiness and self-negation, yet resulting in an ineffable joy beyond words. The spirituality of the French and Italian Quietists had such strong correspondences to Quakerism that by the early eighteenth century the writings of the most prominent Quietists had become virtually a part of the ‘Quaker canon’.3 The synchronicity of thought between early Quakerism (even in Fox) and continental Quietism is so evident some transference of thought into Quakerism must be assumed.4 But despite the prevalence of mysticism and perfectionism in widely read devotional materials, and their use by radical and separatist movements in England, 3 The first person to translate Guyon’s writings into English was a Quaker, Josiah Martin, in 1727. But an even earlier work linking Quakerism and Quietism can be found in a tract published in 1698 called Quakerism à la Mode or a History of Quietism, particularly that of the Lord Archbishop of Cambray and Madame Guyone (Hobhouse, 1972, p. 157). 4 For further background on Quietism and other religious movements contemporary with the beginning of Quakerism see Ted Campbell, The Religion of the Heart: A Study of Religious Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Columbia, SC, 1991). For a recent re-evaluation of Quietism see Louis Dupré, ‘Jansenism and Quietism’, in Louis Dupré and Don E. Saliers (eds), Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern (New York, 1996).
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in the Reformed theology that permeated Anglicanism, the doctrine of perfection and claims of union with God were denounced as illusion, heresy, or blasphemy (Smith, 1989, p. 142). Yet George Fox and other Quaker leaders who wrote and preached consistently on perfection were not developing a new doctrine but appropriating an ancient one. Robert Barclay, the early Quaker’s leading theologian, was well acquainted with patristic and medieval theology, and drew on a rich heritage in formulating a Quaker doctrine of perfection. Nevertheless, the doctrine, being out of favor with the main currents of Protestant theology, drew considerable opposition and became a lightning rod for pamphlet wars and public debate (Smith, 1989, p. 142; Moore, 2000, pp. 87–9).5 Sanctification in Early Quaker Thought Although the concept of perfection is much broader and more inclusive than simply the question of freedom from sin, the popular debate revolved around the possibility of reaching a state of sinlessness. The Quaker claim to perfection tended to steer around any claim of sinlessness, but instead focused on the overcoming of the power of sin through union with God. Perfection meant a growing into the ‘measure of the statue of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph. 4:12–13). Robert Barclay writing in 1676 described perfection as the ‘growth of the holy birth into its fullness’, and a ‘perfection proportionable and answerable to a man’s measures’ (Barclay, 2002, pp. 205–7). He admitted that falling from grace was always possible if one did not abide in the Light: ‘… this perfection still admits of a growth; and there remaineth always in some part a possibility of sinning …’ (Barclay, 2002, p. 205). Fox’s own experience convinced him that perfection was initiated by a direct experience of God and was available to everyone. He felt divinely and morally driven to bring others to this experience.6 As such, he became the spiritual guide and charismatic teacher in whom holiness was ‘embodied’. Quaker spirituality comprised a soteriology much closer to the pre-Reformation via Triplex (the stages of perfection of classical mysticism – purgation, illumination, and union) than Luther’s sola fides. This understanding of the via Triplex is reflected in Fox’s teaching to a potential young disciple, John Taylor, who described his guidance by Fox in this way:
5 In Gershom Scholem’s insightful study of mysticism, he notes how doctrines which are routinely accepted in certain times and places without causing conflict can become at other historical times the focus of great conflict (1965, pp. 245). The doctrine of perfection as deification, a key doctrine of the patristic period, is one famous example. The teachings of Quietism are another. When formulated by Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth century, they were generally acceptable, but when taught by Madam Guyon in the late seventeenth century, they were condemned (Scholem, 1965, p. 25). 6 Fox’s most explicit statement of his vocation to bring people to the light that would give them ‘power to become sons of God’ and that the ‘manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to every man’ can be found in the beginning of his Journal (Fox, 1998, p. 34).
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Good and Evil When I first went to him, he treated me in meekness as a lamb; he took me by the hand and said ‘Young man, this is the word of the Lord to thee. There are three scriptures thou must witness to be fulfilled; first thou must be turned from darkness to light; next, thou must come to the knowledge of the glory of God; and then, thou must be changed from glory to glory’.7
‘Turned from darkness to light’ represents the stage of purgation, ‘knowledge of the glory of God’, illumination, and ‘changed from glory to glory’, the transformation of union. (‘Changed from glory to glory’ is a common reference to deification in the patristic tradition.) In the Protestant version known as the ordo salutis, this last stage is referred to as ‘glorification’ (justification, sanctification, glorification). Glorification is reserved for eternity. But for Fox and early Quakers, perfection was an earthly form of glorification and could be experienced in the real world. George Fox’s most dramatic expression of perfection occurred sometime around 1648 when he experienced an ecstatic rapture, metaphorically expressed as being in the ‘Paradise of God’. The experience itself was so overwhelming that Fox found words inadequate, yet he, like all mystics, nevertheless felt compelled to try and express the inexpressible: Now was I come up in the spirit through the Flaming Sword, into the Paradise of God. All things were new, and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus, so that I say I was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell … But I was immediately taken up in spirit to see into another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus that should never fall. And the Lord showed me that such as were faithful to Him, in the power and light of Christ, should come up into that state in which Adam was before he fell, in which the admirable works of creation and the virtues thereof may be known, through the openings of that Divine Word of wisdom and power by which they were made (Fox, 1952, pp. 27–8).
Later, in his testimony at trial for blasphemy in Derby, he referred to this state of being ‘in the Paradise of God’ as sanctification. Here Fox is giving witness to Christ abiding in him in a state of continual presence through the Holy Spirit: At last they asked me whether I was sanctified. I said, ‘Sanctified? Yes’, for I was in the Paradise of God.8 7 Testimonial of John Taylor, 1691 (Fox, 1831, 4:6). ‘Changed from glory to glory’, a phrase often used in the Eastern Church to describe deification, is found in Scripture in 2 Cor. 3:18. 8 In Jewish mysticism, to enter ‘Paradise’ means entering the realm of mysticism (Scholem, 1965, p. 26). In Christian mysticism the journey back to Paradise is through contemplation. See, for example, William H. Shannon in Thomas Merton’s Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation, 2000, pp. 3–4. Although Fox is not normally identified as a contemplative, Merton’s description of a pure contemplative fits Fox: ‘… contemplation is a supernatural love and knowledge of God, simple and obscure, infused by him into the summit of the soul, giving it a direct and experimental contact with Him’. Several places in his journal, Fox alludes to being infused with this love, for example: ‘… I was taken up in
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They said, had I no sin? ‘Sin?’ Said I, ‘Christ my savior hath taken away my sin, and in him there is no sin’. They asked me how we knew that Christ did abide in us. I said ‘By his Spirit that he has given us’9 (Fox, 1952, p. 51).
The Quaker Experience of Mystical Transformation George Fox never developed a concise theology of perfection, or a clear doctrine of it. He never claimed to be a theologian. Fox had a subjective experience of being transported into union with God through Christ, ‘I knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness, being renewed up into the image of God by Christ Jesus’ (Fox, 1952, p. 27), convincing him that he had freedom from and power over sin, ‘a state in Christ Jesus that should never fall’ (Fox, 1952, p. 27). What might appear to be arrogance or audacity is related to the ecstatic state, which gave him an unshakable certainty of the unio mystica, as well as profound insights into the unity of all beings and the radical optimism of good overcoming evil. George Fox discovered, as mystics before him, that we are all united, we are all one, we are all Adam. There is no duality nor are there any dichotomies. One is both oneself and united with all others. Everyone’s heart contains the worst sins of humanity as well as seeds of the divine. An anonymous Syrian mystic and monk, called today Pseudo-Macarious, wrote in the sixth century: The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. There also are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the Kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace—all things are there (Homilies, 43:7).
It is highly unlikely that Fox ever read the homilies of Macarius, yet he discovered through direct revelation a similar insight in which he saw the worst of human nature, identified with it, even though he, himself, had never committed those evils. Yet he was shown by God that he had to have a ‘sense of all conditions’ and be bound with all humanity. Once he consented to experience that connection, he felt the immensity of the unconditioned, infinite love of God. He discovered that we are all one in the love of God. Evil is only in the finite, not the infinite. God is all-love, all-powerful and in the end, perfection reigns. In God the world is perfect, and humans through the power of the Spirit can see it and conform to it. He describes this in one of the more famous passages in his journal: … the Lord shewed me that the natures of those things, which were hurtful without, were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men. The natures of dogs, swine, vipers, of the love of God …’ (Fox, 1952, p. 14) and ‘… I saw the infinite love of God …’ (ibid., p. 19), and ‘… I saw into that, which was without end, and things which cannot be uttered, and of the greatness and infiniteness of the love of God, which cannot be expressed by words …’ (ibid., p. 21). 9 Fox antagonized his Puritan opponents by accusing them of ‘pleading for sin and imperfection’ and preaching salvation in sin rather than from sin (ibid., p. 18).
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Good and Evil Sodom and Egypt, Pharaoh, Cani, Ishmael, Esau, etc.: the natures of these I saw within, though people had been looking without. I cried to the Lord, saying, ‘Why should I be thus seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?’ and the Lord answered, ‘That it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions!’ and in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings (Fox, 1952, p. 19).
Fox’s experiences and teachings were similar to many great mystics and preachers of the late medieval period, including his assurance that he was led by the Spirit and lived in the divine presence.10 Fox employed a variety of metaphors to try to describe mystical union, the source of perfection: ‘the paradise of God’, ‘Adam’s perfection’ (the image of God that humanity had before the fall, clear and pure and without [original] sin), ‘growing up to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’, ‘the same power and spirit of the prophets and apostles’, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’11 (Fox, 1952, pp. 32–3, 56). Other images used by Fox to describe the ‘life in Christ’, which comes through union included the mystical ‘grafting’ and marriage metaphors:12 Wait in his Power and Light … that you may be grafted into him, the true Root, and built upon him, the true Foundation … and by this Truth you may be made free, by which ye may be espoused and married to Christ Jesus, for the Marriage of the Lamb is come and coming.13
Fox never exalted his mystical raptures, nor made them paradigmatic for his disciples. He never claimed to be equal to Christ, though he and other Quakers were accused of blasphemy by the civil authorities.14 He wrote, for instance, of being questioned for 10 George Tavard compares him to the Spanish Dominican Vincent Ferrer (1350–1419) in ‘George Fox Among Christian Mystics’ QT, 2000, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 38. He finds the doctrine of the Light of Christ within, the inward Light, a central theme in the Franciscan theologian, St. Bonaventure (2000, p. 41) and claims that the metaphor of the light is commonly used in the Christian mystical tradition, and was hardly a new concept discovered by Fox. The language of the Light, as employed by Fox, is both biblical and orthodox (John 1:9 is a key verse), and its usage by early Quakers is not far from the lumen fidei of standard Catholic teaching today, according to Tavard (2000, p. 42). 11 Col. 1:27. This phrase from scripture became the most common way later Quietistic Quakers expressed the concept of perfection through union with God. 12 The metaphor of spiritual marriage is one of the most common images for mystical union in the medieval tradition. 13 Epistle 288 (1672), quoted. in A Day-Book of Counsel and Comfort from the Epistles of George Fox, compiled by L. Violet Hodgkin (1937, pp. 234–5). 14 In a few rare instances Fox wrote that he was ‘the son of God’: see, for example, his letter to Oliver Cromwell, 1654, in Appendix III of Nigel Smith’s edition of The Journal (Fox, 1998, p. 493). While this could be construed as blasphemy, or at the very least the height of arrogance, it seems more likely, in light of the totality of his writings, that it is meant as a metaphor of the new birth, divine sonship, by which Christians are changed into ‘sons of God’ (see, for example, 2 Cor. 6:18).
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claiming to be Christ: ‘They temptingly asked if any of us were Christ. I answered, “Nay; we are nothing; Christ is all”’ (Fox, 1952, p. 51). Despite his answer, Fox spent the next six months in prison as a blasphemer. Fox and other Quakers were often charged with blasphemy because they were perceived to be deifying themselves by claiming perfection. The apostle Paul, himself, writes of being rapt into the third heaven, and refers to an ‘out of body experience’, yet is so cautious in expressing this mystical ecstasy that he creates distance by writing in the third person as an observer of his own experience. ‘I know a man who… was caught up to the third heaven’ (2 Cor. 12:1–4). Paul never refers directly to this experience again in his letters. Fox alludes to this experience of Paul and identifies with it (Fox, 1952, p. 21). Fox described many such ‘openings’ in which he was given remarkable visions and revelations, but he did not teach his followers to seek visions, nor canonize his own experiences. Nothing in his writings gives evidence that he exalted mystical consolations, exaltation, nor encouraged the seeking of them.15 Perfection as Theosis George Fox’s teachings on perfection have been interpreted widely, from Richard Bailey’s identifying him as an ‘avatar’ with divine union taken literally to mean the ‘celestial flesh’ of Christ assumed by the saint (1992), to a simple, biblical growth in grace: ‘Fox’s belief in perfection is not to be distinguished sharply from a simple faith in or obedience to Christ …. To him the state of grace brings a securer and stable relationship in which Christ gives the power of continued obedience and faith’ (Jones, 1955, p. 149). The latter has been the dominant modern understanding of the meaning of Quaker perfection, but Fox and the early Quakers meant a far deeper infusion of divine power, a ‘becoming by grace what God is by nature’ as the Eastern Orthodox say, a correspondence between the divine and human. The individual does not become God, but because of the incarnation and atonement can become god-like and reach the level of the ‘measure of the stature and fullness of Christ’. This is what Scripture calls the ‘perfecting of the saints’ (Eph. 4:12–13). The word for perfection in early Christianity was rendered in Greek as theosis, God-likeness, or deification. In seventeenth-century England in the Puritan cradle where Quakerism was born, perfection was the equivalent theological term for the concept of theosis. Theosis was the goal and culmination of the spiritual life, and although the Greek term was not used by Quakers, they regularly employed its English equivalent, divine indwelling. For early Quakers, seeking perfection became the terminology of personal transformation. The concept of theosis, deification, or unio mystica, a participation in God through Christ, is the foundational experience of all Christian mystics and has always existed 15 In Fox’s famous Journal passage outlining so concisely his ministry and mission, ‘I was to bring People off from all their own ways to Christ …’ (Geoffrey Nuttall calls this passage his ‘marching orders’ [1973, p. 145]), there is no mention of bringing people to visions or raptures, but only to ‘Christ the new and living Way’ to ‘know the Spirit of Truth in the inward Parts …’ (Fox, 1952, p. 35).
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within, and alongside, the dogmatic, liturgical and institutional faith. This mystical aspect of faith as divine union, biblically expressed as ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4), was so central to the beginnings of Quakerism that one early leader, Richard Farnworth, actually made it into a ditty: ‘Written by one whom the world called a Quaker, but is of the divine nature a partaker’ (Farnworth, 1653, p. 2).16 Perfection was also anchored in the doctrine of the incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, and the atonement, Christ’s offering on the cross. The key biblical text for Quakers, John 1:9, ‘the true Light that enlightens everyone’, could not be understood apart from the incarnation, because the true Light was the Word become flesh. And Fox, like the Greek Fathers, did not stop there, but recognized the inverse as well, that transfiguration was a two-way process. Since Word (God) became flesh, flesh could also become god-like (deified, perfect). Fox understood perfection as the return to the original God-likeness in which humanity was created, which Christ had restored through his incarnation and atonement. This concept of perfection as restoration and earthly glorification, rather than a glorification only to be experienced in eternity, is common to Christian antiquity and continues to be the traditional understanding of perfection as deification in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Quaker Perfection in a Calvinist/Puritan Culture Quakers, like many mystics before them, found themselves suspected of heresy by the religious establishment. Fox was denounced as a blasphemer (Moore, 2000, p. 87) when he confidently claimed to have reached a state ‘in which Adam was before he fell’ (Fox, 1952, p. 27). In his journal he went on to describe an even higher state, ‘another or more steadfast state than Adam’s in innocency, even into a state in Christ Jesus, that should never fall’ (Fox, 1952, p. 27). Few early Quakers made as bold a claim as Fox, or experienced such an elevated kind of spiritual rapture. But for Fox, locked as he was in the Puritan prison of total depravity and election, the power of his vision became the divine gestalt to make the radical break with accepted Calvinist doctrine. But despite the fact that perfection created intense controversy in English Puritanism of the seventeenth century, religious ecstasies were not uncommon and a ‘devotion of rapture’ emerged. For English Puritans, the longing for assurance of election and validation of beliefs led to the seeking of private mystical experience
16 Barclay uses 2 Peter 1:4 twice in his Apology, once in explaining justification: ‘By this also comes that communication of the goods of Christ unto us, by which we come to be made partakers of the divine nature, [his emphasis] as saith Peter, (2 Pet. 1:4), and are made one with him, as the branches with the vine …’ (2002, p. 175). He uses it again in his explanation of perfection: ‘Wherefore if man must be always joined to sin, then God would always be at a distance from him … whereas on the contrary, the saints are said to partake, even while here, of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) and to be one spirit with the Lord, (1 Cor. 6:17)’ [his emphasis] (2002, p. 208). This text is the key scripture used in the Eastern Orthodox Church to support biblically the doctrine of deification.
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as a confirmation they were among the elect.17 An intense, inward experience of the heart became an important source of authority and assurance for Quakers as well. However, what Quakers meant by ‘experience’ was not just any kind of felt presence of the divine, but an encounter with God through a direct revelation of Christ. Thus Fox challenged his contemporaries with a message that set Quakers apart from all other radical sectarians of the time.18 Other groups proclaimed perfection, but only the Quakers combined mystical, eschatological perfection with the moral rigor of self-denial and perfect obedience. The Quaker call to perfection was born of mystical experience and a mystical consciousness. But it was not a private experience of initiation (in a Gnostic sense), or an absorption into God in a pantheistic sense, but a theistic sense of being filled with God, reborn and transformed, yet maintaining one’s individuality. Quaker conversion narratives followed a tradition pattern of approach to God, which included many of the same elements found in other Puritan accounts (Barbour, 1964, pp. 3, 109; Vann, 1969, p. 26). Conversion narratives, with slight individual variations, describe a pattern of intense seeking and struggle, a dramatic personal awakening to grace, recognition and sorrow for sins, inward struggle with darkness or emptiness, repentance, and finally a dramatic breakthrough that results in peace and fulfillment, and a sense of being made clean and pure.19 William Dewsbury’s (1621–1688) convincement narrative is one example: Not withstanding all my strict walking in observation in which I was seeking the kingdom of God, I found it not, but the flaming sword cut me down and my sorrow increased … And after the Lord discovered to me that his love could not be attained in anything I could do … thither the flaming sword turned, which kept the way of the tree of life, and fenced me from it … crying in the depths of misery … waiting for the coming of Christ Jesus, who … purged away the filthy nature … so through the righteous law of life in Christ Jesus I was made free and clean from the body of sin and death, and my garment is washed, and made white in the blood of the lamb, who hath led me through the gates of Jerusalem … where my soul now feeds upon the tree of life which I had so long hungered and thirsted of … (Dewsbury, 1655, pp. 12–14).20 17 For a description of seventeenth-century Puritan spirituality see Rupp, 1977; Hambrick-Stowe, 1982; and Nuttall, 1973. 18 Scholem uses Fox as one famous example of how mystics transform religious authority (1965, pp. 23–24). On a personal note, when I first picked up Scholem’s work on Jewish mysticism (On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism), I did so only hoping to find background materials and sources for a comparative study, and was completely surprised to find Fox and Quakers specifically mentioned in this work. 19 For studies on conversion narratives in Quaker journals see Barbour and Frost, 1973, pp. 151–241; Brinton, 1972, Vann, 1969, ch. 1; and Wright, 1932. 20 Note also the use of the metaphorical language of the Garden of Eden. Salvation as a reversal of the expulsion from paradise and return to the unity (perfection) of creation differentiates Quakers from the Puritan mainstream understanding of salvation as a covenant made between God and humanity in the sense of a legal contract. Quakers also used covenant terminology, but differently; to be in the New Covenant meant the via mystica and the unio mystica, which they coined the ‘Covenant of Light’. See Moore on salvation and paradise imagery (1993, p. 83) and Covenant of Light (1993, pp. 86–87).
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George Fox describes the culmination of his own seeking with a dramatic inbreaking of revelation through Christ in 1647. After a desperate search for a human spiritual guide led him only to the depths of despair, he finally exclaims with utter joy and absolute certainty: … when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord did let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory; for all are concluded under sin, and shut up in unbelief as I had been, that Jesus Christ might have the pre-eminence, who enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power. Thus, when God doth work who shall let [prevent] it? And this I knew experimentally (Fox, 1952, p. 11).
One significant difference in Quaker and Puritan theology evident in conversion narratives is the Quaker sense of certitude and assurance, the capstone of which is their doctrine of perfection. This difference is especially evident in Fox’s journal, which conveys a sense of triumph, peace and certainty, rather than the continuing struggle for assurance.21 Although Fox experiences occasional post-conversion periods of darkness and even depression, these are a result of his often dire circumstances and the sins and hostility of others, not a struggle with his own sin, guilt, anxiety and uncertainty, as is found in most Puritan journals. Luella Wright in her classic study of Quaker literature describes this significant difference: In the attainment of mystic peace lies the principal line of demarcation between the journal of George Fox and the recorded spiritual anguish of John Bunyan in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. The latter temporarily secured peace of mind, but never retained it for any length of time. Quite differently and with great uniformity, the confessions of the Friends indicate that the writers, ideally at least, after they had definitely accepted the inner Light as a guiding gleam, did not consume their energies with questions of future rewards or the fatalities connected with the unpardonable sin, but employed them almost wholly with carrying out the commands of the Spirit (Wright, 1932, pp. 199–200).
In addition, for the Quakers as distinct from other Puritans, conversion was a continuous process of deeper and deeper intimacy with God. Most Quakers had already had a conversion experience, perhaps several before joining with Quakers. They sought a communion with God that would be ongoing, ‘so deep that it might be called “continuous conversion”’ (Vann, 1969, p. 32). This concept of ‘continuous conversion’ naturally expands to continuous perfection. Quaker perfection is not the reaching of a static state, but a continual pressing forward, a dynamic movement towards never-ending perfection. This paradoxical idea of perfection being found in a continuous attempt to reach it, finds its root in Phil. 3:13–14, where Paul writes of ‘pressing forward’ towards the goal of the heavenly call of God in Christ. It is 21 See Tousley, ‘The Experience of Regeneration and Erosion of Certainty in the Theology of Second Generation Quakers,’ 2002, for a comparison of conversion experiences of first- and second-generation Quakers. Tousley argues for a rapid decline in the certainty of assurance in Quaker religious experience.
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fully developed in the doctrinal writings of the Quaker theologian, Robert Barclay in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity. Perfection is eternally endless and always admits of growth. It is a reaching for something that is always beyond. Just as divine love is limitless, so is perfection in Christ a continual process of the heart’s expansion. Quaker Theology of Perfection In 1657, twenty years before Barclay articulated the Quaker theology of perfection, Edward Burrough (1634–1662) wrote the most explicit statement of belief concerning perfection, expressing it in a ‘creedal’ form in a manner that sounds like a Quaker confession of faith. He clearly stated what Quakers believed about perfection in A Declaration to All the World of our Faith: We believe that the saints upon earth may receive forgiveness of sins, and may be perfectly freed from the body of sin and death, and in Christ may be perfect, and without sin, and may have victory over all temptations by faith in Christ Jesus. And we believe every saint called of God ought to press after perfection, and to overcome the Devil and all his temptations … and we believe they that faithfully wait for it shall obtain it, and be presented without sin in the image of the father, and such walks not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, and are in covenant with God, and their sins are blotted out and remembered no more (Barbour and Roberts, 1973, p. 301).
Perfection here is both a gift and grace that is infused, and also ironically something which must be pursued: ‘press after perfection and overcome the devil’. He describes paradoxically, both a waiting and an active pressing after, faith and works together, a seeking and a doing. Perfection, therefore, must be understood as a paradox, in fact the Bible would be totally contradictory if its truth were not paradoxical, and early Quakers understood this innately: we gain our life by losing it, we become ourselves by dying to ourselves, we give up the world and are given a Kingdom. This paradox of perfection is beautifully expressed in the poetry of Quaker convert Thomas Story (1663–1742), who became a Friend towards the end of the seventeenth century. Story’s mystical experiences inspired one of the most poetical expressions of perfection that can be found in Quaker literature. Story pens a Psalmlike consecration hymn, to witness to his extraordinary experience of divine love: I called unto my God out of the great Deep: and He had compassion upon me, because His Love was infinite and His Power without measure. He called for my Life and I offered it at His Footstool; but he gave it to me for a prey, with unspeakable addition. He called for my Will: and I resigned it at His Call: but He returned me His own in token of His love. He called for the World, and I laid it at His feet with the Crowns thereof I withheld them not at the beckoning of His hand. But mark the benefit of Exchange! For He gave me, instead of Earth,
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Story’s prayer captures all of the essential facets of a mystical experience of perfection as surrender of self and exchange of wills. The phrase, ‘He called for My Will … and He returned me His own in token of His love’, is a moving expression of the ‘union of wills’ in which the transcendent God becomes the intimate beloved so frequently claimed by the Christian mystics. Perfection, the spiritual transformation of being changed ‘from glory to glory’, and the reality of such union, would be evidenced through outward expression or response of action, as well as moral purity, obedience, compassion and humility. The puritanical morality and asceticism of early Quakers served to differentiate them from Ranters, and other antinomian sectarian groups, who claimed to be beyond the law. Barclay’s Apology includes a lengthy section outlining a distinctly Puritan ethic of separation from all worldly activities including sports, games, and recreations (Barclay 2002, pp. 429–78). William Penn’s widely read devotional work, No Cross No Crown, is similar in spirit (1682). These and other Quaker writings advocating a this-worldly asceticism were necessary to correct common misperceptions and to differentiate themselves from the libertarianism of some of the more extreme sectarians. Quakers were determined to convince their opponents they were orthodox Christians who observed a biblical morality. They were like monks without vows, who lived in families and pursued vocations in the midst of the world, but separated themselves from the culture of the world. Strict renunciation and puritanical asceticism were the antidotes to tendencies of pride, a constant temptation among perfectionists. This ethical and behavioral asceticism of early Quakers was so strong that it became the dominant ethos of the next century of Quaker faith and practice. Such a disciplined and ascetical way of life was as necessary for Quaker mystics as it had been for Catholic mystics. Structures and disciplines were needed to contain the excesses and prevent the dangers of delusions and pride, which can result from mystical experiences. While the concept of perfection, to the modern mind, appears to be puritanical, moralistic rigorism of the highest kind, to the early Quakers, it was a manifesto of freedom. It allowed the Quaker movement to release its followers from the darkness of religious, spiritual, and social oppression and experience a radical optimism in which the kingdom of God could be experienced on earth (Nuttall, 1973, pp. 147–8). One final key element of the Quaker concept of perfection is that it is not merely individual, but corporate – a purely individualistic perfection would be inconceivable for early Quakers. Robert Barclay testified of his own experience: … when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up; and so I became thus knit and united with them, hungering more and more after the increase of this power and life whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed: and indeed this is the surest way to become a Christian; to whom afterwards the knowledge and understandings of principles will not be wanting, but will grow up so
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much as is needful as the natural fruit of this good root, and such a knowledge will not be barren nor unfruitful … (Barclay, 2002, p. 300).
The church itself (the pure and holy church, which he calls ‘catholic’) has been sanctified and consecrated by Christ, and by becoming ‘knit and united with them’ the empowering Spirit flows into the whole body (Eph. 5:25–27) (Barclay, 2002, p. 212). The manifestation of perfection is love – love of God, of neighbor, and most revealing of all because it is the most difficult love, love of our enemy. Thus, the doctrine of perfection is also the foundation for the Quaker peace testimony. Perfection is growth in love, a continuing expansion of the heart to include even one’s enemies and the ultimate test of the ethical side of perfection because it is so humanly unnatural.
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Chapter 5
Beyond Depravity: Good and Evil in the Thought of Robert Barclay Hugh Pyper
For when I came in to the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart; and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me and the good raised up: and so I became thus knit and united unto them, hungering more and more after the increase of this Power and Life, whereby I might feel myself perfectly redeemed.1
These are probably the best-known words from the pen of Robert Barclay (1648–90), the Scottish Quaker who wrote what is still widely regarded as the most systematic and theologically learned defence of Quakerism: his Apology for the True Christian Divinity. They touch directly on the question of good and evil and how they are manifested in an individual’s life as he recounts his personal experience of the effect of the communal waiting on God, which he found in the silence of Friends’ Meetings. Taken in isolation, they could be read as a kind of precursor to a Jungian view of the achievement of balance between the shadow and the light within each developing individual. It might come as a surprise, then, to set this beside another passage from the same work: All Adam’s posterity (or mankind) both Jews and Gentiles as to the first Adam (or earthly man) is fallen, degenerated and dead, deprived of the sensation of feeling of this inward testimony or Seed of God; and is subject unto the power of nature and seed of the serpent, which he soweth in men’s hearts, while they abide in this natural and corrupted estate: from whence it comes, that not only their words and deeds but all their imaginations are evil perpetually in the sight of God, as proceeding from this depraved and wicked seed. Man therefore as he is in this state can know nothing aright (Barclay, 1692, p. 310).
1 In the present paper, Barclay’s works are cited from the collected, but incomplete, edition of his writings that was published in 1692 under the title of Truth Triumphant through the Spiritual Warfare: Christian Labours and Writings of that Able and Faithful Servant of Jesus Christ, Robert Barclay (London, 1692). The quotation above is from Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity, first published in Latin in 1676 and in English in 1678. It is to be found in Proposition 11 ‘Concerning Worship’, Section 7 (1692, p. 447).
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For Barclay in this passage, human beings are entirely given over to evil and dead to the influence of good, not through any action of their own, but as a result of Adam’s fall. This is a less congenial message to many nowadays than the one in the previous quotation. The two work together, however, in Barclay’s thought. To understand how, we need to understand the theological climate in which he was working, and what truths he saw himself as defending. We may find some of his arguments and opinions dated and off-putting, but the breadth of his reading and his skill in argument are still exceptional. More importantly, what shines through is his sincere concern that people should know both what they are and what, through Christ, they could be. Although he is involved in debates that are of his time, he can remind us of difficult and inescapable choices that are too easily glossed over in more modern or more comfortable accounts of human evil. Barclay’s Intellectual Context Barclay’s upbringing and education show the range of influences on him. Born and raised near Aberdeen in Scotland, he himself describes those who brought him up as ‘the strictest sort of Calvinists’.2 His education was continued, surprisingly in the circumstances, at the Jesuit-run Scots College in Paris, where his uncle was Rector. This institution had been set up with the express aim of recovering Scotland for the Roman Catholic Church from the Calvinist reformers. His own later account blames his ‘tender years and immature capacity’ – he was perhaps twelve years old – for his falling in with Catholic teachings for a time. By all accounts, Barclay was an exceptional student and, when his mother’s deathbed wish that he should return to Scotland became known, his uncle offered to make him his heir if he would complete his education. Barclay, then aged 15, refused and went home. As Barclay puts it in the introduction to his treatise on ‘Universal Love’ written in 1676, when he was 28, ‘It being then so, that the conditions of my life hitherto (albeit I as yet am but a young man) gives me experience more, than perhaps to many others, to treat this subject’ (Barclay, 1692, p. 75). He was exposed to the two extremes of the theological debate between Protestantism and Catholicism in this fiercely controversial period. What struck him was their similarity. Both, it seemed to him, offered an unacceptably narrow view of the scope of God’s love. On the other hand, he has stern things to say about teachers he later came across who superficially might have seemed to be his allies in protesting against sectarianism and doctrinal severity. What they preached seemed to him to be unacceptably lax and he was saddened that in practice they resorted to their own brand of judgmentalism. 2 Tantalizing fragments of autobiography are to be found in Barclay’s treatise published in 1677 with the impressive title ‘Universal Love Considered, and established on its Right Foundation: Being a Serious Enquiry how far Charity may and ought to be Extended towards Persons of Different Judgments in Matters of Religion: and Whole Principles among the Several Sects of Christian do most Naturally lead to that due Moderation required. Writ in the Spirit of Love and Meekness for the removing of Stumbling Blocks out of the Way of the Simple; By a Lover of the Souls of All Men, Robert Barclay’ hereafter referred to as ‘Universal Love’ (Barclay 1692, p. 675).
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He found what seemed to him to be the acceptable mean when, in 1666, at the age of eighteen, he was convinced and became a Quaker, as his father had done the year before. With his unusual background and superior education, he was soon drawn to putting his gifts at the service of his new companions in faith. Quakers were being subject not only to physical and legal attacks but also to theological denunciation from all sides. It is in response to such attacks that Barclay was prompted to write most of his works to explain to his opponents that Quakerism was not some new heresy but actually the pure and original gospel, which his opponents themselves claimed to be teaching. It is essential to bear in mind that this was his aim. Barclay never set out to codify Quakerism but rather to counter its Protestant detractors’ misrepresentations of Quaker belief and to persuade them that the logic of their own arguments, by their own premises, should lead them to adopt the Quaker position as most nearly resembling the faith and practice of the early church. Barclay and the Legacy of Calvinism The opponents with whom Barclay deals most directly are all Calvinists. This is not simply because of Barclay’s Scottish background and location, although that is significant. Calvinism was in Barclay’s day the dominant theological movement in Britain. It tends to have a bad press in many circles these days, but, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, ‘Unless we can imagine the freshness, the audacity, and (soon) the fashionableness of Calvinism, we shall get our whole picture wrong. It was the creed of progressives, even of revolutionaries’ (1954, p. 43). For those who embraced it, what Calvinism offered was the unmatched promise of utterly undeserved grace from God and the assurance of salvation secure from any subsequent threat, all derived from carefully argued engagement with scripture. In addition, Calvin’s rigour in argument, erudition and mastery both of the Bible and of literary technique were deeply impressive. The most influential expression of Calvinism in Barclay’s Britain was not Calvin’s own writings, but the various documents produced by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, in particular the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.3 For Baptist, Independent and, especially, Presbyterian churches, these documents continue to this day to be significant statements of fundamental Christian belief, although they may not be familiar to those from other traditions. In midseventeenth-century Britain the Westminster Assembly and its pronouncements were at the centre of theological and political debate and to a large extent set its agenda. The Westminster Assembly was convoked by an order in Parliament in 1643. It was never a church court but was an advisory body set up as part of the state’s attempt to consolidate the religious diversity of the time. It had 151 nominated members, 30 of whom were lay assessors and 120 were divines. The members were 3 These have been continuously reprinted. The edition consulted for this paper is The Confession of Faith (London, 1969), which also includes The Larger Catechism, The Shorter Catechism, The Directory for Publick Worship, and The Form of Presbyterian Church Government.
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deliberately drawn from a broad range of theological positions, but in practice the Independent members, who were influenced by Cromwell, and the Presbyterians, always the largest party and later reinforced by delegates from Scotland, set the agenda. The assembly’s original task was to revise the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, but under Scottish influence it turned to producing a confession of faith that would bring the churches of Britain into conformity, supplemented by a common directory of worship and common catechism. These documents were formally approved by Parliament in 1648. Although the fall of the Long Parliament and the restoration of the monarchy meant that it became something of a dead letter in England, in Scotland the Westminster Confession of Faith was adopted as what was called a ‘subordinate standard’ of the Church of Scotland, second only to the Bible as the benchmark of sound Christian teaching. All ministers of the Church of Scotland still acknowledge its authority ‘on all matters pertaining to the substance of the faith’ as part of their ordination. A Clash of Confessions From Barclay’s point of view, the Westminster Confession’s claim to be a kind of national manifesto for theological orthodoxy made it an inescapable opponent. The fact that much of his adult life was spent on the family estate in Aberdeenshire meant that he lived in a religious environment where the Confession was a dominant text. The language, style and concerns of the Westminster Confession encapsulate a theological stance very familiar to Barclay, but also sum up exactly what he had felt bound to reject in his embrace of Quakerism. Moreover, it was to the authority of this document that many of his critics appealed when denouncing Barclay’s writings as erroneous. For all these reasons, it is not surprising that it profoundly shapes his theological response. Its influence is especially clear on the rival Confession, which Barclay wrote in 1673, the full title of which is almost a self-parody in its concern to outrank the Westminster Confession. Whereas the latter announces itself as ‘The Confession of Faith; Agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, with the Assistance of Commissioners from the Church of Scotland’, Barclay counters with ‘A Catechism and Confession of Faith, approved of and agreed unto by the General Assembly of the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles, Christ himself Chief Speaker in and among them’. It is not surprising that this sort of claim not only annoyed but scandalized his opponents. In writing his own Confession, Barclay is expressly taking on his Protestant opponents on their own ground. In the ‘Preface to the Reader’, he sets out two principles that all Protestants agree on in opposition to the Church of Rome: Every principle of the Christian faith is founded on Scripture and any teachings which go beyond scripture should be denounced. The scriptures are plain and easy enough for every believer to understand; the interpretations of councils and assemblies of any kind have no authority beyond that (Barclay, 1692, pp. 110–12)
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Barclay’s contention is that his own catechism, which is made up simply of quotes and paraphrases of biblical verses, shows that it is Quakers who are the ones who are faithful to these principles of Protestantism, not their opponents. In composing his version, we should not forget that he fully accepts the two principles laid out above. On the matter of good and evil, the Westminster Confession is clear that all human beings are caught up in the corruption of human nature brought about by the disobedience of Adam and Eve: ‘From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to evil, do proceed all actual transgressions’ (The Confession of Faith, 1969, p. 12). Christ, however, bought salvation, but only for those chosen by God to receive it. The choice is God’s and does not depend on any human action or merit. In keeping with Calvinism, the Confession makes it clear that ‘the rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for his sin’ (The Confession of Faith, 1969, p. 9). Such people have no hope of salvation. They may be Christians, and even feel the operations of the Spirit, but they are condemned. Even their good deeds simply increase God’s displeasure, though their wicked deeds increase it more. It is only fair to say that the Confession warns that this is a mysterious doctrine, which must not be lightly misused. The other side of the coin of this inescapable doom is that the Confession offers the elect the assurance that, even though they fall into sin and may meet just punishment and rebuke, their salvation is certain. God’s choice is infinitely beyond being shaken by their human misdemeanours. After all, no-one deserves or can earn salvation; neither can they forfeit it. It is important to recognize that Calvin and the Westminster Divines are here being faithful to Scripture as they understand it. They take seriously, for instance, passages such as Romans 9:20–23, where Paul writes: Who are you, my friend, … to bandy words with God? Shall the thing moulded say to him who moulded it, ‘Why have you made me this way?’ Or is it that you wish to deny that the potter has the right to do with the clay whatever he likes, to make out the same lump one vessel for noble use and another for ignoble use? And what if God, while ready to display his anger and make known his power, has yet borne most patiently with those vessels which were the very objects of his anger, fit for nothing but destruction; and he has acted in this way in order to make known his glory, in all its abundance, bestowing it upon the vessel singled out for mercy, those, I mean, that had been prepared by him from the very first, so that glory might be theirs?4
By conceding the two principles of Protestantism as he states them above, Barclay has to deal with these verses and the others like them that can certainly be understood as reflecting an arbitrary divine decree and a division of humanity into those destined for destruction and those awarded the hope of glory. 4 The translation used here is H.W. Cassirer God’s New Covenant: A New Testament Translation (1989), which more than any other catches the movement of Paul’s argument.
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At the same time, Barclay is equally keen to avoid the accusations that the proponents of the Westminster Confession indiscriminately levelled against their opponents: that they fell into the errors of Pelagianism, Arminianism or Socinianism. These were the ‘boo-words’ of theological debate of the time. Pelagianism was the error traced back to the Irish or Scottish monk Pelagius, who taught that human beings could contribute to their own salvation, thus earning himself the condemnation of Augustine of Hippo. Pelagius’s point was one that many Christians nowadays have sympathy with. He argued that unless we are capable of doing good, we are not really moral beings at all with the dignity but also responsibility that this confers. Augustine’s counter was that this reliance on the merely human was a denial of the power of God’s grace. Arminianism was a riposte to Calvin’s teaching that Christ’s death was only for the elect, those chosen to be saved. Arminius, a Dutch theologian, argued in his Remonstrance that all had the opportunity of salvation, but not all took it up. Again, this earned him the wrath of those who found it a detraction from God’s power to suppose that so momentous a decision as the salvation or damnation of a human soul could depend on a merely human choice. Socinianism was a version of Unitarianism which doubted the divinity and pre-existence of Jesus. From the modern reader’s point of view, it may seem that all these theological positions at least have something to be said for them. In Calvinist circles in the seventeenth century, however, they represent insidious heresies. Barclay’s achievement was to develop an argument that could state the Quaker case and its disagreements with Calvinist orthodoxy without his being dismissed instantly as merely a champion of one of these heretical errors. As we examine his teaching on good and evil, we need to be aware that in this theological minefield, where perceived error could lead to imprisonment or even death, he is skirting round a succession of strategically placed theological mines as he charts what may seem to us now a rather tortuous path through these debates. Barclay’s Counter to Calvinism Barclay’s main objection to the Calvinist view of double predestination is, I have argued elsewhere,5 related to his concern to find a ground of certain knowledge in the direct apprehension of Christ by every human soul. In this, Barclay is entirely of his time. The idea that true knowledge entailed certainty, on the model of the axioms of geometry, was beyond question. Protestantism placed that ground of certainty in the Scriptures. Barclay, however, points out the lack of certainty demonstrated by the range of interpretations of scripture that underlay Protestant disputes. He seeks to draw on the philosophical writings of Descartes, and places certainty in the universal experience of the operation of Christ. Calvin’s insistence that the human race is divided into two categories, those who can respond to Christ, and those who do not, is fundamentally inimical to this analysis. Barclay’s universalism, which argues that even those who have no knowledge or exposure to Christian teaching 5 The argument is developed in my article ‘Resisting the Inevitable: Universal and Particular Salvation in the Thought of Robert Barclay’ (1998).
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are open to the influence of Christ on their hearts in exactly the same way as anyone else, is essential to his theory of religious knowledge. Christ dwells in the heart of every human being. However, as we have seen, Barclay agrees with Calvin, and indeed may even go beyond him, in accepting that all human beings are corrupted by the fall of Adam. Indeed, it is this common condition admitted by Calvin that gives Barclay his ground of universalism. He does baulk, however, at Calvin’s stern ruling that election extends to the unborn and to infants. In Calvin’s view, elect infants who die before baptism will be saved, but the reprobate infant will go to hell. The Catholic doctrine that such children enter the state of Limbo is dismissed by Calvin as unscriptural. Barclay concurs with this view of Limbo, but finds this aspect of Calvinism repugnant. His view is that infants are not subject to the law, and therefore cannot sin. They only incur the punishment for Adam’s sin when they join themselves to it by acts of actual transgression. He confesses he would rather fall into the error of declaring that all infants are saved than be a party to a doctrine that decrees the damnation of infants who have never actively sinned. Nevertheless, it is the agreed premise of the universal depravity of the human heart that provides the common ground from which Barclay can build his alternative system. This then leads to a problem for Barclay, who has to explain how Christ dwells in the heart of evil men without implying that God is somehow exposed to the corruption of evil or unable to defeat the evil in men. His solution to this is the ingenious but puzzling idea of the vehiculum dei, the ‘divine vehicle’, which he also calls the seed of Christ.6 In Barclay’s view, this is a divine substance, in which God dwells. The language of ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’ that he uses here is not one that is familiar to us, but is part of the legacy of Aristotle in medieval and Reformation theology and philosophy. Barclay himself acknowledges that this is a doctrine that is hard to grasp, but uses the analogy of medicine and health. A medicine can be found in both a sick and a healthy body. The bodies are different, and the difference may have been brought about by the medicine. The medicine itself, however, is a ‘substance’, something whose nature is unaffected by its environment. ‘Health’ is an accident, or in other words, something that is not intrinsic to the body. In the same way, the divine Seed can bring about salvation in a human soul, but the outcome depends on the response of the soul. The Seed itself, however, is unaffected by the evil of an unsaved soul. Barclay insists time and again that the Seed is nothing to do with any part of human nature. It is quite separate. Human beings can do nothing that would affect it, so no effort that we make to strive for our salvation can make it more likely or hasten its operations. All we can do is to wait, as the sick at the Pool of Bethesda had to wait for the angel to stir the pool, an allusion to John 5. Barclay extends this metaphor to counter any charge that he is teaching that human beings have any part in their own salvation, and thus falling into Pelagian error. He compares God to a doctor who gives us a medicine with strict instruction to keep to our beds and not to stir a finger but let the medicine work. If we then stubbornly disobey these instructions, we have 6 The main discussion of this idea is in the Apology, Propositions 5 and 6, Section 13 (Barclay, 1692, p. 333).
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nobody to blame but ourselves if our sickness worsens, but if we get well, the credit is the doctor’s. Our only task is to remain totally passive and allow the Spirit to do its work. It is not surprising, then, that Quakers in the eighteenth century embraced Quietism, as Barclay here gives a classic account of quietist teaching. The ‘Day of Visitation’ Although this explanation may allow Barclay to counter charges that his views are Pelagian in that he sees human goodness as depending on an act of human will, it does not answer the accusation that he is at heart an Arminian who believes that all human beings are called to be saved in the face of the scriptural evidence. The need to avoid these charges leads Barclay to the distinctive but rather chilling doctrine of the ‘Day of Visitation’, which he sets out in Propositions 5 and 6, Section 12 of his Apology (Barclay, 1692, p. 333). By this he means that there is a particular window of opportunity, so to speak, for every individual to respond to Christ’s offer of salvation. Before or after that period, they are incapable of responding to grace. This ‘day’ is different in length for each person. It might be a literal day, or it might extend over the whole of a lifetime. It may extend to the point of death, but it may not. Whatever its length, once the day has passed and the offer has not been accepted, there is no longer any hope of salvation for that person. This allows Barclay to explain those scriptural passages that his opponents cite to justify their claim that there are people who are reprobate, and to whom the offer of salvation is never open. Here he distances himself from Arminius, who simply seems to sidestep the scriptural evidence. Where Barclay thinks the Calvinists are wrong, however, is in their belief that this distinction between the saved and the reprobate implies an eternal decree that marks individuals out from before their birth. Salvation is open to everyone once they are vouchsafed the moment of visitation. The reprobate are those who have failed to respond to their only chance of salvation. They become reprobate, excluded from salvation, by their own choice. This is an ingenious counter to both Arminians and Calvinists that provides a defensible reading of passages such as the one from Romans cited above, but it is a frightening idea. In protecting his commitment to the universal possibility of salvation, Barclay has to argue that reprobation is possible for everyone as well, if they miss this chance. It may be for much of our lives that no possibility of salvation is open to us because the Day of Visitation for us has not yet dawned, or because we have failed to respond to it. Repentance beyond that point will be of no avail. That means that there are people alive around us who are irredeemable, no longer capable of responding to God. Does this mean that God is frustrated in his purposes, if he has intended our salvation and we have failed to respond to him? Not at all: the metaphor Barclay employs here is of the sun, which shines equally on wax or on clay but melts one and hardens the other. Everyone has the chance in the Day of Visitation to be melted and reformed by the light of God, which appears as love, but once that day has passed, the same light of God hardens the reprobate’s heart and increasingly reveals his wickedness. The same divine light now appears as wrath.
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Barclay ends up undermining the great promise and guarantee of Calvinism, which is the certainty of salvation for the elect. On the contrary, Barclay argues, everyone is capable of falling away from grace. Even if you do seize the opportunity of the Day of Visitation, you may subsequently forfeit its benefits. If even St Paul was aware of the need for constant vigilance to prevent himself from falling short, how much more must the rest of us have the humility to realize that we can always lapse into sin. This means that Barclay, unlike Calvin, can give an unequivocal endorsement to the need for discipline and outward works, which for Calvin must always remain icing on the cake, so to speak, good things in themselves but not the criteria for salvation. At the same time, Barclay makes much of the seemingly inconsistent claim that human beings are capable of moral perfection in this life and of reaching a state of stability from which it is hard to fall. At first sight, this seems difficult to reconcile with his view of human depravity. In the vehiculum dei, however, perfection already resides in the human being. By persistent obedience and conformity to Christ within, a person can attain a state where obedience becomes a part of one’s nature. Barclay is careful not to claim that any human being can be perfect as God is, but stands by the claim that there is a state that human beings can enter where they do not participate in actual transgressions, although this is never without the risk of temptation and possible lapse into sin. Some, moreover, he declares, are given an assurance of salvation, and those will not be deceived: ‘Such a state is attainable in this life, from which there is not a falling away’ (Barclay, 1692, p. 402). Barclay’s perfectionism is not a contradiction of his low view of fallen human nature, but on the contrary a product of it, paradoxical as that may seem. Human nature is so reduced to impotence by the Fall that it can be conformed to the divine nature and its rebelliousness overridden. Its power of resistance is limited. Barclay never goes quite as far as George Fox did in claiming that there are those who are incapable of sin, but he does give a theological justification for claiming that perfection is possible in this life, and that to settle for anything less is not a sensible accommodation to human frailty, as both Catholic and Protestant theologians would claim, but a failure of faith in the transformative power of the seed of Christ. Barclay thus sees the human incapacity to do good as the other side of the possibility that, united with Christ, human beings can achieve perfection. Freedom, Grace and Responsibility Does Barclay then manage to bridge the gap between those who champion the sovereignty and power of God and those who champion human freedom – or does he fall into that gap? His unique move is to bring both together in every human life by making the division temporal. We are all given our day of visitation. In that period, we are free to surrender to the redemptive power of the seed of Christ within us. Those biblical passages that speak of universal salvation and the human responsibility of choice apply to this period of our existence. Before, and particularly after, this day of visitation, our fate is determined. Nothing we can do can alter the
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decree of damnation that our corrupt human nature deserves. Here, those biblical passages which speak of unalterable divine decrees apply. The price of this remarkable solution to the problem, which achieves the feat of making election and reprobation universal, is a spirituality that can only operate by a suppression and denial of the human will so that the divine can work unhindered. The laudable aim of making the connection between internal disposition and outward works transparent in practice is bound to lead to an increasing concern with policing every detail of outward behaviour as the only way of policing the internal disposition. The later Quaker tendency to set out increasingly detailed and strict rules of dress and conduct is a product of this and with it paradoxically a danger of religion becoming viewed as obedience to a set of conventions rather than the lifechanging disruption of the conventions of human society. The other consequence is that Barclay has little to say on the communal and social dimensions of good and evil. He does have some concern for justice, but the individual soul and its salvation is his focus. To be fair to him, this highly selfreflective understanding of theology is common to all his opponents, and, as I have argued elsewhere, the vocabulary and polemical interests of theological debate which Barclay entered into gave no support to the exploration of human beings as creatures grounded in relationship. Descartes’ famous remark, ‘I think, therefore I am’ is a prime example of the fact that in this period thought begins from the individual reflecting on his own consciousness. The existence of other minds then becomes a problem to be explained. How can I know that there are any other conscious selves in the world as I can never inhabit them as I do myself. Communication and relationship thus become problems to be explained. Barclay’s much-loved words, which formed our first quote, are a rare but telling testimony to the role of the community in the transformation of human tendencies which Barclay has no encouragement to develop. ‘How can I be saved?’ is the question that is debated, and each competing group accepts the premise that the answer can only be adequate if it is build on a claim of certainty. Good and evil for Barclay and his contemporaries are ways of describing attributes of the individual. They are absolutes, because their measure is the attributes of the supreme individual, God. Our contemporary view, on the other hand, is shaped by the insights of biology, psychology and sociology and this may tempt us to go too far in explaining individual actions and attitudes in terms of external factors and trends within the group. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are often taken as relative terms which reflect the constructed values of particular groups and social customs. The individual may be reduced to a manifestation of a social dynamic. Yet this goes against the sense we have that our values do matter and have some explanatory and commanding power. We have at least the sense of choices and of constraints, of being responsible for our actions and yet not always able to do what we know we should. The universal experiences of legitimate guilt and undeserved forgiveness have to be taken into account in any theology. Cheap grace is not an option for any theology that takes seriously the destructive impulses in the human heart and the reality of seemingly undeserved and random suffering in the world. In the consideration of these issues, Barclay reminds us is that the interaction of human and divine, of grace and law, of freedom and responsibility, is a mystery only
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compounded when the rich but conflicting witness of the biblical texts are brought into play. The Bible provides no neat set of rules of conduct or simple picture of ideal human behaviour. Its contradictions may lead us to abandon any attempt to make sense of it, but it may be that it is precisely its insistence that these contradictions can and must be held in tension that is its abiding value. Barclay offers a solution that seeks to account for both freedom and determinism but fails to take into account the complex network of relationships that make up both human, and, in Christian terms, divine realities. His failure, and that of many of the theological traditions he is interacting with, is tied to the philosophical premises of the argument. His insight into the dynamic nature of good and evil is tied to an understanding of change that can only express it in terms of discrete and distinctive phases in time. It might be more fruitful to consider ‘good’ and ‘evil’ not as adjectives or nouns attached to individualized and isolated acts or agents, but as adverbs, as ways of describing tendencies and movements with a ceaseless movement of relationships that may be more or less loving and enlivening.
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Chapter 6
John Woolman and Good and Evil Mike Heller
John Woolman’s views on good and evil are worth examining. He is often recognized as the first important writer against slavery in America and the exemplar of the eighteenth-century’s Quaker ethic. His Journal is considered to be among the world’s great spiritual autobiographies. Since the publication of his collected writings approximately two years after his death in 1772, Quaker and non-Quaker readers have continued to turn to his writings as a model for their own spiritual discernment. His Journal, which records interactions with Friends who owned slaves, supported the slave trade or engaged in harmful economic practices, continues to inspire readers to consider their own responses to those whom they perceive to be taking part in harmful practices.1 A Christ-centered Universalist First, a few preliminaries. John Woolman uses the term ‘evil’, but he does not define what he means by evil. He is more concerned with how he and others in his Quaker community needed to respond to evil, and for him that evil was visible in actions that created injustice, oppression and violence. These were much on his mind locally and in the wider world. He does not use the phrase ‘good and evil’, which might indicate something of an aversion to condemning others and seeing others in black and white terms. He avoids being judgmental of others, even going to lengths in his revisions to be accurate to what he or others can observe. In the Journal, for example, he first wrote that how Friends received each other depended ‘partly in regard to character’, but he revised this passage to read ‘partly in regard to reputation’ (p. 60). While he avoided the fixed dualities implied by the phrase ‘good and evil’, his thinking is characterized by other dualities that are at the heart of his worldview. He was a Christ-centered universalist, and his decisions were guided by a subtle relationship of passive and active stances in regard to waiting upon and surrendering to the inward spirit and then taking action in the world as he felt guided by a profound spiritual discernment.
1 References to John Woolman’s writings, unless noted, are from Phillips P. Moulton’s edition of The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (1989). My thanks to my wife, Rebecca Heller, for her helpful ideas for this essay. Also my thanks to colleagues Sterling Olmsted, Katherine Hoffman, Ned Wisnefske, and my student Anna C. Nobile for their generous suggestions.
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Perhaps he records in his Journal his struggles as a boy and young man in order to express his own experience with destructive temptations and impulses. In the Journal’s first chapter, he writes of his childhood, ‘I perceived a plant in me which produced much wild grapes … the sight of my backsliding affected me with sorrow … vanity was added to vanity … and I hastened toward destruction’ (p. 25). Not setting himself above his neighbors, Woolman’s own experience and his faith told him that evil arises within everyone and that within everyone is something of the divine spirit of goodness. He thought a great deal about ‘the goodness of God’, which he felt he knew experientially. He encountered and was much weighed down by the wrongs and oppression he witnessed. Woolman’s expressions of universalism and trust in others to respond to their sense of the spirit of love might lead a reader to believe Woolman was naïve about evils in the world. But in fact, throughout his Journal and essays one can find numerous examples of him describing his deeply felt responses to violence and oppression. There is a woodblock print by Leonard Baskin of ‘John Woolman’s Dream of the Fox and the Cat’, which creates a vivid illustration of Woolman’s awareness of horrible injustice in the world. In the woodcut’s foreground is a vicious fox-cat with bared teeth and claws, and in the background is the figure of a hanged ‘old Negro man’ whose flesh was to be fed to the fox-cat. In Woolman’s narrative of the dream there is the further addition of a woman calmly drinking tea, who looks on from a position of privilege (as do perhaps the viewers of the woodcut and the readers of the Journal), unmoved by this violence against a fellow human being. Woolman writes that in the dream, ‘I stood silent all this time and was filled with extreme sorrow at so horrible an action and now began to lament bitterly …. but none mourned with me’ (p. 161). Descriptions of violence and his responses occupy many passages in his writing. One of his often anthologized early memories, from Journal chapter 1, recounts his horror as a child at having killed a mother robin and his decision to kill her babies to keep them from suffering (pp. 24–5). He presents the robin incident as an early lesson in human cruelty in contrast to God’s mercies, and he quotes from Scripture to make his point: ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel’ [Prov. 12:10]’ and ‘… he whose tender mercies are over all his works hath placed a principle in the human mind which incites to exercise goodness toward every living creature’ (p. 25). In Journal chapter 9, Woolman tells of two white men horribly tortured by Indians, who ‘opened the belly’ of one of the men ‘and fastened a part of his bowels to a tree, and then whipped the poor creature till by his running round the tree his bowels were drawn out of his body’ (p. 142). In chapter 11, describing his journey on the ship to England, he reflects on ‘a sympathizing tenderness’ he feels toward the young sailors laboring under terrible conditions on the ship (p. 170). In his essay ‘Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, Part Second’, he quotes from his reading of Willem Bosman about the horrible conditions of the slaves on the ships bringing them from Africa: ‘The ship I went aboard was loaded with elephants’ teeth and slaves, to the number of 680 men, women, and children. It was a pitiful sight to behold …’ (p. 229). Woolman writes of the complicity of those who see themselves as mere bystanders while African children are taken into slavery. ‘Should we consider ourselves present as spectators …’ he writes, ‘or should we look upon it
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as happening in our own families … we must own that such proceedings are contrary to the nature of Christianity’ (p. 232). What is worth noting is the extent to which Woolman is moved by these terrible realities and deeply motivated by his empathy for those who suffer. After the description of Indian torture, which is the most vivid description of violence in his writings, he writes that the account ‘affected me with sadness’, and then he records a long meditation on Christ, which ends with a prayer that ‘his family … may walk as he walked’ (pp. 142–3). Another striking image of Woolman’s response to violence and oppression occurs after his often quoted dream, in Journal chapter 12, in which he hears an angel say ‘John Woolman is dead’, after which he says, … I spake not in public meetings for worship for near one year, but my mind was very often in company with the oppressed slaves as I sat in meetings, and though under this dispensation I was shut up from speaking, yet the spring of the gospel ministry was many times livingly opened in me and the divine gift operated by abundance of weeping in feeling the oppression of this people (p. 187).
Here is a man deeply affected by violence in the world. Reason and Faith Because Woolman wrote in an attractive plain style his writings can seem very modern. As a result, it is tempting to forget that he was very much an eighteenthcentury man drawn to Enlightenment ideals. It is important to see him accurately within the context of his time and the community of Friends who were his primary audience. Woolman presents carefully structured arguments, which reveal how much he valued the power of reason. For example, he develops tightly reasoned arguments about the effects of wealthy landowners who, in their desire for luxuries, charge high rents, which cause laborers to be overworked and, in their misery, become alcoholic and abusive. Phillips P. Moulton observes, in ‘John Woolman: Exemplar of Ethics’, that ‘Woolman had a strong sense of a principle of order and harmony governing the universe. If our relationships … are in accord with true wisdom, a divine proportion will be evident’ (p. 91). Moulton cites as an example Woolman’s belief that ‘as a divine principle directs us away from harmful but lucrative employment, our desires for expensive luxuries will also be reduced, so that harmony will tend to prevail’ (p. 91). Woolman might well be described as ‘a practical idealist’. Like Benjamin Franklin, his near-contemporary, Woolman seems to have been less concerned with theological questions of evil or the roots of evil than he was with practical solutions to the problems he witnessed. Unlike Franklin, however, Woolman was not only an eighteenth-century man of reason who drew upon Enlightenment language of the ‘natural rights of freedom’ (p. 204), but also a man of experiential faith in the tradition of the great Christian mystics. As J. William Frost observes in ‘John Woolman and the Enlightenment’, Woolman used ‘the language of rational religion in antislavery tracts but rarely in the Journal’ (2003, p. 169), where one can find his more mystical writings. Frost argues that he was ‘inconsistent’ (2003, p. 169),
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but I would rather say that Woolman was remarkably able to balance both modes of thought and knowing, reason and mysticism. Woolman was successful in business, keeping a dry-goods store until his mid30s, when he gave up the store in order to devote more time to his spiritual calling. He turned to orchard-keeping, tailoring, writing wills and other documents for his neighbors, and sometimes school teaching. Through his itinerant ministry, his antislavery essay publications, and his decision in 1761 to wear undyed clothing because the dyes were made by slave labor, he became a striking figure of some fame among Friends. He felt drawn to work to restore Friends to the ‘steadiness and firmness’ of faith of an earlier time, from which he and his fellow reformists felt Quakers had fallen away. In the Journal’s chapter 1, he makes it clear that one of his primary motivations was to improve the spiritual health of his community: ‘I believed there had been in past ages people who walked in uprightness before God … and the apprehension of there being less steadiness and firmness amongst people in this age than in past ages often troubled me while I was a child’ (p. 24). It seems he saw his life’s work not as redeeming individual souls for the afterlife, but rather as using his ministry to help others find their own spiritual guidance to help redeem the community. Woolman does occasionally refer to God’s judgment but significantly the fear of judgment can be a unifying realization. He writes in the first essay against slavery, ‘Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes’: When we remember that all nations are of one blood (Gen. 3:20); that in this world we are but sojourners; that we are subject to the like afflictions and infirmities of body, the like disorders and frailties in mind, the like temptations, the same death and the same judgment; and that the All-wise Being is judge and Lord over us all, it seems to raise an idea of a general brotherhood and a disposition easy to be touched with a feeling of each other’s afflictions (p. 200).
Moulton observes that ‘A striking quality of Woolman which has current relevance was his capacity to see the long-range effects and implications of an act’ (1965, p. 85). In expressing the realization that ‘all nations are of one blood’ and that all people are brethren because they are subject to God’s judgment and can be sensitive to each other’s afflictions, Woolman looks toward the wisdom of caring for each other and for our succeeding generations. He calls for decisions which are guided by ‘an affectionate regard to posterity’ (p. 101), that is, as a spiritual gift to succeeding generations. A faithful relationship walking ‘in uprightness’ was to be achieved by valuing and attending to an inward experience of God’s spirit, which Woolman called ‘a motion of love’ (p. 23). From this inward experience of the spirit emerged Friends’ testimonies of peace, equality, simplicity, and community. The Fountain of Universal Love Woolman seems to have seen ‘the good’ primarily as a result of attending to the inward leadings of ‘the goodness of God’, which significantly he describes in terms of his own experience in the opening sentence of his Journal: ‘I have often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness
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of God, and now in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work’ (p. 23). He shared the belief that God was acting in the world, as on-going revelation; it was the individual’s and the community’s duty to work to make the world a better place. He wrote that ‘Our duty and interest is inseparably united’ (p. 208). He helped to found a school in Mt. Holly, where he lived in New Jersey, and he was much concerned about the education of children. He published his own primer, which emphasizes not humanity’s fallen state but rather charity toward others, and concludes with the parable of the Good Samaritan (1997, p. 81). He begins a chapter on education in ‘A Plea for the Poor’ by writing ‘When we are thoroughly instructed in the kingdom of God, we are content with that use of things which his wisdom points out …’ (p. 263). The kingdom of God was here and yet to come. The individual was called to help make the kingdom a living reality. Woolman’s Journal can be read as the story of his own education in faith. In fact, the purpose of Quaker journals, and the reason they were published by yearly meetings, was to strengthen the community’s life of faith. He revised the Journal for publication because he felt he had something to share that could be helpful for others and the betterment of the community. But the outward effects of one’s labor are not the highest end. He writes in the Journal, … I have had renewed evidences that to be faithful to the Lord and content with his will concerning me is a most necessary and useful lesson … looking less at the effects of my labour than at the pure motion and reality of the concern as it arises from heavenly love (p. 72).
Being faithful first to a concern rather than to results, Woolman demonstrates an unusual aspect of his Quaker journal aesthetic. He sometimes reports in his Journal that he spoke on a particular occasion, that he cleared his mind and was thus faithful to his leading, but he feels no need to tell the reader what was said or what result followed! His ideas of good and evil center upon his experiential belief in the divine spirit present in all people. It is unusual to find a writer of the eighteenth century stating so clearly the validity of other faiths. Generations of readers have been drawn to Woolman’s expressions of a Christ-centered universalism that still speaks to people’s concerns about the quality of God’s justice and grace. Woolman writes, ‘I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people in every Society who truly loved God were accepted of him’ (p. 28). It follows that he would see the belief that one’s own community is superior to that of others as ‘a darkness in the understanding’: To consider mankind otherwise than brethren, to think favours are peculiar to one nation and exclude others, plainly supposes a darkness in the understanding. For as God’s love is universal, so where the mind is sufficiently influenced by it, it begets a likeness of itself and the heart is enlarged towards all men (p. 202).
The statement that ‘God’s love is universal’ is based upon the faith that all people have access to the spirit’s inward motion of love and can be guided by it. In ‘A Plea for the Poor’, Woolman famously writes of this faith ironically as ‘the [true] business
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of our lives’, implying that such a motion of love is one’s highest calling: ‘… to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives …’ (p. 241). His persuasion, his understanding of rhetoric, is based upon a trust in the other person’s ability to respond to the leadings of the spirit. In his narrative accounts of meetings and confrontations with others, he addresses others with the faith that they would awaken to their own sense of the inward spirit. In his first antislavery essay, he appeals to Quaker slaveowners not by condemning them for owning slaves, but by emphasizing a concern for the moral burden placed upon children by inheriting slaves. The essay asks readers to respond to a higher sense of gratitude to God’s spiritual ‘gifts bestowed on us’, which are a spiritual ‘inheritance incorruptible’ (p. 205). He trusts that others have within themselves this universal principle of goodness. He writes with the expectation that they will awaken to the practicality of attending to that principle. Thus Woolman’s writings gravitate toward a meditation more on good than on evil. (A computer concordance of his writings indicates that the words ‘evil’ and ‘evils’ occur 52 times in his writings, the word ‘sin’ occurs 13 times. By comparison, the word ‘good’ occurs 166 times and ‘goodness’ 73 times.) The first sentence of his Journal signals that the motivation for this writing is an experience of ‘the goodness of God’ (p. 23). He knows that ‘goodness’ by experience. He writes in the Journal’s first chapter, for example, of his experience first speaking in ministry, the pain of overstepping his inward guide, and the resulting humility and final strengthening sense of forgiveness, which allows him to speak again in worship: I remembered God and was troubled, and in the depth of my distress he had pity upon me and sent the Comforter. I then felt forgiveness for my offense …. And after this, feeling the spring of divine love opened and a concern to speak, I said a few words in a meeting, in which I found peace. This I believe was about six weeks from the first time, and as I was thus humbled and disciplined under the cross, my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the language of the pure Spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart and taught me to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together … (p. 31).
His understanding of one’s relation to the inward spirit was also the foundation for his ideas of prophetic speaking and of Quaker ministry. By stripping away the distractions in life, the material clutter and the busyness of life, the individual seeks to hear the still small voice within. This need to reduce distractions for the sake of spiritual clarity was the basis for the simplicity testimony. Woolman’s Journal was also the story of his life-long efforts to follow the inward leadings and ‘breathings’ of the spirit. His ministry and his actions outward into the world were born of private, inward discernment. His belief in walking in uprightness, in finding one’s right actions, depends upon taking great care not to be misled by the selfish, earthly spirit within, but rather to seek to discern throughout one’s life the true leadings of the divine spirit. For Woolman, there is nothing worse than being separated from the inward spirit, the fountain of universal love: ‘The true felicity of man in this life, and that which is to come, is in being inwardly united to the fountain of universal love and bliss’ (p. 249). To be separate from God is the essence of sin, but Woolman seems less concerned about issues of salvation and sin than about the need to attend to the
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inward discernment through which one finds his or her true guide. Every individual, if he or she is sensitive to the inward motions of the spirit, can be guided by a principle that is universal in humanity. Perhaps his most quoted sentence expresses this faith: There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity (p. 236).
The heart of his trust in others and the power of his persuasion is this faith in a universal spiritual reality. Injustice, Oppression and Violence Woolman’s idea of evil follows from his idea of good. He saw evil as a departure from the inward principle placed by God in the human heart, and such departure results in acts of oppression, war, failure to recognize the natural rights of freedom in others, and using others in ways that cause suffering. Evil comes of insensitivity to divine leadings; it is a deprivation, an absence of good. As I looked for evidence of Woolman’s ideas about evil, I kept coming back to his practical solutions to injustices. He does not seem to dwell on thinking about evil, and when he uses the term, the focus is on actions about which people can make choices. Perhaps because of his experience in the dry-goods business, Woolman had a mind for thinking about economic issues, and he thought about ways that economic oppression could be addressed and corrected. He wrote short essays ‘On serving the Lord in our outward employments’, ‘On the Example of Christ’, ‘On Merchandising’, and ‘On Divine Admonitions’, (1922, pp. 440–58). In the essay ‘On the Example of Christ’, Woolman looks to Christ as a model for looking out for the poor, the helpless, the weak, and ‘those of low degree’; he quotes Philemon 2:4–5, ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus’ (1922, p. 447). In the essay ‘On Divine Admonitions’, he writes not only of the love of luxury as a ‘deviation from pure wisdom amongst us’ but also of the pollution of the early industrial revolution, which he refers to as ‘the defilement of the Earth’ (1922, p. 457). In Journal chapter 12, while walking in northern England, he observed ‘narrow streets in towns and villages, where dirtiness under foot and the scent arising from that filth’, which came from cloth being dyed and ‘where much of their dye-stuffs have drained away’ (p. 190). Woolman may have been one of the first writers to recognize the dangers of the industrial revolution in its pollution and its effects upon laborers. In his own time, his essays on slavery were probably his most influential essays. But for later generations perhaps his most significant writings are about injustice and oppression and about the abuses done to the poor. Woolman’s most influential and reprinted essay on economics is ‘A Plea for the Poor’, which was republished in England in the late nineteenth century by the Fabian Society and recently republished as a pamphlet by Pendle Hill (2001). Woolman had unusual insight into what he called ‘the connections of things’ (p. 247). His writings often talk about the relations
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between landowners and tenants, the wealthy and the poor. He published a dialogue called ‘Conversations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It May Be Promoted’, which presents two conversations, one between ‘a labouring man’ and ‘a man rich in money’, and one between ‘a thrifty Landholder’ and ‘a Labouring man’ (1922, pp. 460–73). He saw the love of luxury as a cause for economic oppression of others, which led to a misuse of the land, and which contributed to policies and attitudes that led to wars. Simplicity was about more than the issue of reducing the distractions of life. He saw a direct cause-and-effect relation between the desire for luxuries and the decisions that took nations to war. He observed that in ‘luxury and covetousness ... the seeds of great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent’ (p. 129). As he writes in the Journal: As the least degree of luxury hath some connection with evil, for those who profess to be disciples of Christ and are looked upon as leaders of the people, to have that mind in them which was also in him, and so stand separate from every wrong way, is a means of help to the weaker (pp. 54–5).
Such observations today obviously touch readers who are much concerned about the causes of war. He warned of the retribution of God for actions that were harmful and that disregarded Jesus’ teachings about loving one’s neighbor and doing unto others as one would expect them to do. It is significant that he labeled the love of luxury as an ‘evil’, perhaps as a form of emphasis for how intensely he felt its far-reaching effects, which fell upon one’s children and generations to follow. An awareness of evil actions led Woolman to feel called to witness for change. From his witness to injustice, oppression and war, Woolman drew a constructive series of connections. In a passage early in the Journal, he felt a sense of duty to confront the owner of a tavern where he observed much drunkenness and disorder. Although he was only in his early 20s, Woolman saw no elders stepping forward to speak with the tavern owner. Remarkably, if we can take Woolman’s own account of the incident at face value, the man responded to him with kindness and regard (p. 32). This incident reinforces the idea that for Woolman good and evil were community responsibilities, while the necessity of being a ‘true witness’ belonged to the individual. In a dream recorded in Journal chapter 3, ‘a great multitude’ of soldiers pass by the house and, Woolman writes that they, ‘looking up at me, expressed themselves in a scoffing, taunting way’ (p. 47). War is the results of governmental decisions made by governmental leaders. But the decision to oppose war had to be made by the individual. Yet one need not stand entirely alone. In a passage in Journal chapter 5 recounting a struggle with war-tax refusal during the French and Indian War, Woolman joined with twenty Friends who could not in good conscience pay their war taxes and who explained their actions in an epistle addressed to Friends (pp. 85–6). Interestingly, the Quaker community was not in unity about objecting to the war tax. Woolman found strength by working with others to oppose what they perceived to be wrongs carried out by institutional and governmental bodies. Woolman felt that ‘where true love so seasons’ the ‘proceedings’ of others, ‘the pure witness is reached in such who are well acquainted with them’ (1922, p. 401).
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The effect of ‘the pure witness’ of one person upon others would be felt in their response to the ‘spirit of true charity’ (p. 98). Woolman wrote in his essay ‘On the Example of Christ’ that Christ created ‘a perfect example of humility, that the pure witness may be reached in many minds, and the way opened for a harmonious walking together’ (1922, p. 447). For Woolman, Christ is the Redeemer. But because Woolman is not greatly concerned about issues of salvation, it would seem that Christ as Redeemer took on other meanings. Woolman wrote in the essay on Christ’s example that ‘… this mind being in us, which was in Christ Jesus, it removes from our hearts the desire of Superiority, worldly honors or greatness’ (1922, p. 448). The good, for Woolman, was centered in the Christian act of resigning one’s own will to become one with the will of Christ. Salvation and redemption for Woolman seem to be found by surrendering one’s self to Christ’s model of humility, sacrifice and suffering. Was this knowledge easily gained? It would seem not, based upon the narrative of Woolman’s Journal. The Journal tells the story of a life-long journey of learning humility and resignation of the self will. It tells the story of a journey toward oneness with suffering humanity. A significant moment occurs in Journal chapter 12, when he sees himself in a dream mixed in with the masses of suffering humanity: ‘I saw a mass of matter of a dull gloomy colour … and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be and live, and that I was mixed in with them and henceforth might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being’, and he then realizes that ‘poor oppressed people’ working in the mines are oppressed in the name of Christianity as they dig rich treasures for wealthy Christians (pp. 185–6). Woolman’s expressions of compassion and empathy distinguish his vision from many other Christian writers of his time and ours. Hope and Transformation Was Woolman a hopeful man? Did he believe that people could respond to injustice, oppression, and war with what Rudolf Heredia, talking about Mahatma Gandhi, called the ‘amelioration of heart’? Like Gandhi in the mid-twentieth century and the Dalai Lama in our time, Woolman’s approach to peacemaking arises primarily from his spiritual experience. His strategies for addressing others are the result of a complex motion of trusting in the inward motion of the spirit of Christ. Through this trust, the profound hope which is founded in faith, Woolman finds the enabling force through which, as Sterling Olmsted observes, he can ‘reach the true witness in the hearts of others’ (2003, p. 330). Woolman’s ideas about responding to evil actions in the world evolved through his life, and these insights were hard-won. His experiences and knowledge of good and evil deepened and intensified. He grew more aware of humanity’s capacity for violence and oppression. His own health seriously deteriorated at the same time that, as a way of identifying with the slaves and poor, he chose to walk on his journeys rather than go on horseback or even by stagecoach. In Journal chapter 10, he suffered confusion about his motives for wanting to travel in the ministry to Barbados. Yet as his physical and mental suffering increased, his spiritual practice deepened, and he moved closer and closer to experiencing oneness
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with the spirit of Christ. During his foot-journey in England in 1772 at age 52, he seems to have given up on long-range plans and turned his whole attention to a daily exercise of spiritual discernment. In one of his last writings, called ‘Concerning the Ministry’, he says that ‘Thus I have been more and more instructed as to the necessity of depending, not on a concern which I felt … but upon the fresh instructions of Christ, the prince of peace, from day to day’ (1997, p. 65). In that essay, he sees himself walking through ‘a miry place’: I have sometimes felt a necessity to stand up; but that spirit which is of the world hath so much prevailed in many, and the pure life of Truth been so pressed down that I have gone forward, not as one traveling in a road cast up and well prepared, but as a man walking through a miry place, in which there are stones here and there safe to step on; but so situated that one step being taken, time is necessary to see where to step next (1997, pp. 65–6).
The act of stepping from stone to stone becomes a kind of parable for taking action, for walking through a fallen world of injustice and suffering. Pausing upon a stone, waiting for inward spiritual instruction, one finds the understanding of where to step next.
PART III Present-Day Perspectives
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Mental Lllness, L<norance, or SinM Perceptions of Modern Liberal Friends
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V"4.( ;'4&+8F.( 21+%&D%( B#.( %"&( 4+.%4%A%41+( 17( B#'( #+8( "&( '&7A.&8( %1( #22&$%( $#'%424$#%41+( 4+( B#'( #.( %"&( E,&..&'( &@4,F( 4+( %"&( 7#2&( 17( T4%,&'F.( &@4,( #2%41+.I( T4.(
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Mental Lllness, L<norance, or SinM Perceptions of Modern Liberal Friends
RN
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V#14.>(B#.(24%&8(:<(<&%(#+1%"&'(;'4&+8(B"&+(.$&#H4+0(17(0118(#+8(&@4,I(EV"&(V#1( 81&.+F%(%#H&(.48&.I(-%(04@&.(:4'%"(%1(:1%"(0118(#+8(&@4,I(g(V"&(n*#.%&'o(B1'H.(B4%"( %"&(>4+8(17(%"&($&1$,&I(3"&(4.(0118(%1($&1$,&(B"1(#'&(0118I(3"&(4.(#,.1(0118(%1(%"1.&( B"1(#'&+F%(0118I(V"4.(4.(%'A&(0118+&..IF(V"&.&(B1'8./(B"42"(.1(2,1.&,<(>4''1'(X&.A.F( 4+ZA+2%41+(4+(%"&(3&'>1+(1+(%"&(*1A+%(L*#%%"&B(OdUcKURS/(#'&(#+1%"&'(&D$'&..41+( 17( %"&( ,1+0.%#+84+0( GA#H&'( %"&1,10<( 17( $&'7&2%41+/( #( 812%'4+&( %"#%( .%4,,( $&'>&#%&.( ;'4&+8.F(:&,4&7.I( =.4#+(%"1A0"%(('.%(:&2#>&(@4.4:,&(#>1+0(#(7&B(T42H.4%&(GA#H&'.(4+(%"&(+4+&%&&+%"( 2&+%A'<(#.(;'4&+8.(,&#'+&8(#:1A%(YA88"4.>(#+8(T4+8A4.>/(:A%(:&2#>&(4+2'&#.4+0,<(
Mental Lllness, L<norance, or SinM Perceptions of Modern Liberal Friends
Nc
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NU
3ood and 45il
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Mental Lllness, L<norance, or SinM Perceptions of Modern Liberal Friends
NO
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`'404+#,(34+I(-+.%(17(#..&'%4+0( %"&($1..4:4,4%<(17(:&4+0(7'&&(7'1>(.4+(4+(%"4.(,47&/(#.(C&1'0&(;1D(848/(,4:&'#,(;'4&+8.( 712A.(1+(%"&(1'404+#,(C'&&H(B1'8(teleios/(B"42"(4.(17%&+(%'#+.,#%&8(#.(E$&'7&2%41+F( 4+( %"&( \&B( V&.%#>&+%I( V"4.( C'&&H( B1'8( EA.A#,,<( .40+4(&.( i#%%#4+4+0( %1( %"&( &+8j( K( 21>$,&%&( >#%A'4%$,&%41+/( B"1,&+&..( #+8( .$4'4%A#,( >#%A'4%:A&8( B4%"( %"&( A+21+84%41+#,( ,1@&( ."1B+( :<( C18/( %"#%( 2"#'#2%&'4_&.( %"&( >18&'+( ,4:&'#,( GA#H&'( A+8&'.%#+84+0( 17( $&'7&2%41+d( #( ,47&(4+(B"42"(%"&(>1@&>&+%(17(%"&(3$4'4%(4.(@4.4:,&(4+(1+&F.(21+@&'.#%41+/(#2%41+(#+8( @&'<($'&.&+2&I
Mc( 94+8.&,,( 01&.( 1+( %1( .#<( 4+( %"&( 711%+1%&( %1( *#%%"&B( OdUR/( ET&'&/( "1B&@&'/( %"&( 21>$#'4.1+(4.(>#8&(:&%B&&+(C18(#+8("4.(2"4,8'&+d("&+2&/(%"&(>&#+4+0(>A.%(:&(&D$#+8&8(%1( 4+2,A8&(>1'&(%"#+(i>#%A'4%<jI(V"4.($&'7&2%41+(>A.%(:&(#(C18?,4H&(^A#,4%<(17(,1@&(#+8(H4+8+&..( &@&+(71'(%"1.&(B"1(81(+1%(8&.&'@&(4%/(#(^A#,4%<(%"#%(4.($1..4:,&(71'(A.(%1(#%%#4+FI
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Chapter 9
The Publishers of Truth and the Enemy of Truth: Evangelical Friends Consider Good and Evil Johan Maurer
How do evangelical Friends understand good and evil? How do they distinguish between sin and evil? An exploration of these questions will reveal some commonalities with Friends outside the evangelical orbit, some important influences from evangelical Christianity outside Friends, and, perhaps most significantly, a capacity to synthesize these commonalities and influences and thereby make significant contributions of their own. First: who are evangelical Friends? My own working definition starts with an early name for Friends, ‘publishers of Truth’. Among those Friends, Truth, spelled with an upper-case T, referred to God, the will of God, and the good news of Jesus Christ as God’s provision for salvation (Cooper, 2003). Modern evangelicals continue to advocate an absolute understanding of Truth as rooted in God. Based on Genesis 1:31 (‘God saw all that [God] had made, and it was very good’), evangelicals also see the categories of ‘Truth’ and ‘Good’ as completely interrelated. Evangelicals also acknowledge: Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah of God, offering reconciliation between God and humans; the importance of ‘publishing Truth’ (evangelism); and the authority of the Bible. Friends who identify with these features are most obviously found in Evangelical Friends International, an association of yearly meetings and mission programs in the USA, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Most of the international constituency of Friends United Meeting is also evangelical according to these criteria. There are scattered evangelical Friends meetings and individuals in almost every other yearly meeting in the world, particularly among the Conservative Friends in the USA, and some of the meetings in Ireland Yearly Meeting. To find out how evangelical Friends currently understand good, sin, and evil, I collected their views through three surveys circulated on two e-mail subscription lists and sent to participants in my previous study on evangelism and the Friends testimonies; through extended correspondence and conversations resulting from these surveys; and in the ‘laboratory’ of the Forum class at Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, Oregon, USA, which spent autumn 2005 considering the subject of evil. I asked these Friends how the Bible and Friends teachings affected their understanding of sin and evil; whether they understood moral evil as originating
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from within the individual or externally influenced; and whether external influences had their own will and intelligence. Before turning to those responses, I will trace some continuities in the ways Friends have taught about sin and evil throughout their history, and briefly review current usages and influences among evangelical Friends. Distinguishing Evil and Sin Compared to Friends of the more liberal streams, evangelical Friends may be more willing to use categories such as ‘sin’ and ‘evil’. However, evangelical Friends are not necessarily agreed on how to define ‘sin’ and ‘evil’. Evangelical Friends may also be as reluctant as anyone else to look too closely at sin and evil at home (as opposed to the dramatic sins of others – the unchurched, liberals, multinational corporations, big government, etc.).1 This reluctance and lack of consensus may reflect a common deficit of theological teaching on the subject among Friends generally. More positively, this lack of teaching may originate in a theological inheritance shared by all Friends from the early Quaker movement: a preference for functional theology over metaphysical theology. Friends’ first and most prominent systematic theologian, Robert Barclay, was clear that, although ‘all Adam’s posterity … is fallen, degenerated, and dead; deprived of the sensation or feeling of this inward testimony or seed of God, and is subject unto the power, nature, and seed of the serpent, which he sows in men’s hearts … [n]evertheless, this seed [of the serpent] is not imputed to infants, until by transgression they actually join themselves therewith …’ (Barclay, 1908, p. 15).2 While Barclay agrees that by effect of Adam and Eve’s disobedience we are born without the unaided ability to know God and reject the serpent’s seed, he refuses to join with the categorical assertions of total depravity of his non-Quaker contemporaries. Rather than speculating on the nature and depth of human depravity, Barclay emphasizes the functional and relational nature of evil: we cannot by ourselves break free from the influence of the ‘prince of the air’ but this is our situation, not our essence – hence the refusal to condemn the infant. Christ came precisely to offer that freedom, provided we do not resist the offer he makes.
1 See Ron Selleck’s comments on a Quaker Theological Discussion Group’s conference on sin and evil: ‘Papers, responses, and discussions somehow objectify and detoxify sin so that we can deal with it as “out there” rather than “in here”. (Why?’ 1987, pp. 46–7). 2 From the fourth proposition, ‘Concerning the Condition of Man in the Fall’. See the full discussion of this proposition (pp. 97–109), which defends a very bleak assessment of the condition of fallen humanity against all known optimistic heresies of the time. (However, he also points out that the term ‘original sin’ is not scriptural.) Barclay then follows with two propositions, numbers five and six, whose optimism concerning the universality of salvation through Christ is as dramatic as number four’s pessimism is bleak.
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Evangelical Quaker Teachings on the Nature of Evil This early focus on function and relationship may explain the lack of attention to the nature of evil and sin in evangelical Quaker literature. There is no lack of exhortation on avoiding sinful behavior as part of their teaching on discipleship, but there is remarkably little speculation on the root causes of sin, for example, on the nature of Satan, and on Satan’s attempts to tempt toward sin. The Richmond Declaration of Faith of 1887, which is a foundational document for Friends United Meeting and Evangelical Friends International, states: As the children of fallen Adam, all mankind bear his image. They partake of his nature, and are involved in the consequences of his fall. To every member of every successive generation, the words of the Redeemer are alike applicable, ‘Ye must be born again’ (John 3:7). But while we hold these views of the lost condition of man in the fall, we rejoice to believe that sin is not imputed to any, until they transgress the divine law, after sufficient capacity has been given to understand it; and that infants, though inheriting this fallen nature, are saved in the infinite mercy of God through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. … Yet the most holy Christian is still liable to temptation, is exposed to the subtle assaults of Satan, and can only continue to follow holiness as he humbly watches unto prayer, and is kept in constant dependence upon his Savior, walking in the light (1 John 1:7) in the loving obedience of faith.
Northwest Yearly Meeting’s book of discipline (1997, with revisions) includes this document, and adds its own contemporary summary of Quaker doctrine on sin and evil: We believe that God created the human being, male and female, in His own image; but that when Adam and Eve fell from a state of holy obedience, the human race lost a perfect relationship to God, and self instead of the Creator became the center of life. Through the blood of Christ our Savior we may be recovered from the fall and made right (justified) before God. To those who put their faith in Christ, God offers forgiveness of sins, regeneration of affections and actions, and final glorification of the resurrected body.
Walter Williams’s history of Friends, The Rich Heritage of Quakerism (1987), reflects an evangelical interpretation of Quaker history. It discusses the rise of theological tensions that ultimately divided Friends – but those tensions are, according to Williams, concerned with the nature of Christ and the authority of the Bible. He is virtually silent on the subject of sin and evil in Friends doctrinal controversies.3 More recently, Richard Foster’s massively successful Celebration of Discipline is another example of evangelical Friends’ preference to focus on Christ and discipleship. It is not that Foster is unaware of the reality of evil; in describing true worship, he says:
3 Williams (1987) [1962]; see, for example, pp. 140–41 on the struggle against liberal heresies; p. 174 on the contributions of Joseph John Gurney; p. 205 on the virtues of the Richmond Declaration of Faith.
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The theme of the ‘Lamb’s war’ against injustice is a direct reference to the teachings of George Fox, James Nayler, and other early Friends who distinguished the struggle against spiritual oppression (against which the ‘whole armor of God’ is employed) from the violence of carnal warfare that was no longer permitted the follower of Christ. Such contemporary Friends as T. Canby Jones, Arthur O. Roberts, Jan Wood, T. Vail Palmer, Howard Macy, and Ben Richmond, have used this theme in recent decades, particularly to link social justice to spiritual faithfulness. Canby Jones’s talk at the 2005 Friends United Meeting Triennial sessions in Iowa, ‘The Lamb Shall Overcome’ (Jones 2005), provided a powerful example, linking the final victory against evil in Revelation with the character of the nonviolent Lamb (Jesus). Jones did not dissect the imagery of Satan or the Antichrist in order to make those links. His examination of the ultimate battle between good and evil in Revelation was not intended to analyze the nature of evil but to demonstrate the biblical basis for Friends’ discipleship and peacemaking under the banner of the Lamb. At the same Triennial, Oliver Kisaka Simiyu of East Africa Yearly Meeting– North and Nairobi Yearly Meeting provided a Bible study on ‘The Lamb’s War’, which warned Friends not to let relativism and traditionalism weaken our witness when we ought to be God’s voice in this generation. While accepting the reality of Satan’s opposition, Kisaka defined the struggle from God’s point of view: … It is not a war in which God is fighting Satan. (Because I imagine that sometimes that is what we think.) This is a war in which God is redeeming his creation to himself. Satan is a nonentity in this war. It is important that we know that because in our generation today there is all manner of experiences, teachings, and propositions that are going around about Satan. He was never the issue. When God set out to save human beings, he was not answering Satan, he was satisfying his high standards of holiness.5
4 In this extract, Foster ends with a quotation from James Nayler. 5 Transcribed from an audio recording of the Johnson Lecture, 2005 Triennial Sessions of Friends United Meeting. (Part of the lecture, but not this part, appeared in Quaker Life, October 2005, pp. 10–13.)
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Kisaka is entirely consistent with Friends’ emphasis on functional theology when he insists that the primary front of the Lamb’s War is not fighting Satan but attending to holiness – which I translate as accountability to God for the reality of our discipleship. Spiritual Warfare and the Lamb’s War In the wider evangelical Christian world, the last thirty years have seen much attention to the subject of spiritual warfare – direct confrontation with evil, through disciplines of spiritual and social vigilance coupled with focused prayer by teams of ‘prayer warriors’.6 In North America, this movement draws upon several streams of spiritual experience: Roman Catholic practices of exorcism, Pentecostal ‘deliverance’ ministries of healing through casting out demons, the Charismatic movement’s focus on ‘spiritual gifts’ (including such relevant gifts as healing and spiritual discernment), and equally importantly, the reports of missionaries who experienced direct confrontations with apparent supernatural manifestations of evil in cultures where such manifestations are considered normal. Among Friends, most evangelical yearly meetings would not automatically find either Catholic or Pentecostal/Charismatic influences congenial. In addition, an emphasis on the supernatural runs counter to modern sensibilities, while at the same time, some leaders worry about the opposite problem: an unhealthy fascination with the esoteric and occult. However, several prominent Christian writers have provided the framing and vocabulary necessary for some Friends to overcome their community’s natural doubts and embrace spiritual warfare. The late John Wimber, who served for several years as a co-pastor at Yorba Linda Friends Church in California before going on to co-found the Vineyard denomination, is one of the best known of these writers and leaders.7 His friend and mentor C. Peter Wagner, associated for many years with Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California, has both advocated and chronicled the increased acceptance of supernatural confrontations with evil as part of Christian ministry. Wagner has 6 Is the term ‘Lamb’s war’ simply Quaker language for ‘spiritual warfare’? At the 2005 FUM Triennial, Oliver Kisaka Simiyu made a helpful distinction: the Lamb’s War is actually the grand tapestry of God’s redeeming work throughout history, from the atonement of Christ through the empowerment of the Church and leading to the eventual full redemption of all Creation. Spiritual warfare is more specific: it is ‘… the spiritual fight that God’s children put up in response to the opposition they experience from the kingdom of darkness as they proclaim the gospel of the kingdom of God through their lifestyle and ministry to others. … Many people are looking today for Satan, to fight him. I don’t think we are called to that. I think we are called to proclaim the Gospel. And if Satan puts up a defense against the proclamation of that Gospel, then we have been equipped by the power of God to deal with him’ (transcribed from the audio recording of Oliver Kisaka’s Johnson Lecture). 7 Wimber’s approach is summarized in Wimber, 1990. See p. 15 for the reactions he encountered when first reporting supernatural aspects of evangelism to his ministry colleagues: ‘They encouraged me not to talk about them. My colleagues were uncomfortable (so was I), and felt I would lose stature if other leaders heard about it’. He mentions cross-cultural influences on page 16.
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reached out to liberals, in part by recognizing that diagnoses of evil must include violence and social oppression.8 Friends who have emphasized deliberate confrontation with supernatural evil include former Evangelical Friends Church Southwest superintendent Chuck Mylander, who has led workshops with the stated purpose of helping individuals and churches break supernatural bondages. Mylander brought these views into his service as director of Evangelical Friends Mission, whose previous director, Norval Hadley, had also been known for his advocacy of spiritual warfare. Hadley and Mylander wrote the book Rwanda: In the Trail of the Red Horse, which provided a stark spiritual dimension to the horrors of 1994’s genocidal hundred-day civil war in Rwanda. Friends lost somewhere near one-eighth of their membership, both Hutus and Tutsis, within the larger picture of a genocidal butchery that claimed, by some estimates, 800,000 lives. As the authors point out, the vast majority of both killers and victims were Christian. Their observations fit the pattern of evangelical Friends’ examination of evil, as illustrated by Foster, Jones, and Kisaka: a willingness to acknowledge the role of supernatural power (and of supernatural resources opposing evil as well), but a near-total absence of detailed speculation about the exact nature of supernatural evil and its agencies.9 Other Friends leaders associated publicly with spiritual warfare are Stan Perisho, formerly superintendent of Rocky Mountain Yearly Meeting and presently a pastor in 8 In Churches that Pray (1993), pp. 223–4, Peter Wagner cites the illegal prayer service against nuclear war led by Bill Wylie-Kellerman and others at the Wartburg Air Force Base on Easter Sunday 1983 as an example of spiritual warfare. 9 These examples are representative: (Mylander) ‘God calls a few people to a ministry of intercession. These are the marine corps in the Lamb’s War against the forces of evil. These spiritual assault forces spend hours in prayer, and their war stories are incredible. Some wake up in the middle of the night with a specific urge to pray for a missionary at the precise moment of need. Some receive scripture promises for a Christian leader that fits the situation perfectly. Some pray down blessings on a ministry that moves it beyond human ability to a sovereign work of God. Any of these may be the experience of those called to intercede for others’ (Mylander, p. 43). And, describing a pastors’ conference during Hadley’s and Mylander’s post-civil war visitation: ‘... Chuck pointed the people to Nehemiah chapter 9 and Daniel chapter 9 and taught that the Bible shows we can pray over the sins of our ancestors. God will hear and break the curse of the sins visited to the third and fourth generations. Pastor Pierre was amazed that visitors from the West would teach such truths. “The Holy Spirit led you to this message,” he declared. “There is no way someone from the West to understand and teach this truth. But this is the message we Africans need.” Chuck is suggesting it is the message we Americans need too. “Private sin never stays private. It affects our descendants, especially our own children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren”’(Hadley, p. 38). Interestingly, another book on the travails of central Africa, David Niyonzima’s and Lon Fendall’s Unlocking Horns: Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Burundi (2001), while impeccably orthodox and biblical, has even less theological reflection on evil. Supernatural intervention gets credit for miraculous escapes, but the overwhelming experience of evil in the Hutu–Tutsi massacres of 1972 and 1993 is mainly ascribed to human sin and weakness. ‘... [T]he reason there has been so much violence in this so-called Christian country is that Christians have not extended the love of God from their hearts to their neighbors, those of different backgrounds, and even to their enemies’ (page 128).
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Northwest Yearly Meeting; the late Meshak Mudamba of Kakamega Yearly Meeting in Kenya; and Steve and Marlene Pedigo, who applied spiritual-warfare principles to such varied challenges as drug addiction, gang violence, and political oppression in inner-city Chicago. Most yearly meetings have pastors or other leaders who identify with one or another aspect of spiritual warfare, but, as far as I am aware, no yearly meeting has fully united around these concepts. Often there is a tacit understanding that Charismatic or supernatural phenomena are not to be a major public emphasis. Two writers from outside evangelical Protestantism, Walter Wink and the late M. Scott Peck, have contributed to understandings of spiritual warfare among evangelical Friends. Scott Peck’s books, People of the Lie and Glimpses of the Devil, discuss the psychological and social dimensions of evil, and document his attempts to understand the apparently supernatural manifestations of Satan and demons he witnessed while conducting two exorcisms. People of the Lie is particularly strong on the subject of evil as manifested in groups or societies. In examining the My Lai massacre perpetrated by the U.S. military in Viet Nam, Peck traces the lines of participation all the way from the individual soldiers to their hometowns and rippling outward, impacting the psyche of the whole nation.10 This social dimension is explored biblically and theologically in the writings of Walter Wink of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. An attender in North Berkshire Meeting of New England Yearly Meeting, Wink is known among liberal Friends in the USA, but based on my sampling for this study, his visibility among evangelical Friends is also increasing. In contrast with evangelical writers in the more literalist tradition of biblical interpretation, Wink is reluctant to grant Satan and demons independent intelligent existence, although he leaves the door open for readers to make their own judgment. According to Wink’s writings, all organizations and communities have spiritual dimensions and are located in spiritual linkages that were all created good, have fallen, and need redemption. The ‘fallenness’ of these organizations in their spiritual dimension is manifested in their patterns of domination and scapegoating, and by perpetuating the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ to divert and sabotage reform. Wink acknowledges both his differences with and his unity with the spiritual warfare movement; while avoiding supernatural explanations, he agrees with systemic analyses of the power of evil, and with the necessity of confronting evil through prayer.11 10 Peck’s first book, The Road Less Traveled (1978) and his first book as a publicly identified Christian, People of the Lie (1983) sold well at Quaker Hill Bookstore in Richmond, Indiana, where I served on the staff briefly in the early 1980s. Peck was also a popular retreat leader at the Yokefellow Retreat Center on the Earlham College campus in Richmond. For his interesting treatment of the My Lai tragedy and its social context, see People of the Lie, pp. 212–53. Glimpses of the Devil (2005) is a detailed account of the exorcisms first reported in People of the Lie, pp. 182–211. 11 See Wink, 1998, p. 197, where Wink addresses the question, ‘Is my understanding of prayer similar to the “spiritual warfare” practiced by some evangelicals and charismatics?’
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Friends Respond Evangelical identity is partly founded on acknowledging biblical authority, so it is not surprising that, in my own surveys and observations, many Friends cited biblical grounding for their understanding of sin and evil. Most respondents took into account the full range of biblical evidence for the origin of evil; few dwelt exclusively on human weakness or depravity. Some representative examples: 1 Peter 5:8: Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. [Reedwood Forum participant.] … In Christ you have Peace, and in the world you have trouble: ‘But be of good cheer, Christ hath overcome the world’. (John 16:33). In him you all overcome the Devil and his works, and ‘without him you can do nothing’. (John 15.5); but through Christ, his Power and Strength, you will be able to do all things according to the Will of God. And though for a time you may suffer for the Name of Jesus, and for his Truth, and be cast into prison, and suffer the spoiling of your goods; the eternal God knows, and his Son Christ Jesus, it is for him alone, and his Truth’s sake we suffer for his Name and Truth’s sake (Phil. 1:29) … [Pastor in Northwest Yearly Meeting]. Well, you know it’s on about every page … Garden of Eden, Cain & Abel, the ensuing cycle of faithfulness and idolatry throughout the OT, Jesus’ temptation by Satan, Ephesians on putting on the whole armor of God, Peter on abstaining from fleshly lusts … the list goes on and on … [Evangelical Friend in a ‘liberal’ yearly meeting]. Old Testament emphasis on the Fall in Genesis 1–3 – the volitional nature of evil, in turning away from God and disobeying. Old Testament emphasis on idolatry and the exaltation of other spirits or things into God’s place. There is an inherent arrogance and pride in both. Rebellion against God is a common theme from Exodus through Malachi. New Testament clarification that comes to mind is Romans: ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God’. Various Pauline references give lists of disobediences and contrary virtues that may be missing from life. Paul also stresses that all of life is to be lived for the glory of God and ‘harmartia’ (sin) is falling short of that goal [Professor, George Fox University].
Fewer respondents cited applicable Friends teachings, although about half mentioned Fox’s ‘ocean of light and love’. They accurately differentiated Friends’ traditional emphases – functional over dogmatic theology, an optimistic interpretation of the will and power of God, disinterest in demonology – from the emphases of the wider evangelical world. Some [Friends’] teachings emphasize Personal Experience which means more than anyone’s ‘theory’ or dogma [Reedwood Forum participant]. According to John Calvin, after the fall, the image of God ‘was afterward vitiated and almost destroyed, nothing remaining but a ruin, confused, mutilated, and tainted with iniquity’ (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chap. XV, sect. 4). According to George Fox, in the fall, ‘man and woman’ totally ‘lost the image of God’; fallen mankind is in the image of the devil (Fox, Works, Vol. 4, pp. 366–7). Fox’s view of the prevalence of evil in unredeemed human life is even deeper and sharper than Calvin’s!
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Of course, Fox also had a much stronger view of God’s power to bring us out from under the control of sin and evil. He rejected the substitutionary or satisfaction theory of Christ’s atonement, and affirmed the Christus Victor view: God in Christ has won the decisive victory over evil; he favored such terms as ‘Christ bruises the serpent’s head’ (Works, Vol. 2, p. 117; Vol. 6, p. 429; Vol. 3, p. 509; Vol. 8, p. 236; Vol. 2, p. 320). Fox, Edward Burrough, and James Nayler, in their ‘Lamb’s War’ interpretation of the book of Revelation, emphasize how the followers of Christ participate in the struggle, begun in the work of Christ, to eradicate the remnants of evil in the world. … Edward Burrough insists that the weapons used by the faithful in the Lamb’s War are totally nonviolent (Burrough, Works, p. 665, p. 626); the use of violence is intrinsic to the nature of evil [Theologian in Northwest Yearly Meeting]. Early Friends advised against ‘preaching up sin’. I understand that to suggest that we need not give Satan or evil a platform. All disease is enabled – evil is dis-ease. It should be our aim to check our behaviors which enable the dis-ease to spread. Our immunity comes from a relationship with Christ’s presence, the peace that comes from entrusting our anxieties to Christ [Pastor in Northwest Yearly Meeting]. George Fox’s emphasis on a sea of light overcoming the sea of darkness has been a powerful image to me that establishes a great optimism in the ultimate victory of God over evil. Thus evil is limited and not infinite. I think there is a Quaker tendency to stress the positive (the seed that can take root and grow, or the seed that can be nurtured and made to grow) [Professor, George Fox University].
Another theme of my questions: Are people affected by external influences when making moral choices? Do these external influences have aspects of independent will, intelligence, personality? (Two respondents wrote vivid personal examples of confrontation with evil, not recounted here. Similar accounts were recounted to the autumn 2005 Reedwood class by a speaker from the Quaker-affiliated George Fox Evangelical Seminary.) There is a force that tries to seduce us to do what we want to, not what is best (or right). It calls to us to think only of ourselves and live in the Present [Reedwood Forum participant]. Evil depends on good for its existence. Evil is not one side of a yin–yang balancing act, it is perversion. Evil is derivative. God’s purpose and character and creation are what evil perverts. Even in saying it that way, I’ve given evil too much credit as an entity unto itself. It is potential for good wrongly exercised. The higher the potential for good, the more evil it is when it is perverted. Satan is the highest created angelic being who has chosen selfishly for evil over good. The evil of his perversion is the most glaring example of how necessary it is to recognize God as God, and how awful it is to pervert that which God intended for good [Pastor in Evangelical Friends Church Southwest]. Well, certainly there are environmental influences that influence – society, family, peers, social structures. I think there are unseen spiritual forces at work in those environments that seek to work ill for us in an attempt to rebel against God. I accept the concept of our own twists and internal corruption that can also lead us astray. There is plenty of blame in both categories of both internal ill (our own fallen or rebellious conditions) and the external influences of environment and the devil. Improving environment doesn’t hurt, and may
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Good and Evil actually liberate people to respond more freely to God, but ultimately there is a personal accountability to respond in obedience to God [Professor, George Fox University]. It is pretty nearly impossible to not recognize the palpable presence of evil spirits at times here, and even more so in Cambodia. It seems to me that the only people who can ask that question are those who have been restricted to normal American life where the spiritual warfare has been more subtle, at least in my lifetime [Pastor in Evangelical Friends Church Southwest]. I accept the idea of a personal Satan and the demonic. My cross-cultural experiences have influenced me significantly on that issue, and my recent research in Quaker missiology of the early twentieth century confirms this was a commonly held concept by Quaker pioneers in Africa, Latin America and Asia [Professor, George Fox University]. I think in the tug and pull between evil being the description of the nature of ‘gravity’ in a broken world vs. an intelligent entity with designs upon God’s amazing heart and creations – I am an ‘and-too’ person. I think there may well be an ‘inner default’ in a fallen human nature that makes mis-arrangement a natural choice. I am sure that organizations, culture, nations become mis-arranged and fall from their God-given purpose. I also suspect that there is an intelligence/energy that has a stake in the perpetuation of mis-arrangement. It makes sense to me that as long as God is committed to a cosmos of free-will, there are powers/forces that are saying ‘no thank you’ and working against God’s Love and Purposes [Member of Northwest Yearly Meeting, former pastor].
This last response leads to another question I asked: Did Friends find the concept of cumulative systemic patterns of evil (for example, as described by Walter Wink) a helpful way to understand evil? Many said ‘yes’ including that last respondent: ‘Certainly you hear Walter Wink written all over my understanding and language’. Other responses concerning evil as hosted by systems: I agree that there is a systemic accumulation of evil choices, which can shape or warp a nation, organization, family, ethnic group etc. I think of this accumulation of evil as part of ‘the work of the Devil’. I also am mindful of how one person’s evil actions will synergize with the evil actions of others and pretty soon things are really out of hand. So to speak. I don’t minimize individual and corporate responsibility for evil, I just don’t think we’re acting independently when we sin [Evangelical Friend in ‘liberal’ yearly meeting]. I do not consider intelligent evil and systemic evil to be mutually exclusive. I can see truth in both concepts. Prayers for righteousness are directed for God to be glorified and exalted through righteous social structures and through righteous personal choices and through the binding of evil powers found in the natural order of things or found in society. I tend to believe that Ephesians 6 speaks to this in terms of not battling against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, so that social structure itself is not so much God’s enemy as are the powers behind that [Professor, George Fox University].
Finally, I asked for the names of contemporary writers and teachers who influenced the respondents. Among those already cited above, respondents mentioned Peter Wagner, Walter Wink, T. Canby Jones, Jan Wood (Friends teacher, writer, and minister), Stan Perisho, Scott Peck, and Ben Richmond. (One pastor wrote me to say,
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‘I just started reading Signs of Salvation by Ben Richmond and would recommend it as a powerful evangelical Friends statement on the nature of evil and the promise of new life.’12) Additional influential authors included Clinton Arnold (Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers in Paul’s Letters), Neil Anderson (The Bondage Breaker), Paul Ricoeur (The Symbolism of Evil), Everett Cattell (Mission: A Matter of Life), Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Robert Conquest, Father Arseny, Hannah Arendt, Gitta Sereny, and Aldous Huxley (The Devils of Loudon). Points of Unity This exploration of evangelical Friends’ understanding of sin and evil found considerable diversity on the level of language and concepts. For example, Friends do not agree even on the reality of Satan as an independent entity, despite a common allegiance to biblical authority. Nor do they have a common view of a supernatural dimension of evil. Some report dramatic supernatural experiences of evil, or victory over evil, while this forms no part of others’ understanding. Nevertheless, I offer these general observations, subject to comment and further testing: •
•
•
Friends continue to uphold early Quaker teachings concerning original sin. While not minimizing the reality of sin, both in their own lives and in the world at large, evangelical Friends share with the larger Quaker community a basic optimism concerning victory over evil. Most evangelical Friends believe that evil is more than an absence of good, and has an external aspect – it is not simply personal corruption or weakness. Many cite the principal activities of evil, the Enemy, Satan, as twofold: attempting to usurp God’s role of judging what is good and evil; and spreading lies and deceit. Friends express their observations tentatively and resist asserting more than they actually know concerning sin and evil. There’s a modesty and a ‘both/and’ spirit to their expressions. Lists of recommended books did not include any of the sensationalist literature on Satan, the end times, being ‘left behind’, spiritual warfare, or demonology, that is available at many Christian bookstores.
The lack of unity among Friends concerning definitions of sin and evil may be, in part, due to a deficit of common theological teaching, as I pointed out earlier. Another factor may be the absence of a widely accessible forum to bring questions and possible answers. (The pastoral visitations conducted by Friends leaders in post-civil war Burundi and Rwanda gave perhaps unique occasions for agonized 12 I join in this recommendation. In Signs of Salvation: A Biblical Meditation (2005), Ben Richmond interprets the atonement as the inauguration of a new covenant, and describes the ‘signs’ of the new Christian community that lives within the new covenant, restoring the relationship that was broken when Adam and Eve rejected ‘God’s sovereignty as the Judge of good and evil’ (p. 27).
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reflections on precisely these questions, driven by the need to understand the national nightmares from which these Friends were emerging.) However, rather than leading me to regret the lack of such unity, this study encourages me toward a far more positive conclusion: there is powerful potential of further dialogue among all Friends, and between Friends and the ecumenical community, on this topic. Why am I optimistic? Friends seem intellectually and spiritually equipped for creative syntheses of dramatically varied sources. Participants would need to avoid assigning each other to hasty categories (‘spiritual warfare is for Pentecostals’, for example, or ‘Walter Wink is an unredeemed liberal’). This is not a minor point; while mutual suspicions concerning Pentecostalism, liberalism, fundamentalism, etc. did not arise in this particular study, they are certainly present among evangelical Friends. Given that condition, a successful dialogue would draw upon foundational Quaker sources (Barclay, for example), spiritual warfare (Wagner, Anderson, Arnold, and others), the Lamb’s war (Jones, Richmond, Kisaka, and others, including Arthur O. Roberts), systemic understandings of principalities and powers (Wink), cultures less dominated by technological worldviews, and the experiences and reflections of communities who have survived unspeakable suffering from the scourge of the ‘red horse’. The evidence of this present limited study demonstrates that individuals and small groups among evangelical Friends are capable of these creative syntheses; is the evangelical Quaker community ready for a wider conversation?
PART IV Contemporary Reflections on Good and Evil
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Chapter 10
A People of Unclean Lips: Reclaiming an Anthropology of Complexity David L. Johns
Evil’s Challenge to Utopianism Quakerism’s besetting sin is utopianism. This is as true today as it was in its beginning. On one hand, utopianism indulged can lead to an optimism of spirit and to a lively vision for the future. This, no doubt, has been part of Quakerism’s impetus to better the world. Through the years, Friends have generally possessed an eschatology that collapses kingdom and church into the present moment and have attempted, albeit often resulting in sectarian manifestations, to embody the reign of God in a new ‘order’ or ‘Society’. As is typical of restorationist ecclesiologies, Friends embraced a vision of restoring the church to a state of pre-Apostate purity. Enthusiasm for such a vision has modulated over time. However, the formative period of Quakerism bequeathed to future generations of Friends a vision of the church community premised upon purity and perfection. Reinhold Niebuhr once described Quakerism as utopian. ‘Neither Catholicism nor Calvinism has any illusions about the inevitability of sin in all human striving,’ he wrote. ‘Sectarian Christianity laid the foundation for “monstrous evils” because of efforts to have complete freedom from sin in society; when a group seeks for the “unqualified realization of the Kingdom of Christ in history” it ordinarily means the reconstruction of human society into a commonwealth of perfect love or perfect equality or perfect liberty’ (Niebuhr, 1951, pp. 205, 206). Quakers represent the ‘soft utopian wing of radical sectarianism’. Niebuhr qualifies his description as ‘soft utopianism’ in contrast to ‘hard utopianisms’ such as fascism and communism. It is ‘soft’ because, in his view, it represents only a negative peril to society and does not engender the intensity of dangerous fanaticism in its devotees (Niebuhr, 1951, p. 207). More recently, Baumeister has suggested that the whole of Christianity is much like Niebuhr’s ‘soft utopian’ description since it ‘no longer seems to have the force to set off holy wars’ (Baumeister, 1999, p. 384). On the other hand, utopianism can lead to self-righteousness and a crippling naïveté. This is so because utopianisms are not honest. Indeed, they cannot be. Utopians simplify reality into a protective ‘us’ and ‘them’. The world, while complicated and messy, can be understood through the group’s established categories. According to Niebuhr, utopian groups manage ‘… to evade the tragic realities of life and to obscure the moral ambiguity in all political positions’. They evade these
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realities by ‘… hoping for a progressive alteration of the character of human history’ (Niebuhr, 1951, p. 208). Most fundamentalisms contain a degree of utopianism including, for example, differentiated categories of good and evil, a sweeping vision for the restructuring of society (or, a restructuring of the group as an alternative, usually sectarian, society), and hope for the perfection or the perfectibility of group members. But these views are shortsighted and truncated and they do not possess sufficient complexity to name faithfully the realities of the world and the complexities of human existence. Utopian visions are more difficult to maintain the more closely one interacts with social and religious difference and complexity. This is one reason why many utopian groups must resist assimilation into wider communities or limit their members’ interaction with ‘outsiders’. Any group tempted by utopianism faces difficult intellectual and spiritual challenges because of evil. As it does for all religious folk, evil challenges established notions of God’s omnipotence and benevolence. If God is capable of eliminating evil and the suffering that results but does not do so, then one has reason to question God’s benevolence. Yet, if God desires to end the evil that ravages the world but is incapable of doing so, then one has cause to question God’s omnipotence. Evil is palpable and real, its manifestations are many and its consequences are in opposition to the creational intent of God. For example, the weight of poverty crushes the most vulnerable in the two-thirds world as well as millions in industrial nations making it nearly impossible for those affected to rise to the level of basic human dignity. Forced commercial sexual exploitation, torture, untreated HIV/AIDS, racism and inter-ethnic violence, international debt, chemical addictions, illiteracy, and so forth, all diminish human flourishing. In many cases, these oppressive and destructive realities continue to exist and, indeed, thrive, even in the face of wellintentioned efforts to address them. Over time, these have developed a life of their own, a life that takes shape in systems and a life that has distorted the human heart, causing each of us to become co-conspirators in the world’s suffering. In his trilogy on ‘the powers’, New Testament scholar Walter Wink argues that evil is a contagion. Even the ‘struggle against evil can make us evil’ because, according to Jung, ‘the very sight of evil kindles evil in the soul’ and, when ignored or denied, that evil shapes us into what we hate. ‘Either we face the fearful shadow in ourselves, withdrawing the projections we have placed on our outer enemies, or we will mimetically act it out against some feared opponent and pull down the pillars of the world on our own heads’ (Wink, 1992, pp. 206, 207). The Faith and Practice of East African Friends is rather unique among yearly meeting Faith and Practices in its forthrightness about evil: ‘Friends believe in the reality of evil. There is a power in the world, which wants to enslave us and turn us from God’s purposes’ (Christian Faith and Practice in the Friends Church, 2002, p. 2). Whatever the origin or destiny of this evil, these Friends acknowledge its living character and its corrosive efforts to eliminate our freedom and making us slaves. The burden of proof, it would seem, rests on those who claim evil to be an illusion or of no substantial existence. The existence of evil challenges views of humanity that are uncritically optimistic. To claim, as some are wont to do, that ‘humans are all basically good’, hardly expresses the range of the experience of humanness. To dismiss the messiness
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of it all by counseling ‘live into mystery’ betrays a level of privilege and detachment from the lived reality of human suffering. George Fox was only half right when he recorded in his journal, ‘those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men’ (Fox, 1952, p. 19, emphasis added). An honest assessment of the human experience of humanness must acknowledge that those ‘hurtful things’ that Fox rightly noted were within (or have their origin within), are within the ‘righteous’ as certainly as they are within the ‘wicked’. Several distinctions are made in the formal discussion of evil, the first of which is between natural and moral evil. My concern here is with moral evil, those events, conditions, and states resulting from human agency. Additionally, sin is differentiated from evil, sin being particular life diminishing moral actions or inactions of human agents, and evil being the result of sin. I discuss both sin and evil here and, since it is my contention that in the human experience of humanness the two most often appear together, I will not attempt to isolate them. Life is inescapably tragic. This is expressed succinctly in Henry VI: I am ‘… more than I seem, and less than I was born to’ (Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, i, 56). My concern in this chapter is to increase awareness of human collaboration in the flowering of evil. I want to resist the abdication of responsibility, whether that abdication takes the form of denial, scapegoating, or determinism, and I especially want to resist this abdication among religious communities, particularly the Religious Society of Friends. And since it often matters where particular doctrines or conversations are situated in a theological framework, where should a discussion of evil be located? Is it part of a doctrine of God or is it part of theological anthropology? Although it is often classified in connection to God or the doctrine of creation, which is an extension of the providence of God, it is my contention that in order to be honest about evil and to gain the most illumination from the discussion, the subject is best approached as a part of understanding humanity, and not humanity-in-general, but humanity-as-ourselves. Anthropology of Complexity The call narrative in Isaiah 6 is an important biblical example of what I am calling an ‘anthropology of complexity’. In this text, the prophet refuses to draw a distinction between himself, the one commissioned by God to speak on God’s behalf, and those to whom he is called to speak. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory’. And the pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and
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Good and Evil I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (6:1–5, NRSV).
Isaiah’s vision in the temple is transforming, and at the same time it terrifies him, like the mysterium tremendum et fascinans Rudolf Otto discusses in The Idea of the Holy. It leaves him fearing for his very life (Wildberger, 1991, pp. 249, 268). If ever the prophet assumed he possessed an inherent worthiness for his commission or that he was spiritually superior over those to whom he is called to preach, his mind is changed in this vision. In his vision a seraph touches Isaiah’s mouth with a live coal plucked from the temple altar. ‘Now that this has touched your lips,’ the seraph says, ‘your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out’ (Isaiah 6:7). Many of the biblical call narratives reveal a similar anthropology of complexity. In these texts, the one called acknowledges that he alone is insufficient for the tasks to which he is called: consider Moses’, ‘send someone else’ (Exodus 3:13b) or, in the New Testament, Peter’s, ‘go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man’ (Luke 5:8b). So, while the prophetic disposition is noted for its confident, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ it is preceded by a non sum dignus – I’m not worthy. But this is not self-deprecating or self-diminishing. It recognizes that being called by God is not an occasion to claim a perfection or a moral separateness from the wider human community. Characterized by this attitude, the prophet does not succumb to utopianism nor isolate himself from the wider community and the human condition. He acknowledges his full participation in the condition of the people among whom he is called to serve. Non sum dignus acknowledges a deep and inescapable complicity and participation in what the prophet calls the people out from: ‘I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips’. Faced with the thrice-holy God, Isaiah recognizes and acknowledges that his own sin and his own need for grace is no different than anyone else’s. This may appear elementary, but it requires honesty to look at evil and at the complexity of the human condition and not draw distinctions between ‘clean lips’ and ‘unclean lips’. And honesty requires courage. The ‘ancient’ Quaker emphasis upon ‘distinctives’ and the ‘hedge’ around the community, and Friends’ self-understanding as a ‘peculiar people’, have contributed to a denominational ethos that frequently tries to disentangle itself from moral ambiguity and acknowledgment of its own complicity in evil (Abbott et al., 2003, s.v. ‘Hedge’, ‘Perfection’, ‘Peculiarity’). In her important Swarthmore Lecture, Janet Scott takes great pains to affirm the possibility that humans can do good. She rightly notes that early Friends distanced themselves from theological positions that they believed denied humans freedom enough to be held accountable for their behavior, such as Calvinism. She is convinced that humans are not only free but also able to know the good and to act morally. Although she grants humans extraordinary freedom, she has difficulty acknowledging that humans may will not to do the good. ‘We must never underestimate this aspect of our lives,’ she concedes; however, Friends know the possibilities of goodness and know that people ‘tend to become what we expect them to be’. So much do humans conform to expectations that our vision of humanity, if it regards humans as fundamentally sinful, will generate a fundamentally sinful humanity. If, on the other hand, we regard our fellow humans as capable of goodness and trust and love, ‘these
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are the capacities that they develop’ (Scott, 1980, p. 38). Thus, the possibility for goodness in the world hinges on a moral ‘we’ who articulate good expectations and upon a human family capable of appropriating and enacting these expectations. The human is complex and multi-dimensional. Bipartite (heart/soul) and tripartite (heart/soul/mind) anthropologies, although dated, were well-intentioned efforts to illustrate this complexity and acknowledge that within a single individual there is complexity sufficient for inner tension and contradiction. If our understanding is mono-dimensional, or utopian, evil is all the more perplexing. Even in Isaiah’s cosmic vision, the purgation with a live altar coal does not remove his sin nor does it perfect his nature. His ‘guilt has departed’ and his sin is ‘blotted out’. That is all. Evil raises the thorny and unfashionable issue of sin and human participation in – often, willful and active participation in – those things which cause harm to others, which damage creation, or which frustrate the unfolding of God’s good purposes. But much energy is devoted to denying that sin is real or diminishing its significance. Stanley Hauerwas has written that it has become necessary to be reminded that we are sinners because this is not always ‘self-evident. Indeed, our sin is so fundamental that we must be taught to recognize it; we can not perceive its radical nature …’ (Hauerwas, 1984, p. 30). Similarly, Ted Peters argues that sin is made more difficult to see because it always contains a lie and, through scapegoating (identifying evil with someone else) and self-justification (identifying good with ourselves) we convince ourselves that we truly are not sinners (Peters, 1994, pp. 162f). The term ‘sin’ has become unfashionable, but the reality this classical theological concept sought to name has not disappeared. It is my contention that evil cannot be understood apart from a comprehensive vision of the human being that is complex enough to encompass both the glory of God’s image and the painful reality of brokenness and sin. But to avoid responsibility is as old as Eden. There are countless ways to do this; however, I’ll mention four common approaches to evil that in their own peculiar way, attempt to absolve humans from accountability. One is a particularly theological evasion, one places evil outside the human agent, and two evade responsibility through determinism. First: theodicy itself is an attempt to avoid responsibility for evil. That terrible things have happened and do happen has long been cited as evidence that God does not exist. Theodicy (the justification of God) is a formal effort by theologians and philosophers of religion to explain the incongruity between the world’s suffering and our concept of the Divine. In theodicy God has, as it were, a day in court to show just cause for God’s behavior or lack of action. Evil and disorder do not disappear or become less a problem because of this ‘justification’. However, theodicy tries to make belief in God less unreasonable. Peters has suggested that when theologians argue in this way, they are engaging in self-justification and scapegoating. In demanding divine selfjustification, they are making God a scapegoat, however hidden it might be under the cover of theological logic. By setting up the problem in such a way that God is put on the defensive, the theologians give the appearance of being engaged in an honest inquiry. But that is a lie. They conveniently leave out of the formulation of the problem the key fact
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Evil is factored in, he says, but sin factored out – all effect, but no direct human cause. Yet, Peters argues that a number of twentieth-century atrocities sprung from so-called secular causes and cannot be said to be fundamentally religious, much less the effect of a divine cause: for example, ethnic cleansing, international drugtrafficking, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Hitler’s genocidal empire building. Scapegoating is a form of self-justification and distortion of the truth. It extends from nature, to other human beings, and in theodicy, to God. Luther noted in his commentary on Genesis, it is ‘the last step of sin, to insult God and to charge him with being the originator of sin’ (Peters, 1994, p. 162). Peters continues by stating that when we scapegoat in this manner God’s goodness cannot be known because we try to steal that goodness for ourselves. Emil Brunner goes so far as to say that morality is itself a form of evil. When we strive to be moral we want to make ourselves good and, ‘this state of mind constitutes the source of all falsity, for it is the denial of the fact that the Good is always a gift of God’ (Brunner, 1947, p. 71). Second: as a concept, structural or systemic evil helps us understand the ways evil assumes concrete embodiment apart from the immediate action of the human agent. In some cases, institutions and social systems crush human flourishing and subjugate the ‘good news’ proclaimed by the faithful. Sin is larger than any one person or ideology and the resultant evil is larger than any particular action. It exists as part of the backdrop of our lives. The traditional concept of ‘original sin’ can be discussed in these terms. Corrupted systems take on a life of their own and can embody nothing short of the demonic. We are born into a world where this disorder already exists; thus, we have inherited it. Over time, we appropriate it and we make our own contributions to it and to its continued existence. Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki has noted that ‘every act of violence reverberates throughout the race’ and that this forms solidarity between all humans and, indeed, all creation (Suchocki, 1994, p. 105). This solidarity unites humanity not only in a passive condition but in a state of being and of active participation. There are, she argues, numerous forms of violence pervading the planet that include everything from the condition of our eating to the deprivation of entire populations. Violence, she writes, is the cause of anxiety and the root of sin. ‘And if through the solidarity of the race we necessarily are affected by all the violence everywhere, we must perforce respond to this violence, whether subliminally or consciously. And the subliminal response is simply anxiety’ (Suchocki, 1994, p. 108). And yet, the idea of systemic evil, when taken alone, does not adequately explain the presence of evil and can have the effect of absolving the human from direct responsibility. Institutions are built, populated, sustained, and perpetuated by humans. One cannot so easily place evil outside or beyond human agency. After oppressive systems and social structures have been dismantled there always remains the human heart. An anthropology of complexity concedes that all humans are implicated, all lips unclean. The following two approaches to evil evade responsibility through some form of determinism. Although they both admit human participation in a particular activity,
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responsibility for that participation (and thus, culpability) is denied. Like the first two approaches, these do not allow enough complexity to acknowledge that we, in freedom, may act ‘otherwise’ and, therefore, stand with unclean lips among others with unclean lips. Third: the suggestion that an outside supernatural force determines one’s behavior, ‘the devil made me do it’. More than a child’s effort to evade responsibility, this phrase, or some variation of it – ‘dark energy’ or ‘negative energy’, for example – represents a complete worldview. Within some segments of the Christian community during the late twentieth century, ‘spiritual warfare’ expressed a belief that cosmic forces of both good and evil were raging in battle and humans were caught in the crossfire. Temptations, illnesses, and any form of evil could be attributed to hosts of demons, living forces that act upon and within humans. In this view, evil is not eradicated but, because free agency does not exist, sin is eliminated. Fourth: a position very much like the last, but updated somewhat, replaces ‘the devil made me do it’ with ‘my genes made me do it’, or some equivalent sentiment. Popular media have carried stories speculating whether there are genetic predispositions for such things as infidelity or various criminal behaviors. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, remarked, ‘We used to think our fate was in our stars. Now we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes’ (Jaroff, 1989, p. 67). Variations on this theme include rooting human behavior primarily in economic forces or social conditions. Although it may appear more credible because it is discussed in the language of science, this is simple determinism with a new face. The truth about humanity is more complex than any utopian vision and the tragic reality of existence means that whatever hope the community of faith has, it stands in front of us as never completely realized. It is true that the Religious Society of Friends is built upon the affirmation that ‘Christ is come to teach his people himself’ (see Johns, 2005, pp. 6–19), but this is not a self-evident claim, it is a claim made by those whose eyes are open to new possibilities and to realities that exist in potentia. A fully unleashed Reign of Christ present and teaching in ‘all his offices’ does not yet exist, although it unfolds in small and often unexpected ways as grace takes hold of lives and begins its slow work. Religious communities, especially those tempted by utopian idealism, are impatient with the elongated time-frame of God’s activity and they often claim more than can be sensibly claimed. Until such time that ‘the kingdom of the world … become[s] the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah’ (Revelation 11:15b), religious communities wrestle against evil from the inside as ‘people of unclean lips’. What is the Truth About Us? This anthropology of complexity I have been discussing tries to hold together the extremes of human existence, the gore and the glory. It shuns utopian visions and uncritically optimistic views of humanity because it regards them as truncated and unable to speak honestly to the thorny realities of sin and evil. This is its gift. It resists efforts to deny the existence of evil, or participation in it, and does not permit
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us to evade responsibility for it. It is, of course, nearly impossible to hold together all that is human and answer concisely: ‘what does it mean to be human?’ Pascal tried, almost in a single breath, to express the extremities of human existence: What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel this tangle? … Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself (Pascal, no. 131).
This meditation from the Pensées is ambitious, but Pascal has the right idea. The Pauline literature includes both the humble ‘I am the foremost [of sinners]’ (I Timothy 1:15b), and the confident ‘keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me’ (Philippians 4:9; also 3:17). Often, it is in great literature that the depths of human complexity are explored. For example, in an exquisite reflection on the human, Shakespeare’s Hamlet remarks: ‘What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! … this quintessence of dust’ (Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, 319–23). Just as the creation account of Genesis chapter 2 asserts that the human is a blending of dust and divinity, Hamlet’s observation captures the paradox of creation in the phrase ‘quintessence of dust’, creatures who are, as the Psalmist sings, created ‘a little lower than God’ (8:5a). As a literary character, King Lear is a study in anthropological complexity. Like Isaiah’s ‘I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips’, there is a pivotal scene in the play when Lear removes all his clothes, all remaining vestiges of his elevated status, and recognizes his participation in even the wretchedness depths of the human condition. It is only when Lear is brought low and is able to identify with the ‘unclean lips’ of another that his decent into madness is interrupted and he is reborn, as it were, to wisdom (Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv, 100–108). I must emphasize that just as it is a mistake to embrace an uncritically optimistic or utopian vision of humanity, we are no closer to understanding evil if we dismiss the human project as irreconcilably flawed. Naming sin and evil has occasionally led to an orgy of hatred and self-abuse. This need not be. Emil Brunner offered a corrective to this response by stating quite emphatically, ‘Since Creation comes first, and sin comes second, the primary duty of [Christians] is to adopt a positive attitude towards life …’ ‘To forsake the world absolutely is the absolute denial of love’ (Brunner, 1947, pp. 126, 202). God has not abandoned the world – ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it’ (Psalm 24:1–2) – and for religious communities to abandon it is short-sighted. Although Quakers have never been enthusiastic about formal creeds, it bears acknowledging that the two creeds embraced by most of the Church as summaries of orthodoxy say very little about sin and evil. The Nicene Creed says only that ‘we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins’; likewise, the Apostles’ Creed says only, ‘I believe … in the forgiveness of sins’. Sin is acknowledged, but it is not a preoccupation, it is not an issue for theological fixation. All that the Christian
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church has been willing to inscribe in its formal credos is the implicit claim that sin exists and the explicit claim of faith that sins are and can be forgiven. This is reinforced in Christian traditions that regularly practice the liturgical discipline of corporate confession and assurance of pardon. Ultimately, the attention is focused on neither sin itself nor on the one of ‘unclean lips’; the emphasis is where it belongs: the gracious forgiveness of God through Christ. This resonates with Scott’s remark, ‘We do not need to be good people’ to do God’s work, she says, because our ‘hope and confidence is not in ourselves but in God whose grace is sufficient’ (Scott, 1980, p. 47). The complexity I have advocated in this chapter tries to hold many things together all at once. Perhaps Luther comes the closest to speaking this comprehensive and honest assessment of humanity in the fewest words: simul iustus et piccatur – always justified, always a sinner. With this brief phrase he holds in tension two truths about us: humanity is justified by the gracious saving action of God through Christ, and at the same time we stand always in need of God’s gracious saving action. Being sinners does not eliminate the justifying, but the justifying does not inoculate the sinner from the condition of a world that groans and awaits the full flowering of God’s redemption (Romans 8:22). There is no utopia in the foreseeable future, so it is premature to make sweeping claims about perfection, or redeemed societies, or returning through flaming swords back to Eden. We may pray for, work toward, and be open to the piccatur in each one of us diminishing steadily over time and the iustus settling deeper in each of us more certain over time as well. This was Barclay’s experiential claim concerning the Spirit’s activity in worship: ‘when I came into the silent assemblies of God’s people, I felt a secret power among them, which touched my heart, and as I gave way unto it, I found the evil weakening in me, and the good raised up …’ (Barclay, 1692, p. 447). We are ‘people of unclean lips’ who live among ‘a people of unclean lips’. This is the human experience of humanness. Nevertheless, the experience of opening to grace means that it is also true that sin is not the complete truth about humanity and, therefore, evil alone will never be the final word about the human situation.
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Chapter 11
Quakers and Coercion in a World of Good and Evil Phil Smith
When is it right to force someone to do something? Real evil exists in the world. We recognize it in the selfish and cruel actions of other people, and if we are honest we admit at least the possibility of evil in our own actions. Sometimes we have the power, we think, to stop evildoers. But since we recognize the potential for doing evil ourselves, we worry that our efforts to stop the injustice of others will themselves be unjust. Whether wickedly or unwittingly, our fight against evil might just produce more evil. This chapter consists of comments on violence, coercion, and Christian morality as interpreted by the Quaker movement. The context is explicitly one of good and evil – how should we think about violence and coercion in a world of real evil? All thoughtful people, certainly all thoughtful Christians, face difficult questions in this topic, but for Friends, the questions have a different context and bite.1 Since George Fox’s days, Quakers have expressed a strong confidence in the power of God. In his Journal, Fox repeatedly concluded his description of diverse situations with some variant of ‘the power of the Lord was over all’. This does not mean Friends have been ignorant of evil in the world, only that they believed that God’s power, the light of Christ within them, would enable them to live effectively in the world, in spite of real evil. Because of this confidence, Quakers have plunged into the affairs of the world; they have been active in commerce, in science, in education, in manufacturing, and in government. At the same time, Friends have testified against war. George Fox wrote that he had ‘come into that life and power that takes away the occasion of war’. In the 350 years since Fox, Quakers have become well known as a pacifist sect (notwithstanding the fact that some of their members have chosen to serve in the military). So Quakers live in a tension-filled space. They are committed to living actively in the world, yet they reject war, one of the major features of worldly affairs. Quaker historian Peter Brock calls the typical Quaker position integrational pacifism, because Friends often try to integrate participation in social reform movements (movements that tend to pull them into government or attempts to influence government) with nonparticipation in war (an all-too-frequent activity of governments) (Brock, 1972 and 1990, pp. 87–111). Other Christians have sometimes suggested that the Friends’ 1 2002.
I have addressed some aspects of these issues before in Smith, 1994 and Smith,
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position is inconsistent; either they ought to accept the theory of the just war, or they ought to separate themselves from the evils of government. Friends themselves have not always thought very clearly about these matters. This essay is an attempt to rectify that weakness. At the outset, I should define important terms, to avoid confusing the reader unnecessarily. There are many varieties of pacifism – non-resistant pacifism, nonviolent pacifism, restricted violence pacifism – but they all espouse the principled rejection of war. I will not try to specify which principle motivates the pacifist. Therefore, I will use ‘pacifism’ to mean simply anti-war-ism, the thing that all pacifists share. Next, I will use ‘coercion’ to mean any action taken to cause someone to do something against her will.2 Coercion is thus a broad concept, and there are many kinds and degrees of coercion. Some, but by no means all, forms of coercion are violent. Finally, I intend to use ‘violence’ to mean physical attacks or restraints on persons or their property. This is a narrow definition of violence, unpopular with many people, so I will defend it later on. I will structure my comments by identifying three philosophical mistakes that Quakers sometimes make about efforts to coerce other people. I suspect that nonQuakers fall into similar errors when thinking about coercion and violence, so I hope this essay will be of interest to many readers. First Mistake: Over-simplification: ‘All x is x’ The first error Friends make about violence and coercion in a world of evil is to fail to see the important differences between various acts of violence and/or coercion. We say, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’. Now, I suppose for some situations this proverb gives wise advice, warning us against half-hearted commitments. Worthwhile projects deserve enthusiastic support. But similar thinking, when applied to violence, coercion, or evil, oversimplifies the nature of moral actions. Some evils are worse than others; some violent acts are more violent than others; and some acts of coercion are stronger than others. And since these differences are real, we ought to heed them. For example, Quakers disapprove of war but typically have approved of law enforcement, the ‘violence of the magistrate’. Many people (including some Friends) think this position internally incoherent. Since Augustine, a standard argument has been that if one approves of police force or violence, then one must approve of military force or violence. Now this argument depends on the assumption that police force or violence does not differ from military force or violence in any morally significant way. Jenny Teichman, in Pacifism and the Just War, effectively rebuts this assumption (Teichman, 1986, pp. 38–45). 2 Philosophers might demand at this point that I give some account of the notion of human ‘will’ if I define coercion as interfering with or overruling a person’s will. There is hardly any question in philosophy more complicated than the question of free will, and I must resolutely resist the temptation to plunge into that business. I will only say that I intend here to appeal to a commonsense notion of agency in which we often act freely but sometimes are compelled by others.
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Teichman points out that civilized nations distinguish between certain roles in the application of police force or violence. The police apprehend persons suspected of crimes. The courts determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. The prison service carries out whatever sentence the courts decree. Note: we hold it to be morally and practically critical to maintain this separation of roles; we condemn as unjust those countries in which a single institution (the party or the army) combines the roles of apprehension, judgment, and punishment. Because the separation of roles has been actually practiced, we have the reasonable expectation that police force or violence can be limited and effectively criticized. For example, in many cities police officers must file reports every time they discharge their weapon while on duty. These reports can be made part of the public record, and violent episodes can be subject to investigation by outsiders. Some people argue that these limitations on police violence are too severe, that they hinder the police officer from protecting society. Others argue that institutional hedges on police violence should be stronger. My point is not that limitations on police violence are unimpeachable, only that they are real. In warfare, by contrast, typically the same person(s) fills the roles of apprehender, judge, and executioner. Because the roles are mixed, we do not have a reasonable expectation that the violence of war will be limited. To the contrary: the history of war suggests that if any tactic is judged necessary for victory, that tactic will be used. Therefore, there is a significant, morally significant, distinction between the violence of the magistrate and the violence of war. So Augustine’s argument is simply unsound, since it relies on a false assumption. It is at least possible that one could approve the violence of the magistrate (or some instances of the violence of the magistrate) and disapprove of the violence of war. And Quaker practice has leaned toward toleration or even approval of some of the violence of the magistrate while resisting any acceptance of war. Some Quakers are very hesitant to admit this, since they think that pacifism requires that they reject all violence. But pacifism does not require that one reject all violence. Pacifism as such only requires that one reject war, presumably on the basis of a non-arbitrary principle. We need to explore more deeply and more carefully why we think violence and/or coercion are bad. I suggest that violence and coercion trouble us because they depart from the moral ideal. I believe that much of the moral progress that we make in our lives depends on our ‘vision of the good’.3 For many Quakers, this ideal is expressed in the vision of the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’, a vision rooted in Isaiah’s ‘Mountain of the Lord’ and other biblical passages (Isaiah 65:17–25). The Peaceable Kingdom is a place of shalom, to use another biblical notion. The idea here is that when God’s rule is complete, there will be life and wholeness and no need for violence. The lion will lie down with the lamb. We might compare the vision of the Peaceable Kingdom with the moral ideal of some enlightenment liberals. Here the ideal society is made up of perfectly 3 ‘A Vision of the Good’ is a chapter in my dissertation (Smith, 1991). There I define a ‘vision of the good’ as ‘a global understanding, involving rational thought, emotions, and imagination, of something toward which a life can be directed’.
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autonomous individuals, each one of whom recognizes the moral law (Kant) or joins in the general will (Rousseau). In this vision, the only need for coercion or violence is against those who fail to be wholly rational. Of course, some Quakers actually are Enlightenment liberals. Why should we expect anything else? The philosophy of the Enlightenment, often called ‘modernism’, has powerfully influenced our society for three hundred years. For such Quakers, the vision of a Peaceable Kingdom fuses with the vision of a liberal society of autonomous individuals. Such Friends have two strong reasons to think coercion and violence are less than ideal. Others of us, and I include myself in this group, are deeply suspicious of modernism and some of the philosophical assumptions of the Enlightenment. For us, the scriptural vision of the Peaceable Kingdom can be understood without individualistic autonomy. Coercion and violence trouble us, because they fall short of the moral ideal.4 Now I think we ought to recognize a wide range of possibilities within ‘less than ideal’. Various states of affairs fall short of the Peaceable Kingdom in different ways and to different degrees. The use of police force or violence falls short of the moral ideal. War falls short of the moral ideal. But there is a great difference, a morally significant difference, between them. The violence of war is ‘further’ from the moral ideal than the violence of the magistrate. And this ‘distance’ carries moral import: the further some action is from the moral ideal, the more reluctant we should be to take it and the stronger our justification for doing so needs to be. Some actions, such as making war, may be so far from the moral ideal that no justification will suffice. And I think that is actually the case – I’m a pacifist. Oversimplified thinking – all x is x – keeps us from recognizing important facts about the moral world. Failing to see the contrast between the violence of the magistrate and the violence of war serves as only one example of this error, though an important one. If we pay attention, we will discover many other contrasts between this and that kind of force or violence. I give some examples below. Second Mistake: Confusion about Violence and Nonviolence Some Quakers, and many people on the political left, have fallen into a peculiar distortion of language. Violence consists not just of physical acts of beating or shooting, they say, but also of unjust social structures that deprive people of their lives, property or other goods just as effectively as robbery or murder. So we should broaden our notion of violence to include ‘social violence’, ‘institutional violence’, ‘psychological violence’, and perhaps other things as well. Such Friends may go on to say that the opposite of violence is nonviolence, which expresses not merely the absence of harm doing but something very close to the moral ideal. At least some contemporary Quakers (and others) seem to be committed to nonviolence as a fundamental principle, the key to the Peaceable Kingdom. I suspect the influence of Gandhi lies behind much of this thinking. There is something right 4 The moral ideal need not be the Peaceable Kingdom or Enlightenment liberalism. Obviously, there are a great many possible ‘visions of the good’. Some persons may have moral goals such that violence and coercion do not fall short of the ideal.
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and attractive about it. Ahimsa treasures every individual person, and aims to encourage full human flourishing for every person. Gandhi used Sanskrit words to express his moral vision: Ahimsa is the absence of even the desire to harm another. It refrains from all forms of himsa, hurting. Nevertheless, I believe this is a confusion of language that leads to a confusion of moral thought. Our language includes many words to express moral judgment; we describe social evils as unjust, tyrannical, oppressive, and so on. We have an equally rich vocabulary for denouncing personal evils. Individuals betray each other, manipulate each other, ignore each other, and so on. Why should we want to label all evils as ‘violent’? As Jenny Teichman has pointed out, both left and right distort the ordinary meaning of ‘violence’. One side broadens the meaning to include all kinds of social evil and injustice. The other side narrows the meaning to include only illegal violence, as if the violence of the state is not real violence. Confusion and inflamed rhetoric result. Both sides are motivated by a simplistic formula: violent = bad. All violent actions are wrong, and all social wrongs are violent. I think we ought to use ‘violence’ as we traditionally have, for those actions that are physically violent: beatings, shootings, hangings, imprisonments, and so on.5 We have many other words to describe other evil actions: cheating, ridicule, deception, exclusion, infidelity, cruelty, unfairness, etc. But my objection is not merely or primarily semantic. Confused language about violence and nonviolence feeds into the oversimplification of the first error. Surely moral judgment ought to be more nuanced than ‘nonviolent, good; violent, bad’. Human beings get themselves into an almost infinite variety of situations about which moral judgments must be made, and these moral judgments simply do not resolve themselves into just violent and nonviolent. Confusion about violence and nonviolence contributes to the widespread belief that pacifism commits one to nonviolence. In fact, people often believe that pacifism must be an outgrowth of a prior commitment to nonviolence. Many pacifists, including many Friends, are motivated by a commitment to nonviolence. But other pacifists, again including Quakers, find their rejection of war grounded in some other commitment. We should not conclude, as some people have, that there must be something inconsistent in Friends history, merely because Quakers have often combined pacifism with involvement in reform movements that sometimes make use of the coercive power of government.
5 There is no problem with the term ‘institutional violence’ as such. There are institutions, such as prisons and armies, that routinely use violence; this could be rightly called institutional violence. But suppose an institution, such as a bank or a wood-products store, engages in predatory lending or gouges its customers in the aftermath of a natural disaster. We might condemn such behaviors as institutional injustice, but they are not violence. Both sorts of practice may deserve our condemnation, but they are not the same, and labeling both as ‘institutional violence’ obscures the differences between them.
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Third Mistake: Naiveté about Coercion Many people, certainly not just Quakers, fall into a third error, this one concerning coercion. They fail to see how pervasive coercion actually is in social life. In particular, we fail to see how much we ourselves coerce other people. The second mistake, the confusion about violence, reinforces our naiveté. If we think all violence (or with Gandhi, all coercion) is bad, we will hesitate to admit that we often participate in it. Therefore, to make my case, I will have to dwell for a while on some examples. I suggest that coercion means making someone do something she does not want to do and would not choose to do in the absence of the coercion. If this definition is even close to right, I want to point out a simple fact: we coerce each other often, in many different ways. The examples I give here show the pervasiveness of coercion and violence in our lives, and they also illustrate my earlier point that there are degrees of coercion and violence. If we notice the many forms of coercion we will recognize morally significant differences between them; we will find that some instances of coercion are bad while others are morally permissible. For example, consider the relationship of student to teacher. Humility is a virtue for students. Of course in some conceptions of humility, it is a vice. Someone influenced by David Hume might think of humility as a sub-human groveling, an offense against autonomy and dignity (Hume, [1739] 2000). But this misunderstands humility. Iris Murdoch illustrated the point with an example of a student learning Russian (Murdoch, 1970, p. 89). If you want to learn Russian, you must submit yourself to the peculiarities of the language. Whatever our discipline, without humility, we will never learn it. One cannot become a master without first being a novice. One cannot do anything he likes and call it ‘gardening’. There is an actual human practice (or complex of practices) that we call ‘gardening’; if you want to be a gardener, you have to submit yourself to the tradition of gardening. Now if humility is a virtue on the part of the student, we should consider what this implies for the role of the teacher. The teacher invents assignments for the student, and the student must submit to the work. The teacher does a disservice to the student if she does not compel the student (in some sense) to submit to the tradition. I serve as chair of my department at George Fox University, and in that role I read all the course evaluations for the department professors. I have read some student evaluations of professors that reflect deep misunderstanding of this feature of education. The professor should not teach x, the students complain; instead, he should teach y. Now I want to be careful and clear here. I very much want student feedback on my courses, and there are instances in which student input helps us decide which topics ought to receive greater attention. Student feedback is a good thing! Nevertheless, a student, as a beginner, is not ready to decide what she ought to learn. A student does not get to do whatever she wants and call it ‘biblical studies’. This means there is an element of force, of coercion, in the teacher’s role. The teacher does not get to confirm all the pre-established beliefs of her students. Instead, she must explain to her students why the tradition is what it is. A professor who confirmed all the prejudices of her students would thereby deprive them of the truth the tradition has to offer.
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What we want, of course, is for students and teachers to collaborate together in the practice of education. At its best, education becomes a mutual seeking for truth in which all the participants are humble before the truth and before each other. Even in this ideal learning community, there will still be times when one must speak authoritatively. In logic, when someone sees the proof that the whole class has been looking for, he says, ‘Eureka’ (or some equivalent). Then he goes to the board and corrects the mistakes we all have been making. Real knowledge carries authority. The voice of authority has a kind of force to it. Truth compels. Richard Rorty is a philosopher who wants as little compulsion as possible in a free society, and he urges us to leave behind ‘truth’ talk. All truth claims, he says, mask power plays. Whenever people start using ‘truth’ talk, they do so in order to control other people. So we ought to stop making truth claims, he says (Rorty, 1989). He suggests that we become ‘ironists’; we ought to believe that our deepest moral commitments are probably the result of historical accidents. (We could have been born in other times and places.) I disagree with Rorty’s conclusions, but I think there is something right in what he says. Truth claims do impinge on other people. Truth claims are public. If I say, ‘the universe is like this’, I make a public claim. Leslie Newbigin explains this well, making reference to Michael Polanyi’s work (Newbigin, 1989, pp. 27–38; see also Polanyi, 1969). Newbigin points out that in a scientific age people often distinguish things that are known from things merely believed. Moderns think we can know scientific truths, but we can only believe or commit ourselves to moral or religious truths. But the philosopher of science, Michael Polanyi, showed that ‘scientific objectivity’ exists primarily as a fiction in the minds of non-scientists rather than in the practice of actual scientists. The scientist uses instruments and theories to put herself in touch with the world, but while she focuses on whatever bit of the world she is studying, she is only tacitly aware of the instruments or theories that reveal that bit of the world. The scientist must personally commit herself to the assumptions, problems, methods, and instruments of the field. In science, as in morals, there is no safe, objective ‘pure knowledge’. Rorty would agree with all this. Views similar to Polanyi’s are widely shared in philosophy of science. Rorty’s conclusion in moral philosophy is that we should give up making truth claims. I disagree with him on that point, but I agree that all truth claims are forceful. Consider a second example. A landowner wants to build a garage next to his house, so he goes to the city planning department to apply for a permit. In the planning department some city employee tells the would-be builder that he must change his plans in some way, to make it conform to code, before his project will be approved. The required change will cost the landowner time and money, in some cases a lot of time and money. This little scenario plays out every working day in thousands of cities, and it involves real coercion. Just ask the would-be builders if they are being made to do something against their will; they’ll tell you. The coercion in this case is almost never violent, but cities do have power to enforce their building regulations; if some landowner persists in disobeying the regulation, he will be fined, and if he
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fails to pay the fines, he may be arrested. State coercion shades into state violence by tiny degrees. Here is a third example. Members of a family, usually with the advice of medical and psychological professionals, go before a judge or some other state authority to ask that some individual in their family be committed to a mental health hospital. Depending on the details of the case, the judge or authority may grant the family’s request, and the individual in question is involuntarily committed to the hospital. While in the hospital, the patient may be subject to locked doors, surveillance and other restraints. Some patients in this situation accept their loss of freedom meekly, but others object strenuously to their imprisonment. The amount of force (coercion) needed to restrain patients may vary greatly from case to case. I think that in at least some of these cases we have instances of coercion or even violence. Extreme cases differ only in detail from the coercion and violence of criminal punishment in prison. Notice that the coercion in these examples varies. The power a teacher wields over students is fairly mild, and students have ways of escaping it. The homeowner, in contrast, has little recourse; if he wants to build his garage, he must submit to the city’s regulations or face legal sanctions. The coercion involved in involuntary commitment is stronger yet, in some cases requiring violence. I could easily list more examples (Smith, 2002, pp. 82–5). A will coerces one’s inheritors as regards property and other matters. Persons freely agree to a valid contract, but later find that its provisions coerce them. In a civil suit, the plaintiff asks the court to compel her adversary to give justice. In a free election, one group of voters imposes its will on another group. And so on. The conclusions I urge are these. First, coercion is not rare, but frequent in civilized life. As I said before, we often do not notice the presence of coercion because we are predisposed to think all coercion bad. But if we pay attention, we see it even in the classroom. Second, coercion ranges in severity from mild to extreme. There is a difference – perhaps a morally significant difference – between a contract that parties agree to through open bargaining and one imposed through market compulsion. As a general principle, the more coercive an action is, the more morally problematic it is. Third, some of the more severe coercive actions are also violent actions. As with city regulations, coercion can shade into violence bit by bit. Again, we should pay attention to the differences between various cases. Fourth, because the differences are morally significant, we may well approve of some forms of coercion (even violence) while disapproving of others. We should think carefully about moral judgments; we should desire to make our judgments by non-arbitrary principles even if we do not always succeed in doing so. I am not here arguing for what those principles ought to be, though it is clear that I don’t think ‘avoid all violence’ is the only candidate.
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Putting Things Together If Quakers want to think well about our response to evil in the world, we need to learn to avoid the errors I have described. We need to get over our naiveté about coercion, clear up our confused thinking about violence and nonviolence, and reject the simplistic notion that all coercion or violence is morally equivalent to any other coercion or violence. These conclusions do not apply only to Quakers, who are, after all, a tiny sect within the Christian religion. I think they apply to all morally serious people who recognize that the world is full of real good and real evil and who are self-critical enough to worry that their attempts to stop evil may instead create more of it. Violence and coercion depart from the moral ideal, whether that ideal is expressed in the biblical vision of shalom, the liberal vision of autonomous moral individuals, or many other moral visions.6 Because of this, we are tempted to fail to see how much violence or coercion there is in our own lives. We should admit to ourselves that we do, in fact, compel other people to do things against their will; sometimes we compel them violently. Christians long for the rule of God, the Peaceable Kingdom. Christians pray for the Kingdom to come, and we offer ourselves to God, that we might be instruments of peace. At the same time, we live in a world of evil and try to reduce its injustice. Christians should consider each use of coercion or violence carefully to see if it moves us toward the Peaceable Kingdom or not. Similar advice applies to those who are motivated by some other vision of the good. Elise Boulding, a Quaker, wrote a response to an earlier article I wrote on some of these questions. In it, she urged Friends to pour their energies into creating a peaceful world, through nongovernmental civil organizations.7 Elise wants us to give our lives to creating new, vital, society – and she says that if we do, we will find that we have no time left over for compromising with violence. I share her worry, that by a series of small missteps we can transform ourselves into Niebuhrian ‘realists’ who justify the outrages of war, even modern mass warfare, as somehow faithful to Jesus.8 We certainly need to guard against that result of the slippery slope.
6 There are, of course, moral visions in which violence is readily accepted and is, in fact a good thing. Nazism was not amoral; rather, it inspired people with a compelling story of German identity. 7 See Boulding’s comments in Quaker Religious Thought, 27/1 (1994), pp. 19–21. 8 Reinhold Niebuhr, a twentieth-century Christian theologian, argued that Christians must guard against any watering down of Jesus’ moral vision. Jesus really did enunciate a vision of complete forgiveness, generosity, and self-sacrifice. But, said Niebuhr, this otherworldly ethic could not actually be practiced in the real world of finite and sinful people. The best Christians can do in the world, he said, is to limit the effects of sin as much as possible. In the context of the Cold War, this meant support for the American policies of global anti-communism and containment. Some Niebuhrians would even approve of limited nuclear war, as an expression of realism.
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Nevertheless I think that some coercion, even some violence, is part of the ‘good life’ for Christian citizens.9 We don’t avoid the slippery slope to war by denying the complexity of morality. Instead, like George Fox, we should nurture in ourselves (or better: receive as a divine gift) a robust confidence in the power of Christ. There is no simple rule (‘violent, bad; nonviolent, good’) to guide our discipleship. Instead, we must live in the life and power of God. I am here advocating a frank supernaturalism. Let’s face it: if God’s Spirit does not actually help us find our way through the thickets of moral quandaries, Christianity doesn’t have anything unique to offer the world. Many non-Christians will find that their understanding of the moral ideal is similar to the biblical vision of the Peaceable Kingdom. For them, shorn of supernaturalism or any specifically Christian dogmas, my essay may serve as a warning against sloppy thinking and self-deception. And that may be enough; we will not make good progress toward the prize if we fail to recognize the twists and turns of the trail.
9 I use the phrase ‘good life’ as philosophers sometimes do. It is the life of good persons who are achieving the proper goal(s) of life.
Chapter 12
Evil: The Presence of Absence Corey Beals
Evil presents us with some difficult and long-standing dilemmas and the answers appear to be absent. For example, are humans basically good or basically evil? Quakers have historically affirmed that we ‘walk cheerfully in this world, answering to that of God in everyone’ (Fox, 1952, p. 335). George Fox wrote that every human is ‘enlightened by the divine light of Christ’ (Fox, 1952, p. 33), meaning that however dim it may be, there remains some trace of God’s goodness in every human. To put it another way, no one is absolutely evil. Looking back on the evidence found in the twentieth century, however, are Quakers justified in this belief? Many examples could be found that might tempt them to abandon the view that the light of Christ is within all. For instance, can we cheerfully say that the light of Christ was in the Turks who raped or killed over one million Armenians? We might also ask if the light of Christ was in Stalin, who forced the death by famine of seven million Ukrainians? Or was the light of Christ in Hitler, who instigated the genocidal killing of six million Jews? Was the light of Christ in Pol Pot, who ruled while two million Cambodians were killed? And what about the Rwandan Hutus who used machetes to slaughter nearly one million neighbors? Was the light of Christ in all of these, as well? Evil as Illusion There are three ways to respond to this. Before turning to Quaker resources for helping discern which response is best, let us identify the three main views of evil. One way to defend the presence of the light within all is to say that the evil we think we see is merely an illusion. One could say that evil does not have any reality, but is only a false appearance. Christian Scientists hold such a view. For example, Mary Baker Eddy wrote that ‘[s]in, sickness, and death are comprised in human material belief’ (Eddy, 1917, p. 286). All that is evil ‘belongs … to the nothingness’, she continued (Eddy, 1917, p. 287). The epigraph for her book sums up this view of evil – in the frontispiece of the book is a quote from Shakespeare: ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ (Eddy, 1917, p. iii). Eddy founded this religion in 1875, near the height of optimism in human progress characteristic of the Enlightenment. Perhaps when everything seemed to be improving, such a view was less implausible, but after a century of repeated genocide and world wars, it is hard to imagine looking in the face of those who have lost family members to genocide
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and telling them that this evil is merely in their head, and that if they sufficiently detached themselves from it, they would see that the evil was not real. There may be very few Quakers willing to go so far as the Christian Scientists in declaring that evil is illusory, but one could see the attraction of such a view if one wanted to affirm the ‘Light which lighteth every [human] that comes into the world’ (Fox, 1952, p. 175). Perhaps some may be tempted to believe that humans are good and that evil is not real because it fits with an optimistic approach to looking for the best in others. But even though this may be effective in finding light in people when others refuse to find it, does it speak truthfully of the reality of suffering that people experience? Can I truthfully say this in light of what I know of my own heart, and in light of what I know about the extent to which people have exercised cruelty in the last nine decades? Evil as Substance Perhaps it is this denial of the reality of evil that leads others to embrace a dualistic, substantive view of evil. For example, a few years ago Paul Buckley argued in Quaker Religious Thought that Quakers should understand evil, or ‘darkness’ as having ‘real substance’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 35). It was important to Buckley that we acknowledge, as George Fox did, that evil or ‘darkness’ ‘is a thing that could be felt – like the darkness that covered Egypt. This is darkness that has some form of spiritual physicality’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 34). Even though Fox was ambiguous in how he used the term ‘darkness’, Buckley nonetheless argued that it is important to see darkness as having ‘substantiality and purpose in the evil it represented’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 37). The reasons given in defense of such an understanding of evil seem valid and important: for example, he argues that holding a substantive view of evil acknowledges that ‘[d]arkness has power’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 36). One can see the disadvantages of denying the power of evil. Doing so is to be naïve, and it makes one ‘easy prey for the power of that darkness’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 37). Second, he thinks that recognizing the substantive nature of evil allows one to actively resist darkness, as opposed to doing nothing but passively remaining in the light. While it is helpful to acknowledge the reality of evil along with the fact that it is powerful and needs to be resisted, this substantive view has some other implications that are serious. To hold a substantive view of evil is to be committed to a dualistic cosmology, since a substance must be created,1 and a good God cannot create an evil substance. Therefore those who embrace a substantive view of evil usually hold that there are two creators – an evil one and a good one. Two of the better-known dualistic views of the cosmos were the Manichees and the Zoroastrians. It is a view shared by other Gnostic groups as well. This dualism in a nutshell is that there are two equal and opposite powers that are in constant battle. Initially a cosmic battle between good and evil may sound intuitively correct, until we realize that this implies 1 It is interesting to note that Buckley even goes so far as to emphasize, on page 36, that this evil substance has a ‘created nature’.
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that the good God is not all-powerful. The God of Christianity, on the other hand, is all-powerful and is the creator of everything. Not only that, but all that was created was created ‘good’.2 Dualism has a picture of the universe with two creators, thus neither of them is all-powerful. And furthermore, this picture denies the goodness of creation, suggesting that there are parts of creation that were created as evil and as such are inherently and purely evil. This view of evil may be more common among Quakers than we realize.3 These two approaches to evil – the illusory and the substantive – each speak some truth, it seems. The former allows us to embrace the light of Christ that is in everyone, while the second allows us to acknowledge the reality of evil as people experience it. However each is lacking in that it disallows what the other affirms. In affirming that all of creation is good, the illusory view of evil denies that evil is real. Yet in affirming that evil is real, the substantive view of evil denies that all creation is good. Evil as Privation A third alternative to evil as illusion and evil as substance is the view of evil as privation. That is, evil can be understood to be the absence of good. This is where the language of goodness as light and evil as darkness is so effective in communicating this metaphysical concept. In the same way that darkness is the absence of light, so the privation view understands evil as the absence of good. Accordingly, only goodness has substance and evil does not have substance of its own but is the distortion of goodness. Another way of saying this is that only goodness has being, and evil is a distortion of being as it was designed to be. That is not to say that evil is an illusion, as we shall see. Distortions or deprivations of being can be very real, and are often experienced in very concrete and vivid ways. But these distortions and deprivations are always derivative of some good, and so it is impossible for pure evil to exist as such. In the way that darkness is the absence of light, so ignorance is the absence of knowledge, loneliness the absence of fellowship, and indifference is the absence of love. This view of privation has been embraced by Christians throughout the history of Christianity. Jesus identified himself as ‘the I am’. That is, as pure ‘being’, and as the light of life. Darkness, therefore, is the lack of this being. Christians believe that everything that is in the cosmos is either God or has been created by God. And since God is good, and since all that God created is good,4 it follows that all being, as such, is good. It is only when existence is altered or twisted in a way that is counter to its design that we discover evil.
2 Genesis 3:1 tells us that God looked at all he had created and saw that ‘it was good’. 3 One example of a Quaker explicitly addressing a dualistic cosmology is seen in a short article in the Quaker Economist entitled ‘Zoroastrian Quakers?’ This article suggests that Quakers might consider being Zoroastrians. See The Quaker Economist, 1/10, May 14, 2001. It can be accessed on line at http://tqe.quaker.org/2001/TQE010-EN-Zoroastrian.html. 4 Genesis 2:31: ‘And God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’
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Gregory of Nyssa, for example, wrote in the fourth century that ‘the withdrawal of the good attributes becomes a positing and origination of evil’ (Nyssa, 1892, Section 4). The reason that evil appears to have substance is because it is the distortion of something that has substance (Nyssa, 1892, pp. 85–6). Augustine, writing in the fourth and fifth centuries, wrote that ‘if something is deprived of all good, then it will be nothing at all’ (Augustine and Chadwick, 1991, p. VII.12.18). This is said not to suggest that evil is an illusion, but to show that all evil, insofar as it exists, must have some degree of goodness. Things that may seem destructive, like fire, frost, wild beasts ‘are not by nature evil. Even poisons, when used appropriately and judiciously, can have medicinal uses’ (Augustine and Dods, 1983). Likewise, those things that seem purely good, ‘like food, and drink, and the light of sun – are hurtful when used immoderately or unseasonably’ (Augustine and Dods, 1983). In short, Augustine explains that evil is not ‘a substance but a perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance, you O God, towards inferior things’ (Augustine and Chadwick, 1991, p. VII.22). Thus, the root of evil is loving anything more than God – the root of evil is disordered loves. But unlike the illusory view of evil, these disordered loves have consequences on oneself and others that are quite real. Another example of this view of evil can be found in George Fox. Although one could argue otherwise,5 a strong case can be made that George Fox understood evil in terms of privation. Any other interpretation would make Fox to be self-contradictory. For example, after hearing Fox talk about the light of Christ that is in every human, one of his interlocutors, Colonel Hacker, asked ‘whether it was not this light of Christ that made Judas betray his master and after led him to hang himself’. Fox replied that, ‘No; that was the spirit of darkness which hated Christ and his light’ (Fox, 1952, p. 191). Hacker must have thought Fox a hack and proceeded to tell him that he should stay at home and not come to public meetings, implying he was not fit to discuss such matters. Was Hacker right? It seems like a blatant contradiction – he says that the light of Christ is in all, but when pressed to explain evil, he blames it on the spirit of darkness. So which is it? Is the light of Christ in all, or is there a difference between the children of light and the children of darkness? Did Fox just appeal to whichever view is useful at the time? Is he inconsistent and contradictory from one time to the next, or are these views consistent? He appears to be embracing either a dualist heresy or an incoherent position until we see what Fox meant by the ‘spirit of darkness’. I would suggest that he is not referring to a separate created substance; rather the ‘spirit of darkness’ is that ‘which hated Christ and his light’ (Fox, 1952, p. 191). The reason these views are coherent is that one can have some degree of light within while at the same time having a 5 In fact, Paul Buckley does argue otherwise, in his article, ‘“Darkness” in the Journal of George Fox’. Even he admits, however, that much of the language used by Fox suggests a privation view of evil. In any case, I do not think that the truth of the matter rests on whether Fox thought one way or the other. Nonetheless, the fact that Fox used language of light and darkness lends naturally to a privation view of evil. Furthermore, the times when Fox’s use of the term ‘darkness’ suggest ‘dimensionality’ to darkness are entirely compatible with a privation view as we shall see.
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hatred for that light. While all have the light of Christ, not all are children of the light because not all love the light. Fox repeatedly speaks of turning people to the light (Fox, 1952, p. 35). The picture is as if the light of Christ is shining into each person, but some are turned away from it because they hate the light and what it would reveal. Thus they are not only turned from the light, but are ‘walking into the dark’ shadow made by their rejecting the light. In contrast, others are ‘walking in the light’ – that is, they are facing the light and walking toward it.6 The significant factor, however is how the person is related to the light. All have the light, but not all love the light. Those who are walking in the light can never fully escape the light for ‘where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there’ (Psalm 139:7–8). In that way, the light of Christ is in all. Anything that exists reflects God’s light since God created everything. But no one, by rejecting or hating the light ‘creates’ a substantive evil any more than one ‘creates’ a substantive shadow. This derivative nature of darkness from light illuminates an apparent contradiction – it helps us see how it is possible that evil is real, and is experienced as such even though evil does not have any independent existence apart from goodness. In this sense, evil ‘borrows’ its existence from goodness. Evil is dependent on goodness in that evil is a distortion of goodness. Even though there is significant evidence that Fox thought of light and darkness and good and evil in these terms, we do not need to hang our understanding of the topic entirely on what Fox thought. As a way of seeing what is at stake in one’s view of evil, however, it will be helpful to consider objections that are sometimes raised against the privation view of evil. It is to those objections I now turn. Objections to the Privation View Considered The greatest objection raised to the privation view of evil is the concern that viewing evil as an absence of good denies the reality of evil. It seems to some that describing evil as an absence denies how terrible and real evil is. For example, Buckley, perhaps wanting to avoid this softening of evil, insists that the darkness of evil is ‘a vicious and malignant being’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 37). It is an understandable concern that we do not acknowledge the reality of evil, but the privation view does not deny evil’s reality. George Fox’s view that walking in darkness is the hatred of the light is compatible with scripture that says the ‘love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ (I Timothy 6:10). That is, money itself is not purely evil. When we give it to the poor, it can be a great good. But loving money more than God or more than one’s neighbor – that is a distortion of how money should be loved. Greed, even though it is a distortion of something designed to be good (generosity) is not a mere illusion. It cannot be merely ‘thought away’. Its effects are very real and very present.
6 The references to ‘walking in the light’ or ‘walking in the darkness’ are ubiquitous, but for a sampling, see Fox, 1952, pp. 14, 29.
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Thus on this view of evil, understanding evil as an absence does not mean that evil is absent. Evil still is experienced as presence, since there is something good (which has substance) that is distorted. If I distort my chocolate chip recipe and double the flour, quadruple the salt but quarter the sugar, then the cookies will taste terrible. That is not to say that the cookies do not exist; rather, the existing (good) ingredients are distorted. Likewise, saying that evil is distorted goodness does not deny that evil has consequences that are often solid, concrete, and felt with great intensity of pain or suffering. Is loneliness any less real because it is constituted as an absence? Another complaint against the privation view is the objection that it denies the power that evil has. And a corresponding objection is that by denying the power of evil, we consequently do not oppose evil as actively as we should. For example, Buckley opposes the privation view because he insists that only the substantive view allows us to acknowledge that darkness ‘has power’. The substantive view allows us, he says, to admit that evil ‘has strength as being and it needs to be wrestled with intentionality’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 36). If evil is merely an absence, he argues, those ‘who wait passively for illumination become easy prey for the power of that darkness’ (Buckley, 2001, p. 37). But does the privation view deny the power of evil? It does not – in fact, even the belief in Satan, powers and all, is quite compatible with privation. The privation view simply denies that there is any purely evil, uncreated being. One can still admit that there are powerful evil beings, but these beings are understood as created by God as originally good. Only by a distortion of free will (which is also good) did these powerful beings become evil. The evil, however, is not pure in the way that God’s goodness is pure. As C.S. Lewis argues, there is ‘no uncreated being except God’. He explains that no being could ‘attain a ‘perfect badness’ opposite to the perfect goodness of God; for when you have taken away every kind of good thing (intelligence, will, memory, energy, and existence itself) there would be none of him left’ (Lewis, 1982, p. vii). So evil and evil beings can be very powerful. It is not that evil does not exist or is without power. It is that evil is a twisting of a good existence and that the power is a misuse of what was created for good. This in fact makes evil all the more difficult to oppose and thus more powerful. The most effective evil is that which most closely approximates the good. A spy who appears to be good is far more dangerous than an enemy who is openly opposed to the good. What about the objection that evil as absence cannot be resisted or opposed and is thus made more powerful? This is answered like the previous objection, in that viewing evil as privation actually prepares us to better oppose evil, because it allows us to understand how it grew into existence. Understanding evil in this way also helps us become more discerning of evil. I can more easily recognize evil in the world, in others, and most importantly, in myself. If I think that evil is a pure substance ‘out there’, then I am unlikely to see that evil can emerge in myself insofar as I come to hate the light or desire to turn away from the light. If I do nothing other than ‘wait passively for illumination’, then I can see how I might become ‘easy prey for the power of that darkness’, as Buckley suggests. But I agree with Fox who urges on us the need to ‘stand still in the light’ (Fox, 1952, p. 117).
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The reason for this stillness is not passivity as an end. The stillness is done so that I might see my own life in this light and be moved to act rightly as a result. Fox told the people outside the Aldingham steeple house of ‘the light of Jesus Christ in their own hearts … that let them see all that ever they had done, and said, and acted’ (Fox, 1952, p. 115). I cannot speak for others, but I can say that sometimes activity – even activism – sometimes prevents me from standing still in the light. Far from encouraging passivity, Fox suggests that being still in the light will inspire us to walk in the light. The difference between the children of darkness and the children of light is evidenced by how one walks – or acts. One must love the light in order to walk in the light. There are ‘children of the darkness, that will talk of the light … and not walk in it’. In contrast to this, ‘the children of the light love the light, and walk in the light’ (Fox, 1952, p. 60). So the concern of the privation view leading to an overly internalized or inactive life is addressed by the fact that it is the loving of the light that leads to the dwelling in the light, which then leads to acting in the light. Evangelical and Universalist Evil What is a Quaker to think about evil? What one thinks of good and evil is always at work, at least as a presuppositional background belief, in just about everything one believes, writes or says. Since evil is not a topic frequently addressed as such,7 it is not always easy to discover what various Quakers think about it. Nonetheless, I generally find that while some Quakers are more likely to speak about the goodness and light that is within everyone, other Quakers are more likely to speak about the fact that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Both of these views may be partly right. I wonder, though, if the illusory view of evil might seem attractive to Universalist Quakers because of its optimistic view of humans and the light within. On the other hand, I wonder if the substance view of evil might seem attractive to Evangelical Quakers precisely because it takes evil seriously and does not deny its reality. Despite the strengths of each position, must one choose to either deny that evil is real or deny that the light of Christ is given to all? Many of the differences between various Quakers often boil down to how one views Christ. But perhaps an underlying split is how one views evil and how that causes us to view Christ. If one thinks that we should refrain from condemning others and should rather speak to that of God in everyone, then perhaps a Christ who comes to save us from sin is too offensive since such a Christ focuses on sin and condemnation, rather than on the light within. But the only need for Christ in a world where evil is illusory is simply to convince us that evil does not really exist. To those who see the sin in their own hearts as something real, it is understandable why such a view of Christ would be seen as insufficient. The fact that each of these views of evil and Christ is problematic has changed my question. I have started asking how I can understand Christ in a world where evil is 7 This present volume of essays on evil, of which this essay is a part, will hopefully take a step to filling that gap.
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the distortion of goodness. Exploring this question, one may be somewhat surprised to encounter a Christ who does not condemn, while also acknowledging that sin is real. How is that possible? Christ Does Not Condemn Evangelicals know John 3:16 well. However, the verses that follow are the stunning part of the Scripture. There, we find that ‘God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him’.8 That appears to be impossible, because how can Jesus save the world without condemning it first? Indeed, as Quakers endorse, the ‘Light has come into the world’ (John 3:19a), but the fact that Christ does not condemn is not contradictory to the reality of sin and evil. ‘Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already’ and despite the light that has come to all, some have ‘loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed’ (John 3:18b–19). This is Fox’s description of Christ as well. Fox often encouraged children of the darkness to ‘come to the light that Christ had enlightened him withal, that with it, he might see all his evil words and actions that he had done and acted … and so return to Christ’ (Fox, 1952, p. 92). The light of Christ does not come to condemn. The one who hates the light is self-condemning, just as one who physically turns her back to the light remains in darkness not by any fault of the light. I can also stand with my back to the light and condemn those I see who are in darkness. But Fox speaks of another approach. It is certainly possible to see darkness at work in others. There were some who did this, who in ‘reading the Scriptures, cry out much against Cain, Esau, and Judas, and other wicked men of former times … but do not see the nature of Cain, of Esau, of Judas … in themselves’. Fox saw that ‘these said it was they, they, they that were the bad people; putting it off from themselves: but when some of these came, with the light and spirit of truth, to see into themselves, then they came to say, “I, I, I, it is I myself that have been the Ishmael, and the Esau”’ (Fox, 1952, p. 30). Light in Rwanda Viewing evil as privation (the distortion of God’s good creation) is compelling philosophically and theologically. Sometimes a concept might be elegant conceptually but fail to work in lived life. Since it is probably thought that philosophers and theologians do their work sitting in a chair, I felt the need to test this theory by seeing how it accounted for the worst cases of evil I could find. So over the last several years, I have been putting this view on trial, almost trying to disprove it. That led me not only through Holocaust literature, but it also led me to Rwanda last spring. What I found in hearing people’s stories was at once comforting and discomforting. 8
John 3:17. Emphasis added.
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It was comforting because I found that the light of Christ is never snuffed out – not even with a smoldering wick. A friend of mine who is Tutsi returned to Rwanda recently, to the place that had been his childhood home. He had left as a boy and became a refugee. But after the genocide he found himself standing face to face with the people who had killed dozens of his relatives. They were living in the home that used to belong to his father. And yet he saw regret in their faces. They had done a terrible evil, but were still capable of remorse. Even though it would be easy to demonize those murderers of his family, my friend found them still reflecting God’s light. This I found encouraging. Yet I was also ill at ease with what I found. I expected evil to have a monstrous face. I expected to find it psychotic, deranged, enraged, and grotesque. What I found echoed Fox’s description above. In looking to find evil in ‘they, they, they’ – Nazis in Germany, Hutus in Rwanda – I saw darkness, but it was not grotesque like some strange species of monster. It was not other-worldly or of a different nature than my own. Rather I looked and saw ordinary men not unlike myself. Men who loved their children and had friendly conversations with their neighbors. The ordinariness of evil was disarming. That is not to say that it was any less horrible. The stories of women raped and children watching their parents cut down could not be ignored or denied. What they spoke of was real. The skulls I saw that were split in two were evidence that this evil was no illusion. But how did these ‘ordinary’ people commit such extra-ordinary evil? Of course there are many contributing factors, but one feature that seems to have played a key role is the way in which the Hutu viewed the Tutsi. The Hutu viewed the Tutsi as evil and as a threat to their own existence. They not only emphasized these divisions between Hutu and Tutsi, but they used terminology that helped to draw a false dualism between one person and his neighbor. The Hutu regularly referred to the Tutsi as inyenzi, which means ‘cockroach’. Within a dualistic, substance view of evil, it follows that the way to achieve goodness is to purge oneself – or one’s nation – of that evil substance. If one can cast an enemy in terms of evil, then this dualistic framework allows the enemy to be seen as entirely evil and worthy of elimination. If my enemy is entirely evil and is a ‘cockroach’, then not only am I permitted to kill my enemy, but I am required to do so, if I am to be in service to the good. Besides seeing the enemy as purely evil, the converse of the dualistic, substance view is that I am more likely to think that I am entirely good. In contrast to this, however, consider how a privation view of evil alters the way I view my enemy and myself. If I see every human as a creation of God, then I must acknowledge that no one is purely evil. If no human is purely evil and every person has some trace of the light of Christ, then to kill another human would be to kill one of God’s created children. Classifications and categories such as male, female, Greek, Jew, Tutsi and Hutu may exist, but they are trumped by the fact that all reflect God’s image, even if that reflection may be very dim in the lives of some. A man I met in Rwanda by the name of Antoine Rutayisire is painfully aware of those who denied that God’s image dwelt in their enemies. But he has also collected accounts of those who risked their lives rather than deny the truth that a trace of God’s light was present in everyone. In one account, Rev. Emmanuel Gasana tells about an event in the first month of the genocide. On April 22, 1994 Gasana was
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harboring dozens of Tutsi in his church building. The Interahamwe militia (those who later were referred to as genocidaires) came searching for the Tutsi that they suspected were hiding there. They demanded that Gasana hand over everyone to be slaughtered. He then asked them, ‘why those innocent people had to be killed’. They replied that they had strict orders from higher authorities to kill all Batutsi. ‘I told them,’ recounts Gasana, that ‘there were no Batutsi in my church but only “children of God”’ (Rutayisire, 1995, p. 84). They left angry and returned later with a larger contingency ‘brandishing guns, grenades, axes, nail studded clubs and other weapons that they used in their macabre job’ (Rutayisire, 1995, p. 85). Gasana was threatened with his life to turn over his hideaways, but he quietly stalled while his wife helped those in hiding to go temporarily into the surrounding fields during the search. Those at the compound continued to deflect attempts at rounding up those in hiding, and those who hid there remained safe throughout the genocide. What is especially worthy of note here is Gasana’s understanding of his relation to others. They were not cockroaches or even Batutsi or Bahutu. Rather they were children of God. On hearing this story, one might object, saying that the victims may very well be children of God, but that classification cannot apply to the genocidaires.9 To say that even the genocidaires have the light of Christ in them threatens to minimize the horror of their actions, one might argue. How can you really say that there is no difference between the innocent victim and the violent genocidaire? How does this avoid the view of evil that denies its reality? Well, one can acknowledge the reality of evil without denying that the light of Christ is in all. Gasana, for example, did see a difference between ‘those who obey God and those who serve the devil’ (Rutayisire, 1995, p. 84). But one can still serve the distorted, evil purposes without being entirely evil. This affects how we view those who do evil; first, no ‘enemy’ is viewed as purely evil. Gasana clearly saw the light in these attackers because and in the way he spoke to them, he tried to help them see this light as well. He did not curse the killers, but instead asked them ‘why those innocent people had to be killed’. That question is an appeal to the light that they were trying to block. Gasana also told them ‘they would have to kill me before they killed the people the Lord had placed under my protection’ (Rutayisire, 1995, p. 84). It challenged their dualistic categories of evil and good, because Gasana was a Muhutu. This one who was good was linking his fate to ones they considered evil. They would have to destroy what was good in order to destroy what was evil. This quandary put them off for awhile. When they returned, they tried to reconcile the dilemma by convincing themselves that Gasana must be a Mututsi. ‘You, too, you must be a Mututsi … We don’t trust your identity card, you’ve probably falsified it’ (Rutayisire, 1995). By continuing to challenge their false dichotomies through appeal to the light within these genocidaires, those under his care remained alive. Viewing evil as privation not only affects our actions by helping us see the light within everyone, but it affects the way we treat those who seem to have a very dim or poorly reflected light. Acknowledging the difference between those who love the light of Christ and those who hate the light of Christ might seem to justify doing 9
This is the name given in Rwanda to those who participated in the genocide.
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harm to those who hate the light. But part of obeying that light of Christ includes blessing those who curse, and that includes loving one’s enemies. Consider Rutayisire’s own testimony of forgiveness, for example. Long before the genocide, as a young boy, he saw his father beaten nearly to death and later taken away to be killed. After many years of harboring deep bitterness – which could easily have turned to acts of vengeance, he was ‘confronted with the message of forgiveness and love of our enemies as conditional to being a child of God’. One day, he reread all passages that dealt with forgiveness and spent the day forgiving and praying ‘the Lord’s blessing on all the people [he] hated’ (Rutayisire, 1995, p. 106). He made a list of all their names and the wrongs each had done to him or his family. Then he ‘started declaring forgiveness to each, one by one and calling the Lord’s blessing on them, their children, their businesses and their relatives’. He says it was painful, and that he had to repeat it again and again, but he was finally released from the ‘gripping pang of bitterness’ (Rutayisire, 1995, pp. 107–8). Thus, how we view evil is not merely a pedantic discussion that has no bearing on how one lives life. Rather, it can be argued that the way in which we understand good and evil has enormous consequences on how we view others and ourselves, and how we interact with them. Viewing the various ways people acted during this genocide affirms that the light of Christ was even in those Hutu genocidaires – they responded differently when people appealed to the light within them. Furthermore, this view of evil can be affirmed without excusing or minimizing the horrific nature of those actions – there is a difference between loving the light and hating the light. After taking a sober look at some terrible evil, I am aware more fully of the possibility of turning away from that light. I have seen that it is possible to walk great distances in the dark. I have seen that not all roads converge, but that some people walk more and more in the light, while others seem more persistent to remain in darkness.10 But all this has changed my questions. As Fox described above, I found myself looking at evil not in ‘they, they, they’ but in ‘I, I, I’. What is to keep me from me from turning away from the light? How can I not only stand in the light but walk in it? But all believe in the light and walk in the light, which Christ hath enlightened every man that cometh into the world withal, and so become children of the light, and of the day of Christ; in his day all things are seen, visible and invisible, by the divine light of Christ … by whom all things were made and created (Fox, 1952, p. 29).11
10 I have addressed examples of both at greater length in a forthcoming book (Baylor University Press) in which I address the question of how we become invisible to one another. It is this invisibility (or covering of darkness) that allows evil deeds to be done, I argue. I look at examples of those who both became invisible and did great evil as well as at those who became visible and accomplished acts of sacrifice. 11 Emphasis added.
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Chapter 13
Driven By Darkness, Drawn By Light: The Progression of Faith in the Poetry of John Greenleaf Whittier William Jolliff
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) was one of the most widely published American poets of the nineteenth century, and he was arguably the most important American Quaker writer of his time. His books went through scores of editions: no home was complete without a gilt-edged, leather-bound volume of Whittier on the parlor table. Although he is no longer considered an artist of the first rank, his contributions to the history of American literature and the history of the American conscience retain significance. His masterwork, Snow-Bound (1865), remains widely anthologized; it stands as the definitive statement of the popular American conception of rural life during the early 1800s. His anti-slavery poems continue to be taught in schools, suggesting his continuing importance as a poet of commitment. Neither can his lyrics on homespun topics be overlooked. At their best, as in ‘Telling the Bees’, they persist in eliciting a deep and non-sentimental emotion from contemporary readers. It testifies to his excellence that even with the explosion of the American literary canon, Whittier, a white male traditionalist from New England, still captures a few moments in the typical college survey. Yet the aforementioned categories may not include his most lasting gift to American letters, a gift largely overlooked in academic circles: Whittier produced the most significant body of religious poetry by any nineteenth-century American. Students of the poet’s life might attribute the perseverance of his poetry to a fascination with his rare character: he was a great and honorable public man. But most people reading his poems know little about his single-minded work for the abolition of slavery, the political power he wielded, or the integrity of his manner. Appropriately, his religious poetry survives not because of the saint who wrote it but because of the spirituality it reflects: the faith revealed in his poems demonstrates an increasing complexity, yet it consistently addresses its audience in language convivial with Christian orthodoxy, a language that is simple but never simplistic, carefully crafted but never contrived. Whittier’s artistic and ethical triumph was the transparent portrayal of a man making his way through the world with an unquenchable thirst for the good. Though this image of Whittier as poet and idealist is a true one, the historical Whittier was far from the starry-eyed stereotype such attributions might suggest. Quite the contrary, as an editor, an abolitionist, a lobbyist – and as a prolific writer
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of opinionated prose as well as poetry – he was a man of the world who inevitably defined his life through action rather than abstraction. Though he identified with orthodox Christian expression, he spent precious little energy on the intricacies of theology. He did not theologize about the nature or meaning of evil, but he consistently acted against it. Theological concepts, he believed, found their truest, and maybe their only, meaningful expression in the vigorous living of one’s life. It may be most accurate, then, to say that he believed evil to be that which prevails when goodness fails; although he might not have fully agreed with his friend the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson that ‘Good is positive. Evil is merely privative’ (Emerson, 1993, p. 105), which may be as useful a formulation as we are likely to discover. In detailing, therefore, the poet’s understanding of evil, we will necessarily follow a two-step route: first, to examine the particular darkness that drove him forward; and second, to examine the light by which he was drawn, that spiritual ideal toward which he intuitively persisted. The first will be observed most clearly in those poems that outline his reasoned and radical opposition to slavery; the latter, though more subtle, will become clear as we examine the faith progression demonstrated in his later religious poetry. For both steps, it will be helpful to understand his writings in relation to the model of faith development presented in James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (1981). According to Fowler, all humans are born with the capacity for faith. By faith, however, he does not refer to contents (i.e., a particular set of beliefs). Instead, faith refers to the ways people go about making and maintaining meaning in their lives. In other words, faith refers to how we go about understanding the world – how we interpret our experience and how we respond. As he writes: Faith is a person’s or group’s way of moving into the force field of life. It is our way of finding coherence in and giving meaning to the multiple forces and relations that make up our lives. Faith is a person’s way of seeing him- or herself in relation to others against a background of shared meaning and purpose (Fowler, 1981, p. 4).
Though all people, according to Fowler, have the nascent capacity of faith, few will progress all the way through his six-stage model, and there is considerable variation between individuals concerning how the stages work. The first two stages will not concern this essay. Stage One, Intuitive–Projective Faith, is the egocentric and highly imaginative faith of early childhood. Stage Two, Mythical–Literal Faith, occurs when children begin to sort out the real from the unreal, and to identify with the stories of their own tradition – a playground sense of fairness characterizes this stage. Though it might be worthwhile to study the development of Whittier’s childhood faith development, for our purposes here we will begin with those stages identified with late adolescence and adulthood. These will be defined and discussed as we discover them in Whittier’s life and as they reveal themselves in the progression of his poems. In his maturity, Whittier reflected on the good fortune that resulted in his turning toward the great issue of his era, abolition, as his life’s work: ‘I cannot be sufficiently thankful to the divine Providence which … turned me away so early from what Roger Williams calls “the world’s great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor”, to
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take side with the poor and oppressed’ (Pollard, 1949, p. 252). We affirm, with the advantage of a longer historical lens, the accuracy of Whittier’s hindsight. In the years before he embraced abolitionism in 1833 at age 25, Whittier was operating out of what Fowler calls Stage Three, Synthetic–Conventional Faith. At that stage, individuals have uncritically internalized the beliefs and values of their community. If asked, they can sincerely claim to hold such beliefs, but they may not be sure why. According to Fowler, many adults remain at this stage all their lives. In Whittier’s case, he could readily spin out a ballad or a fiery editorial to advocate his family’s Quaker ways, but he had not made the convictions his own. As a young writer and editor in his early twenties, he was a typical, sad young man having trouble ‘finding himself’, with his life and his mind moving in too many directions. He was trying to discover a way of making a living other than grinding out a subsistence on the family farm, to navigate a series of unsuccessful courtships, to make his reputation as a poet by publishing piles of verse in the popular press, and to gain fame as a newspaperman and occasional politician – all while maintaining some relationship with his Quaker ideals. Success came too slowly, and he was extremely dissatisfied. In both positive and negative senses, he was clearly ambitious but lacked direction. And at times, even his ethical compass failed him. At the nadir of his struggle, in 1832 he went so far as to connive to gain a seat in the Massachusetts legislature through a complex set of manipulative delays and promises of participation in the ‘spoils system’ – the very political phenomenon that he had often condemned as an editor (Pollard, 1949, pp. 106–7). It was providential that soon after this political failure, the charismatic abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison, who had been the first to publish the young Quaker’s adolescent verse, re-entered Whittier’s life. Garrison’s letter of March 22, 1833 – a letter which would prove to be the watershed event in Whittier’s professional and spiritual progression – delivered this admonition: ‘Whittier, enlist! – Your talents, zeal, influence – all are needed’. A few days later Whittier heard Garrison lecture on the obligation of Americans to demand the immediate abolition of slavery, and, as Pollard notes, ‘Whittier seems at this time to have been won to active Abolitionism’ (Pollard, 1949, p. 116). Indeed, the young man took his new commitment to heart, and he put his heart into action. He began by writing and publishing one of the pivotal pamphlets of the abolitionist movement, Justice and Expediency (1833). Its arguments against the evil of slavery were not new, but they were lucid, and his self-published run of 500 copies soon spurred republication by the thousands. Thus Whittier’s commitment to abolition was not only a sign of change in his inner life, but resulted in a kind of public confession, the consequences of which were sure: as John B. Pickard writes, ‘Its publication had a profound and lasting effect on Whittier’s life. It severely limited Whittier’s hopes of political preferment, sharply curtailed the number of journals which would publish his verse, and earned him notoriety second only to that of Garrison and a few other abolitionists’ (Pickard, 1975, p. 111). Had this publication not demonstrated his transformation clearly enough, it would have been made public when he signed a key abolitionist manifesto later that year: thirty years after the signing, Whittier stated, ‘I am not insensible to literary reputation. I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my
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name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title page of any book (Pollard, 1949, p. 124). As Pollard succinctly puts it, Whittier ‘got his true bearing on life only when his heart fully asserted itself and when, like a true Quaker, he embraced a cause’ (Pollard, 1949, p. 37). Something had certainly changed. His embrace of abolitionism transformed his inherited Quaker beliefs into a personal, lived convincement: this turning toward the light focused his passion for writing, his compassion for fellow humans, and his deep religious conviction all on the goal of human betterment, particularly on the plight of the slave. He left behind that unattractive selfish ambition and acted upon his convictions. In Fowler’s terms, Whittier was now operating in Stage Four, Individuative–Reflective Faith, that level at which one ‘must begin to take seriously the burden of responsibility of his or her own commitments, lifestyle, beliefs and attitudes’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 182). At this stage, individuals become critical of previous beliefs and learn to differentiate their authentically held convictions and those beliefs that were based only on social expectations. Such was the case with Whittier. As a young Quaker, simply agreeing that slavery was wrong was not a demanding belief; it could be easily held alongside the other beliefs of his socially progressive reference communities. But committing his life’s energy toward the generally unpopular cause of abolition – that was a radical matter with far-reaching practical implications, and it demanded the strength of a personal conviction that could accept sacrifice. Focusing now on his poetry, we see that from this point on, Whittier stopped his not particularly successful emulation of Robert Burns and other Romantics; their topics would be his topics no longer. When, in his own words, he transformed his ‘gift of song’ into a ‘weapon in the war with wrong’, his Individuative–Reflective Faith led him to do so with aggressive boldness and an apparent confidence in his knowledge of what evil is. Granted, some of Whittier’s most powerful abolitionist poems make their effect by creating sympathy for the slave. But his most compelling pieces maintain a dominant tone not of sympathy but of righteous anger – a hatred of evil. This is in fact a typical stance for Individuative–Reflective Faith to take. With this stage, what Fowler calls the ‘executive ego’ has emerged, and that ego speaks and works clearly, even combatively, on behalf of its own commitments. This stage of faith constructs ‘a perspective genuinely aware of social systems and institutions’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 179) and reasons in terms of ‘the impersonal imperatives of law, rules and the standards that govern social rules’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 180). Operating in such a mindset, Whittier attacked his chosen dragon, slavery, with absolute confidence; and he quickly demonstrated his mastery of the invective. Looking at the objects of his most strident attacks, we understand what he perceived to be evil. Most broadly, of course, evil was represented by slavery: the individual cruelties of slavery were easily sufficient to earn this description. But even more basically, race slavery as an institution assaulted that which is most essentially human: it denied the nature of humanity by treating that which is created in the image of God as something less than that. The poet’s conviction against that wrong becomes clear in the logical ire of ‘The Christian Slave’ (1843); the most strident of all his abolitionist poems, it laments the irony that slaves would sometimes be advertised as ‘Christian’. To describe a slave as ‘A GOOD CHRISTIAN’ or ‘a Baptist Preacher’
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admits, on one hand, the full humanity of slaves: they were capable of a personal relationship with the Creator. Simultaneously, however, such descriptions deny the slaves’ full humanity: these spiritual beings were simply chattel. The strangest irony is that one might be a more sellable slave for having a more fully realized spirituality. Thus in Whittier’s poem, the attribute which should have precluded the woman’s being considered chattel is put forth as the very attribute which makes her more valuable as chattel. So the poem begins, ‘A Christian! going, gone! / Who bids for God’s own image?’ and proceeds with bitter sarcasm (Whittier, 2000, p. 34). A further degree down the scale of evil in Whittier’s understanding of slavery was the betrayal of the truth – and the intentional misrepresentation of the Divine nature – by those who most clearly should have known better and taught otherwise: Christian leaders. Thus the poem ‘Clerical Oppressors’ (1836) is not only a condemnation of slavery and those who support it with their clerical office, but a deepened definition of evil. As its epigraph states, this poem is a response to a gathering of southern clerics in support of slavery. It damns their action for its conscious and therefore intentional misrepresentation of God and humans, and for its propagation of evil. The poet begins, ‘Just God! and these are they / Who minister at thine altar, God of Right! / Men who their hands with prayer and blessing lay / On Israel’s Ark of light!’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 31). As a Quaker who did not believe in clericalism, Whittier had little sympathy for ‘hireling ministry’; that a person would claim for himself this special relationship to God, thereby undercutting every person’s relationship with God so valued by Whittier’s religious impulse, was a problem on its own. But when that ‘chosen’ group would lend weighty support to the greatest offense to Christian principle – earning their ‘hire’ with ‘the price of blood’ – such people had chosen to ‘barter truth away’, and echoing Jesus, the poet would state, ‘Woe to the priesthood!’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 32). If there were an evil still worse than twisting truth to support evil, it was this: to have the potential to end or limit that evil, but to choose otherwise. That was the sorry choice of Senator Daniel Webster, the subject of Whittier’s best abolitionist poem, ‘Ichabod’ (1850). Early in his career as an editor, abolitionist, and lobbyist, Whittier had trusted Webster’s sound politics and good moral sense. What made Webster’s evil the greatest, then, was his betrayal of his gift: in Whittier’s mind, Webster knew the right but chose otherwise: when he used his powerful influence to guarantee passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, he had placed his own desire to preserve the union above his understanding of good and evil. In response, Whittier performed that most pitiless of acts: he damned him with public pity: ‘[P]itying tears, not scorn and wrath / Befit his fall!’ Whittier states, ‘When he who might / Have lighted up and led his age, / Falls back in night’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 47). Thus he gave the senator the epithet Ichabod, which means lost glory. In Whittier’s anti-slavery poems, then, we see suggested an outline of what the poet most clearly considered evil: to do others harm; to devalue or deny the divine nature of all humanity; to misrepresent the nature of God; and, finally, to refuse to address such evils when it is within one’s power to do so. The moral imperatives of that era were clear. But as the period of Whittier’s most energetic abolitionist involvement passed and the nation moved into wartime and the post-war era, the either/or approach of political invective faded from Whittier’s work. As it did,
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we begin to find among the prolific poet’s many themes great devotional poems that demonstrate the fruit of growing spiritual complexity. Just as clearly as the imprecatory abolitionist poems demonstrate the Individuative–Reflective Faith with its ethical simplicity, these more reflective and complex later works would suggest Stage Five, Conjunctive Faith. At this stage, according to Fowler, disillusionment and an increased understanding of life’s complexities ‘press one toward a more dialectical and multileveled approach to life truth’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 183). He writes that as a way of seeing, of knowing, of committing, [Conjunctive Faith] moves beyond the dichotomizing logic of Stage 4’s ‘either/or’. It sees both (or the many) sides of an issue simultaneously. Conjunctive Faith suspects the things are organically related to each other; it attends to the pattern of interrelatedness in things, trying to avoid force-fitting to its own prior mind set (Fowler, 1981, p. 185).
Conjunctive Faith reasons dialectically and accepts other belief systems on their own terms; unlike more exclusivistic understandings of Christianity, it does not force other beliefs to accommodate. For such faith to function, though, the believer must have realized detachment enough to allow ‘an intimacy in knowing that celebrates, reverence and attends to the “wisdom” evolved in things as they are, before seeking to modify, control or order them to fit prior categories’ (Fowler p. 185). It is perhaps providential that just as Whittier’s abolitionist poems were the most fitting words for the abolitionist era, the more theologically complex poems of his middle age also found a ready audience: a poetry informed by the attributes of Conjunctive Faith was exactly what his public needed. Traditional Christian orthodoxy had taken a beating among his contemporaries; no serious thinker could retain the literalistic readings of the Bible, which had previously been the stuff of American popular religion, and the nature of public discussion had changed. Questions once squeezed into silence by biblical literalism were rising to the surface, increasing anxiety among Christians; the challenges of new science, higher biblical criticism, and comparative religious study were powerful in their newness. Such doubt-inducing issues could only intensify those perennial theological questions, such queries as ‘Why does God let bad things happen?’ and ‘Will I really see my loved ones again in heaven?’ Whittier’s fame guaranteed him a place in popular discussion; and as we keep in mind the traits Fowler assigns to Conjunctive Faith, we see them repeatedly exemplified in the poet’s most characteristic verse. While they give us no further definition of evil, they do suggest an idea of evil’s opposite – the light that would draw Whittier forward. For example, Fowlers states that this stage is characterized by a ‘reclaiming and reworking’ of one’s past, in which the believer gives new attention to that social unconscious which was developed in the tradition in which he was nurtured (Fowler, 1981, p. 197). This tendency is suggested in Whittier’s renewed celebration of Quakerism clearly portrayed in such poems as ‘First Day Thoughts’ (1853), which honors the traditional meeting in the manner of Friends. The waiting in silence, the ‘still small voice’, the heart that will ‘strive with each besetting sin’, the ‘wandering’ soul seeking ‘the path of duty’ – all find their place as the poem recounts typical
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characteristics of Quaker worship (Whittier, 2000, pp. 230–31). Two additional poems which Whittier published in 1879 issues of Lyman Abbott’s popular Christian Union magazine, ‘The Word’ and ‘The Book’, also pay tribute to this tradition (Woodwell, 1985, p. 432). Then as now, many Christians referred to the Bible as ‘The Word’, but Whittier here reclaims the Quaker preference. The Word is not the Bible but the voice of the Holy Spirit, the guide that allows one to read the scripture – ‘The picture-writing of the world’s gray seers, / The myths and parables of the primal years’ – in a beneficial way (Whittier, 2000, p. 254). Here too, Whittier emphasizes his Quaker ‘hatred of cant and doubt of human creeds’, a theme that recurs in his poems. It is important to note for our purpose here that his anti-creedalism reflects not only Whittier’s Quakerism but the dialectical nature of Conjunctive Faith. In ‘The Book’ he restates this theme from another angle. There is a truth that is deeper, more universal and pervasive than anything we read in creeds, and it is in such a light that the Bible must be read: ‘But only when on form and word obscure / Falls from above the white supernal light / We read the mystic characters aright, / And life informs the silent portraiture’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 255). Clearly the light to which Whittier was drawn was beyond any sectarian exclusivism – he believed that religious understanding could and would necessarily change; but with equal clarity, he advocated that changes could be absorbed within a traditional manner of worship. Such a complexity distinguishes Whittier’s Quakerism from the rigid evangelicalism that challenged the sect from within and the encroaching modernism that threatened from without. Another trait of Conjunctive Faith is that it purposefully ‘maintains vulnerability to the strange truths of those who are “other”’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 198). Unlike the either/ or ethic of Individuative–Reflective Faith, Conjunctive Faith does not defend itself against other views; it attends to other positions with the supposition that they might in fact be correct. The 1865 poem ‘The Eternal Goodness’ (Whittier, 2000, pp. 244– 7) demonstrates that trait well. In metered argument, the speaker respects the truths his opponents stress, and he even seems to admire their Calvinistic scholasticism, their ‘logic linked and strong’; but clearly he chooses a tentativeness antithetical to theological confidence. He prefers the ‘hushed feet’ of unknowing to the arguments that seem with ‘boldness shod’, just as he prefers to dwell upon God’s ‘pitying love’ rather than divine ‘justice’. Similarly, he fully understands by his own experience the same tendency toward sin that his Calvinist friends perceive, for he humbly admits that within himself, ‘Too dark you cannot paint the sin’. He rejects their creed not because he does not believe in sin, but because he perceives that creeds are reductionistic and therefore betray a misperception of God. His poem is a corrective, just as Conjunctive Faith may be considered a corrective to Individuative–Reflective Faith. According to Fowler, Conjunctive Faith ‘knows that the symbols, stories, doctrines and liturgies offered by [one’s] own or other traditions are inevitably partial, limited to a particular people’s experience of God and incomplete. …’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 186). Whittier parallels this idea in verse: ‘Who fathoms the Eternal Thought? / Who talks of scheme and plan? / The Lord is God! He needeth not / The poor device of man’. Typically, he attempts to transcend both positions in the enduring faith that ‘God is good’; as the poem concludes, he addresses his listeners as ‘brothers’, and even asks them to pray for him, so that, should his faith
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be vain, he might find their ‘sure and safer way’. This poem clearly exemplifies that strength of Conjunctive Faith that Fowler calls the ‘ironic imagination’, the capacity to embrace one’s own beliefs while ‘simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial, and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 198). Such an ability to hold apparent contradictions simultaneously edges toward yet another attribute of Conjunctive Faith: in Fowler’s words, it is ‘[a]live to paradox and the truth in apparent contradiction’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 198). The poem ‘Trust’ (1853) testifies to Whittier’s own struggle and acceptance of God’s will, and is also a statement of his encouragement to others. Easy belief for the thinking Christian had ceased in Whittier’s day, as in our own. Thus he begins with a heart-felt exclamation: ‘Those same old baffling questions! O my friend, / I cannot answer them’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 233). His own soul, he confesses, has been unable to discover the ‘great and solemn meanings’, to solve the ‘awful riddles’, and he states, ‘I have no answer for myself or thee’. His conclusion transcends logic, however, into pure faith, and it is a truth he learned, he admits, at his mother’s knee: ‘“All is of God that is, and is to be; / And God is good”. Let this suffice us still / Resting in childlike trust upon His will / Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill’ (Whittier, 2000, pp. 233–4). At first glance, this might seem to be naïve belief, but grounded in Conjunctive Faith, it becomes what Fowler has termed, borrowing a word from Ricoeur, a ‘second naiveté’ in which ‘symbolic power is reunited with conceptual meanings’, as one reworks one’s past, prompted by the ‘deeper self’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 197). The truth he learned at his mother’s knee has not changed; he simply understands it more deeply. Whittier’s most intimate spirituality suggests another trait of Conjunctive Faith: it can ‘appreciate symbols, myths, and rituals (its own and others’) because it has been grasped, in some measure, by the depth of reality to which they refer’ (Fowler, 2000, p. 198). With this difficult phrase, Fowler refers to something akin to mystical experience, a depth of experience like that referred to in Whittier’s ‘The River Path’ (1860). Though the poem begins as a typical walk-in-the-woods lyric, it quickly becomes something more. The speaker and his companion are walking at dusk, when they turn a corner and encounter a glowing vista, ‘a dream of day without its glare’, and they stand in the darkness looking into the light. Whittier scrambles through 16 more couplets trying to wrap language around the significance of the vision, and at last arrives at a metaphor of standing between two worlds: the ‘shadowy with the sunlit side’ is ‘allied’; the heavenly and the earthly have come together (Whittier, 2000, pp. 241–3). An even more mysterious experience of the real that stands behind symbols is the subject of ‘A Mystery’ (1875). In that poem, the speaker walks alone in the wilderness, beguiled by a feeling of having been there before: ‘No clue of memory led me on, / But well the ways I knew; / A feeling of familiar things / With every footstep grew’. At last he confesses that a ‘presence, strange at once and known, / Walked with me as my guide; / The skirts of some forgotten life / Trailed noiseless at my side’ (Whittier, 2000, p. 251). Such experiences indicate a difficult truth of Conjunctive Faith: ‘the conscious ego is not master in its own house. … [it] recognizes the task of integrating or reconciling conscious and unconscious’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 186). Conjunctive Faith can embrace such mystery because it ‘attends to the pattern of the interrelatedness of things’ and it has gained the detachment necessary
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‘to let reality speak its word, regardless of the impact of that word on the security or self-esteem of the knower’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 185). Whittier did not write easily of mystical experience; when he did so, his words have weight. Indeed, though his faith is expressed in common ways, his was never an easy faith. As noted, nineteenth-century Christians were confronting – in addition to a radically changing economy, population shifts from rural village to city, and dehumanizing industrial technologies – advances in biblical criticism and a plethora of scientific discoveries that made traditional, literalistic biblical interpretation impossible. Some lost their faith; others retreated into fundamentalism. Whittier’s Conjunctive Faith allowed him to avoid both fruitless extremes. Though he felt keenly the confusion and anxiety of his peers, he dealt wisely with the challenges of his time. ‘Requirement’ (1881), for example, is impressive in its straightforward reflection of the poet’s grappling with a changing theological context. Though grounded in typically Christian language, it goes beyond typical theology. Echoing Saint Paul, Whittier writes, ‘We live by Faith’, then is quick to add, ‘but Faith is not the slave / Of text and legend’. Whittier maintains his traditional approach to religion, but he is not about to disregard modern scientific and biblical scholarship in order to maintain an outdated reading of scripture. He persists in his belief that all truth, new and old, is God’s truth, that ‘Reason’s voice and God’s, / Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds’. In a list that sounds as commonly orthodox as one can imagine, the poet catalogues what he believes God does require: What asks our Father of His children, save Justice and mercy and humility, A reasonable service of good deeds, Pure living, tenderness to human needs, Reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see The Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, But the calm beauty of an ordered life. . . Firm-rooted in the faith that God is Good (Whittier, 2000, p. 257).
Though he uses particular Christian language, his list of ‘requirements’ is universal; it could be shared by most religions. Typical of Conjunctive Faith is confidence ‘in the reality mediated by its own tradition and in the awareness that that reality overspills its mediation’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 187). While expressing his belief in Christian terms, what Whittier values as the greatest good is not the particular language of a religion but the reality behind the symbols, reflecting again that he has been grasped by ‘the depth of reality to which [religious symbols] refer’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 198). Finally, the poem ‘Adjustment’ (1884) testifies to the sophistication of Whittier’s faith; that he wrote it as he approached 80 speaks to the persistent vitality of that faith. The poet argues without apology that religion must evolve: ‘The tree of Faith its bare, dry boughs must shed / That nearer heaven living ones may climb’, he contends. The ‘troubled times’ that others lament are in reality are a blessing: ‘an angel sent of God’ to roil the waters of the world ‘with life’. From his mature spiritual perspective, such shifting theological strands were natural and good: ‘the strong tides come and go.’ So his response to a changing world is far from despair:
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Good and Evil Therefore I trust, although to outward sense Both true and false seem shaken; I will hold with newer light my reverence for the old And calmly wait the births of Providence. No gain is lost; the clear-eyed saints look down Untroubled on the wreck of schemes and creeds; Love yet remains. … (Whittier, 2000, p. 261).
This is Conjunctive Faith at its plainest, and Whittier at his theological best. The particulars upon which faith seems to depend may change, but the universals do not. Whittier maintains reverence for the old, but ‘with newer light’. The ‘clear-eyed’ saints, he tells us, are untroubled by ‘the wreck of schemes and creeds’. And why? Because ‘[l]ove yet remains’. In conclusion, we readily admit that Whittier was no academic philosopher. Still, having considered carefully the darkness by which he was driven and the light by which he was drawn, we can determine his clear ethical parameters. Written from the perspective of Individuative-Reflective Faith, his abolitionist poems have presented a clear indication of what he considered to be evil: to do others harm, to devalue or deny the divine nature of all humanity, and to refuse to correct wrongs when it is within one’s power to do so. And his religious poems, reflecting his progression into a Conjunctive Faith, have presented clearly his understanding of the good; while it would be inconsistent with such an understanding to attempt to define evil in any absolute sense, we can suggest that for Whittier, to do evil would have been to go against the progression of faith his poems express: to refuse to admit moral complexities; to force others to conform to one’s own thinking; to refuse to accommodate the beliefs of others; to commit oneself to rigid, unchanging perspective; to reject participation in spiritual mystery; and to overlook the persistent goodness of God. Such a definition by opposition, however, is not one the poet would have undertaken. His preference was to work hard for the good – and let evil atrophy. It is worth mentioning finally that Fowler briefly suggests a sixth stage of faith development, though he writes very sparingly about it. Few people, he notes, ever reach the final level he calls Universalizing Faith; and those who do so have ‘a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human that the rest of us …. Life is both loved and held too loosely. Such persons are ready for fellowship with persons at any of the other stages and from any other faith tradition’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 201). Such a saintly description of any human would seem to beg for disappointment. Nevertheless, in reflecting upon Whittier’s journey – his purposeful life; his relentless work; the depth of his faith development that work reflects; and, maybe especially, the broad appeal, both critical and popular, that he maintained even to the end of his life – one is tempted to suggest that he was the embodiment of just such a Universalizing Faith. It is not without significance that on his deathbed, after medicine was deemed to be no longer effective, he would often breathe, ‘Love – love to all the world’.
Chapter 14
Good and Evil in an Ecumenical Perspective Janet Scott
Many Quakers are involved in ecumenical movements at local and regional levels and some at the national or international level. This is one of the areas where the Society becomes particularly conscious of its connection to the Christian tradition, either as something that it embraces, at least in part, or as a tradition with aspects from which it separates itself. Within these ecumenical circles, issues of good and evil are seldom discussed or are discussed only in a limited form. They are likely to be presented as issues of Justice – what to do about an unjust world – or in terms of the ‘brokenness’ of the church. In this chapter I look at the Biblical sources on which the churches draw for their understanding of good and evil, and how ideas about the realization of the kingdom of God relate to church activities. I then consider how churches respond to a current issue, that of HIV/AIDS, and look at what the eucharist might suggest as the basis for a theology of suffering. I conclude by suggesting how this applies to Quaker sacramental living. Evil and good stand thick around In the fields of charity and sin Where we shall lead our harvest in (Edwin Muir).
The issue of good and evil almost invariably becomes an issue simply of evil, since people do not seem to have problems with what is good (other than to do it!) In terms of evil there are two major problems: the first is how to explain why it happens, the second is how to live with it. These can become intertwined, since the understanding of causes is part of accepting and living with evil and suffering. If we can see an explanation, we can hope to see ways to avoid them. Explaining Evil In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the attempt to explain and understand evil goes hand in hand with the development of a monotheistic concept of God, specifically of a God who, as in the Exodus story, intervenes in history, cares for people and both is righteous and demands a righteous community. In the ancient world as long as God was seen as capricious, or only one amongst many gods, or local, absent or powerless, then there was no problem of explanation for evil. The best response to
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ill-fortune, actual or prospective, was to attempt to win over the appropriate god to favour you, through sacrifices, vows or other ways of pleasing him or her. If this failed a reason could always be found: either one’s gifts had not been adequate or there was a more powerful god to whom one should shift one’s allegiance. But the concept of one God only, especially when that God was seen as the creator of the world, brought about the need to explain evil and suffering, to justify God’s ways. We can see in the Bible the development of a series of explanations, changing over the centuries as each one was seen to be inadequate. The first explanation, one which still holds some power today, perhaps because it is half-right, is that suffering is a punishment for sin. People like this explanation. Its simple truth can be seen when we put our hand too near a source of heat and are burnt, or we neglect our health and fall ill. It is attractive because it suggests solutions: it also allows us to ‘blame the victim’. When we read or hear the argument that a woman was raped because she was wearing a short skirt and was drunk and so ‘asked for it’, we see the continuing power of this level of explanation. It focuses on the victim and what she did and enables us to avoid the more difficult task of explaining the behaviour of her attacker. This concept of suffering as a punishment can be seen in Biblical texts written before the Exile, both in Deuteronomic texts and in the account of creation found in Genesis Chapters 2 and 3. Even then there were some features to be noted. The suffering is communal: a whole community suffers from war, oppression or disaster. Often the sin is communal too. In books such as Judges, the sin is turning away from worshipping the right God (e.g. Judges 3:7). It is idolatry rather than moral sin that is the problem. The story in Genesis 3 is one of the earliest attempts to explain why there are things wrong in the world. Aetiological in form and intent, it sets out to explain why there is death, why there are animals such as the snake, which are harmful to humans, why work is frustrating and often unsuccessful, why childbirth is painful and why women stay with domineering husbands. The author lays the blame on the ancestors and on their disobedience. Because they wanted to know about and understand good and evil and acted on this wish, they were cast out of paradise. The everyday unsatisfactoriness of human life is the price paid for knowledge. At the same time however, the author depicts God as one who is gracious and keeps promises: good happens because God has promised it and will not go back on the promise. Such an understanding of sin and punishment as communal can help to explain the evil that happens to and in a community, but it does not explain the randomness of what happens to individuals. The Wisdom tradition, as found for example in the book of Proverbs, suggests that it is possible for a wise individual to become attuned to the will of God and to prosper through hard work and right living. The prophetic tradition, at around the time of the Exile, was also concerned with the individual. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel took the old proverb, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge’ and argued that this no longer applied. Everyone should be punished for their own sin, not for that of others (Jeremiah 31: 29–30, Ezekiel 18:2ff). This is still, of course, an application of the same theology of evil as punishment, but it runs into greater problems when it comes to the suffering
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of individuals. The problem of the righteous individual who suffers is the greatest challenge to this theodicy. The great prophet known to us as Second Isaiah, writing in the later part of the Exile, was alone in suggesting that suffering could be redemptive, and that one person could suffer on behalf of others. The poem, in Isaiah 52:13–53:12, reads as if the prophet had actually witnessed this happening, and one persuasive suggestion is that it refers to the young king, Jehoiachin, who was imprisoned and suffered on behalf of his people. Later, Christians of course took the poem to prefigure the work of Christ. This same prophet (Isaiah 45:7) was clear that good and evil, welfare and woe, both came from the one God. Anticipating the Persian influence of dualism expressed as the battle between light and dark, Second Isaiah resisted it in the name of the God who created both the light and the darkness. The other major attempt to explore the problem comes in the book of Job. The book has a complex literary history and format. The bulk of the book is poetry, with much of it the words of Job’s friends as they try to bring Wisdom theology to bear on his experience of suffering. They suggest that since he is suffering he must have been sinful; indeed that to insist that he is righteous is in itself sinful. But all of this is rejected by Job, who challenges God to appear and explain himself. God does so appear, but faces Job with questions rather than answers. The suggestion seems to be that creation is so vast and complex that a mere mortal cannot hope to understand it. Whilst some commentators regard this as an expression of deep faith and profound spirituality, others are more cynical, seeing it as abandoning the attempt to explain the inexplicable. Around the poem is wrapped the prose prologue and epilogue telling the story of a conversation in heaven in which God boasts of the righteousness of his servant Job and Satan suggests that Job be tested to see whether his righteousness is real or the product of what he gains from it. In the end Job is justified, his health and riches are restored, and he has ten more children to replace the ones who died – though the text does not tell us what his wife thought of this! It seems that the prose writer was one of those who did not find the poem a satisfactory explanation and so added the explanation that suffering is a test. What matters is not how it is explained, but how it is lived through. The book of Ecclesiastes, probably written in the third century BC, similarly seems to have given up on explanation. The ‘rules’ just do not work. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, but time and chance happen to all (Eccles. 9:11). All attempts to understand are empty and vain. Although the writer has tried to gain wisdom he cannot understand God’s purpose and so he sees that there is nothing better to do than to eat, drink and take pleasure in life whilst one can (Eccles. 3:11–12, 5:17). One of the writer’s problems is that there is as yet no belief in life after death: thus justification has to happen in this life. The final book to be included in the Jewish Bible deals with this issue. The book of Daniel was probably completed during the Maccabean revolt (168– 165 BC) to encourage those who were struggling to maintain the Jewish faith under the persecution of Antiochus IV of Syria. Those who lived through this struggle saw the righteous put to death for their faith and this caused a severe crisis. How could a God be justified who did not rescue his servants? The book draws upon
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the experience of the Exile to tell stories of heroes who were prepared to suffer for worshipping God; Daniel in the lion’s den is one of these, and shows the hero maintaining his faith and being rescued in the end (Daniel 6). Other stories predict the downfall of overweening rulers. In the final chapter, the book reaches towards a new idea. Although we find apocalyptic material in other prophetic books, Daniel is the first to talk about resurrection. After a final battle between good and evil the dead will be raised and judged, some to eternal life and some to condemnation (Daniel 12:2). The book of Daniel has in effect given up on the concept of justice in this world and has postponed it to the next. The Work of Jesus All of this material provided resources for the early Christian churches when they tried to understand and explain the work of Jesus. Both crucifixion and resurrection are essential to this for Jesus is seen both as suffering and as justified. An early strand in the language about him is that of the resurrection. He is seen as having gone through death to the new life that he opens up to his followers. For Quakers this eschatological explanation is important. For those who can see, the world is transformed, into the realm of God where those who live in Christ’s way are already part of the new creation. The Quaker testimonies such as peace and equality, and the organization of the church as ‘gospel-order’, are visible witness to this new life. Other strands of explanation draw on the idea of suffering as punishment for sin and see Christ as bearing the punishment due to others. This is often linked to the metaphor of sacrifice or of redemption – buying people out of slavery or debt. Jesus himself had little to say about explanations for suffering or evil. In Luke 13:1–5 he refers to what appear to be two well-known incidents, the collapse of a tower killing the workers, and the killing by the Romans of people as they offered sacrifices. He asks whether these people who suffered were more guilty than others and concludes that they were not. Such incidents are likely to happen to anyone regardless of their fault. Jesus has more to say about willingness to suffer, to follow him in the way of the cross. ‘If anyone wishes to follow me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me,’ he says (Mark 8: 34). Whatever the work of Jesus and however it is explained, it does not appear that he expected it to end suffering. However, he may have meant to change the meaning of it. Thus Christians have the further resource, in part an explanation of evil and in part a way of living with it, of embracing and accepting their own suffering, believing that it is the way of Christ and that they are sharing in the life and selfoffering of Christ. Their suffering has the potential to be part of the way in which the world is changed. Because Christ suffered, the Christian has a companion and fellow-sufferer. However, none of this allows the Christian to accept the suffering of others as just or right. The kingdom of God as depicted in the gospels in the early part of the ministry of Jesus is a time of restoration when a withered hand is restored, demons are cast out, the blind see, the lame walk, captives are freed and good news
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is announced to the poor. The kingdom appears to indicate a cessation of evil and suffering and an establishment of the good. All of this means that the church is caught up in the midst of different and apparently contradictory experiences and concepts. The work of Christ has established the kingdom of God but it is experienced as ‘not yet’ as well as ‘already’. The kingdom is given but is also to be worked for. It is both gift and task. If these possibilities were mapped on axes, churches would place themselves at different points of the resulting grid, according to their attitudes towards whether the kingdom is already present or not, and whether it is given or requires human effort. Quakers could be found in the quadrant, ‘already’ and ‘task’. gift
already
not yet Quakers
task A Case Study: HIV/AIDS Much of what has said so far about the meaning of evil and its relationship to the kingdom can be illustrated from the example of churches dealing with the issue of HIV/AIDS.1 Many churches are involved in programmes to relieve suffering caused by HIV/AIDS, whether this is directly through the provision of medical treatment for sufferers, or indirectly through the development of programmes to care for orphans or to empower women and equip them with skills which make them economically independent. In these areas churches work together, and there seems to be no divergence from the need for compassion and help. However when it comes to explanation, the theology involved in the case becomes more complex and differences become more apparent. There is a temptation to fall back on the old explanation of suffering as a punishment for sin, equated here with sexual behaviour that is disapproved of. Certainly some infection is spread as a result of sexual promiscuity, but much affects those who have not been promiscuous. Nevertheless the culture of blame means that there is a stigma attached to the disease that in itself can prevent people from admitting that they may have it, preventing them from receiving treatment and so contributing to the spread of the disease. Churches have to find their own balance between judgment and mercy, naming the factors that contribute to the problem 1 This section is indebted to a discussion at the meeting of Secretaries of Christian World Communions held in October 2005.
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whilst attempting to change behaviour that puts people at risk. Whilst this can be effective with individuals, bringing about repentance and reconciliation, it is more difficult to tackle the structural ‘sins’ such as the economic systems or the social violence that make it impossible for some people, usually women and children, to avoid behaviour that results in them becoming infected. There is a dilemma too in the involvement of multiple agencies, both secular and religious. Churches, even though they have medical facilities, may find it more difficult than secular agencies, NGOs or charities to obtain funding from governments for work with HIV/AIDS patients. Churches can be perceived as pursuing a moralizing line that is considered unhelpful by adding to the blame and stigma. The churches on the other hand may feel that if they do not speak up for morality as they see it, where will a moral voice be found to name evil in this complex situation? The problem of HIV/AIDS highlights other problems that churches face: the relationship with governments; competing value systems, whether secular or religious; the attempt to control behaviour by a ‘top-down’ approach; economic systems that create poverty; and political systems that encourage violence. The same issue however also emphasizes the particular strengths of churches, which lie in their people. Congregations are the ‘grass-roots’. They are present in local neighbourhoods and know what local problems are. They can be empowered to act together as a community meeting local needs. In Kenya, for example, a Quaker women’s prayer group has begun a day centre for AIDS orphans, giving them a meal and education. In Thailand a Seventh Day Adventist church has begun an income-generating project for women who would otherwise depend on prostitution. Congregations are able to take a part in mending the world and in doing so can begin to develop their own theology. Sacramental life The World Council of Churches Faith and Order Commission has recently published a study document, Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology, which begins to address contemporary issues such as HIV/AIDS that present challenges for the understanding of human nature. It seeks to affirm that all human beings are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–7) even when that image is marred by sin. It stresses forgiveness and hope, and the raising of humanity into the new life that Christ brings about and exemplifies. In discussing this, the document looks particularly at the sacraments of baptism and eucharist. Baptism is seen (Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology, 2005, para.103) as ‘the sacramental sign given to the Christian community to express and embody the totality of new life in Christ’. It brings the baptized into ‘a community of profound equality within which divisive difference is banished, while diversity of gift and calling is honoured’. Nevertheless, this description has to be recognized as itself more a hope than a reality, since the rites of baptism are still one of the issues on which churches are themselves divided, and many churches fail to show in their structure and practices the equality that baptism signifies.
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The sacrament of the eucharist (Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology, 2005, paras 107–12) is also seen as bringing the faithful more fully into the life of Christ and into re-creation as the image of God. The broken bread reflects broken bodies, and the table-fellowship reminds of how Jesus welcomed and ate with the ‘outcasts and “bad characters” within the society of his time’. Again, the significance of the rite is diminished by the failure of churches to welcome each other to the sharing of the eucharist. Here the vision of the new humanity becomes dimmed. How does this concern Quakers? The Quaker tradition rejects the need for such rites and interprets the sacramental as an inward condition which permeates the whole of life and action. For Quakers, equality, hospitality, the building of a new community in peace and justice, are the work of everyday. There is no need for outward symbols, especially when the symbols reflect hope rather than reality. However, in ecumenical work in particular, it can be of importance to Quakers to recognize and encourage the potential of other traditions without departing from their own. Human beings need ritual as a way of learning about, expressing, and controlling emotions. Symbols carry the meanings of these emotions for us and act as reminders. Quakers do recognize the importance of symbols and symbolic actions. Paradoxically, this is done through the absence of symbols – in itself a symbol of rejection of the superficial. But not all symbols are superficial. Sometimes they carry in a visual or kinetic form meanings that can be hard to put into words. At an infant baptism even a young child can see meaning in a flame taken from the paschal (Jesus) candle and used to light a candle for the baby. In cultures such as India where it is uncommon for people of different castes to eat together, the gathering of Christians together round the eucharistic table can have a profound significance. For British Quakers, the ritual and symbolism of the sacraments are replaced by silence, in which as Robert Barclay described, ‘I felt the evil weakening in me and the good raised up’ (Barclay, 2002, proposition 11, section 7). The eucharist is described as a foretaste of the kingdom (Christian Perspectives on Theological Anthropology, 2005, para 112), of the ‘new heaven and new earth’. As such it bears a relation to the Quaker approach to eschatology, the sense of the Kingdom as present and being demonstrated whenever its life is lived. For Quakers, the quality of this life is often summed up in the ‘testimonies’; witness is borne to the kingdom through the practice of peace, truth, equality, simplicity and justice. Behind these and inspiring them is the sense gained in worship of the presence of Christ and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. But it is the actions, the lives lived, that bear the testimony and are the witness to the activity of Christ and the Spirit in the world, and not the symbol of the eucharist. Nevertheless, great potential can be found in the eucharist, not only for symbolizing but also for realizing the new life of Christ, even though it may be necessary to distinguish between the words spoken and the all too humanly flawed way in which they may be carried out. As an example, every eucharistic liturgy invites those present to be at peace with other members of the congregation. Whilst in Britain this can result in a rather tepid shaking of hands, this cannot disguise the challenge to the worshipping community to be a community of reconciliation, and to develop the relationships that characterize the kingdom. Like the Lord’s Prayer, which demands that we forgive just as we are forgiven, the eucharist both
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requires and helps to bring about the attitudes towards others who are committed to the ways of peace. It is the transformation of the worshipper that contributes to the transformation of the world. The sharing of bread, and in most traditions wine, can symbolize a range of meanings. There is the equality of eating together, and the justice of sharing one of the necessities of life. These are actions that help to form the community that can then live out equality and justice in the world. The remembrance of the Last Supper as a Passover meal recalls the nature of God as one who brings people out of slavery, forming a new people free from oppression and called to be a sign of God’s promise to all humanity. Thus the eucharist can call God’s people again to become what they are meant to be. Remembering those who took part in the Last Supper recalls the faults and flaws of humanity. There is a church in Cambridge that has an east window showing the last supper. Beneath it is the quotation, ‘And one of you will betray me’. Those who worship there come each time to the altar to be faced with a reminder of fallibility. The new community has to face the truth about itself: it is composed of people who betray and deny their faith and who flee from suffering. For the Christian churches, then, the eucharist has the potential to create a community that witnesses to peace, equality, justice and truth. This community faces the truth about the evil it commits and finds a way to reinforce hope in the world through forgiveness and sharing. For these churches, the question is whether this potential remains locked into ritual or whether it is understood and set free to be lived outside the church. For Quakers, on the other hand, the question may be whether they remain locked into silence or whether they are able to articulate the sources of the hope and power that create their community, give them new life, and overcome evil with good. ‘The evil weakening and the good raised up’ Quakers are given the task of being a sign of the Kingdom, of the presence of Christ in the world, without the aid of obvious symbols and rituals. This starts from worship. The form of worship that is silent and waits on God for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit brings people into that greater silence where the Word of God can be heard, spoken, and made active in life. Quaker worship can be described as bringing the worshippers ‘under the cross’, as one of the essentials is the setting aside of self so as to make room for the divine life. It can also be described in terms of the resurrection, of becoming transformed into the body of the Risen Christ, alive and active in the world. Regular worship is a way in which people are gradually transformed, through meeting and listening to their Inward Teacher, and through the call to understand and practice the life of truth, integrity, peace, justice, equality, simplicity and love which is both the life and the sign of the Kingdom. But none of this in itself ends suffering. Whilst the life that springs from the worship may in some cases alleviate or prevent suffering and evil, and may foster what is good, there is still evil and suffering, there is injustice, war and conflict, even at times within the worshipping community. This means that it is perhaps necessary to look at the Kingdom with new eyes. One way is to return to the biblical sources
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described earlier. It is possible to draw on the tradition of the Old Testament to show that there are no easy or final explanations. The book of Job can be drawn on to underpin the concept of mystery, and the book of Isaiah for the idea of suffering used in a positive way on behalf of others. It is also possible to look at the attempts in the New Testament to redefine the Kingdom: Mark seeing it, for those who have eyes to see, as being exemplified in the crucifixion, in the obedience of Christ to God; Luke/Acts seeing it as marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community that follows Christ. The Kingdom is greater than the imaginations of human beings, and there may never be a fully satisfactory explanation for evil. Along with this there is the quality of Hope. Paul classifies hope as one of the three things that last for ever (1 Cor 13:13). Hope is not part of a ‘wish-list’ which can be satisfied; it is part of the eternal, of the life of God. As such, it can be seen as part of the creative purposes of God.2 Only a hopeful God would take the risk of creation. Hope is the energy that creates and frees and loves. Creation is made for redemption, made with the purpose that draws all that is created towards wholeness and towards relationship with the creator. Hope is the ability to deal with disappointment, with all that goes wrong in creation, to ensure that nothing is lost, and to take all that is faulty and find a place for it that contributes to the whole. In thinking about good and evil Quakers have access to the Christian metanarrative, which allows the belief and the experience that all is in the hands of God, that suffering and evil can be transformed, and can even play their part in bringing about the ultimate purposes of God. Quakers share this metanarrative with their ecumenical partners but they bring to the ecumenical discussion the particular Quaker claim, that evil can be transformed through the testimonies in lives of service. It is through those lives that the truth of the claim, and therefore of the possibility of transformation, must be judged.
2 For fuller discussion see Scott, 2001. This was based on the public lecture given to Ireland Yearly Meeting in 2000.
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Chapter 15
‘It is worse to be evil than to do evil’: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Challenge to the Quaker Conscience Rachel Muers
Introduction: Bonhoeffer and Quakers on Being and Doing Evil The challenge posed by the life and work of the German Lutheran theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Quakers and other advocates of Christian pacifism is clear and well documented.1 In this chapter, I shall have relatively little to say about the most obvious challenges Bonhoeffer’s story presents to advocates of pacifism – the fact of his participation in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, the vexed question of the consistency or otherwise of his ethical and theological thought before and after his decision to take part in that conspiracy – and shall look, rather, at the broader claims he makes about the ethical life in the context of the Nazi state. These, I believe, present a particularly acute and timely challenge to some of the ways of identifying and speaking about good and evil common among contemporary Quakers in Britain and elsewhere. The main focus of my discussion will be Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, the unfinished work produced during the early 1940s – and hence during a key period for his own decisions about the nature of evil and of resistance to it. The quotation in the title of this chapter provides the starting-point for my discussion. Its context in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics is an extended discussion of the differences of character that become apparent, or are produced, in the context of Nazism. ‘Today,’ Bonhoeffer writes, ‘we have villains and saints again, in full public view’ (Bonhoeffer, 2005, p. 76). In this situation, Bonhoeffer suggests, judgements passed on individual acts become, not ethically irrelevant, but in important respects inconclusive: ‘One sin is not like another. They have different weights’ (p. 77). An instance of truth-telling, for example, coming from a ‘liar’ will not necessarily be evaluated as good: ‘it is worse when a liar tells the truth than when a lover of the truth lies’. A calculus of good and evil that responds only to actions – the ‘weighing’ of sins – cannot account for people’s being good or evil, for the emergence of the villain and the saint from ‘primeval depths’. In Bonhoeffer’s account, at least some of the people encountered in the Nazi context do not simply do evil; they are evil, in
1 Two key discussions of Bonhoeffer in relation to Christian pacifism, to which I shall refer in this article, are McLendon, 1994 and Hauerwas, 2004.
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a way that places even their ‘good’ actions in the service of evil.2 The various ‘good’ acts or effects of the Nazi regime do not mitigate, but rather conceal and hence exacerbate, its evil nature.3 Conversely – although for other reasons Bonhoeffer is less inclined to speak in terms of ‘being good’ simpliciter – people can be ‘lovers of truth’, faithful, loving towards their neighbours, without it being the case that all their actions fit these descriptions. By contrast, it is easy to identify pressures within contemporary liberal Quakerism to think in terms of ‘doing evil’ rather than ‘being evil’. Claiming to believe that there is that of God in everyone, and with the well-established (and, I would argue, erroneous) tendency to read that as a judgement on the goodness or otherwise of ‘everyone’, liberal Quakers might be expected to resist talk of people ‘being evil’, or of ‘villains and saints’.4 On the other hand, by identifying acts (rather than persons) as evil one can separate them from agents who are, at least potentially, ‘good’, and avoid the much more problematic (from many perspectives) exercise of deciding whether the moral agents themselves can be described as evil. By the same token, a good action by one who generally does evil is likely to be regarded as an indication of fundamental or potential goodness, as evidence to justify the claim about ‘that of God in everyone’. On the face of it, we would seem to have a fairly straightforward choice here, reflected in two different attitudes to the use of violence. Surely, some would say, the willingness to declare people to ‘be evil’, in Bonhoeffer’s work, correlates with the willingness to consider assassination or other forms of violence as ethical options – and the rejection of the label ‘evil’ for people (as opposed to actions) correlates with principled pacifism? I want to argue in due course that the contrast is not so straightforward, and that Quakers, as members of a historic peace church committed to ongoing peace testimony, would do well to take on board Bonhoeffer’s claims about the possibility of ‘being evil’. First, however, in the interests of presenting Bonhoeffer’s ‘challenge to the Quaker conscience’, I shall focus on the disadvantages of a focus on ‘doing evil’, as Bonhoeffer’s work helps us to identify them. It should become clear that I believe that there are built-in correctives within Quaker thought and practice – and not only historical Quaker thought and practice – to the problems I identify, and that the challenge posed by Bonhoeffer to Quakers is to rediscover and enunciate the importance of these correctives.
2 A reference to ‘Shakespeare’s characters’ (Bonhoeffer, 2005, p. 76) most obviously recalls Iago – who, when he acts in honest, compassionate or reasonable ways towards Othello and his other victims, is being more, rather than less, of a villain. 3 Bonhoeffer, 2005, p. 77: ‘That evil appears in the form of light, of beneficence, of faithfulness, or renewal ... of historical necessity, of social justice, is for the commonsense observer a clear confirmation of its profound evilness’. 4 For ‘that of God in everyone’, see Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 19.32. The extract from a letter by George Fox to Quaker ministers is positioned at the end of a key section on early Quaker belief. On the centrality of the phrase for contemporary liberal Quaker expressions of belief, see Dandelion, 1996.
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Three Wrong Directions: Fanaticism, Conscience and Private Virtuousness Fanatics believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles. But the essence of fanaticism is that it loses sight of the whole evil... Though their fanaticism serves the lofty goals of truth or justice, sooner or later they are caught in small and insignificant things … Men of conscience fend off all alone the superior power of predicaments that demand decision … they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience rather than a good conscience, that is … they deceive their own conscience in order not to despair. Those whose sole support is their conscience can never grasp that a bad conscience can be stronger and healthier than one that is deceived … In flight from public controversy this person or that reaches the sanctuary of private virtuousness … these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that keep them from conflict … Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world (Bonhoeffer, 2005, pp. 78–80).
Two of the key frameworks within which Quaker ethical thought has tended to work in recent decades are the importance of the individual conscience (as illuminated by divine guidance) and adherence to the historic Quaker ‘testimonies’, presented all too often (despite the numerous official protestations to the contrary) as rules or principles to be followed. I want to suggest, taking Bonhoeffer’s analysis of ‘ethical’ responses to Nazism as a cue, that either of these approaches taken to an extreme can produce a form of ethical irresponsibility that fails to discern the complexity and depth of either good or evil. Part of the problem in both cases, I shall suggest following Bonhoeffer, is a failure to perceive the evil situation or the evil person due to a focus on the evil action. Looking at the above examples of ethical failure as analysed by Bonhoeffer, the problem with the focus on the evil action becomes most apparent in the case of the fanatic – whose opposition to evil is based on pure principles. Using principles in this way for the discernment of evil enables the evil action, large or small, to be identified easily – whatever does not conform to the relevant principles is evil. The ‘fanatical’ approach can, however, easily collapse, after it exhausts itself in opposition to the enormous number of small evil actions it discovers, into something like ‘private virtuousness’, which draws clear boundaries between good and evil and makes it the chief responsibility of the ethical agent at all costs to avoid doing evil. The fanatic will not in practice be able to eliminate everyone else’s evil – so is liable to restrict her activity to eliminating, at all costs, her own. So, paradoxically, Bonhoeffer consistently suggests that an obsession with the good or evil of particular acts prevents ‘responsible action in the world’. It does so not only because the refusal to dirty one’s hands takes an inappropriate priority over the desire to confront and resist evil. Rather, and more importantly, these ethical frameworks can become impediments to the perception of reality. Thus, for example, to throw one’s energy into opposing each and every act of violence – which is unquestionably an important form of resistance to evil – may leave someone less well-equipped to see when a
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false ‘peace’, a mere cessation of violence without challenges to ongoing injustice, is being sought in order to allow evil to continue.5 Both the ‘man of conscience’ and the adherent of ‘private virtuousness’ are characterized, as Bonhoeffer describes them, by self-deception. They fail fully to perceive the depth of their own involvement with an evil situation, because the approach they take to ethics has as its end some form of self-justification – the ability to assure oneself that one is good. The worry about both ‘conscience’ and principles (criteria of ‘virtuousness’) as ethical bases is that they encourage people to become judges of their own goodness – which they can only do by elevating a generalization about ‘the good’ over the primary criterion of Christian ethical action, doing the will of God.6 Bonhoeffer, in fact, writes very little about ‘being good’, and is clear that becoming ‘good’ is not the aim of the Christian life. To try to be good is likely to land one again in the trap of self-justification. ‘Saints’ – and for that matter ‘villains’ – are seen as such only from the outside. What can be formed in oneself is not habits of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, conceived according to predetermined principles, but habits of following or turning away from the will of God.7 At this point some of the counterbalances within Quakerism to any tendency to ‘fanaticism’, the emphasis on the assuaged conscience, or the retreat into ‘private virtuousness’, become apparent. To seek the will of God in the given situation, relying not only on interior guidance but on the best available understanding of the complex reality with which one is confronted, is what various linked practices of discernment and decision-making in Quakerism claim to make possible. In order fully to bring out the significance of these practices, however, it is important to be clear about the understanding of truthfulness on which they rely.
5 The arguments within British Quakerism over the ‘violence against property’ used by members of the Trident Ploughshares movement arguably revealed some of the weaknesses of a body of ethical tradition built up around principled nonviolence. Without judging the rights and wrongs of the particular case, debate came to focus largely on exactly what the protestors would be doing to the ‘property’ concerned, and the extent to which their actions could be characterized as ‘violence’, rather than on the evil of the situation that constitutes nuclear weapons as protected ‘property’, or on the habits and characteristics that those responsible for Trident Ploughshares sought to form in themselves and others. 6 See for example Bonhoeffer, 2005, p. 81: ‘Wise people know the limited receptivity of reality for principles, because they know that reality is not built on principles, but rests on the living, creating God’. 7 Although, as many commentators have perceived, Bonhoeffer has numerous affinities with later ‘virtue ethics’ and ethical theories based on ‘character’ – hence, to some extent, Hauerwas’ interest in his work – he is not easily appropriated for secular ‘virtue ethics’, because of his relentless refusal to talk about virtues other than as correlates of a particular relationship to God. Thus, for example, in the passage we have mainly been discussing, ‘wisdom’ and ‘simplicity’ are defined in terms of ‘see[ing] reality in God’ and ‘keep[ing] in sight only the single truth of God’ (Bonhoeffer, 2005, p. 81).
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Truth, Good and Evil: Facing Reality Quaker Testimony and Truth-claims Stanley Hauerwas’ recent work on Bonhoeffer, in emphasizing the integral connection between truthfulness and peace in the latter’s work, indirectly draws attention both to some of the major potential pitfalls for Quaker thinking about evil, and to the very significant resources in Quaker tradition for contemporary thought on the subject. Bonhoeffer, as Hauerwas is anxious to remind his readers, argued consistently that (to quote a speech he made in 1934) ‘there can only be a community of peace where it does not rest on lies and injustice’. (Hauerwas, 2004, p. 60). To be committed to peace is meaningless if one is merely committed to ‘external’ peace, to ignoring injustice and – more importantly – to ignoring falsehood. In other words, for Bonhoeffer, no peace can be made with evil; there is no peace if evil is tolerated. This does not mean, of course, that the appropriate response to evil is violence; it simply means that one cannot expect to achieve peace by the kind of tolerance that deliberately ignores questions of truth and falsehood, good and evil. Bonhoeffer was, in a fine phrase coined by Hauerwas, ‘a relentless critic of any way of life that substituted agreeableness for truthfulness’ (Hauerwas, 2004, p. 57). Quaker understandings of the call to nonviolence and active peacemaking have been and remain closely bound up with a commitment to truthfulness. To speak of ‘peace testimony’ is to speak of practices of peacemaking as witnessing to the truth – as making a claim about the way things are. There are, however, two ways of interpreting this claim. The emphasis on conscience – and on something very like ‘private virtuousness’ – in certain Quaker accounts of peace testimony suggests that the ‘truth’ told in (for example) refusing to fight is primarily the truth about one’s own convictions; the issue is to be ‘true to oneself’, to follow the leadings of one’s own conscience, to live out what one claims to believe. This remains an indispensable part of Quaker understandings of truthfulness. Taken on its own, however, it can allow its advocates to dodge the question of whether the conscience is itself ‘good’ or ‘evil’ – and the question of the correspondence of individual discernments of truth with the reality of God and the world. It is a fairly commonplace observation, within debates about ‘truth’ in theology, to note that these two aspects of testimony – the individual’s ‘living in the truth’ and ‘doing the truth’, and the claim that he or she thereby makes about God and the world – are far from mutually exclusive. The truth to which the actions of Christian peacemakers (for example) testify is not external to themselves and their lives – they are part of the world to which peace is given by God as its hope and final end. Their living out of their commitments is not incidental to the truth of that to which they are committed. Actions and lives are in Quaker terms the primary form of ‘testimony’ because they participate in the realization of that of which they ‘speak’. At the same time, it is important, and increasingly important for liberal Quakers, to be clear that sincerity – being ‘true to oneself’ – is not an adequate substitute for the discernment of good and evil. The debates in Britain around the invasion of Iraq in 2003 serve as an interesting example of the tangled webs that can be woven once sincerity becomes central to our understanding of the rightness or otherwise of
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actions. For various reasons much of the debate about the war came to centre on the question of the sincerity or otherwise of some of the Prime Minister’s claims about the Iraqi government’s actions and intentions. It was remarkably easy for large sections of the peace movement itself to focus on this issue of sincerity – easy, I suggest, because this avoided having to argue the harder (in a relativistic environment) case that even if Tony Blair meant every word he said, even if he genuinely believed he was doing the right thing, he could be genuinely and catastrophically wrong. At this point the historic and communal/institutional aspect of Quaker peace testimony became particularly significant in guarding against a possible distraction from the central claims being made about good and evil in relation to war. Because Quakers knew themselves to be committed to a substantive and not merely formal claim about good and evil – the claim, to put it most simply, that warfare is evil – they were able to use this, to some extent, to bypass the ultimately fruitless arguments (into which both sides occasionally fell, and which Blair on several occasions deliberately adverted) about whose sincerely held opinion was the more sincere and therefore the more deserving of consideration and respect. The problem that sometimes emerges even here is the transfer of a concern for the sincerity and integrity of the individual to one for the sincerity and integrity of the community – such that the historic peace testimony becomes, not a sign of the reality to which contemporary Friends are committed, but the focus of commitment in itself. Quaker Community Life and Truth-claims Historic testimonies, I would suggest, when the theological depth of the word ‘testimony’ is lost and the grounding of all the testimonies in worship (on which more below) is forgotten, can very easily become a system of ethical principles, in the problematic sense identified by Bonhoeffer. Preserving the system then quickly comes to matter more than response to the demands of given reality; and, in terms of good and evil, one can become incapable of perceiving good and evil outside the boundaries that the system dictates. Ultimately, such an approach to testimonies produces idolatry, by setting up a community or a tradition as the ultimate source of good, rather than as its necessary but necessarily limited mediation. Even where it does not reach this point, there is still the problem that it can reinforce the oscillation between the tormented conscience and the salved conscience, and the quest for private virtuousness. If the community functions in the individual’s thinking about good and evil predominantly as a source of rules, it offers little or no help to the person for whom the rules have become part of the problem, who finds in a given situation that he or she cannot help but break the rules. Setting up the community, as bearer of a set of rules, as the basis of justification is just as problematic as demanding that the individual be the sole judge of his or her goodness or evil. The recent experience of debates around the war on Iraq, read in the context of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on ‘being’ and ‘doing’ evil, points to the disturbing possibility that ‘being evil’ would entail, among other things, sincerely believing that one was doing the right thing while (unbeknown to oneself) ‘doing evil’. In
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Bonhoeffer’s work, what is needed to break out of the circle of self-justification and/or obsessive self-examination, to which this thought is likely to lead, is the presence of others. One cannot liberate oneself from evil, and one cannot assure oneself satisfactorily that one is not ultimately deluded, ‘being evil’, existing in the service of falsehood. The other person in one’s community, the scriptural texts, or the complex history of one’s community, can all in different ways break open the circle. But how does this differ from the idea that the community and its traditions carry the ethical rules according to which one should act? Particularly important for Bonhoeffer in breaking open the circle of selfjustification, however it is heard, is the word of forgiveness – which acknowledges the reality of evil, as a condition as well as an action, but refuses it ultimate power because all evil, including one’s own evil, is overcome in the forgiving work of God. The need to ‘forgive oneself’ is certainly real, but so is the inability to do so without being given some basis on which to believe that the forgiveness has an objective reality, that it is possible to turn away from evil. The tormented conscience, in Bonhoeffer’s account, if left to itself finds no peace without making a compromise with evil – settling for a salved conscience, some way of ‘forgiving oneself’ that ends up blurring the distinction between good and evil – rather than accepting the ‘bad conscience’ with which a community of forgiveness might give you the resources to live. Part of the problem with the enormous importance currently given to the historic testimonies in British Quaker thought, I suggest, is that it ensures the community can challenge the individual to change her life but makes it harder for the community also to be the space in which assurance of forgiveness is received. Bonhoeffer’s life story suggests, as Hauerwas, Jones and others have noted, that forgiveness, wholeheartedly believed in and accepted, can function not as an easy escape from responsibility but as a spur to responsible action – just as pacifism. As is well known, Bonhoeffer was very aware of the dangers of ‘cheap grace’ – but he was no less aware of the dire need for ‘costly grace’. Forgiveness rightly understood and practised is, in fact, what enables those who receive it to see evil for what it really is. They are not forced to deny or minimize evil (including their own complicity in evil) so that they can cope with it better and thereby avoid despair, because it is not their job to cope with it. For this to work, as Bonhoeffer suggests elsewhere, forgiveness has to be given in specific cases, not proclaimed in general and in advance – it has to take place within the process of discerning good and evil. This brings us back to the question of Quaker practices of discernment and their basis in worship – in contact with the reality of God that transcends, even when it grounds, any rules that can be established for judgments about good and evil. Best-known among these practices of discernment is the ‘Meeting for Worship for Business’, the church-community gathered for decision-making – including on occasion, crucially, for the testing of individuals’ perceptions of divine leading. Reading Quaker Decision-making A Quaker ‘Meeting for Worship for Business’ is distinguished most obviously from the decision-making procedures of other organizations by the absence of voting. Normally, after a matter for deliberation has been introduced, there follows a
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period of silence from within which – as in a ‘normal’ Meeting for Worship in the unprogrammed tradition – spoken contributions may be made. The clerk, to whom is given the responsibility for recording the meeting’s conclusions, offers a draft minute expressing a decision that has been reached, a decision around which he or she believes the Meeting can unite. The process ends when a minute is accepted by the group. There is in Quaker thought a considerable tradition of reflection on the personal and corporate discipline required to enable a Meeting for Worship for Business to work. As Dandelion (2007) makes clear, the mechanics of the process vary considerably from one Quaker group to another, but the basic features are remarkably consistent. This decision-making practice can be – and is – interpreted in at least two different ways related to the two understandings of the relationship between truth and peace discussed above. One can read it as a search for consensus, which is perhaps the more common assumption among external observers. If this is the case, what matters most is the sincerity of the participants in expressing points of view, and their willingness or otherwise to make compromises on what are taken to be their own principles. Alternatively, one can read it as a search for truth, in which case what matters most is not the sincerity of the opinions expressed but their fittingness to the reality of God and the world; and not the willingness of the participants to compromise, but their willingness to recognize difficult or unpalatable truths spoken by another. These two readings are not, of course, antithetical, since the truth being sought is not really external to the community that seeks it or the process by which they seek it. The truth being sought concerns the activity of God in the world, activity that the seeking community claims to reflect through its own life. So, a community that is not peaceable within itself, that does not care for its members and render them able to live peacefully together, cannot be a truthful witness to a God of peace. The virtues that are involved in the search for consensus are not irrelevant to the capacity of a community to say something truthful about God. Nonetheless, to give priority to the search for truth is, as what I have suggested above implies, the only way to ensure that the community as a whole does not fall prey to ‘fanaticism’ (adherence to what it believes to be its pure principles whatever the cost), or, more likely, a collective compromise with an evil situation. There is a need to retain a sense that the truth is not only ‘whatever we all agree to’ – or there will be no scope for learning, perhaps gradually and painfully, that we are all wrong. Searching for truth will include the need to confront, without despair, one’s possible inability to avoid evil acts – and hence the need of both communities and individuals for forgiveness. In this context it is worth reflecting on James McLendon’s profound comments on Bonhoeffer’s life from a ‘baptist’ (by which he means, among other things, a historic peace church) perspective. Concerning Bonhoeffer’s participation in the conspiracy, McLendon’s argument (which has many affinities to that of Hauerwas) is that it reflects not a failure on Bonhoeffer’s part but a failure on the part of the German churches to sustain genuine resistance to Nazism. There was, in the end, no churchcommunity with a clear enough commitment to truth, even against overwhelming power, such that reliable discernments of good and evil could be made, tested and enacted there. There was no obvious community that had clearly maintained itself as a bulwark of resistance to Nazism’s ‘big lie’, such that it could be the context
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in which an individual could test and work through a decision to take part in the assassination of Hitler. McLendon calls church-communities, and in particular the historic peace churches, to examine how they can be places in which such reliable discernments can be made. My suggestion would be that the major resources contemporary Quakers have for this lie in the historic ‘testimonies’ – understood as the bearing of witness to the truth about how things are – and in communal practices of discernment understood as the search for and attention to truth. Conclusion: Quaker Villains and Saints The early Quaker theological vocabulary (in particular) was not short of ways of articulating the insight that a person’s entire orientation could be towards evil; that this was not simply a matter of individual choice, but rather was shaped within and by a society; and that nonetheless the evil orientation ‘belonged’ to the person in a way that did not allow it to be reduced to his or her acts. Quaker journals from the seventeenth century are full of ‘villains and saints’, often to the point of embarrassingly crude characterization and the apparent assumption of a position of judgement with which contemporary Friends are, in many ways rightly, deeply uncomfortable. I would suggest, however, that there are features of our contemporary situation, in particular, that call for something like this vocabulary of ‘being evil’ to be reclaimed. We may need to learn, for example, to recognize at least the possibility of becoming (temporarily and contingently) unable to hear the truth when it is spoken – for example, by being drawn into a ‘debate’ between false alternatives, by internalizing assumptions so deeply that we automatically reject whatever calls them into question. We may need to learn that this is a state we are liable not merely to fall into but to prefer and to seek to sustain, for various reasons. (‘Now this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil’ John 3:19; the point is not that evil ‘deeds’ are not connected to ‘being evil’, but that the overall attitude of rejection of the light becomes more fundamental than any of the particular evil deeds). Thinking about what I have referred to as Bonhoeffer’s challenge to the Quaker conscience, it is particularly important, I would argue, for contemporary Quakers to resist any temptation to communal or individualistic relativism – to go over to the claim that only ‘my truth’ or ‘your truth’ matters (and that, hence, by implication, the person who is sincere cannot be out of the truth, cannot be living a lie). It is also, perhaps ironically, important to ask not about how to be good collectively or individually, but about how to be conformed to God. Asking about being good, Bonhoeffer’s thought and life suggests, leads to a self-referential and anxious quest for self-improvement according to a predetermined pattern of ‘goodness’. Asking about being conformed to God, by contrast, can enable responses to the complex truth of a particular situation. So attending to Bonhoeffer as a guide to rereading the Quaker inheritance could lead, I suggest, less to the enunciation of new principles of right action, and more to the teaching and learning of practices of discernment. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s challenge to the Quaker conscience is neither, I would suggest, the challenge of a ‘saint’ to whose good example one should inspire to live
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up, nor the challenge of a ‘villain’ whose complicity with evil serves as an awful warning. It is, rather, the challenge of someone who sought honestly to learn to see and do the will of God, and to allow no facile pre-understandings of good and evil to interfere with this.
Chapter 16
Looking Within: A Nontheist Perspective David Boulton
Quaker discourse on good and evil often takes as its starting point words Thomas Ellwood ascribed to George Fox when he wrote the early section of Fox’s Journal. The first sixteen pages of the fledgeling autobiography Fox dictated to his stepsonin-law Thomas Lower in 1675 had either been lost or destroyed by the time Ellwood received his commission from the Quaker central leadership in the 1690s to spin a new, sanitized image of the recently deceased ‘first among Friends’, in the form of a personal journal.1 For the critical years up to 1649, when Fox was fashioning his own distinctive theology and gathering a following that would become the core of the infant Quaker movement, Ellwood had to reconstruct his early life and, critically, his early thought, as best and creatively as he could. Fortunately, he was no mean editor – John Milton had employed him as his secretary in the 1650s – and he cleverly wove together bits of letters, diaries and reminiscences to create a firstperson narrative in Fox’s own characteristic style. And among the words Ellwood put into Fox’s mouth, locating them in Nottinghamshire and dating them to 1647, are those so familiar to Quakers of all generations and theological tendencies that they could probably form the epigraph of any chapter in this book: I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God; and I had great openings (Fox, 1952, p. 19).
The language certainly smacks of the genuine George, in its visionary sweep, its inherent, unforced poetry, and its intensely personal perspective: ‘I saw ... I saw ... I had ...’ (there are 14 personal pronouns in the short paragraph of which the quotation is a part). The image of dark and light, evil and good, as contending oceans makes an immediate and graphic impact on our imaginations. It is universally accessible, magnificently memorable. It also carries Fox’s sense of a blessed assurance: the winds and waves of evil and good may clash with the cosmic force of a tsunami, but we are promised a happy ending. The ocean of darkness and death is limited and bounded, whereas the ocean of light and love is infinite and will flow over its adversary. The 1 See the preface to Fox, 1952. It is important to emphasize that it was Ellwood, writing in the 1690s, not Fox in the 1640s, who recorded the oft-quoted ‘oceans’ vision, along with most ‘I saw’ and ‘I said’ statements made in Fox’s name before 1650. Given Ellwood’s tendency to soften, neutralize or omit the most ‘enthusiastic’ statements we may conjecture that these ‘lost’ years of Fox’s early life were perhaps more radical than Ellwood’s reconstruction suggests.
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raging billows will be stilled. The cosmic clash of evil and good is merely the storm before the calm. (It is no accident, I suggest, that Fox’s ‘opening’ on ‘light and love’, if accurately recorded and dated by Ellwood, would more or less coincide with his discovery of the ‘shattered Baptists’ in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire who, taking their cue from John 12:36, had begun to call themselves ‘Children of the Light’.) Fox’s vision was rooted firmly in his own time, reflecting the acute contemporary sense of ‘apocalypse now’. In 1647 the ocean of darkness and death was in flood tide. England had been devastated by five years of relentless, bloody civil war, coinciding with a long run of cold, wet summers, which had reduced half the nation to near-famine conditions. The king had been defeated and was held captive while a Presbyterian parliament, an Independent army council and a radical Leveller movement quarrelled violently over what to do with him and how to stave off a collapse into anarchy. Millenarians smelled Armageddon and scented the coming reign of King Jesus. The merely human king’s escape and secret agreement with the Scots heralded a second civil war and the collapse of the ‘Good Old Cause’. And Fox had another apocalyptic moment: ‘I saw there was a great crack to go throughout the earth, and a great smoke to go as the crack went; and that after the crack there should be a great shaking’ (Fox, 1952, p. 22). But if these prophetic visions were rooted in the revolutionary conditions of his own time, they also had something of a universal ring to them. It is remarkable how every culture at every time has tended to equate light with good and darkness with evil. When the God of the Genesis story created light he saw that it was good. It was good because it flowed over and obliterated the ‘darkness ... upon the face of the deep’. The author of John’s Gospel, borrowing from Philo, explicitly equates God, reason (logos) and life with ‘the light of men’ that ‘shineth in the darkness’, and which the darkness is unable to ‘comprehend’, or overcome (John 1:1–5). Light reveals, darkness conceals. And the complex of light–darkness/good–evil metaphors is by no means confined to the monotheist traditions. Buddhism teaches its own version of ‘enlightenment’, Hinduism celebrates Diwali, the festival of light. Fox claimed that those he convinced by his own preaching ‘were turned from darkness to light’, adding, in case anyone failed to understand his metaphor, ‘from the power of Satan unto God’ (Fox, 1952, p. 19). In an age when we can lighten our darkness at the flick of a switch, these ancient metaphors have lost much of their power. We are no longer obliged to get our work done by daylight before the long dark night descends: we may work, eat, read, write, travel or rock around the clock. Our forebears had no such luxury. In the age of dim rush-light, flickering candle and spluttering torch, the onset of night marked the end of daytime and daylight. Light and dark were different worlds, as seriously different as the dark uninhabited forests – hiding ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night – and the bright towns of urban civilization. The sun was good because it gave light and life, the warmth to swell the grain: only when the sun set did the evil forest-sprites dare venture forth in the cold, harsh moonlight, realm of the rebel Queen of the Night. This was Fox’s world, where an ocean of darkness would be an ocean of death, an ocean of light an ocean of love. And as day followed night, as the rising sun extinguished the moon, so the ocean of light and love would
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flow over and extinguish the ocean of darkness. For Fox, as for the author of the fourth Gospel, light and love were God, as darkness and death were the very devil. For the ancients in all cultures, light and dark were givens. They arrived. They happened. They were external. No man could hasten or delay by a single second the rising or setting of the sun. That was the work of the gods, or God’s doing and his alone. So, in a world where light = good and dark = bad, good and evil are external. All that is bad originates from a Satanic power, and all that is good comes from God. We humans are good when we obey God, when we stand in his light, and evil (or ‘sinful’) when we move into the shadows where the devil waits to ensnare us. Goodness and badness are discerned in relationship to their originator. This is the ancient paradigm, where light and life and the good are understood to be embodied in an imagined source of all that is good, true, pure and beautiful, while all that is bad is similarly projected onto an embodiment of rebellion against the divine. We find the paradigm deeply embedded in our rich heritage of mythologies – Judaic, Christian, Islamic, and beyond the monotheist traditions. It runs through our arts and literatures – Hebrew, Greek, Anglo-Saxon – taking in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Paradise Lost, The Narnia Chronicles, and The Lord of the Rings. Within this paradigm, good and evil have an objective existence, a will and power of their own. They are forces that pull, push and prompt us this way or that; forces that can overwhelm us and shape our destiny. They are not of our making, nor are they under our control. This was the world of George Fox and early Friends because it was the world of the seventeenth century, emerging from medievalism but as yet barely glimpsing the coming Enlightenment. Bunyan’s hobgoblins and foul fiends lurked in its dark corners, as they had done, according to the prevailing mythology, since Lucifer rebelled, choosing to reign in hell rather than serve in heaven. Fox shared many of the common superstitions. He believed in witches and fancied that he had a gift for discerning them among the old women who crossed his path. Fox, Bunyan and their contemporaries were men of their time. But the times they were a-changing, and their world is not our world. From our vantage point more than three centuries later we can see how pre-modernity was beginning to give way to early-modernity. A new, experimental spirit was in the air. In 1645, even as Fox struggled with the unnamed temptations that threatened to drown him in an ocean of darkness, weekly meetings began in London of ‘diverse worthy persons, inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy or Experimental Philosophy’ (Sprat, 1734). In 1660 these same worthy persons mooted the foundation of ‘a Colledge for the promotion of PhysicoMathematicall Experimentall Learning’, which became in 1661 the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. Their ‘new philosophy’ or ‘experimental learning’ came to be known as ‘science’. Isaac Newton, a future president, began experimenting with light as Fox, in parallel, re-invigorated the ancient metaphors of light as inner knowledge, known experimentally. Like Newton (whose attachment to alchemy ran in parallel with his absorption in the new sciences) Fox had one foot rooted in the old pre-modernity and the other planted squarely on a stairway that led to the modern world. What Fox knew he knew ‘experimentally’, and Fox found that what he knew experimentally, contrary to what was taught in the universities and preached in
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the pulpits, was that light and dark, good and evil, were inner rather than outer phenomena. It was in the depth of his own being, his own psyche, that he experienced an ocean of darkness and death raging against an ocean of light and love. As he (through Ellwood) puts it in the lines leading up to the vision of the contending oceans, ‘the Lord shewed me that the natures of those things which were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men ... though people had been looking without’. Fox was not alone in beginning to sense the inadequacy of the old model, where good and evil were sourced as ‘out there’, existing as supernatural forces embodied in demons and angels, and ultimately in the God and Satan of the Abrahamic traditions. The new introspection, with its emphasis on the experiential, is a marked feature of the literature of the radical separatists of the 1640s – and it is important to understand that, unlike today, the words ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’ were then virtually interchangeable, so that ‘experience’ was something you did rather than something you had.2 Of course, when Fox and his contemporaries among the emergent Baptist, 2 Don Cupitt (1998, pp. 15–16) points out that in its ‘old and active use, experience (verb and noun) overlapped considerably with experiment (verb and noun), which came from the same root’, the Latin experiri, ‘to put to the test, to try out’. Checking out Cupitt’s proposition with the aid of the Oxford English Dictionary, I found the following illustrations: (i) The first (1382) version of the Wycliffe Bible translates Genesis 42:15 as ‘Now ye shall take experiment of you’, but the version of 1388 reads ‘Now ye shall take experience of you’, both meaning, as the Authorized Version puts it, ‘Hereby ye shall be proved’. (ii) Chaucer in 1420 describes an experiment in inoculating fruit trees against disease, commenting that ‘the experience hath proved well’. (iii) The Fabyan Chronicles of 1494 describe a prophecy of war, ‘the which was after put in experience’, i.e. proven. (iv) In 1590 Sir John Smith writes ‘experience is the mother of science’, meaning experiment is the foundation of knowledge. (v) Marlow in Dido, 1594, writes of ‘making experience of my love’, meaning testing it. (vi) The Jacobean dramatist James Shirley has a character say ‘Make experience of my loyalty, by some service’, meaning ‘try me, test me’. This virtual interchangeability of the two words, whereby both experience and experiment are used in the active sense of something one does rather than the passive sense of something that one undergoes or feels, lasted well into the nineteenth century. The passive sense, as commonly understood today, appears to have been first used by the New Model Army chaplain and late Ranter and Seeker John Saltmarsh in his 1645 pamphlet Free Grace, where he complained that ‘we experience in part some remainders of prelacy’. That this was a new usage of the word is evidenced by the fact that it was challenged by one of Saltmarsh’s critics as a misuse, whereupon Saltmarsh gave the very modern reply that permitted usage was to be judged by criteria of usefulness rather than precedent. Saltmarsh’s neologism caught on: by 1674 John Owen could write of ‘the experience of them that truly believe’, and in 1684 John Bunyan could refer to ‘Christian’s experience’. This is ‘experience’ not as ‘experiment’ but as what the OED calls ‘a state of mind or feeling forming part of the religious life’; but we should be clear that this passive meaning was virtually unknown to early Friends, when Quaker insistence on the priority of experience over book-learning was an insistence on ‘knowing experimentally’, by active trial and putting to the test. Cupitt (1998, p. 22) finds the earliest usage of ‘religious experience’ in an evangelical tract of 1809, where the author, Mary Waring, tries to ‘put into words’ what God is doing in the
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Seeker and Quaker milieu came to think and speak of evil as ‘in the hearts and minds of wicked men’, and good as the product of an inner convincement, nurtured by an inner light,3 they did not suddenly abandon the ancient notions of God/good/light and Devil/evil/dark as cosmic realities. God, ‘the Lord’, ‘the Spirit’, and ‘the power of Satan’ never ceased to be both transcendent and immanent forces for Fox and early Friends, but the change of emphasis expressed in the sense that ‘the nature of those things that were hurtful’ were ‘in the hearts and minds’ – interior rather than exterior, within rather than without – made for a potentially radical shift in religious thinking. It was left to a contemporary of Fox’s, whose influence on early Quakerism was profound (though he did not join with Friends until the end of his life), to break with the old and wholeheartedly embrace the new. Enter Gerrard Winstanley. *** Winstanley wrote all twenty of his surviving books, pamphlets and open letters in the four years between 1648 and 1652. The entire body of his work thus precisely coincides with the beginnings of Quakerism as bounded by Fox’s early wanderings among sundry separatists in the late forties and the moment of Quaker lift-off in 1652 when a leader seeking a following met seekers seeking a leader. Winstanley is known to have been in contact with Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough when they were setting up the first Friends’ meetings at the Bull and Mouth inn in London in 1654. Burrough wrote to Margaret Fell telling her that Winstanley had been with them and had expressed the hope that their work would bring to completion what he had tried to accomplish with his ‘True Levelling’ experiment in 1649. But what little is known of Winstanley’s subsequent life suggests that he had no further contact with Friends or the wider radical movement until the 1670s, when his name (and, a little later, those of his two sons) is recorded in the burial registers of Westminster Quaker meeting in 1676. Two years later, Thomas Comber, Dean of Durham, claimed in a tract called Christianity no Enthusiasm that the Quakers (his principal target as ‘enthusiasts’) derived their ideas from Winstanley’s stream of books and pamphlets published during ‘the great rebellion’. This was less true than Comber believed, but more true than most Friends, then and now, have been prepared to admit. hidden realm of her soul. It was given new currency by psychologist and nontheist William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (significantly subtitled A Study in Human Nature), 1902. Cupitt argues that James ‘does not understand “religious experience” in the old realist or supernatural way, as the cognizing of something that is given to the soul from outside it and from “Above”. James (for the most part) treats religious experience in an immanent way and as a function or capacity of human nature, much like “aesthetic experience” or “moral experience”. By thus naturalizing religious experience, James hopes to make of it the startingpoint for a new science of religion’. In this, however, though in the language of his own times, Gerrard Winstanley had preceded him! 3 Here I understand the ‘inner light’ (whether ‘of Christ’ or ‘of conscience’) to be a metaphorical light generated from within and shining outwards, and the ‘inward light’ as one generated outside (by an external divine source) and shining into the human personality. But I do not claim that early Friends consciously intended such a clear distinction.
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Some 16 years older than Fox, a native of Wigan, Lancashire, who moved to London around 1630 to begin an apprenticeship in the cloth trade, Winstanley’s pilgrim’s progress had followed much the same pattern as that of his younger contemporary. In The New Law of Righteousnes (1649)4 he tells how he had begun as ‘a blind professor and strict goer to church … a hearer of sermons’ who ‘believed as the learned clergy believed’, before moving on to ‘the ordinance of dipping’ (Baptists) and eventually to outright rejection of all forms of institutional religion. Among his associates by the time he was writing The New Law (the preface to which he signed on the day Charles Stuart was sentenced to death, four days before the execution) was the Kingston radical John Fielder, who would continue his agitation as a Quaker under the new republican regime. Winstanley’s spiritual journey took him for a time on a different trajectory, to a different place, and one still more radical. This frantic search for new truths, for meaning behind all the chaos, change and decay, raised all the old religious questions in new, more urgent forms. Where on earth was God amid the ocean of blood, sweat and tears, amid the earthquake, wind and fire of a war that pitted brother against brother, neighbour against neighbour, parent against child? Where was the still small voice of calm when pulpits had been turned into batteries of cannon firing musket balls of Biblical texts, verse hurled against verse, chapter against chapter, this Christ against that? Where in this hell was the kingdom of heaven? And if an earthly king, claimed by church and state to rule by divine right, could be tried, condemned and beheaded, where did that leave the king of kings who had anointed him? The Winstanley/Fox generation, class of the 1640s, was forced to confront questions of evil and good, not as philosophers seeking answers in elegant aphorisms or theologians wrestling with ancient texts, but as lay men and women with nothing but their own traumatic experience/experimentation to enlighten them. Fox discovers in 1647 that ‘the natures of those things that were hurtful without were within, in the hearts and minds of wicked men … though people had been looking without’. Winstanley, breaking into print for the first time in 1648 with The Mysterie of God, is more specific. There is neither God nor Devil ‘without’: both are delusions. The Bible’s Serpent or Satan is a figure for human selfishness and the wrong-doing bred by selfish impulses. ‘What you call the Devil is within you’. Moreover, it is this Devil within that ‘leads men to imagine God in a place of glory beyond the skies’. Winstanley tells his readers, ‘Neither are you to look for God in a place of glory beyond the sun, but within yourself and within every man … He that looks for a God outside himself, and worships God at a distance, worships he knows not what, but is … deceived by the imagination of his own heart’. Christ, too, is not ‘a single man at a distance from you but the indwelling power of reason’. So ‘You are not to be saved by believing that a man lived and died long ago at Jerusalem, but by the power of the spirit within you’, the ‘indwelling power of reason’ that, for Winstanley, infuses ‘all 4 I hope some day to publish for the first time a complete edition of Winstanley’s works, including those merely summarized or omitted in Sabine, 1965. Meanwhile, quotations in this chapter are from Boulton, 2002, where they are fully sourced. In this chapter, however, I have modernized spelling, punctuation and the use of capitals. Only in referencing Winstanley’s titles have I preserved his spelling, e.g. Armie, Paradice and Righteousnes.
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flesh and … every creature within the globe’. For good measure, heaven, hell and the angels too are within rather than without. ‘Every saint is a true heaven’, and angels (in a striking pre-echo of Blake) are ‘the sparks of glory or heavenly principles set in men’. In the particular social, political and economic context of the English revolution, Winstanley made a narrowly specific identification of the inward devil, selfishness, with the covetousness that drove men to accumulate private property and thereby lord it over others. The ‘indwelling power of reason’ called on ‘sons and daughters’ to abandon private property relations and embrace the common ownership of land in a republic of equals. ‘In the beginning of time, the great Creator Reason made the earth to be a common treasury.’ But Reason’s adversary, the Devil of selfishness, had come to ‘rule as king in the room of Reason’, whereupon the earth was ‘hedged in to enclosures’ and its common storehouse given over to buying and selling in the interests of the few. ‘Did the light of Reason,’ Winstanley demanded to know, in The New Law of Righteousness, ‘make the earth for some men to ingross up into bags and barns, that others might be oppressed with poverty? … Did the light of Reason make this law, that some part of mankind should kill and hang another part of mankind that could not walk in their steps? Surely Reason was not the God that made that law; for this is to make one part of the creation always to be quarrelling against another part, which is mighty dishonour to our Maker. But covetousness, that murdering God of the world, was that law-maker; and that is the God or ruling power which all men that claim a particular interest in the earth do worship.’ Winstanley’s repeated and eloquent insistence that, on the one hand, evil is selfishness and selfishness is ‘propriety’ (property ownership), and on the other that good is reason and reason is common ownership, has the beauty of simplicity. It also has the weakness of over-simplification, demonstrated all too graphically in the social politics of subsequent centuries. Self and selflessness, ego and altruism, are indeed perpetually at war, as Winstanley saw very clearly, but they have an interior depth and complexity that could never realistically be reduced to the one matter of property relations. The failure of the ‘True Levellers’ communitarian experiment, inevitable as it was in the conditions of the time, had the effect of obscuring its own core insight by which good was decoupled from a metaphysical God and evil from a metaphysical Devil. Winstanley seems to have recognized this, judging by his subsequent silence, though we may speculate that in joining Westminster Friends in the 1670s he was choosing to ally himself to those who came nearest to his own radical view in their assertion, as expressed by Fox, that what was known experimentally was that light and dark, good and evil, were experienced inwardly, in the depth of the human psyche. But events proved that not only Winstanley’s thorough-going rejection of outward gods and demons, but also Fox’s more qualified emphasis on light and dark as interior states rather than exterior influences, were too radical for their contemporaries and had to bide their time.
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*** Friends were by no means unaffected by the hasty retreat from radicalism that marked the restoration of royalist and Anglican ascendancy after 1660. Our admiration of the heroism shown in Friends’ willingness, after the collapse of the British republic, to suffer crippling fines and cruel prison sentences for their continuing civil disobedience in matters of church conformity and non-payment of tithes has tended to relegate to the margins of Quaker history their less admirable retreat from the revolutionary principles and practice that had made them the avant-garde of the republican fifties. The reaction took the form of a public about-turn on radical politics, involving the repudiation of ‘levelling principles’ and suppression of Fox’s own republican, democratic and egalitarian pamphlets of the fifties, underpinned by an equally thoroughgoing retreat from radical theology. By the mid-1660s Friends were rewriting their own history, down-playing or censoring-out former ‘extravagances’ and ‘enthusiasms’. A 1666 declaration by eleven self-appointed Quaker leaders set out six points aimed at controlling dissident members and unauthorized preaching – ‘the death rattle of the early Quaker movement’ Glen Reynolds has called it, illustrating that ‘its male and London-based authors were assuming the role of patriarchs and apostles with the exclusive right to interpret faith, history and practice’. Radical doctrines such as Fox’s own perfectionism were no longer to be taught ‘until people’s minds were ready’; such ideas were now considered ‘stumbling block[s] to minds biased against Truth’. A Quaker equivalent of the despised church courts was set up to judge and disown not only behaviour prejudicial to the reputation of ‘the saints’ but also ‘all imagined, unreasonable and untimely prophesyings’ (preachings). A religious movement of renewal only made possible by the abolition of censorship in 1640 introduced its own censorship in 1672, decreeing that ‘no new book should be printed without an order from this committee’ – a committee (all male) of the General Meeting, which in 1673 became the Second Day Morning Meeting and had ‘all the controlling influence and powers of a national executive’ (Reynolds, 2005). Fox appears to have approved these activities and outlined his own rules by which Friends’ books were to be published or suppressed. He in turn was rigorously censored (after his death) by Thomas Ellwood in the compilation of a version of the Journal judged to be acceptable to the pious and politically quietist nonconformity of the cautious 1690s. Glen Reynolds sums it all up: the post-Restoration Quaker leadership ‘intervened whenever they could to ensure that the image the world received of Quakerism (especially through the written word) was a conservative, respectable and inoffensive one’ (Reynolds, 2005). So Winstanley was forgotten – the Quaker leadership either failed to notice or deliberately ignored his re-emergence in Westminster meeting in the 1670s – and Fox’s experimental religion of trying, testing, proving, was gradually diluted into a religion where the emphasis shifted to experience understood in its modern passive sense. ‘Experimental learning’ was left to the scientists, light to the Enlightenment. Barclay and Penn nudged Quakerism away from its experimental roots towards accommodation with mainstream protestant nonconformity, and the earlier radical emphasis on looking within rather than without, on inner rather than inward light and dark, good and evil, God and Devil, was obscured, glossed, or written out of the
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approved Quaker scriptures. It survived in attenuated forms at the margins: in Thomas Paines’s eighteenth-century deism, in the free thinkers of the Manchester Friends’ Institute of the nineteenth century, in the life and work of Henry Joel Cadbury in the early twentieth. Outside Quakerism it fed into Unitarianism, the religious humanism of George Eliot and the atheological nonrealism of Don Cupitt, only to break back into the discourse of Friends with the re-emergence of Quaker nontheism in the 1990s (see Boulton, 2006). There is no one Quaker tradition. There are many. Winstanley initiated one that took several generations to mature. This tradition, influenced and reinforced by the insights of the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution and the collapse of magic, asserts that good and evil are better understood as human phenomena than as powers embodied by real gods and demons. Human selfishness is the root of the wrong-doing we call evil. Human imagination, which enables us to put ourselves in another’s place, is the root of the altruism we call good. Human reason, Winstanley’s divine principle, is the imperfect but essential tool for discerning the difference – and making the distinction is a wholly human responsibility. We may describe impulses of love and truth in our hearts as the promptings of God, but we understand with Winstanley that this God is ‘the power of the spirit within’, the ‘indwelling power of reason’, a God that resides in the human breast. If there is a ‘problem of evil’ it is a human problem: classic theodicy becomes meaningless where the old omnipotent God-without is re-envisioned as our own projection of wholly human values and ideals. There is no evil in the jaws of a crocodile, the sting of a hornet, the bite of a snake: these are simply what they are, nature as nature is. Nor is there any evil force behind the morally neutral earthquake, wind and fire (though our failure to do what we can to alleviate consequent suffering makes an evil of the natural disasters insurance companies call ‘acts of God’). By the same token, there is no innate benevolence in the rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Whatever beauty, truth and moral purpose there is in our universe is the beauty, truth and moral purpose we, in community, choose to give it. That is Winstanley’s legacy to Friends, and the Enlightenment’s legacy to all of us. We no longer live in the dim rush-light of pre-modernity.5
5 I thank Os Cresson and James Riemermann for reading this chapter and suggesting improvements that I have attempted to incorporate, though responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation is mine alone.
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Chapter 17
Darkness and Light Rex Ambler
We can get a clearer view of how good and evil arise if we think it through in conversation with early Friends. We can then see, for example, that the Quaker understanding is quite distinctive. It emerged from the Christianity of its time, yet its way of realizing Christianity and its unusual reading of the early Christian writings gave it a distinctive view of good and evil, and how the one may be overcome by the other. Much of the early clarity has been lost, however, as Quakerism has either turned back towards mainstream Christianity or veered further away from it. If we can recover and rethink those early insights, it should become clear that the Quaker understanding of good and evil is unusual in a number of ways: • • • •
it arises from the experience of evil in ourselves, as illuminated by the light; it traces evil, not to rebellion, as in classical theology, but to deceit and ignorance; it recognizes that humans have a choice, even though they are immersed in darkness and cannot see, for the light of God is always in them pressing on their conscience – they have only to turn; and it regards the good as arising spontaneously from humans as and when they are illuminated by the light and responsive to its truth.
Experience Experience was fundamental to the early Quakers, as it has been ever since, but they were not unique in that respect. When Fox said that he knew the truth ‘experimentally’ he was saying something similar to what some radical Puritans had said already.1 Joseph Hall had written in 1644 of ‘those solid divines that experimentally know what belongs to the healing of a sinful soul’ (Hall, 1644, p. 110). Even in 1593, R. Harvey had been able to say of those radicals who doubted received doctrines that they were ‘trusting none but which they find certainly and experimentally true’ (Harvey, 1593, 10.6). What they trusted, however, on the basis of their experience, were doctrines derived initially from the Bible and rational reflection on the Bible. Experience provided the confirmation of what they had been taught. With Friends it was slightly different, though given the consequences, we would have to say that the difference was immense. It is worth looking at that whole passage of Fox that concludes with his knowing ‘experimentally’. 1
This has been fully shown by Nuttall, 1992.
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Good and Evil As I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor tell me what to do; then, O then I heard a voice which said, ‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition’. When I heard it, my heart did leap for joy. Then the Lord let me see why there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition, namely, that I might give him all the glory …. Jesus Christ … enlightens, and gives grace, faith, and power. Thus when God doth work, who shall let it? This I knew experimentally (Fox, 1991, vol. 1, p. 74).
‘The most experienced people’ were precisely those who insisted on the relevance of personal experience, but Fox had forsaken them too. So when he found the truth ‘experimentally’ he had something else in mind. He was not bringing a truth to bear on experience, and not simply testing a truth by experience. He was finding the truth in experience. And the insights he gained were quite specific. They would certainly have implications for other people, but initially they were for him: they were insights into himself. Oh, then did I see my troubles, trials and temptations more than ever I had done! As the light appeared, all appeared that was out of the light, darkness, death, temptations, the unrighteous, the ungodly; all was manifest and seen in the light …. And then the spiritual discerning came into me, by which I did discern my own thoughts, groans and sighs, and what it was that did veil me, and what it was that did open me (Fox, 1952, p. 14).
Indeed, he would be able to identify the light as that which shows a person his or her condition. Now this is the light which you are light withal, which shows you when you do wrong …; and you know with that when you have wronged anyone, and broken promise, and told a thing that is not so, there is something riseth in you that is a witness against you, and that is the light (Fox, 1656, p. 2).
Or more simply, ‘With the light man sees himself’ (Fox, 1991, vol. 1, p. 142). There was more to the light than this initial self-disclosure, but this was Friends’ first experience of it and without that experience the light would be unable to show them anything else. There was evidently a block to humans understanding themselves: it consisted of the image people already had of themselves, ‘the self’, as Friends called it, or the ego as we might call it. Any understanding of their condition which opposed this self-image would meet with strong resistance. They were unlikely to get to this understanding by the use of their normal faculties of reason and imagination, because these were controlled by a ‘self’ that had too much to lose in exploring the alternatives. An understanding of the truth of their situation could only come about if they surrendered the self and its various activities and submitted to the insights that would come to them as they waited passively in stillness and silence. All you that be in your own wisdom and your own reason, you tell that silent waiting upon God is famine to you; it is a strange life to you to come to be silent, you must come into a new world. Now you must die in the silence, die from the wisdom, die from the knowledge, die from the reason, and die from the understanding (Ross, 1991, p. 21).
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The powerful experience of being illuminated by this divine light within could become the basis of a new life, grounded in the true self, which was in turn grounded in God: ‘Which light being owned, self, and the righteousness of self, come to be denied’ (Fox, 1991, vol. 1, p. 344). Then, as the obverse of that loss of the self: ‘That which calls your minds out of the earth, turns them towards God, where the pure babe is born in the virgin mind’ (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 71). Those who have undergone that process have then ‘Come to the truth in the heart, to the hidden man in the heart, to a meek and quiet spirit’ (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 229). We can say, therefore, that the Quaker experience, as understood by Fox and the first Friends, begins with an experience of good and evil, and that it is this experience as it unfolds in life, rather than any doctrine or theory, that becomes the basis of Quaker understanding. Looking at Evil But if the basic Quaker experience is a realization of the truth of one’s life, and if the ego resists the truth by putting up an image that makes it appear more acceptable, then the first thing to be experienced is the bad things the ego is denying: ‘If all men would come to the knowledge of the truth they must come to that which doth reprove them, and lead them into all truth’ (Fox, 1991, vol. 4, p. 284). The intention was not to have them persuaded that they were wholly bad, which would be as much a distortion as the reverse, but to correct the distortion, so they could get a sense of the truth, the whole truth, and accept that as the basis of their life. And if, as Fox said, echoing Jesus, that truth makes you free … (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 275)2 … free from all the will-worships, and from all the windy doctrines; from all the evil inventions, traditions, imaginations and notions, and rudiments of Adam in the fall (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 311).
Then the disclosure of the ‘evil’ in one’s life would serve to liberate one from evil and promote the good. It needs to be emphasized that this is an experience of evil as well as good, and indeed that the experience of evil is in some sense prior to the experience of good. The Quaker habit of always looking to see the good in people can be taken to mean that they do not take evil seriously. This may sometimes be true: the Quaker outlook does attract people who are prone to idealism and optimism, and the modern, liberal version of Quakerism has tended to play down the dark side of human nature in the interest of bringing about reform. But it should not be inferred from this that Quakerism is essentially idealistic. On the contrary, as I hope will become apparent, it is essentially realistic. It has looked, and does look, evil in the face, and its hopefulness arises from an understanding of how evil may be overcome.
2
The allusion to Jesus is from John 8:32.
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Projecting Evil To confront the evil in ourselves, however, is one of the most difficult things we can ever be expected to do. Indeed, the most common way of understanding evil is to construe it as something entirely outside us, something that invades us from outside, either through an impersonal ‘force’ or through specific ‘evil people’.3 It helps us to identify certain other people as evil if they carry some external mark that distinguishes them objectively from us. They have different practices, stated beliefs, clothing, language or colour of skin. They are people we can point to as different, and say ‘They are the bad people’, and with this feel comfortable that we after all must be (at least relatively) good. Fox has a remarkable passage in the Journal where he describes what people do with evil when they cannot face it in themselves. I think it must be the first time, historically, that this insight was given expression.4 I saw the state of those, both priests and people, who, in reading the scriptures, cry out much against Cain, Esau, Judas and other wicked men of former times mentioned in the holy scriptures, but do not see the nature of Cain, of Esau, of Judas and those others, in themselves. These said it was they, they, they that were the bad people, putting it off from themselves, but when some of these came, with the light and spirit of truth, to see into themselves, then they came to say, I, I, I, it is I myself that have been the Ishmael, the Esau etc. ... When these, who were so much taken up with finding fault with others and thought themselves clear from these things, came to look into themselves and with the light of Christ thoroughly to search themselves, they might see enough of this in themselves; then the cry could not be that it is he or they, but I and we are found in these conditions (Fox, 1991, vol. 1, p. 87).
Two things are worth noting in this passage. One is the energy that people require to put the blame on others. They ‘cry out much’ against the ‘wicked men of former times’, as if to drown out the sense that they may have something to do with this themselves. It is not simply ‘they’ who do these things, but ‘they, they, they’ who do them. The other thing is that the evil they have put on others is precisely the evil they have denied in themselves; they have taken it off their own backs and laid on the others’. It is a remarkable phrase, for its time: ‘putting it off from themselves’. It shows an insight into the human condition that was not fully to be recognized for another two hundred years or more, with the writing of Feuerbach, Freud and Jung. It was the discovery of what Freud was to call a ‘defence’ by which people deal, 3 Even M. Scott Peck falls for this in his otherwise perceptive and challenging book on the subject People of the Lie (1988). By confidently labelling certain people ‘evil’, that is, ‘the people of the lie’, and others not, he fails to deal adequately with the evil in all of us. This is not of course to deny the vast differences between people, or the capacity in each of us to overcome ‘the lie’. 4 It might be said, though, that it was already anticipated in Jesus’ teaching not to judge others, ‘lest you also be judged’, and not to remove ‘the speck’ in the other’s eye until you have removed ‘the log’ from your own (Luke 6: 37, 42). The implication in both these sayings, though it is not said explicitly, is that when we judge others we are normally criticizing them for the very evils that we ourselves commit. (Cf. Paul in Romans 2:1–3, 17–23.)
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psychologically, with those aspects of themselves that they find unacceptable. We see this most clearly in time of war, when we are capable of believing that the enemy is wholly evil and wholly responsible for the suffering that we have to endure. This tells us how important it is to us to have an acceptable image of ourselves, a selfidentity we can be proud of, and also how easy it is for us to lie, profoundly, in order to maintain this self-image. When we have the insight and courage to accept the truth, however, we may also come to see that what we project onto others arises from deep within us. Indeed, we may not be aware of the impulse that leads us to do wrong, even when we recognize that we have done it and that it is our responsibility. This in itself may be a(nother) reason why we ‘put it off from ourselves’: we simply do not know where else to put it. It can come as quite a revelation to us that our greed or ambition, for example, arises in us from a deep sense of insecurity. Our conscious behaviour seems to be governed, or at least influenced, by feelings and desires of which we are not conscious. We are then in the contradictory situation of first of all accepting responsibility for the way we live our lives, and then discovering that it is something else in us that seems to be living our life for us. As we shall see later, this contradictoriness bedevils all our experiences of evil. Two Objectivities The contradiction has to be accepted, though, according to Friends, for accepting what we are doing and thinking, and accepting the often dark and mysterious motivations beneath what we do, is a necessary condition for gaining some control of our lives. This too requires that we let go the normal activities of ‘doing and thinking’ so that we can see them, and see them whole. The discipline of waiting in the light, in stillness, gives us a vantage point from which to look at ourselves whole, to recognize what we are doing and why. Remember Fox’s early insight into himself, quoted earlier: Then the spiritual discerning came into me, by which I did discern my own thoughts, groans and sighs, and what it was that did veil me, and what it was that did open me (Fox, 1952, p. 14).
He became aware of the inarticulate ‘groans and sighs’ as well as the ‘thoughts’, so that he could see the whole of his inner life in a way that made sense of his behaviour. It is what some psychologists would call the Gestalt of our behaviour, the whole pattern and process, which may not seem rational to us, but at least makes some kind of sense. It makes a lot more sense than ascribing evil to something external to ourselves, whether considered symbolically as a force in the world, or concretely as (certain) other people. If we ascribe it, symbolically, to Satan or the devil we may have in mind an imagined, but invisible ‘person’, or we may be expressing objectively what we know to be ultimately subjective realities. Symbols are ambivalent in this respect. Viewing evil as straightforwardly objective, however, does have an advantage. If there really is something ‘out there’ that is responsible for all that goes wrong, we can form a concept or image of it which makes it superficially easier to understand.
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We might even be consoled by understanding this, since it could deal with that awful despair at not knowing why there is so much suffering in the world. There is nothing worse than to experience suffering when there is no understandable reason for it. Life itself can then lose its meaning. Moreover, if evil can be named, objectively, we have something to fight against, and fighting against it would not only serve to destroy it, but also to give meaning to our lives. Explanations of Evil Explanations of evil are therefore very attractive. But they cannot finally do what they promise to do. If they explain evil as a force outside us that is responsible for all the specific evils that take place, they have magnified evil into such an immensity that we cannot possibly counter it. We are then thrown back into our despair. All we can do is to imagine and believe in some other force which is good and which can overcome evil – or better, that will overcome the evil, otherwise our uncertainty as to who or what will win through will leave us as anxious as before. If the good will prevail over the evil, we can be reassured, but, again, only for a time. It will soon dawn on us that if there is a power for good that is ultimately greater than the power for evil, it must be the ultimate power, a power ‘greater than which cannot be conceived’, that created or at least governs and guides the whole world. But if so, then it was responsible for allowing evil into the world in the first place. So it cannot be that good, or that powerful, after all. The apparent advantage in having a clear conception of evil as an objective something or someone turns out to be a serious disadvantage. However we think it through, evil still wins. This is true whether we think in traditional terms of God and his struggle with evil, or in modern terms of a process of evolution with a built-in bias towards the strong and adaptable. The problem arises from failing to recognize, or accept, that evil is inseparable from our unique way of being as humans, and that it is precisely as we struggle with this unique way of being that evil arises. It arises, traditionally speaking, from the heart, or, as we might say today, existentially, and we can understand it (in so far as it can be understood) only when we look to ourselves, and into ourselves. The Quaker understanding, then, starts with self-understanding. It soon opens out, as we shall see, into an understanding of others and the wider world. But at no point does it need explanations of how things are, or will be. It is sufficient that we can see from our own observation how things arise and why, for then we are able to respond with an appropriate action. Indeed, seeing things as they are, without the bias of an anxious or defensive ego, already gives us a power to act differently. Fox called it a capacity for ‘seeing over’ the evil.5 5 See e.g. his impressive letter to Lady Claypool, included in the Nickalls edition of the Journal (Fox, 1952), p. 347f: ‘Do not look at the temptations, confusions, corruptions, but at the light that discovers them, that makes them manifest; and with the same light you will feel over them, to receive power to stand against them. … For looking down at sin, and corruption, and distraction, you are swallowed up in it; but looking at the light that discovers them, you will see over them. That will give victory; and you will find grace and strength; and there is
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Theorizing Evil There is a danger, of course, that Friends will want to express this insight in a ‘doctrine’ or ‘theory’ so that they can communicate it to others. At the present time Friends seem to be given to theorizing in order to resolve the increasing number of differences between them. It is a false trail, and not in keeping with their fundamental insights. They should take a warning from a contemporary philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, who obviously has some sympathy with Friends.6 Ricoeur describes the various stages we may go through in our confrontation with evil, beginning with a ‘lament’ that feels helpless in the face of evil, but then progressing to a second stage in which we actively ‘complain’ or ‘protest’ against evil, since we now have an explanation of how it occurred:7 A third stage in the catharsis of the lament is to discover that the reasons for believing in God have nothing in common with the need to explain the origin of suffering. … We believe in God in spite of evil. To believe in God in spite of … is one of the ways in which we can integrate the speculative aporia into the work of mourning. Beyond this threshold, a few sages advance along the path that leads to a complete renouncing of any and all complaint about evil. Some even reach the point of discerning in suffering some educative and purgative value. But we should immediately add that this meaning should not become the object of a specific teaching; it can be found or rediscovered only in each specific case. And there is a legitimate pastoral concern that this meaning taken up by a victim not lead him or her back along the route of self-accusation or self-destruction. … A similar wisdom is perhaps indicated at the end of the book of Job when it is said that Job came to love God for nought, thereby making Satan lose his bet. To love God for nought is to escape completely the cycle of retribution to which the lamentation still remains captive, so long as the victim bemoans the injustice of his or her fate (Ricoeur, 1995, pp. 260f).
Can we say more than this? Or is the Quaker suspicion of theory in this area a block to any further reflection? It is not, I am sure, but it needs to be understood how reflections arise, what kind of experience they refer to, and how the language Quakers use to reflect may be limited by their particular experience and culture. They cannot make general statements that they can confidently apply to everybody, the first step to peace’. This is a paradoxical passage, because he is urging Elizabeth Claypool not to look at the dark things, yet he is expecting her to see them in some sense, otherwise they would not ‘be made manifest’ to her. The clue to unravelling the paradox appears in that later phrase, ‘the first step to peace’. He is describing a process of discernment, in which she first of all looks squarely at what troubles her, as the light reveals it to her, then she turns her gaze to the light that has done this, which gives her a basis for hope and strength. She is not all darkness, she has a divine light within her, which can enable her to see and act differently. 6 In his autobiographical reflections on his work, Paul Ricoeur (1998, pp. 41f) describes his time at Swarthmore College as a very happy one. He learnt much, he says, from the tolerance and openness of Quakers. 7 For a helpful summary of this difficult piece, see Kearney, 2004, pp. 91–7, though he fails to indicate this last step to wisdom as described at the end of Ricoeur’s article. As far as I know, it is still waiting to be taken seriously.
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irrespective of others’ background or circumstance. But they can say how they, specifically, have come to understand good and evil, how this way of understanding is confirmed, or otherwise, by other Friends, and how they as a community have come to see their path, and the world in which they have to find their path. In so far as it is grounded in and tested by experience, in particular the experience of being illuminated by the light, they can talk with great confidence. In so far as they talk in a common language, so as to make their insights clear and accessible to others, who may not have had the relevant experience, they have to be more tentative. So my tentative proposal on what Quakers can say now to make sense of their experience is as follows. Denial First, the evil things that we and other people do arise from a denial of truth. Everyone keep on their watch and guard, against the enemy that led out from God, out of life and truth. For all the sufferings are by and through him that is out of the truth (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 238). All have been plunged into sin and death from the life, for … they have been all subjected by the evil spirit, which hath led them out of the truth into the evil (Fox, 1991, vol. 8, p. 160).
It must be clear from these texts, and others, that Fox does not understand ‘the truth’ to be a system of doctrine, not even the Quaker doctrine, but the reality that everyone faces as ‘the truth of their life’.8 Even the devil, he is saying in this mythological way, has abandoned ‘the truth’, alluding to the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel: You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks according to his nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
That is, being interpreted, the primal fault, the origin of all the suffering that we cause one another, is a refusal to accept the reality of life as it presents itself to us. There may also be some reference in both Fox and Jesus to our primal history, when humans first developed the capacity to lie and to live their lives on the basis of a lie. John had said in his Prologue, which interpreted much of what was to come, that ‘In the beginning’ what has come into being in him [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:4f).
But the darkness did try. From the very beginning of our history there has been some kind of resistance to the light that shows people the truth. 8 I have elaborated on this in my interpretive essay, ‘Making sense of Fox’, in Ambler, 2001, pp. 175–200.
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We have to rid ourselves of the contemporary gothic mythology of darkness to understand what Quakers (and biblical writers) have meant by it. Rather than belonging to another, imagined world, it is something we are already familiar with in our own experience, as we struggle to find out who we are and how we are to live. In Fox’s time, as in John’s, ‘darkness’ was a generally understood metaphor for the condition of not being aware of the truth. ‘All that be in ignorance are called darkness,’ said William Tyndale (1531, on 1 John 1:5). ‘Truth’s still in darkness undiscovered,’ said E. Walker in 1692 (‘To the Author’). The Quakers gave a special meaning to the term because they understood ‘truth’, not as a representation of reality (primarily), as in a set of words, but as reality itself, as experienced. Just as ‘the light’ made people aware of reality, ‘darkness’ was the dire state of not being aware of it, of not being able to recognize the truth or to live one’s life in accordance with truth. It was a condition of not knowing who or what one is, not knowing other people as they really are, so inevitably mistreating them. Fear But how do humans come to be in this condition? All that early Friends seem to tell us is that they have abandoned or refused the truth, ‘gone out of it’, and that as a result they live the rest of their lives cut off from it: ‘When once you deny the truth then you are given over to believe lies’ (Fox, 1952, p. 136). At least this tells us that it is ‘you’ who deny the truth, and not simply ‘the devil’, who led us astray. We are not to think of ourselves as victims here. Though we were powerfully drawn to deny truth, it was we who do it, or did it. ‘Once’ we do that, however, we are ‘given over to believe lies’, so we lose some of our freedom and have little choice but to believe fabrications we have made to stand in for truth. Fox is clearly echoing Paul here, in his Epistle to the Romans. Though they [the unrighteous – which turns out to include everyone] knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and … they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions … (Romans 1: 21–3, 25–6).
Understanding Paul on this point may help us better to understand Fox. Paul set out to explain, in his great Epistle, why people had to rely on a gift of grace and goodness in order to become good themselves. Up till now they had relied on a ‘law’ to tell them what to do, whether in their conscience or ‘chiselled in letters on stone’, but they had signally failed to do it. Why? Because, he argues, they are already committed to ‘the flesh’, that is, their own selfish interest, so they treat the ‘law’, wherever it comes from, as a means for their own selfish ends (Romans, Chapters 2, 7, 8 especially). And why have they done that? Because, for some reason, they found the reality of the Creator too much to take, and preferred the more accessible reality of ‘creatures’, including, of course, their own ‘flesh’. We can
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infer this from his rather brief account of humans’ ‘suppression of the truth’ (Romans 1:18): For what can be known of God is manifest in them [literally]. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God they did not honour him as God … (Romans 1: 19–21).
They were aware – intuitively, this is not a work of reason – that their life derived ultimately from a ‘power’ quite beyond their grasp, an ‘eternal power’ that is ‘manifest in them’ as they contemplate the ‘things that have been made’. Everything around them comes and goes, as do human beings, and nothing can sustain itself beyond a brief time. The only stable point of reference in such a transient world is the unimaginable ‘eternity’ out of which it all came. It is a daunting reality. How can anyone accept that as the fundamental fact of their life? Much better to latch on to something concrete, something that holds a promise of security and meaning.9 So the fundamental truth is suppressed, and, as Fox paraphrases Paul, ‘they are given over to believe lies’.10 Fox described a similar fear in the first few pages of his Journal, in the days before he was enlightened. He was afraid, it seems, because he felt so vulnerable, so isolated, in a world of constant change, pretence and deceit. When eventually he found the one reality that transcended time and could ground his life in that, he was freed from fear and full of hope. He would also urge Friends to trust that resource within themselves that would enable them to see the world for what it was and to rise above it. In that wait to receive power … whereby you may come to feel the light which comprehends time and the world and fathoms it, which believed in gives you victory over the world (Fox, 1952, p. 175). All dwell in the power and spirit of God, with which ye will comprehend all that which is to change, with that which doth not change and hath no end (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 221).
Although they didn’t say so explicitly, as far as I know, it is likely that early Friends saw the fundamental denial of truth as a response to fear and anxiety. They had been afraid and anxious, as Fox had been, because they were aware that nothing and noone lasts, and that behind this sorry tale of life and death there is an eternal reality that they cannot begin to understand or trust.
9 Latching on to self and idols did little for their basic anxiety, however, as Paul confirms later in the Epistle, 8:15, where he reminds the Christians of Rome how different they are now: ‘You received not a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but a spirit of adoption …’ Their life of idolatry, before they discovered Christ, had obviously been dominated by fear. 10 I have written more fully on this understanding of Paul in a paper for the Quaker Theology Seminar in 2004, ‘Reading Paul experientially’, soon to be published in a book of Quaker theology, Quaker Truth.
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Whether or not Fox and his Friends thought this explicitly, it seems to me to fill in the gap in what they said. Evil arises, I said earlier, in response to the challenges that human life throws at us. The first and most awesome challenge, we could say, is that life doesn’t last. This provokes anxiety and insecurity. And to make ourselves secure in the world we reach out to things or people that seem strong and durable.11 Imagining ourselves, falsely, to be isolated, separate beings, then aware of our precarious situation, we latch on to some objective good that we hope will give us security: authoritative texts, images of gods or heroes, property, weapons, consumer goods or whatever. We soon find them to be inadequate, however, and have to resort to further deceit, or violence, to maintain ourselves. Evil then has already begun. Good Arising They know all this from their own experience of being illuminated by the light. But acceptance of that disclosure leads to another experience. The First Advice urges Friends to ‘Take heed to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts’, and to ‘Trust them as the leadings of God, whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life’ (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 1.02). The logic is surprising. How can a revelation of our darkness lead to such a positive outcome?12 The analysis we have been through up till now should enable us to understand this. The Quakers undertook the risky experiment of achieving a good life by first of all looking at the evil in themselves, fully and squarely. This exercise has proved that they are not themselves evil, and not captive to evil forces. They have done what they have done because they could not face the truth and, like everyone else, have to live their lives on the basis of falsehoods. With the help of this light that they have discovered in themselves, they can now see through the deceit and recognize the truth. And with the surprising sense that, in this moment of acceptance, they find themselves accepted,13 they have the courage to embrace the truth and live their lives on the basis of it. An inner change then begins to take place. Seeing through deceit and accepting truth enables them to see their own true selves. In place of the self-identity they 11 But see George Fox on the result: ‘When your mind runs into anything outwardly, without the power, it covers and veils the pure in you’ (1991, vol. 7, pp. 24f); ‘Where the mind is stayed upon the Lord, there is a perfect peace, for it is a whole peace, which cannot be broken. … All imperfect peace may be broken, that is when the mind is stayed upon the creature or in any creature, and not upon the Creator; or in any outward things, goods, houses, lands or inventions of vanities, in the foolish vain fashions, which the lust of the eye and the pride of life go into, which will defile and corrupt it. When any of these things fail and are not according to your mind, it being in them, then your peace is broken, and you are cross and brittle and envy gets up’ (1991, vol. 7, pp. 284f). 12 Cf. Elizabeth Bathurst, a sadly neglected writer of the early days, in her Truth’s Vindication (1679): ‘Tis the same hand that wounded which healeth’ (reprinted in part in Garman et al. 1996). 13 I am using words of Paul Tillich here to interpret the traditional ideas of ‘receiving mercy’ or ‘being justified’ by God; from his sermon, ‘You are accepted’, in The Shaking of the Foundations (1962).
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(and others) had constructed to make them safe in the world, they can now accept what they really are, with all their contradictions and unreconciled desires. They can accept the incomprehensible reality in which their life is set, because it is something akin to their own true self, their own deep self, which is also incomprehensible. Instead of being fundamentally anxious about life, they can relax and trust. They also sense a kinship with other people. Having dropped the mask, and all defences with it, they can see others more clearly and recognize themselves in others, and others in themselves. An habitual attitude of self-concern gives way, slowly perhaps, to a desire to help others. This is not a desire to prove themselves good, or to make up for their half-acknowledged selfishness or to win others’ approval, all of which will be recognized as subtle forms of selfishness. Feelings and desires that are freed from self-anxiety will now be spontaneous and natural, generous and unmeasured. Goodness will be found to be the core of their nature, obscured and restricted only by the false image of themselves that arose from their fear. It is the natural response of their hearts to a world they feel they belong to. Goodness, like evil, has its roots in spiritual situations, so it is in the spiritual arena that the battle with evil, the Lamb’s War, has to be fought. This is not to say that they should see themselves as wholly liberated by the light, while the rest of the world lives in darkness. To think in those polarized terms would be failing to recognize the ambiguity of their lives, of all human lives, which means that they are always being drawn into the ‘bliss’ of ignorance, always having to watch to see what is going on. It would be failing to recognize the ambiguity in others as well, for if they are once again denying those parts of themselves that they find unacceptable, they are surely ‘putting them off from themselves’ on to others. They can’t see them properly because of the image they have foisted on them. Recognizing Others William Penn had a marvellous insight into the way this personal discipline affects our human attitude to others and our action in the world. In an account of the ‘testimonies’ of Friends against the ways of the world, he takes time to explain how they arose. Now it was that a grand inquest came upon our whole life: every work, thought and deed was brought to judgement, the root examined and its tendency considered. ‘The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life’ (1 John 2:16), were opened to our view, the mystery of iniquity in us. And by knowing the evil leaven and its divers effects in ourselves, how it had wrought and what it had done we came to have a sense and knowledge of the states of others: and what we could not, nay, we dare not let live and continue in ourselves, as being manifested to proceed from an evil principle in the time of man’s degeneracy, we could not comply with in others. Now this I say, and that in the fear and presence of the all-seeing, just God, the present honours and respect of the world, among other things, became burdensome to us. We say they had no being in paradise, that they grew in the night-time and come from an ill root, and that they only delighted a vain and ill mind, and that much pride and folly were in them (Penn, 1981, p. 119).
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Penn’s language is significant. It enables him to name evils in his society without ascribing them (exclusively) to the faults of other people. These evils ‘proceeded from an evil principle’, they ‘grew in the night-time’ and ‘came from an ill root’. Human beings were their agents, certainly, but they came from something deeper than their conscious wills. They came from the darkness where humans are not aware of what they do; indeed their not being aware of who they really are, of how they are connected with others and with God, this is the ‘ill-root’ of their evil, or as deep into it as it is possible for us to go. Like other Friends too he had known ‘paradise’ as he had recovered his own true nature in the light; like Fox he had ‘come up in the spirit through the flaming sword into the paradise of God’ and ‘was come up to the state of Adam which he was in before he fell’ (Fox, 1952, p. 27). So he knew from experience where humans had come from, and through the ‘grand inquest’ upon his whole life, he knew what had happened to humans as they became enveloped in the dark night. He recognized their behaviour. He therefore had no sense of superiority to those whose actions he deplored. Conclusion Friends therefore have a unique way of responding to the evils of the world.14 They can see them arising from the very tendencies they have identified in themselves. They have a feeling of commonality with others, not despite the bad things they do, but partly because of them. So they cannot imagine they would rid the world of evil by ridding it of the ‘evil people’, whether literally or metaphorically. On the other hand, they will want, as early Friends did, to ‘bring people off’ the bad ways they have followed so blindly. And they can feel strong and confident in attempting to do this, having discovered in themselves a divine light and power to overcome the evil. Be bold in the power of truth, and valiant for it upon the earth, treading, triumphing over and trampling all deceit under foot, inward and outward; having done it in yourselves in particular, ye have power over the world in general (Fox, 1991, vol. 7, p. 25).
The reverse side of this insight is that other people, however evil they may appear, have this same capacity within them. They may be in darkness, but perhaps unknown to themselves, they also have the light within them, pressing on their conscience. They have only to turn to those promptings, and the light will enlighten them. They can do good, if they choose to mind the light and act on it. They can of course be 14 Geoffrey Nuttall, a scholar with some sympathy for Friends, but not a Friend himself, writes about this uniqueness with special reference to Penn, whose Preface to the first edition of Fox’s Journal he regards as still ‘the most illuminating near-contemporary analysis of the movement’. The Quakers, Penn wrote, ‘are turned off from the vanity of the world and its lifeless ways and teachers, and adhere to this blessed light in themselves, which discovers and condemns sin in all its appearances, and shows how to overcome it if minded and obeyed’. Nuttall comments, ‘Here we have a fresh note: not only off from the vanity of the world but how to overcome it. It is correct elucidation; and it points to an important differential between the Quaker movement and others at first sight similar’ (Nuttall, 2003, pp. 28f).
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helped to do this, if a Friend, for example, lives her life in accordance with the light and thereby gives expression to it, but the decision lies with them. What others do or say may resonate with them, ‘answer that of God’ in them, but it cannot ensure an outcome. Friends can only trust those secret workings of the heart that have brought a change in them. That is their faith, and hope.
PART V Towards Paradigms of Quaker Approaches to Good and Evil
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Chapter 18
Good and Evil: An Epistemological Paradigm Arthur O. Roberts
Introduction The terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ connote trans-cultural concepts that qualify verbal configurations of reality. With synonyms and cognate derivatives these words signify emotional, rational, ethical, and aesthetic judgments. Concepts of good and evil constitute a vital part of humanity’s linguistic infrastructure, providing rational parameters for civil and commercial exchanges. To be human is to accept the burden of choice based on perceptions of right and wrong, a condition from which there is no exit. As a Christian philosopher, however, I posit that – contrary to Sartre – there is light to guide humanity through the darkness shrouding this freedom. Given the ubiquity of this condition, my philosophical approach is intentionally broad. I propose a paradigm of good and evil to assist persons in diverse cultures to coexist more peacefully.1 In the 1980s concerned philosophers coined the term omnicide for nuclear annihilation, which they feared as a terrifying possibility. This group – the International Philosophers for the Prevention of Omnicide (IPPNO) – had scheduled a Moscow meeting in 1989. At the last hour it was canceled due to logistical difficulties encountered by our host. Already ticketed, my wife and I went anyway. I shared my paradigm with scholars at the Russian Institute for Philosophy, suggesting it could help world leaders discover that ‘universal human consensus’ which President Gorbachev had asserted as necessary for human progress.2
1 I first used this ‘geography of thought’ model in classes at George Fox University. It took theological shape in Quaker Religious Thought (1981). A version appears in Roberts, 1996. 2 Mikhail Gorbachev, Address, 43rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, December 7, 1988 (Nezhny, 1988). President Gorbachev’s words, that ‘force or the threat of force can no longer be an instrument of foreign policy’, were matched by participation in arms reduction. His words that ‘freedom of choice is a universal principle that should allow for no exceptions’ fostered an extension of religious freedom. See discussion by K.M. Karchev, chairman, Council of Religious Affairs of the USSR, and Alexander Nezhny, 1988. This discussion anticipated the Vienna Accords, signed January 19, 1989.
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Timeliness of a new paradigm The nuclear threat is no less real in the twenty-first century, although overshadowed by other pandemic threats, such as new flu strains, bio-weapons and the AIDS epidemic. A nuclear arsenal remains despite efforts at control. Although many weapons have been destroyed, more lethal ones are being produced and tested by several countries, including the United States.3 Persons holding diverse political, religious, and social perspectives agree that all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threaten civilization, whether nuclear, chemical or biological. Risks exceed benefits from derivative technologies. From the mid-twentieth century, WMDs have threatened earth’s creatures more ominously than have past disasters, such as plague, genocide, earthquakes and desertification.4 Their presence pressures humanity to transcend partisanship, to confront good and evil on universal terms, at practical levels, and together. My paradigm aims to enhance mutual trust, reducing threats of global disaster so people can coexist more peacefully, and to help political leaders opt for peace more confidently, with fewer excursions into violence. Human misery, aggravated by anarchy and tyranny, has muted rhetorical clamor for so-called necessary warfare or for violence as the ultimate tool of governance.5 In the latter part of the twentieth century leaders within the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledged as moral failure attempts at military domination – even using the word sin.6 Such confession of hubris testified that national sovereignty lacks moral autonomy. Terrorism currently forces all governments to examine 3 Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, in the November/December 2004 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, write as follows: More than a decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only the United States continues to deploy land-based nuclear weapons outside its borders. Defense and NATO officials have yet to outline the purpose or the targets of the weapons, but new documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and other sources shed some light on the composition of still-deployed nuclear weapons, as well as the reductions that have taken place. After reviewing both new and old evidence we have concluded that there are more than three times as many bombs in Europe as was previously thought. We estimate that approximately 480 bombs are housed at eight bases in six European nations. Three types of bombs are deployed: B61-3, B61-4, and B61-10. 4 Omnicide could be contradicted by insuring that at least some persons and environments are not destroyed, but such disproportion of means and ends is morally repugnant. The appalling prospect facing survivors of a ravaged planet prompts dedication to alternatives. 5 ‘The myth of effective violence is as pernicious as any form of evil I can think of’ (Mock, 2004, p. 192). Mock proposes practical peacemaking. 6 Bellah offers this judgment: We are finally defenseless on this earth. Our material belongings have not brought us happiness. Our military defenses will not avert nuclear destruction. Nor is there any indication in productivity or any new weapons system that will change the truth of our condition … We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after
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their grounds for authority. Biblical theology posits a theistic ground: sovereignty belongs to God, not to ‘tribes, tongues, peoples or nations’, as John the Revelator symbolically depicts by proclaiming that ‘Babylon has fallen’. Decades ago, José Miranda called the nuclear crisis an ‘exacerbation of sin to an extreme … the breaking point which mankind needed to become aware of the infernal machinery which it has assembled and to be definitively delivered from it’. Miranda looked to a Biblical/Marxist deliverance from systemic evil within Western civilization (Miranda, 1971, p. 254). Socialism’s subsequent failure to deliver does not void his insight that our times constitute an historical breaking point. The opposite of omnicide is omnivive. Forced to acknowledge evil posed by omnicidal threat, whether by nuclear, chemical or biological means, the world’s people may discover forms of universal good greater than preservation of privileged posterity. Expanded space/time networks allow humankind to confront what is good (not just what is evil) on global terms. Persons holding differing philosophical and religious persuasions agree that conditions favorable to human safety and freedom must be sought! How can technology accommodate to altruism, swords become plowshares? How does good overcome evil? Good and Evil in Philosophic Context The terms good and evil function linguistically in diverse ways, e.g. in a Platonic sense denoting forms of reality, in a Kantian sense identifying transcendental regulative principles, in a Hegelian sense positing historical necessity, in a theological sense affirming divine purpose. Judgments about good and evil are variously calibrated by appeals to consequentialist ethics (happiness, social utility, self-realization) or to formalistic ones (nature, duty, divine command). Within each system an apparent discontinuity, a good world flawed by evil, troubles minds groping for coherence. What is often overlooked should be stated: the presence of good, as well as the presence of evil, begs philosophic pondering. Some idealists seek coherence by dubbing evil illusion, others by bridging polarity with a hyphen (good–evil). Such efforts seem tautological. Some realists attempt to void ontological status by reducing good and evil to aesthetic preferences or cultural epiphenomena (leading to unprincipled dominance of the weak by the strong). Other realists eschew coherent resolution. They simply assign different, even contradictory, moral standards to public and private conduct, or to favored and disfavored institutions, ideologies, places or eras. Or they separate systemic from personal good/evil, denying one and affirming the other. In global society such compartmentalization abets irresponsibility, and, by default, violence. In any form, sphere sovereignty fails the test of coherence. Efforts to deny normative function to moral claims fail; so do efforts to justify ethical relativism on the basis of cultural relativism. Nihilism, economic chaos, power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and share our material wealth with those in need (Bellah, 1985, pp. 295–6).
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personality disorders and state megalomania follow efforts to define act and agency value-free. Lacking common moral foundations civilization sinks into a swamp of contending interests. Bernard Williams labels as ‘the Archimedean point’ that rationality requires commitment to an ethical life (Williams, 1985, p. 29). Socrates and Kant understood this, appealing to universal obligation. Jesus knew this when he said to treat others as you would have them treat you. Parents affirm the principle when teaching children to be truthful and to treat neighbors fairly. As recent scandals demonstrate, exempting corporate power from universal obligation is socially dysfunctional and morally inauthentic.7 Augustine’s depiction of evil as diminished good avoids a morally enervating good–evil dualism. Coherence entails good possessing greater reality than evil. Evil, as a contemporary author states, ‘exists parasitically … sucking out the life of what God has created’ (Wright, 2003, p. 51). Good and Evil: An Epistemological Paradigm This epistemological paradigm focuses upon how we know good and evil, upon the modalities of understanding. It holds that persons acquire knowledge by sense, reason, and intuition. To use John Polkinghorne’s phrase, ‘Epistemology models Ontology’.8 I am aware of, but disagree with, charges that intuition is either overlooked empirical evidence or elliptical logic. My paradigm could be adapted to dual rather than tripartite epistemology, but human experience exhibits three modes of understanding, and wisdom affirms their interconnection. This paradigm is science in its inclusive sense (from the Latin scientia) – intelligence at work in the world.9 My paradigm uses circle and light/dark metaphors common to religious, humanistic, artistic, and philosophic expression. Thought precedes communication, of course, and communication takes sensory form. From sensory experience nonlinguistic creatures logically process cause and effect, inferential choice and costbenefit analysis to opt and act. They employ body language such as foot stamping and vocalization to communicate chosen judgments. (Do animals instinctively sense a logos center?) Human verbal language, however, more systematically communicates thought beyond rudimentary concern for individual or species safety.
7 Consider as evidence numerous organizations advocating ethical integrity within political, social, cultural and corporate structures. 8 A physicist and theologian, John Polkinghorne affirms a universe of open process, asserting that ‘what we know is a reliable guide to what is the case’ (2004, p. 79). 9 I use intuition broadly. Scientific closure as experienced by Albert Einstein illustrates intuition. So does mystical experience. General psychic collating of memory as depicted by Husserl falls into this category, but his efforts ‘to provide an assumption-free account of the nature of evidence’ can run into circular reasoning: to know that our judgment upon sufficiency of evidence is correct assumes an intuition of the a priori. Such judgment upon the act of judging suggests intuition as a separate mode of knowledge. See W.T. Jones’s critique of Husserl in Jones, 1969, p. 408.
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Human responses to tragedies such as the earthquake and flood disasters of 2004 and 2005 and to ordinary acts of love signify, however, that tactile language often communicates values more concretely and intuitively than does verbal language.10 Picture the model geographically, as a universe of thought with an administrative hub and three surrounding territories, SENSE, REASON, and INTUITION (Figure 18.1, ‘Universe of Thought’). Although citizens travel freely among these territories, most feel at home in one, comfortable in a second, and foreign in the third. Interactions between dominant and recessive modalities shape the landscape. This geography of thought overlays human networks – cultural, political, religious, commercial, ethnic and intellectual. How does this model portray morality? In this way: words map semantic movement along a good–evil axis from ordering center to chaotic rim to outer darkness. This applies to systems as well as to persons. We speak, for example, of ‘maximizing the good’, ‘increasing value’, ‘eroding confidence’. Linguistic traffic moves from order toward chaos: from ‘sensible’ to ‘sensuous’ to ‘insensitive’ to ‘sensual’; from ‘rational’ to ‘rationalize’ to ‘irrational’ to ‘deranged’; from ‘intuitive’ to ‘esoteric’ to ‘superstitious’ to ‘diabolic’. Meanings shift from good center to evil edge, from wisdom to folly. Words identify practices considered edging toward evil. People assert, for example, that certain entertainment induces sensual degeneracy, that hypocrisy leads to cynicism, that Satan worship induces intuitive degeneracy. On a systemic level oppression can occur at any point on the periphery. We verbalize a moral slippery slope, from ‘authority’ to ‘control’ to ‘suppression’ to ‘genocide’ to ‘omnicide’. Politically, the path toward the periphery reads: ‘persuasion’, ‘force’, ‘violence’. Citizens of this universe of discourse tend to perceive the good along accustomed radial lines moving toward the center and to perceive evil along foreign radial lines moving toward peripheral darkness. They show less acuity in respect to evil in their own territory and the good in others. As noted, citizens feel at home in one territory, comfortable in a second, and alien in a third. Some persons become misfits, not at home anywhere. Others become alienated and migrate. Some persons are at ease in each region, drawing strength from the center – true Erasmian humanists! Most persons and societies follow a pattern of two dominant modes of understanding and one recessive; their cultures reinforce such patterns. Carl Jung’s distinctions between perceiving by the senses and by intuition, elaborated in respect to introvert and extrovert behavior, in Psychological Types, has been developed by Isabel Briggs Myers into a personality taxonomy, e.g. ST = sensing plus thinking, SF = sensing plus feeling, NF = intuition plus feeling, and NT = intuition plus thinking (Myers, 1980 p. 4ff.). Thus sensory-rationalists feel at home in the senses and comfortable in the world of reason. Or in reverse order. Such persons quickly spot evils within intuitive territory. In religious terms they decry certain practices in that foreign territory as demonic, in secular terms as psychopathic. From accustomed material comfort they look askance 10 I discuss the communicative function of the senses in Roberts, 1996). Re: non-linguistic thought see Bermudez, 2003. Bermudez shows how animals exhibit forms of logic. See section 7.2, pp. 140ff.
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at primitives, artists, and religious mystics, quick to label their actions deviancy, or at least dub the non-rational as the irrational. In respect to the good, these sensoryrationalists readily affirm the physical. Touch, sight, hearing, tasting and smelling become much-traveled roads on the human journey, guided by rational intelligence. So they welcome technological advances as ways to improve conditions. They measure justice and equity in terms of material well being, sustaining a prudent user attitude toward nature. Their rational perspectives give ontological stature and moral priority to abstract systems enshrined in academic, scientific, political, cultural, social, religious, and commercial institutions. Flags, parades, art and slogans provide sensory symbols, whose mystique sometimes appears more parochial than universal. Rational-intuitives feel at home in rationality and are comfortable in the world of the intuition. Or in reverse order. But they’re uneasy in the sensory realm, quickly spotting evil in decadent art, enervating life-styles, media obscenity and sexual exploitation. Their culture reinforces a mystique of abstract systems, less by sensory displays and propaganda and more by restraints upon passion and by transcendental, or cultic, parameters for human freedom and creativity. Rational intuitives bring stability to community, elevating thought and spirit over bodily passions. They provide discipline to individuals and guiding principles to groups. These disciplines flow from intuited convictions embedded in reasoned ideological or religious systems. Their political and religious movements tend to be puritanical, particularly during pioneering stages. Plato gave credence to this perspective: he wanted musicians and poets kept in check lest society lapse into barbarism. Sensory-intuitives feel at home in the realm of sense and comfortable with intuition. Or in reverse order. They feel uneasy and alienated in the rational world. They spot evil in institutionalized power, consigning to peripheral darkness agencies such as the Pentagon, the Kremlin or the World Trade Organization. They’re outraged at deceits embodied or imagined in intelligence networks. Some sensory-intuitive persons espouse conspiracy theories, blaming social disequilibrium on international Jewry or the Trilateral Commission. For these (mostly) gentle revolutionaries tyranny plagues governance; they’re less perceptive about anarchy. They choose simplified life-styles over expansive ones. Such persons currently surf the waves of post-modernism, preferring narrative to creed and constitution. Because most recent religious expressions have been rational-intuitive, and most recent political expressions sensory-rational, these sensory-intuitives may react counter-culturally, expressing their visions through literature and art. They struggle to get ‘outside the box’ of convention, sometimes narcissistically but at other times prophetically so. Their earthy mysticisms sometimes correct rationalistic distortions of what faith in God means – replacing dogma with experiential faith and compassionate (if nonsystematic) concerns for oppressed groups. In my model (see Figure 18.1) logos (the Greek term for ‘word’) constitutes the center. This term connotes more than rationality linked with subordinated empirical science or mystic intuition. Thus my paradigm differs from most Platonic or Kantian models. The center is divine purpose coupled with personal, volitional, intelligence. From this center comes insight about personhood and society, about human and cosmic wholeness. This center is supra-individual but not impersonal, conjoining God, the self and others.
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Figure 18.1. Universe of Thought. Illustration by Marvin Kistler, Newberg, Oregon, USA For many persons, myself among them, Jesus Christ incarnates the logos, the universe of truth’s administrative center. Appropriately we speak of ‘Gospel,’ good news! Other faiths intuit a logos principle, but affirm it differently – and with varying strengths. Philosophic systems posit a moral center, e.g. as pure form, world spirit, wisdom, evolution, zeitgeist, historical necessity, or intelligent design. Although affirming a Christian logos theology, William Penn welcomed concurring evidence of a moral center from less explicit revelations. Even a hen is tender to her chickens, he said, and asserted that natural law preserves civil interest better than false religion (Penn, 2004, p. 441). It’s the nature of worldviews to posit an ethical base. Even popular culture does, by romanticizing cosmic forces. But for the most part, as Habermas asserts, ‘modern societies no longer have at their disposal an authoritative center for self-reflection and steering’. In his judgment, mutual understanding arising from the people must re-energize our political systems.11 11 Habermas, 1987, Lecture Twelve, especially p. 358ff. Habermas believes the political state has become an affair of functionally specialized subsystems some of which, pertinently the nuclear arms race, have become nearly autonomous. More complex systems cannot deliver the nation-state from its bondage. He asks, nevertheless, on what other soil can universalistic
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My model scales evil and good along axial lines from periphery to center clarifies and reaffirms the common human capacity for making moral judgments. We are human beings first, citizens second. The paradigm provides a trans-lingual, trans-cultural, basis for trust, an instrument for comparative criticism, a linguistic framework for dialogue in a dangerous world. Implications and Applications of the Model Recognizing a common epistemological center in respect to good and evil can help mediate differences that otherwise might be misunderstood and escalate into violence. Thus a secularist who sees creative artistry in a poem can dialogue with a Muslim who hears blasphemy, or with a Christian offended by vulgarity. Management and labor can honor the dignity of all work, whether ‘white collar’ or ‘blue collar’. Sensitivity to a moral center overrides caste. Believer and secularist can acknowledge good and evil within systems and within the psyche, holding each other accountable while disputing moral foundations. Doing good together becomes acted faith, implicitly witnessing the logos. Certain technologies make omnicide possible; others, such as accessible communication, enhance the common good. The world’s people have met on a global common. Partisan propaganda is exposed to public view. Better to trade goods and skills and swap stories than to deploy surrogate electronic gladiators to defend parochial honor! The paradigm has implications and applications for philosophy. It avoids a reductionism often found in modes of empirical inquiry locked in theoretical systems and doctrines or clustered in ideological intuitions. The model provides an alternative to an ethical relativism that leaves authorities powerless to resolve conflicting moral claims on other than preferential grounds. It provides a better base for tolerance than the amoral form that fragments society, pampers the ego and induces enervating anarchy or oppressive tyranny. My paradigm opens a door to understanding and practicing virtues, such as loyalty and truthfulness, which gleam like jewels even within flawed social settings, affirming common human bonds. Because the good is distributed bountifully among territories of the understanding, spirituality may be ascribed to persons actuating different modes. Accountants, artists, athletes, chefs, contemplatives, carpenters, engineers, executives, preachers, professors, teachers, waiters and writers have equal access to the center and are equally at risk at the periphery. Sin and holiness mark choices at periphery and center in each territory. The paradigm is useful for analyzing cultural traffic, e.g. periodic mode shifts from rational-sensory to intuitive-sensory, as evidenced particularly by the interface of technology and popular culture.
value orientations, symbolized by culturally revolutionary social movements, take root than in the democratic, constitutional nation-states that emerged from the French Revolution? Within these states the particular and the universal could unite without coercion. Habermas believes mutual understanding must arise from the public will, and not just from economic or political manipulation.
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In global society the good, not just the evil, can be enhanced cross-culturally. A formerly culture-bound fisherman, captivated by Jesus’ vision, instructs us. Wrote Peter: I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ – he is Lord of all (Acts 10:35 NRSV).
Acknowledging how persons and cultures define moral progressions from good to evil may curb temptations to demonize people in order to justify violence.12 The paradigm has implications and applications for Christian theology. It provides a context for logos Christology, correlating modes of human perception with modes of divine revelation. It provides a method for spirituality assessment, by oneself or others. The paradigm provides a way to clarify actions appropriate for heeding the Second Commandment: ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. As the apostle Paul wrote: … test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this (I Thess. 5:22–24 NRSV).
The model has applications for Christian discipleship. Centering modes of understanding upon the logos may result in greater empathy and personal integrity. Some persons may not be sufficiently sensuous (‘sensuously challenged’). From others they can learn more fully to sense God’s creation, to see with their eyes, to hear with their ears, to taste with their palates, to smell with their noses, to touch with their hands the wonders of creation, including its creatures. Some persons may not be rational enough. They can learn from others more logically to process data and draw conclusions. Some persons may not be intuitive enough. From others they can learn to pray more intently and to envision solutions to otherwise intractable problems. Yielding their bodies as temples of the Spirit enables Christian believers to heed the moral authority of the other person, like the Samaritan responding to a victim of violence.13 From the center God reveals specific patterns of truth and love and guards against sin skulking at the periphery. To summarize, in sensory territory lust threatens love, in rational territory deceit threatens truth, and in intuitive territory magic threatens prayer. The theological term sanctification signifies a logos re-centering, with the senses rightly accessing the creation, reason focused
12 Former US ambassador to Rwanda, David Rawson, thinks diplomats underrated how a loathing of ‘the other’ underlay the Hutu and Tutsi conflict (Rawson, 2003). 13 Emmanuel Levinas has heightened awareness of the authority of ‘the other’ in moral judgments. ‘The wisdom of love’ arises from that authority (Beals, 2004). Beals, 2004, pp. 146–64, contrasts Nazi techniques for creating ‘psychological invisibility’, to mask the authentic demands of the ‘Other’, with actions by the villagers of Le Chambon, France, who at great personal cost accepted such obligations.
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single-mindedly upon universal truth, and intuition discerning and acting upon God’s will in specific situations. Conclusion Humanity stands at risk from sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical and biological. Unexamined knowledge patterns exacerbate conflict and impede the cooperation needed to reduce these risks and to discover more authentic forms of human community. My paradigm offers reflexive interpretation of these patterns. The three modes of understanding, sense, reason and intuition, constitute a grid overlaying all societies. Linguistically these modes reflect moral judgments along good/evil axial lines. Some persons judge good and evil from sensoryrationalistic perspectives, some from rational-intuitive perspectives, and others from sensory-intuitive perspectives. Awareness of the cultural interplay of dominant and recessive modalities can reduce misunderstandings and foster hope for a more humane ethic. Global awareness may be enhanced as good and evil are understood in epistemological modes. Although societies vary ideologically, they all posit a moral center, for which I choose the historic term logos. As a Christian I affirm Jesus Christ to be the incarnate manifestation of this center, agent of divine grace, redeemer from evil, and exemplar of righteousness. Significant paradigm shifts do occur in human history. A rightly spoken word illumines the world. Visualizing the geography of thought may lead to wisdom in choosing peaceful patterns for the future and confidence in following them. As catalysts for social change scholars can help humanity threatened by omnicide to cope creatively. We may discover for our troubled century what George Fox, leader of the Quaker Awakening, found for his: the ocean of light overcomes the ocean of darkness. As a Christian scholar, I testify that God moves through finite understandings to draw us toward and into that community where God’s will is done, on earth as in heaven.
Chapter 19
The Secular Ethics of Liberal Quakerism Jackie Leach Scully
Quakers do not begin with a theory. They begin with an event in which, ideally, the presence of God is experienced by each person as part of a group experience (Sheeran, 1983, p. 5).
Introduction The contributors to this collection take a variety of approaches to Quaker thinking on good and evil. As Phil Smith says in his chapter in this volume, Quakers have a general optimism about the power of God to transform humankind and the world and this, combined with the principled rejection of war, means that questions of good and evil have a special bite in Quakerism (Smith, Chapter 11). As a religious society, most of whose members still hold some sort of a belief in God, Quakerism would be expected to have a theistic flavour to its metaethics and normative ethics. Other contributors have shown this is pretty much correct for the Evangelical and Conservative Quaker traditions. The ethical structure of Liberal Quakerism, however, is rather more complex. I am particularly intrigued that, in ethical matters, Liberal Quakerism in Britain, mainland Europe, America and Australasia manages to be deeply ‘in the world’ (and sometimes ahead of it) and at the same time not quite ‘of it’. In this chapter, I suggest that one of the ways in which Liberal Quakerism has done this is by adopting as a central part of its identity a procedural ethics that is more readily grasped by secular ethical thinking than the procedural and metaethics of other religious groups. Attempting to define comprehensively the ethics of Liberal Quakerism, such that every Liberal Quaker would recognize her own moral stance, would be an impossible project. The contributions to this book amply demonstrate not just the diversity of theological thinking within worldwide Quakerism, but also the very loose framework that Liberal Quakerism itself places around the beliefs that Friends are supposed to hold in common. Despite this diversity, though, it is possible to extract a number of characteristic ideas about good and evil that mark Liberal Quakers, first as believing and practising members of the Religious Society of Friends (and not of another religious group), and second as Liberal Friends (and not within the evangelical or conservative traditions). In this chapter I first outline three key points in the development of Liberal Quakerism in Britain that are especially relevant to how moral evaluation is practised there today. Then I look at the normative ethics and metaethics in use by contemporary British Liberal Quakers, based on some empirical observations I
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made during a research project in Britain Yearly Meeting in the mid-1990s. I relate these ethical concepts and processes to parallels in secular ethics, and then consider the discernment procedure of Liberal Quakerism through the lens of one of these: discourse ethics. Finally, I sketch out how the Quaker discernment procedure in principle allows Friends to negotiate internal polarizations, and also deal with the tension of acting as a prophetic voice in society while still being taken seriously by secular agencies. Some Liberal Landmarks Three points in the development of Liberal Quakerism in Britain can be identified that are particularly relevant to how British Friends today approach morally contentious issues. First, there are two statements, or versions of them, that are associated with the founder of Quakerism, George Fox. That these are key statements across the whole spectrum of world Quakerism is demonstrated by the number of other contributors to this volume who refer to them. They remain central to contemporary Liberal Quakers’ understanding of themselves, and especially to Liberal Quaker thinking on ethical issues. One of these is Fox’s description of his vision of the ocean of darkness (evil) that was overcome by the ocean of light (meaning Christ): I saw, also, that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that also I saw the infinite love of God, and I had great openings (Fox, 1952, p. 19).
The metaphors of light/dark in early Friends’ language of spiritual conflict are prominent and powerful, and have undoubtedly shaped later Quaker theorizations of good and evil. As both Marge Abbott and Corey Beals in this volume note, light/dark metaphors lend themselves easily to a conceptualization of evil as the absence or distortion of good, by analogy with darkness following the lack of light, rather than as an independent substance or entity. The second statement is Fox’s demand that Friends recognize and respond to ‘that of God’ in every person. This is possibly the single defining theological statement still held with undiminished conviction by all Liberal Quakerism (Hobday, 1992, p. 69). It lends itself to more than one interpretation but by far the most widely held among Liberal Friends today is that everybody contains some kind of ‘spark’ of divinity and that therefore they are also innately good (Dandelion, 1996, p. 268). Quaker theologians and historians are keen to point out that Fox’s words would have been understood rather differently by his audience of early Friends. But what matters for comprehending the ethical beliefs of Liberal Quakers today is how they draw on this saying of Fox, and on the iconography of light and dark, to define human goodness and also – crucially – methods for the discernment of the good and the right. As well as these two historical statements by George Fox, a third key step in the evolution of British Liberal Quaker thinking was the 1895 Manchester Conference. Recognizing the impact of nineteenth-century biblical criticism the conference
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questioned scripture as the ultimate spiritual authority (Isichei, 1970, p. 40). In a move that was advertised as a return to the basics of the original Quakers, priority shifted to individual experience, given authority by the personal encounter with the Inward Light and so the reality of an unmediated relationship with God (Dandelion, 1996). This shift in location of spiritual authority had long term implications for the siting of moral authority as well. These three key ideas – evil as the absence or distortion of good, the intrinsic good of human nature, and the spiritual and moral authority of individual experience – run through the continuing evolution of Liberal Quakerism, and their effects are visible in many contemporary ethical conceptualizations. Normative Ethics in Contemporary Liberal Quakerism In 1996 and 1997 as a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow,1 I undertook a project to help further British Friends’ thinking on ethical and theological issues in gene technology. In the process I had the opportunity to observe British Quakers’ processes of ethical evaluation in a systematic way. Although the work was formally about genetic ethical dilemmas, much of what I found is more widely applicable. These observations give some insight into how Liberal Friends identify and structure areas of moral difficulty, the values and processes they use to judge them, their ideas about the origin of evil, and so on (Scully, 2002). In this section, I draw on this research to consider Quaker use of normative ethical theory. Moral philosophers have developed numerous ethical theories to provide ‘roadmaps’ to understanding, and ideally solving, moral issues. And yet one of the clearest outcomes of this project was that individual Quaker participants rarely, if ever, stick to any single moral theory or approach. In fact: Within the same conversation a participant might use the vocabulary of justice, talk about autonomy, duties and obligations and the absolute value of human persons, appeal to rights, consider the benefits as the sum total of the consequences to all society, take into account the relationships of care between different agents, search for comparable situations or ruminate on the actions of a really good person (‘What would Jesus do?’) in these circumstances. An observer might therefore have identified them as making indiscriminate use of justice ethics, principlism, Kantian deontology, rights theory, utilitarianism, feminist care ethics, casuistry or virtue ethics (Scully, 2002, p. 211).
Friends’ evaluation processes here look less like the building of a consistent and coherent ethical argument, of the kind that philosophy students are drilled in until they become second nature, than the creation of what I call an ethical collage (Scully, 2002, pp. 211–12). In everyday life it was clear that Quakers find no particular virtue in a person being consistent about the theoretical framework on which she draws. What matters at each stage of the process of moral evaluation is whether what she says properly articulates her moral understanding at that time; that it is true to her 1 At that time (1996–1997) the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust funded Quaker Fellowships for periods averaging 12 months, during which the Fellow would undertook work that in some way benefited the life of Britain Yearly Meeting.
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experience and to her interpretation of it. To ensure this happens the Quaker chooses elements from ethical tradition, recombining and reinterpreting them as seems right, and combining them where necessary with innovations. Choices about exactly what is retrieved from tradition, how it is recombined and reinterpreted, and how much innovation to introduce, are as much intuitive as analytical. In this process coherence is maintained not by sticking strictly to the parameters of a given ethical theory, but by drawing on unifying ‘concepts, analogies, metaphors and symbols’ (Stout, 1990, p. 169). Shared values are also drawn on, and codified as ethical principles that help to put values that are often not articulated and indeed may operate well below the level of conscious thought, to work. In principle there is enormous potential for diversity here, but in practice commonality was relatively easy to identify. Some of the values that the study showed to be held by British Liberal Friends were: the intrinsic worth of every person, truth (telling and knowing), taking responsibility, freedom, justice, and inclusiveness. These can be mapped onto associated ethical principles, such as respecting people’s autonomously made choices, or the requirement to protect the most vulnerable in society. In coming to their individual stances on moral issues, Quakers behave like the majority of people who are not philosophers (in other words, the majority of people): generally, unless the problem is too unfamiliar, they have an initial rapid, instinctive response (a ‘gut reaction’), which is then buttressed with the help of facts, rational arguments, principles and so on. There is substantial evidence from research in moral psychology that evaluation, especially when it is a person’s own private reflection, operates more after the model of the defence lawyer (arguing the best case for the client) than the judge (dispassionately weighing up evidence from all sides: Haidt, 2001). Defending their intuitions, Quakers would sometimes use consequentialist arguments, or arguments resembling care ethics, while rights-based arguments were, perhaps surprisingly for such a socially conscious group, quite rare (Scully, 2002, p. 218). By far the most popular approach, however, relied on a model of the person who can do no other than act in accordance with an internalized alignment with the good. This has a close parallel in virtue ethics, which says the way to identify the right thing in any situation is to identify what the morally good person would do (Hursthouse, 1999; Crisp and Slote, 2000). The theory prioritizes the development of individual moral character, giving an account of the sort of features, or virtues, that would be characteristic of the person leading a good life. It claims that a person with the appropriate set of virtues (courage, intelligence, patience and so on) would make ethically correct choices. Virtue ethics is an agent-centred theory.2 By contrast, the other major theoretical approaches (consequentialism, utilitarianism, deontology, principlism and so on) prioritize the evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of an act according to some kind of criteria, for example whether it is in accord with a given maxim such as the categorical imperative, or the utilitarian requirement to maximize happiness. Virtue ethics, on the other hand, asks: what kind of person would do X? Although act-centred ethical theories have dominated secular ethics for 2 Stohr (2006) disagrees with this definition but I find it a useful if simplified rule of thumb.
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the last couple of centuries, agent-centred approaches predate them; virtue ethics has experienced something of a revival over the last half century. The ‘aretaic turn’ to the good person in place of the good act has a lot of appeal. But as Rachel Muers’ chapter in this volume discusses, the split between act and agent can be problematic. Muers’ chapter refers to the challenge presented by Bonhoeffer’s statement that ‘it is worse to be evil than to do evil’. She notes, ‘Liberal Quakers might be expected to resist talk of people “being evil” or of “villains”’ (Muers, p. 174); this supports my own impression of Liberal Friends (and that even evangelical and conservative Friends are much more restrained in their use of these terms than their equivalents in other Christian churches), although I know of no empirical studies that have looked at this. Given this reluctance, it seems contradictory then that Liberal Friends in my study found a virtue ethics approach so congenial. It becomes less counterintuitive once we note that Friends are not as resistant to talk of ‘being good’ as they are to talk of ‘being evil’. Even if Liberal Friends are reluctant to use the official language of sainthood, they will often refer back to moral or spiritual exemplars – Fox himself, Woolman, Gandhi – and they will readily describe others as ‘good people’. The contemporary understanding of ‘that of God in everyone’ as ‘goodness in everyone’ encourages an account in which moral acts and moral agents are radically separated. In this account it is possible for an agent who is essentially good to do both good and bad acts. The good acts would straightforwardly reflect his or her intrinsically good nature, while the bad acts would indicate a turning away from the motivations that ought to arise spontaneously out of that good nature. Liberal Quakers might put forward various hypotheses as to why this turning away has taken place, as Abbott shows in her chapter. However, the turn to virtue ethics is not the whole story. Although they made relatively few arguments along strictly deontological lines, Quakers in my study tended to justify their virtue-related statements by grounding them in the nonnegotiable claim that every individual has intrinsic value, and the associated deontological command that persons should be treated with respect as persons. ‘That of God in everyone’ provided the ground for this deontological layer of argument (Scully, 2002, p. 219). Specifically theologically flavoured deontological arguments (along the lines of, the right thing to do is to obey the will of God/follow the promptings of the Spirit) were also much less common than might have been expected from a religious group. In fact, the closest deontological link here is procedural rather than substantive. By this I mean that the criterion for whether an action or stance is morally right is not whether it is in accordance with the will of God, but whether it has been arrived at through Quaker discernment processes. We might say that the Quaker categorical imperative is: Act only after your options have been held, individually and collectively, in the Light. I shall come back to this point later.
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Metaethics Metaethics is concerned with fundamental concepts in moral life. In my discussion here, I take metaethics to mean ideas about the nature and identification of good and evil – such as, what is good, or what are the sources of our knowledge of good acts or agents. These are not (or need not be) normative ethical judgements in themselves, but questions about the background to the normative ethical claims we make in everyday ethical choices or, more ambitiously, to construct elaborate ethical theories. I’m specifically excluding from this discussion the approach to metaethics that more analytically oriented philosophy would be interested in, for example defining what kind of sentences moral statements are. There is a major divide here between the kind of metaethical claims that are made by theological and those made by secular ethics. Present day theological ethics continues a long cultural tradition in which definitions of the good are grounded in metaphysical ideas about God. Historically, the metaethics of most cultures (and certainly the Judaeo-Christian and Hellenic cultures from which contemporary western societies have evolved) has been theistically based. The result is a metaethics that can give some conceptually simple, though often practically challenging, answers both to abstract questions about the nature of good (for example, that it is ‘whatever is in accordance with the will of God’) and to concrete matters of the right course of action in particular cases (such as, ‘whatever God commands/furthers the kingdom of heaven/the Bible says/my priest tells me I should do’). Secular ethics on the other hand has the qualitatively different task of answering those same questions but without recourse to the idea of a supernatural being as either the source of or pointer towards good. This requirement has driven the development of an array of secular metaethical frameworks. Personal observation suggests to me that when colleagues who operate within a religious paradigm talk with secular ethicists they are inclined to use these non-religious metaethical frameworks as an intermediate, rather than ultimate, level of discourse. They might for example say that it is possible to ‘discern the good’ because of something like an ‘interior moral compass’, which would be a claim from ethical intuitionism, and both theological and secular ethicists would be able to go a long way in discussion together with the help of this shared vocabulary. But theological ethicists are likely also to say (given the chance) that the capacity for discernment exists because God created humanity with the potential to distinguish what conforms to God’s desires from what doesn’t. Or a theological ethicist might be able to agree with an adherent of ethical naturalism that the right and the good are properties that can be observed from the world around us, but is likely to take the additional step, which would not be meaningful to the ethical naturalist, of adding that this is so because these are empirically observable features of the world that God creates and maintains. As Abbott shows in her chapter, few Liberal Friends today embrace a substantive view of evil. As well as the problem of indicating where the substance resides, this view of evil faces the old theodical difficulty of explaining why an all-powerful and good God should have gone to the trouble of creating/maintaining a separate force of evil. More Quakers, especially those influenced by Buddhism and related beliefs, are inclined towards seeing evil as illusion, although (as Beals notes) this theory
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itself becomes more problematic the more exposure we have to the sheer magnitude of global human suffering, and particularly the suffering that results directly from deliberate choice: murder, rape, genocide. For many Liberal Friends, evil is best understood as the absence or a distortion of good, especially, as Abbott says, the absence of knowledge or insight, closely connected to related ideas illumination and light. There is an asymmetry here that is linked to the agent/act distinction encountered earlier. Other contributors to this collection, including Muers and Smith, have noted the overwhelming Quaker desire to look for the good in people rather than the bad. It is not that Friends ignore evil in practice, as their distinctive tradition of social engagement proves. It is rather that Quakers today view people as essentially good, by virtue of the original bit of the divine nature they carry within them (‘that of God ...’). Goodness is a basic feature of human ontology. By contrast, evil is understood as a deviation or falling away from this into moral pathology. Liberal Friends’ metaethics, then, are closely connected to their theories of human ontology. In this case the answer to the metaethical question of whether good and evil consist in the thing that is done or the person doing it depends entirely on whether it is good or evil we are talking about. British Liberal Friends take the innate and primary goodness of persons as a non-negotiable truth. Hence behaviours that are morally approved of are likely to be articulated in terms of the intrinsic good nature of that agent, while morally deplorable ones are more likely to be described in terms of actions that are separable from the fundamental being of the person doing them. Metaethics of Procedure Ethical theories provide frameworks for normative analysis and judgement; metaethics deals with the nature and ultimate source of good and evil. A further aspect of moral life, however, is the procedures that individuals or groups follow in order to identify the good or the right choice. (I use procedures here to distinguish a set of rules formalizing how moral evaluations should be done, individually but also collectively, from the cognitive and other mental processes that individuals use in their private moral reflections.) While not strictly metaethical in content, such procedural aspects depend closely on people’s metaethical beliefs about the sources of knowledge of the good. For example, if we believe, along with the moral realists, that there are moral truths ‘out there’, then our attempts to judge what to do will be more directed towards perceiving those truths. If we are moral non-naturalists, that is we hold that moral insights can’t be inferred from the facts of the natural world but are shown to us through the workings of an internal guide, our procedures will probably be more introspective and less directed towards collecting empirical data about moral practices or the outcomes of choices. With this in mind I want to look now at Liberal Quakerism’s procedures of ethical reflection. The procedural structure fully recognises the authority given to personal experience in Liberal Quakerism but systematically counterbalances it with corporate scrutiny. These procedures, unique among the Christian churches, demonstrate how
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Liberal Quakerism contains its two internal poles of high mysticism and worldly pragmatism, and also holds its place within secular society together with its selfidentity as a group that takes the reality of continuing revelation, the potential daily inbreaking of God, as a given. Discernment … At the level of the individual, many Liberal Friends place their trust in what I have called an ‘interior moral compass’ to guide them towards the right course of action. Although it does not exclude other approaches, the idea of an integrated guide that generates moral intuitions prior to or in place of rationality is particularly well fitted to virtue ethics. A secular ethicist could also classify it as a non-naturalist, and sometimes intuitionist, approach. A theological ethicist might describe it in terms of the individual’s beliefs and practices that enable her to discern the will of God. Here, the interior guide is not (solely) the end product of a person’s moral training and self-discipline, but also of her voluntary opening up to God as a moral authority beyond herself. What Quakers call ‘discernment’ is the testing of an insight, that a secular ethicist would call a moral intuition or rationally reached conclusion, to be sure it is authentic and correct. Testing is needed because both moral intuition and rational argument can be wrong: the former can be a flawed expression of individual bias, while the latter can omit crucial factors, for example, or incorrectly weight the ones that it uses. In secular terms the intuition or conclusion is held up against criteria such as logical and practical plausibility, past experience, and the ethical tradition of the community. Religious groups are also likely to hold that the insight must be tested to see if it conforms to God, but will differ in their ideas of how exactly conformity can be determined. Compared to other Christian churches and to the evangelical and conservative traditions within Quakerism, Liberal Quakers are less likely to turn to scripture as an authoritative guide here, or to the past written guidance of key figures in the Quaker world (Dandelion, 1996, pp. 134–6). The authority given to individual spiritual claims in Liberal Quakerism has already been mentioned; acknowledging the real risks inherent in an unchecked reliance on unmediated revelation, all branches of Quakerism have institutionalized forms of corporate testing. Once an individual Quaker has reached her moral intuition or rational conclusion, the discernment process is a collective one located within corporate practices. Quaker Faith and Practice, the collection of procedural guides and spiritual sources of Britain Yearly Meeting, has this to say about it: The discernment process is not confined to solitary reflection. As a Religious Society we are more than a collection of people who meet together – we meet as we do because we believe that gathered together we are capable of greater clarity of vision. [Bringing a moral issue to the meeting] is a recognition of mutual obligations; that of the Friend to test the concern against the counsel of the group and that of the group to exercise its judgment and to seek the guidance of God (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 13.05).
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Quakers have devised various formal procedures for this. The most common is the Meeting for Worship for Business, but there are also smaller and problem-oriented gatherings such as the so-called Meetings for Clearness (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 16.19–21), Threshing Meetings (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 12.26), and worship sharing (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 12.21). The procedure can even be seen, in modified form, in the normal Meeting for Worship. Here the idea is that ministry offered by one member will be listened to respectfully by the others and not formally debated or challenged.3 But vocal ministry is nevertheless an articulation of individual understanding in a public forum where others present are invited to examine and, ultimately, accept or reject it as a true expression of God. In the Meeting for Worship, the listener’s response may not be given immediately unless she feels called by God to do so, but it could well happen later. (Many Quakers, especially those from the unprogrammed tradition, will have had the experience of ministering to silence in Meeting, only to have another Friend make a beeline for them at the post-Meeting coffee to comment on what was said.) And in Business Meetings and other more problem-directed formats, the responses can be more direct. For each individual Friend the primary task of discernment is to test her moral stance, however that was reached, by (in Quaker terms) exposing it to the Inward Light, or (in secular terms) comparing it against rational and practical plausibility, past experience, and common tradition. When she hears back from the collective she then has the task of testing that message, not just against her own subjective sense of what is right, but by allowing the Inward Light into/onto it as well. Some aspects of this description fall within the conceptual framework of ethical non-naturalism, as we have seen. Paradoxically, some other aspects resemble a version of ethical naturalism, which claims that morality can be understood by the tools of empirical science. Moral judgements can be arrived at by scientific procedures of observation, experiment, hypothesis testing and so on; there is no need to call upon an intuitive sense or any non-natural source. Now Quakers clearly turn to a supernatural source, in that they (mostly) believe in a God whose desires they are trying to find out. Quakers would say that the corporate discernment is the Meeting’s ‘mind’ guided collectively by God, not a sampling of individual opinions. From a secular ethical perspective, however, leaving God and the notion of discovering God’s will out of it, the procedure can look like exactly that: nothing more mysterious than an empirical test of one’s own insight against a database of others’ experience, or (even more bluntly) a market survey. So secular ethicists might classify what is going on in the procedures of Quaker moral discernment as a hybrid of ethical non-naturalism (when it comes to the individual insight) and ethical naturalism (when it comes to the corporate testing). As a metaethical 3
Quaker Faith and Practice quotes J. Ormerod Greenwood on this:
In my young tempestuous days I heard many things in the Friends’ meeting that I disliked and some that seemed to me quite false, and I felt the need to answer them. I was taught, and I believe correctly, that to insist on answering there and then would be to destroy the meeting; and that we all sit under the baptising power of the spirit of Truth, which is its own witness. We sit in silence so as not to trip over words; and we trust the good in each other which is from God, so that we may be kept from the evil (Quaker Faith and Practice, 1995, 2.68).
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theory, this is an indigestible combination. In practice, however, it works; at least well enough to have been continued for the past 350 years of Liberal Quaker history. … or Discourse Ethics? But by far the clearest theoretical parallel to the procedures of Quaker moral discernment is found in discourse ethics. This is not surprising: discourse ethics itself has been described as a normative ethics for pluralistic communities that lack an overarching moral authority,4 which could read as a non-theist description of Liberal Quakerism. The various discourse-oriented ethical theories developed over recent decades hold that normative claims can only be justified if they are agreed on in some organized forum of discussion. Discourse ethics is a deliberate attempt to move beyond the steadfastly individual perspectives taken by the major ethical frameworks, towards an intersubjective one in which moral authority lies within the communicative framework used by a group. I suggested earlier that the procedures adopted for moral deliberation also reflect metaethical commitments. In the case of discourse ethics, the practical rules for discussion underwrite fundamental moral ideas about how other beings within one’s communicating group should be treated. In the best-known and most thoroughly worked-out form of discourse ethics, for example, Jürgen Habermas (1992) specifies the conditions of discussion under which universally valid ethical claims might be expected to emerge. Habermas has said that true understanding of another’s position can happen only ‘under symmetrical conditions of mutual perspective-taking’ (Borradori, 2003, p. 37).5 The preconditions of Habermasian discourse ethics, the ‘ideal speech situation’, include the freedom of the members of the communicative community to participate without external interference or domination, and equality, so that all those who have a stake in the issue may participate, and all who do participate have an equal voice. Clearly, freedom and equality are both principles that Liberal Quakers would approve of. Equality is one of the aspects of the named ‘testimonies’, and although freedom per se is not, the kind of liberty in deliberation that Habermas means here is implicit in the respectful space that the Liberal Quaker tradition affords the individual to own and articulate his or her experience. Discourse ethics was developed in the secular realm as a tool for ethical–political discourse, and it distinguishes public from private moral debates. It considers that private areas of moral life are not best handled through public discussion. While it would be considered appropriate for policy decisions about the availability of prenatal screening, for example, to be reached through a debate structured by the rules of discourse ethics, each personal choice for or against screening or termination must be reached through a different process of ethical reflection (by the individual, in discussion with a smaller scale selection of partner, family and friends). This 4 By Antje Gimmler in an essay available at http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/ meta/background/agimmler.html. 5 This is the point on which Habermas has been most heavily criticized for a political idealism that assumes that the necessary equality of participation will happen, without presenting a programme to make equal access possible.
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public–private distinction is generally accepted in discourse ethics although there remains debate about where the line between the two can or should be drawn. For Liberal Quakers the line between individual and corporate discernment is more contentious. In the early to middle history of Quakerism there was an expectation that many decisions of the type nowadays considered private ones (about marriage, employment and so on, but also issues of principle such as conscientious objection) would be held up to corporate discernment. With the growing accommodation of Quaker behaviour to the norms of the world over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, these practices became less common among British Friends. Nevertheless, it is still broadly true that major ethical decisions of the group (Quaker ethical policy) are taken through the formalized discernment procedures of the Meeting for Worship for Business at local or national level. Conversely, some discourse ethicists would in any case argue that public procedures do bear relevance to individual moral life, because of the selfunderstanding and self-conceptualization that these procedures evoke in the people who take part in them. It is through the speaking aloud of one’s moral insights, in the context of the collective, that one develops a sense of moral identity as well as of group membership. For Quakers this suggests that their discernment procedures shape not just the collective identity through the group decisions, but also the identity of individual members. In the dialectic between personal and corporate insight the individual Friend observes and rehearses in public all the components of the ethical Quaker life, from basic vocabulary to foundational values. These are the family resemblances between discourse ethics and Quaker practices that a secular ethicist would recognize. For Quakers there are two significant differences that might not be spotted by a secular ethicist, because both depend on holding a belief in a communicating God. One difference concerns what is being sought in the discursive forum. Discourse ethicists would say participants seek consensus, aiming to convince each other through rational argument. Quakers by contrast would claim that it is not consensus they are looking for but the will of God, and the aim is for that will to be corporately identified and agreed upon. It follows that for secular discourse ethicists the primary tool is speech, and not just speech of any kind but a particular process of argumentation. What Habermas, for example, calls communicative action is the activity of arguing about moral claims – giving reasons for holding or rejecting them, and judging or critiquing the reasons. Furthermore, discourse ethics in general and Habermas’ version in particular is deeply committed to rational argument as the basis for coming to universally agreed-on norms. This kind of deliberation relies on practical reason as its criterion for validity. Trying to back up a moral claim with a spiritual or other conviction (such as the privileged insight afforded by revelation) that cannot be justified by an appeal to reason, would not be accepted within the rules of discourse ethics – not because the conviction is necessarily wrong, but because it cannot gain general acceptance in the way that arguments based on practical reason can.6
6 Other forms of discourse ethics do leave open the possibility of including aspects of cognition and argument, such as the emotions, that Habermas tends to downplay.
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This is not how the Liberal Quaker scrutiny of moral insight is held, by Quakers themselves, to work. Quakers would say the primary tool for corporate discernment is not speech but receptiveness to the Inward Light. The articulation of any insight in the public space is secondary. In a gathered meeting, a moral question can be considered to have been thoroughly examined by all present, and a satisfactory conclusion reached, with little vocal speech being shared. The criteria for validity would certainly include, but would not be restricted to, practical reason. Taking these on board as real differences is dependent on (1) the observer’s own stance on the possibility of input from a communicating God, and (2) whether the analytic framework being used allows for it. A sociological observation of what goes on in a Quaker Meeting for Worship for Business might see very little significant difference between that process and discourse ethics. (It’s worth bearing in mind, though, that a sociological analysis might be sceptical of some of discourse ethics’ own claims, such as the absolute equality of the participants, or that conviction is achieved purely through rational argument.) Bridging the ‘Rift of Speechlessness’ In drawing up the rules of discourse ethics, Habermas’ aim was political as much as ethical: to free up debate in political situations where positions risk becoming entrenched or exclusive. This broad goal need not be satisfied only by rational argumentation, however, and as stated it equally well describes the opening up to (unexpected) new light for which the Quaker form of Meeting for Worship, and Business Meeting, were developed. As Doug Gwyn says in this volume, the action of the Light is to force an epistemological break with conventional ways of knowing and judging (Gwyn, Chapter 3). It is important then to acknowledge that, in principle at least, the conventions that are broken with can be those of the Quaker community itself.7 Quaker spiritual practice not only tolerates, but requires, that the individual Friend is initially receptive to insights that come from God, prior to the exercise of judgement by the individual or the community. This opens up space for the leadings (in Quaker language), or the moral insights (in secular terms) that challenge the traditions of the community, and sometimes indeed the deeply held beliefs of the individual herself. The presence of God here is a triangulation that radically disturbs the inherent conservatism of relying on scripture or church tradition as the criteria for moral authority. At all points, the potentially sealed-off system can be gatecrashed by the revelation of a possibility, a stance, a choice that the individual or the collective, constrained by social and historical reality, would not have imagined. The aim of this comparison with secular ethics has not been to shoehorn Liberal Quakerism into a secular ethical taxonomy, but to show that Liberal Quakerism’s moral (and other) decision-making uses collective procedures that are largely recognizable by contemporary secular normative ethics and metaethics. This is a point worth making because for many other faiths, Christian denominations and even 7 This applies to social, ethical and other substantive conventions: the procedural conventions are less likely to be challenged.
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branches of Quakerism, this is simply not the case. Procedures in which an individual relies on revelation alone for moral guidance, where the moral authority of texts is absolute, or where someone has authority to make binding ethical judgements by virtue of their position in a church hierarchy, have no systematic parallels in secular ethics and cannot be meaningfully redescribed in its language.8 In recent years Habermas has reflected on the apparent impossibility of joining forms of reasoning that are rooted in religious belief to the kind of communicative reasoning he thinks is essential for ethical and political discussion in pluralistic societies. Pessimistically, he diagnoses a ‘rift of speechlessness’ between religious and secular discourse. Habermas is writing in a post-9/11 context, and his concerns are primarily to do with what he describes as ‘fundamentalism’, but many of his comments apply to all faiths who cannot play the discourse ethics game because they cannot convince by rational argumentation alone. Here, Liberal Quakerism might want to interject two points. The first is that, although discourse ethics must by definition rely on discourse, not all forms of communication involve talking. Quakers have found collective discernment can take place with relatively few words, sometimes in the absence of words altogether. Speechlessness does not inevitably mean a rift in discourse; sometimes it provides the only appropriate preparation for or background to it. This does not necessarily invoke a ‘spooky’, supernatural moral guide who operates in the silence of worship. A secular ethicist might find other explanations, for example that the sheer presence of others, as a tangible but not necessarily vocal reminder of the reality of alternative perspectives, can shift individual thinking. A second comment is that the discursive procedures used by Liberal Quakerism provide a framework to contain, or at least control, some potential rifts of its own. According to Bradney and Cownie, ‘It is one of the most interesting aspects of contemporary Quakerism that individuals holding … apparently irreconcilable theological views, often deeply opposed to each other, can co-exist peacefully within one religious movement’ (Bradney and Cownie, 2000, p. 50). It might be expected that the extraordinarily idealistic foundational belief of Quakerism (that an individual can have meaningful contact with God simply by ‘waiting in the Light’) would sit uneasily alongside the pragmatic, empiricist worldview of western Liberal Quakerism. Lacking an overarching moral authority, the two poles of mysticism and empiricism are potentially as irreconcilable in ethical as in theological debates. But in practice it seems that Quakerism’s institutional processes for discernment (the Meeting for Worship for Business, and so on) place these and other tensions within a structure and a theological rationale that not only values but actively depends on their presence. To do so Liberal Quakerism draws directly on its metaethical and metaphysical theories of good and evil, of human ontology, and of how God becomes present in individual and corporate life. Whether either the procedures or the theoretical underpinnings could be used to contain the tensions of secular– religious ethical dialogue in general is a question for further exploration. 8 Of course, parallels may exist in practice – for example the high status of being a moral philosopher at a respected university confers authority on him or her to make ethical judgements that others listen to – but this does not contradict the main point. The authority of status is not an intrinsic part of secular ethics but of its professionalization.
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Index
1895 Manchester Conference 220 9/11 (World Trade Center towers) 94, 231 abolition of slavery, see slavery Acts of the Apostles 171, 217 Adam 7, 35, 36. 37, 43, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 59–60, 63, 65, 87, 108, 109, 117fn, 195, 205; see also Fall, Genesis, original sin addiction 105–106, 113, 122 Adversary, the 104; see also Satan advices 98–101, 203 agency 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 123, 126, 127, 132fn, 212 ahimsa 135 Alexander, Howard 93 Antichrist 32fn, 110; see also Satan antinomianism 8, 56 antislavery movement, see slavery apocalypse 6, 32–6, 39, 41, 166, 184 aretaic ethics, see virtue ethics Arminianism 8, 64, 66 Asian religions 84, 92–3; see also Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism atonement 44, 51–2, 86, 87–8, 94, 111fn, 115, 117fn; see also Jesus Augustine 17, 64, 132, 133, 144, 212 authority Biblical/scriptural 6, 10, 16, 17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 62, 97, 107, 109, 114, 117, 221, 230 ecclesial 20–21, 62 of Fox 19 of God 23 of Inward Light 97, 221 of knowledge 137 moral or spiritual authority 217, 221, 226, 228, 230–31 nature of Quaker authority 5, 13, 228 other forms of religious authority 16, 22–3, 27, 53fn of personal experience 5, 53, 221, 225 of revelation 5, 6, 8, 15–16, 17, 28, 230–31
autonomy 26, 134, 136, 139, 210, 221, 222 Babylon 31, 39–40, 91, 211 baptism 65, 128, 168–9, 188 Baptist Church, see Church, Baptist Barclay, Robert 3, 8 14, 17, 43, 44, 47, 52fn, 55, 56–7, 60–69, 108, 129, 169, 190 ‘evil weakening in me and the good raised up’ 3, 56, 59, 99, 129, 169, 170–71 Bartram, John 21–2 Bathurst, Elizabeth 203fn Baxter, Richard 7 Beaconite reaction 22–3 Bible, the 12, 13, 16, 21, 23, 26, 27, 36, 55, 61, 62, 69, 85fn, 97, 98, 100, 107, 109, 110, 112fn, 158, 159, 164, 165, 186fn, 188, 193, 224; see also titles of individual books bio-weapons 210 blasphemy 18, 26, 47, 48, 50–51, 52 Bosman, Willem 72 Brinton, Howard 53fn, 84–5, 90, 91, 92, 93 brokenness 116, 125, 163, 169 Brunner, Emil 126, 128 Buddhism 89, 92–3, 184, 224 Buddhist Friends 83, 84fn Bunyan, John 54, 185, 186fn Burrough, Edward 7, 18fn, 55, 115, 187 Cadbury, Henry Joel 191 Calvin, John 10, 17, 63, 64–5, 67, 114 Calvinism 8, 34, 44, 52–5, 60–61, 63–7, 114, 121, 124, 159 Cambodia 116, 141 care ethics 221, 222 categorical imperative Kantian 222 Quaker 223 Catholicism 56, 60, 111, 121 Roman Catholic Church, see Church, Roman Catholic Catholic doctrine 21fn, 50fn, 60, 65, 67 exorcism 111
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charismatic movement 111, 113 children of Christ 6, 7, 16, 35–6, 39, 43, 48, 50fn, 131, 141, 143, 144–5, 147–8, 149, 150–51, 196 of the darkness 144, 147, 148 of fallen Adam 109 of God 150, 151 of the light 31, 33, 102, 144–5, 147, 151, 184 of the New Covenant 85 Christ, see Jesus Christ within 50fn, 67, 84, 131; see also Inward Light Christology 16, 26, 217 Church Baptist 19, 31, 61, 184, 187, 188; see also baptism Eastern Orthodox 44, 51, 52 false 39 Independent 61 Presbyterian 61, 62, 184 Roman Catholic 32fn, 56, 60; see also Catholicism of Scotland 62 Civil War, English 31, 39, 184, 188 Claypool, Elizabeth 198–9fn Clement of Alexandria 17 coercion 10–11, 15, 39, 131–40, 216fn collage 13, 221 communities of faith, see faith community conscience individual 12, 32, 40, 41, 78, 187, 193, 201, 205 Quaker 173–82 consensus 25, 108, 180, 209 consequentialist ethics 211, 222 continuing revelation 4–5, 16–28, 98, 226 conversion (narratives) 31, 45fn, 53, 54, 94 convincement 6, 7, 11, 53, 156, 187 Corinthians, letters to 37–8, 48fn, 50fn, 51, 52fn corporate accountability 15, 17fn, 18, 26, 28, 98 corporate discernment 26, 227, 229–30; see also discernment creeds 20, 21fn, 55, 61, 84, 102, 128, 159, 162 Crewdson, Isaac 23, 25 Cromwell, Oliver 31, 50fn, 62 Cupitt, Don 186–7fn, 191
Dalai Lama 79 Daniel, book of 112fn, 165–6 darkness, see also evil brought out of 84 children of, see children as ignorance 12, 75, 143–4, 201, 205; see also evil as ignorance in us 91 light versus 31, 33, 93, 184 metaphors of dark/light, see light, metaphors ocean of, see ocean revealed by light 33, 99, 203 struggle with 53, 54 turned from 48, 184 Day of Visitation 8, 66–7 deontology 221, 222, 223 depravity 43, 52, 59, 65, 67, 108, 114 despair 54, 105–106, 161–2, 175, 179, 180, 198 Devil 7, 10, 12, 37, 38, 40, 41, 45, 55, 89–90, 113, 114–16, 127, 150, 185, 187, 188–9, 191, 197, 200, 201; see also Satan Dewsbury, William 7, 45, 53 Diggers 31 discernment 5, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 26–8, 71, 76–7, 80, 103, 146, 175–7, 179–81, 185, 194, 199, 220, 224, 226–31 discourse ethics 220, 224, 228–31 disownment 20–22, 24 Dissenters 5 divine command 21, 54, 85, 99, 211, 217, 223 divine vehicle, see vehiculum dei Divine Will, see will of God Diwali 184 dragon 39–40; see also Satan dualism 4, 8, 142–3, 149, 165, 212 Duncan, David 24 Eastern Orthodox Church, see Church, Eastern Orthodox Ecclesiastes, book of 11, 165 ecumenical movement 12, 118, 163–71 Eddy, Mary Baker 141 Einstein, Albert 212fn elect, the 7, 34, 40, 52–3, 63, 64–5, 67–8 Eliot, George 191 Ellwood, Thomas 183–4, 186, 190
Index Emerson, Ralph Waldo 154 enlightenment 6, 16, 17fn, 20, 33, 52, 54, 92–3, 141, 148, 151, 184, 188, 194, 202, 205 Enlightenment, The 12, 73, 133, 134, 141, 185, 190–91 Ephesians, Paul’s letter to 37, 44, 47, 51, 57, 114, 116 epistemological break 6, 33–4, 230 equality 74 eschatology 35, 121, 169 eucharist 163, 168–70 evil, see also darkness as absence of good 11, 77, 89–90, 102, 117, 141–51, 220–21, 225 act/action 12, 33, 38, 65, 71, 77, 78, 79, 87, 88, 89, 93–4, 116, 126, 131, 135, 148, 151, 173–82, 223 as denial of truth 8, 10, 11, 28, 64, 123, 126, 128, 142, 200–201, 202 as departure from Inward Light 77 as disobedience 34, 38, 63, 83, 89–90, 94, 108, 114, 164 external 12, 107–108, 115, 117, 185, 197 as ignorance 89, 92–3 as illusion 7, 11, 122, 141–2, 143–4, 146, 147, 149, 211, 224 institutional/structural/systemic 9, 10, 21, 78, 88, 90, 94, 102, 105, 110, 113, 116, 126, 134, 135fn, 156, 168, 211, 213, 214 as mental illness 9, 10, 89–90, 92, 93 as moral compromise 15, 88, 179–80 natural 4, 14, 123, 191 as oppression 71, 72, 73, 77–9, 89, 102, 110, 112, 113, 122, 126, 135, 213 in ordinary people 149 potential in everyone 72, 86, 94, 131, 157 projection onto others 122, 185, 196–7 response to 4, 9, 11, 71, 72, 73, 79, 94, 108fn, 116, 126, 128, 139, 163, 175, 177, 205 as separation 9, 35, 37, 38, 41, 76, 89–90 as shadow 59, 91, 122, 145, 185 social dimensions of 40, 68, 112–13, 126, 134, 135, 168
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as substance 10, 11, 90, 122, 142–6, 147, 149, 178, 220, 224; see also Satan as violence 15, 71, 72, 73, 77–9, 103, 110, 112–13, 115, 126, 131, 132, 135, 168, 174, 176, 203, 210 Exodus, book of 114, 124, 155, 163 faith community 41, 98, 106, 127 Fall, the 37, 43, 50, 59–60, 65, 67, 108, 109, 113, 114, 195; see also Adam, Genesis, original sin fanaticism 121, 175–6, 180 Fell, Margaret 20, 102, 187 Feuerbach, Ludwig 196 forgiveness 7, 11, 55, 68, 76, 86, 87, 89, 94–5, 105, 109, 112, 128–9, 139fn, 151, 168, 169–70, 179, 180 Fowler, James 11, 154–5, 156, 158, 159–62 Fox, George 3, 5–7, 8, 9, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19–20, 27, 31–41, 43, 44, 45, 47–54, 67, 83, 87, 91–2, 95, 97, 102, 114–15, 123, 131, 141–2, 144–5, 146–7, 148, 151, 174, 183–7, 188, 189, 190, 193–5, 196–7, 198–9, 200, 201, 202–203, 205, 209, 220 ‘I had great openings’ 5, 35, 36, 45, 48, 50, 51, 183–4, 220 Journal 16, 47fn, 48fn, 49, 50fn, 51fn, 52, 54, 123, 131, 144, 183, 190, 196, 198–9fn, 202, 205fn ‘ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love’, see ocean ‘speak to (my) condition’ 5, 16, 36, 50, 54, 92, 194 ‘that of God’ in everyone 3, 85, 87, 92, 94, 141, 147, 174, 188, 206, 220, 223, 225 Fox, Matthew 88 Franklin, Benjamin 73 free will 4, 8, 90, 116, 132fn, 146 freedom 73, 77, 138, 209fn, 210fn, 211, 214, 222, 228 from sin, see sin spiritual or moral freedom 56, 67–9, 122, 124, 127, 201, 209 Freud, Sigmund 196–7 Friends of the Truth 31 functional theology 4, 8–9, 108, 111 fundamentalism 118, 122, 161, 231
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Galatians, Paul’s letter to 34 Gandhi, Mahatma 79, 134–5, 136, 223 Garrison, William Lloyd 155 Genesis, book of 7, 35, 37–8, 41, 107, 114, 126, 128, 143fn, 164, 168, 184, 186fn; see also Adam, Fall, original sin genocidaires 150–51 genocide 11, 141, 149–51, 210, 213, 225 God image of 38, 125,149 ‘that of God’ in everyone, see Fox will of 15, 24–6, 28, 93, 107, 114, 164, 176, 182, 223, 224, 226, 229 good, see also light act/action 76, 86, 98, 100, 124, 147, 169–70, 173–82, 217fn, 221, 222–3, 224, 226 external 12, 185, 187fn as illumination 12, 146, 193, 200, 203, 225 as obedience 13, 51, 53, 56, 67, 85, 89–90, 109, 116, 171 present in everyone 72, 86, 87, 141, 147, 223 ‘raised up’, see Barclay social dimensions of 68 as unity, see unity Gorbachev, Mikhail 209 gospel order 19, 166 grace 6, 8, 10, 14, 34, 44, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 61, 64, 66–8, 75, 99, 101, 105, 124, 127, 129, 162, 179, 194, 198, 201 greed 15, 26, 89, 90, 145–6, 197 Gregory the Great 17 Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa 144 Gurney, Joseph John 24–5, 109fn Habermas, Jürgen 215, 216fn, 228, 229, 230–31 Hall, Joseph 193 Hamlet 128 harmartia 114 Harvey R. 193 Hauerwas, Stanley 125, 173fn, 176fn, 177, 179, 180 hedge, Quaker 124 Hick, John 4 Hicks, Elias 21–3, 25, 26 Hicksites 21–2, 23, 24, 25, 92
Hinduism 84, 92, 93, 184 Hitler 88, 126, 181; see also Holocaust, Nazism HIV/AIDS 12, 122, 163, 167–8, 210 Holocaust, the 88, 126, 141, 148; see also Hitler, Nazism Howgill, Francis 18fn, 45, 187 Hume, David 136 humility 11,12, 17, 34, 56, 67, 76, 79, 136, 161 Iago 174 idealism 73, 104, 127, 195, 211, 228fn, 231; see also utopianism idolatry 38–9, 114, 164, 178, 202fn imagination 9, 59, 61, 110, 133fn, 141–2, 154, 160, 171, 183, 185, 188, 190, 191, 194, 195, 197, 198, 201, 203, 205 immanence 45, 187 incarnation 18, 44, 52, 84, 215 Independent Church, see Church, Independent industrialisation 25, 77, 122, 161 injustice 71, 72, 77–9, 80, 91, 110, 131, 135, 139, 171, 176, 177, 199; see also justice International Philosophers for the Prevention of Omnicide (IPPNO) 209 intuition 142, 154, 202, 212–14, 216–8, 222, 224, 226, 227 Inward Light 13, 20, 21, 23–5, 50fn, 84, 97, 187fn, 190, 221, 227, 230 Ireneus 4 Isaiah 37, 123–4, 125, 128, 133, 165, 171 James, William 187fn Jesus 5, 6, 7, 16, 20, 21, 23, 32, 33, 35, 44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 64, 77, 78, 79, 86, 87, 92, 93, 94, 100, 105, 107, 109, 110, 114, 137, 139fn, 143, 147, 148, 166, 169, 184, 194, 196, 200, 212, 215, 217, 218, 221 as Christ 5, 6, 7, 16, 20, 35, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 77, 79, 85, 87, 105, 107, 109, 110, 147, 194, 215 faith in 7, 23, 55, 87, 94, 137 incarnate 218
Index as King/Lord 184, 217 as Light 143, 147, 194 moral vision of 139fn, 221 teachings of 20, 21, 44, 78, 85, 92, 93, 196fn temptation by Satan 114 Jewish Friends 83 Job 11, 165, 171, 199 John of the Cross 46 John’s Gospel 84–5, 184–5, 200 Jones, Rufus 91–2 Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust 221fn Jung, C.G. 59, 84, 85, 89, 90–92, 122, 196, 213 justice 32, 68, 75, 95, 100, 102, 110, 138, 159, 161, 163, 166, 169–70, 174fn, 175, 214, 221, 222; see also injustice Keith, George 20–21, 25, 26 Kenya 10, 90, 113, 168 King Lear 128 Kremlin, the 214 Lamb, the 7, 38, 39, 40, 45fn, 50, 53, 110; see also Jesus Lamb’s War, the 31, 39–41, 110–112, 115, 118, 204 leadings 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24fn, 25–8, 74, 75–7, 84, 90, 99, 101, 106, 177, 179, 203, 230 Levellers 184, 189 Levinas, Emmanuel 217fn Lewis, C.S. 61, 146 light, see also good absence of 143, 220 alienation from 38, 39 bringing people to 47fn, 84, 99, 145 children of, see children of Christ 6, 7, 16, 33–6, 39, 48, 50, 131, 141, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 196 Christ as 24fn, 35, 49, 148 coming of 33, 142, 148, 181, 194, 195 Covenant of 53 drawn by 11, 154, 158, 159, 162 in everyone 32, 85, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150 of God 43, 44, 66, 85, 94, 141, 145, 149, 151, 193, 195, 199fn, 205 hating the 144, 145, 146, 148, 150–51
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hold in the 223, 227 illuminating 12, 145, 157, 193, 195, 200, 203, 225 inner, see Inward Light loving the 11, 33, 145, 147, 150–51, 181, 230 metaphors of light/dark 50, 93, 144, 184, 187fn, 212, 220 ocean of light and love, see ocean in people’s conscience 12, 32, 40, 41 revealing 7, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 184, 194, 196, 198–9fn, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205 standing/waiting in 34, 41, 47, 50, 142, 147, 151, 185, 197, 231 transforming power of 11, 35, 38 true Light, the 52 turning to 33, 48, 145, 156, 184, 193 turning from 11, 38, 102, 145, 146, 151, 181, 199fn walking in 36, 102, 109, 145, 147, 151 within, see Inward Light logos 84, 85, 184, 212, 214–18 London Yearly Meeting 18, 22–4 Luther, Martin 47, 126, 129 Manichees 142 Marxism 211 Meeting for Clearness 227 Meeting for Worship 12, 84, 94, 100, 180, 227, 230 Meeting for Worship for Business 98, 179–80, 227, 229, 230, 231 Melanchthon 17 metaethics 3, 4, 13, 14, 219, 224–6, 227–8, 230, 231 metatemporality 32, 34, 41 military 106, 113, 131, 132, 210; see also war Milton, John 183 Modernism 134, 159 Murdoch, Iris 136 Nayler, James 18, 19, 26, 110, 115 Nazism 139fn, 149, 173–4, 175, 180, 217fn; see also Hitler, Holocaust New Covenant 53fn, 63fn, 85, 117 Newbigin, Leslie 137 Newton, Isaac 185 Niebuhr, Reinhold 10, 121–2, 139
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nonviolence 11, 21, 26, 34, 40, 41,100, 102, 104, 110, 115, 132, 134, 135, 139, 176fn, 177; see also peace testimony, pacifism normative ethics 13, 219, 221, 224, 228, 230 Nuttall, Geoffrey 51fn, 53fn, 56, 193fn, 205fn ocean of darkness 3, 8, 36, 43, 50, 93, 114, 115, 183–4, 185, 186, 218, 220 of light 3, 8, 36, 43, 50, 93, 114, 115, 183, 184, 186, 218, 220 omnicide 209, 210fn, 211, 213, 216, 218 omnivive 211 ‘openings’, see Fox original blessing 88 original sin 8, 10, 38, 43, 45, 50, 86, 87–8, 91, 92, 94–95, 108fn, 117, 126; see also Adam, Fall, Genesis, Satan, serpent Othello 174 pacifism 10, 131–3, 134, 135, 173, 174, 179; see also nonviolence, peace testimony, war paradise of God 7, 35, 48, 50, 205 Pascal, Blaise 128 Passover 170 peace testimony 21, 25, 26, 57, 174, 177–8; see also non-violence, pacifism, testimonies, war Peaceable Kingdom 133–4, 139, 140 Peck, M. Scott 113, 116, 196fn Pelagianism 8, 64, 65, 66 Pendle Hill 77, 84, 86 Penn, William 20, 56, 190, 204–205, 215 ‘an evil principle’ 204–205 Pentagon, the 214 perfection 7–8, 14, 35–6, 43–57, 67, 83, 85, 87, 92, 93–5, 121–2, 124, 129; see also teleios Perrot, John 19–20 Peters, Ted 125–6 Pol Pot 141 Polanyi, Michael 137 police force 132–3, 134 postmodernism 214 predestination 34, 64 Presbyterian Church, see Church, Presbyterian
principlism 221, 222 procedural ethics 219, 223, 225–6 process theology 212fn prostitution 39, 168 Protestantism 21, 44, 45, 47, 48, 60, 61–4, 67, 113, 190; see also Church Proverbs, book of 164 psychology 68, 84fn, 91, 93, 222 Publishers of Truth 107 Punshon, John 90 Puritan 31, 32fn, 34, 40, 46, 49fn, 52–4, 56, 193 Quietism 21, 46, 47, 50fn, 66 Ranters 8, 31, 37, 56 reason 12, 15, 17,73–4, 161, 184, 188–9, 191, 194, 202, 212, 213–14, 218, 229–30 reconciliation 20, 37, 67, 105, 107, 112, 150, 160, 168, 169 redemption 9, 11, 36, 56, 59, 74, 79, 87, 109, 110, 111fn, 113, 129, 166, 171; see also Jesus reductionism 159, 216 restorative 95 resurrection 6, 109, 166, 170 retribution 78, 199 Revelation, Book of 32, 36, 37, 39–41, 110, 115, 127, 211 revelation, direct 5–6, 8, 10, 14, 25, 49, 53 revolution(ary) 5, 12, 33, 41, 61, 189, 190, 216fn industrial 77 non-violent cultural 40, 41 scientific 191 Richmond Declaration of Faith 83fn, 109 Richmond, Ben 110, 116–17, 118 Ricoeur, Paul 117, 160, 199 rights 63, 73, 77, 188, 190, 221, 222 Romans, Paul’s letter to 7, 26, 32, 35, 39, 44, 63, 66, 114, 129, 196fn, 201–202 Rorty, Richard 137 Rwanda 11, 112, 117, 141, 148–51, 217fn sacraments 12, 163, 168–9; see also baptism, eucharist Saltmarsh, John 186fn salvation 8–9, 10, 11, 17fn, 20, 23, 24fn, 34, 49fn, 53fn, 61, 63–8, 79, 86–8, 108fn, 129, 188
Index sanctification 7, 10, 40, 43, 44, 47–8, 57, 217–18 Sartre, Jean-Paul 209 Satan 7, 37–9, 41, 90, 92, 105, 109–111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 146, 165, 184–8, 197, 213; see also Adversary, Antichrist, Devil, dragon, evil, serpent as deceiver 37, 39 as symbol 110, 197 scapegoat 15fn, 113, 123, 125–6 schism 6, 9, 14 science 127, 131, 137, 158, 185–7, 212, 214, 227 search for truth 5, 28, 54, 76, 137, 180–81, 188 Second Coming 8, 10, 32 secular ethics 219–31 Seekers 31, 33, 40, 186–7 self, the 12, 33–4, 45, 56, 79, 84, 99, 102, 109, 160, 170, 189, 194–5, 197, 202fn, 203–204, 214 self-deception 26, 140, 175, 176 selfishness 76, 90, 115, 131, 188–9, 191, 201, 204 serpent 35, 37–8, 39, 40, 43, 45, 59, 108, 115, 188; see also Adam, Fall, original sin, Satan shadow 11, 36, 59, 91, 122, 145, 160, 185; see also darkness, evil as shadow shalom 133, 139 simplicity 22, 74, 76, 78, 99, 100, 101, 169, 170 sin, see also evil being revealed by the light, see light ‘concluded under’ 6, 54 as falling short 9, 114, 147 forgiveness of 7, 55, 109, 128–9 interpretations of 11, 107–109, 114, 117, 123, 128, 164, 210 liberation from 7, 39–40, 43, 44, 45, 49, 53, 55, 83, 87, 95, 121, 124–5, 127 original, see original sin overcoming 5fn, 7, 34, 39, 40, 43, 47 power of 45, 47, 115 ‘preaching up sin’ 7, 39, 49, 115 as reality 7, 41, 117, 125, 127, 147–8 redemption from, see Jesus, redemption as separation from God 9, 35, 76, 89–90
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sinfulness 6, 10, 12, 26, 34, 37, 38, 40, 43, 52, 67, 86, 89, 94, 114, 121, 124, 129, 139, 147, 159, 165, 185, 193, 200 sinlessness 7, 8, 47, 55, 65, 85, 93 sincerity 60, 75, 77, 177–8, 180, 181 slavery 8, 11, 21, 71–74, 76–77, 79, 122, 153–8, 162, 170, 202fn social reform 8–9, 25, 32–4, 40, 131, 135, 218 Socinianism 8, 64 spiritual autobiography 71, 103 spiritual gifts 6, 14, 36, 45, 74, 76, 111, 201 spiritual warfare, see war St Bernard 17 St Paul 6, 7, 12, 26, 32, 39, 44, 51, 54, 63, 67, 114, 128, 161, 171, 196fn, 201, 202, 217 St Peter 16, 34, 52, 114, 124, 217 Stalin 126, 141 Steere, Douglas 104 Story, John 19–20, 26 Story, Thomas 55–6 suffering 4, 11–12, 14, 68, 72, 77, 79, 80, 87, 94, 110, 118, 122–3, 125, 142, 146, 163–5, 166–7, 170–71, 191, 197, 198, 199, 200, 225 collective 164, 225 as punishment for sin 11, 164, 165, 166, 167 redemptive 4, 165, 199 supernaturalism 45, 48fn, 111–13, 117, 127, 140, 186, 187fn, 224, 227, 231 Sykes, Marjorie 93 symbols 89, 159, 160–61, 169–70, 197, 211, 214, 222 Tao Te Ching 85 Taoism 92, 93 teleios 95; see also perfection Teresa of Avila 46, 47fn Tertullian 17 testimonies 12, 21, 22, 34, 74, 76, 78, 98, 99–101, 107, 166, 169, 170, 171, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 204, 228; see also peace testimony Thailand 168 theodicy 4, 10, 12, 14, 43, 125–6, 164–5, 191 theology of subtraction 97, 98, 99–101, 102, 103, 105, 106
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theosis 8, 44, 51 Thessalonians, Paul’s letter to 217 Thirty-Nine Articles 62 Threshing Meetings 227 Travelling Minute 18, 22, 24 unity 13, 19, 26, 27, 35, 38, 41, 49, 53fn, 83, 84, 86, 89, 101, 106, 113, 117–18 universalism 9, 32, 64–5, 71–2, 75, 147, 215–16fn utilitarianism 221, 22 utopianism 6, 10–11, 14, 121–2, 124–5, 127–9; see also idealism Valiant Sixty 19 vehiculum dei 65, 67 via negativa, see theology of subtraction virtue ethics 176fn, 221, 222–3, 226 virtue(s) 15, 24fn, 35, 48, 114, 136, 176fn, 180, 216, 221, 222–3 vocabulary of faith 68, 87, 111, 135, 181 of justice 221 shared Quaker 224, 229 war 88, 89, 91, 99, 100, 112, 121, 131–3, 134, 135, 139–40, 141, 156, 164, 171, 186fn, 197, 210, 219; see also pacifism, nonviolence, peace testimony civil war 112, 117, 157, 217; see also Civil War, English, Rwanda Iraq war 177–8 just war 132, 210 spiritual warfare 105, 110–13, 116, 117, 118, 127; see also Lamb’s War
war tax 78 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) 210, 218 Westminster Confession 17, 61–4 Whittier, John Greenleaf 11, 153–62 Wilbur, John 24–5, 26 Wilkinson, John 19–20, 23, 26 will of God, see God Williams, Bernard 212 Williams, Walter 109 Wink, Walter 113, 116, 118, 122 Winstanley, Gerrard 12, 187–91 witness 9, 17, 18, 19, 31–41, 45, 48, 55, 69, 78–9, 166, 169, 170, 177, 180–81, 194, 216, 227 women’s meetings 18, 19 Woodbrooke 86 Woolman, John 8–9, 71–80 his account of torture 72–3 ‘darkness in the understanding’ 75 Journal 8, 71–5, 76, 77, 78, 79 journey to England 72, 77, 80 ‘motion of love’ 74, 75–6 World Trade Organization 214 worship 8, 9, 12, 19, 31, 32, 38, 39, 59fn, 61fn, 62, 73, 76, 83–4, 86, 94, 98, 100, 104, 109–110, 129, 159, 164, 166, 169–71, 178, 179–80, 188, 189, 201, 213, 227, 229, 230, 231; see also Meeting for Worship worship sharing 227 Zoroastrianism 142, 143fn
