First of all, is it an authentic expression of the Friends movement? I turned to Quaker scholar Lewis Benson, who carried an abiding concern that George Fox's writings be understood in context and quoted with integrity.
In a 1974 article for Quaker Religious Thought, "George Fox's Teaching about Christ," Benson said that Fox indicted the existing church of his time for watering down Christ's power to (1) restore us to our full measure as victorious daughters and sons of God; and (2) "gather, order, and govern a community of disciples."
The gospel that Fox preached and which was received by many thousands was, in its briefest form: “Christ has come to teach his people himself.” The word teach is the key word here. His hearers were familiar with the offices of Christ as priest and king and had been taught to think of his saviourhood primarily in terms of his priestly act of sacrifice on the cross. But when Fox told them that Christ is also saviour as he is teacher and prophet, they were hearing something they had not heard before.(Here is a convenient list of quotations from George Fox in which this "teaching" function is explicit or implied.)
Lewis Benson was emphatic about this revolutionary aspect of the movement initiated by Fox and the early Friends. (The first time I met Benson, he said, "I don't have an ecumenical bone in my body.") On the face of it, claiming that early Friends meant to replace, not reform, the entire priestly establishment with a new Gospel foundation, sounds audacious and even arrogant, especially for these times in which many of us want to be nice and to emphasize commonalities over boundaries. So: the proclamation that "Christ has come to teach his people himself" (and the implication that we Quakers embody this promise) may be an authentic voice from our history, but are we justified in adopting it as a kind of Friendly tagline today?
- Do our Quaker meetings and churches really gather with the expectation that we will be taught by Christ?
- (A related query: Do we use the phrase "Christ has come..." only in a second-hand descriptive way, or as an invitation from us personally to new audiences and our own children to experience a community formed by that promise?)
- How do we know when he is in our midst, teaching us? How is his teaching welcomed and recognized? (Alternately, how might we be keeping him at a safe distance?)
- Do we have the freedom to pray and consult with each other concerning our understanding of the teaching, and of its convincing power? Do we have the freedom to tell the community and its leadership when we don't think it is really happening?
- We Friends now have three and a half centuries of experience of being taught by Christ. Some of that experience is preserved in books, doctrines, and ministries expressing our sense of what God wants to say and do through us. But today are we seeing new people being gathered with that same revolutionary expectation, or do we hoard this treasure? (I don't necessarily mean that new people will have the vocabulary and mannerisms of existing Friends cultures, but attracting people who are hungry to experience Christian community that doesn't depend on celebrities, monopolies, rituals, licenses, hierarchies, or proxies in place of raw grace.)
- Benson points out that many of Fox's theological insights were not original but followed tracks laid down by Calvin and others. Despite Benson's dubious attitude to ecumenical and interfaith relationships, could such relationships help keep us fresh and honest in our life as a Friends movement? When we claim that other churches are still too dependent on celebrities, rituals, hierarchies, etc., are we actually discerning truth or just patting ourselves on the back?
Looking at another beloved phrase, "... that of God in everyone."
After our inaugural pastors' conference, I'm looking forward to our first Sierra-Cascades annual sessions. Another chance to be taught!
 |
| Happy Cosmonauts' Day! Source. |
David Naimon talks about and with Ursula K. Le Guin.
Someday I'd love to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing. But this year I have to follow it online.
Dianna Anderson on politicians misusing biblical quotations to score political points.
Classic! (I'm sure I've posted this before and will again.)
7 comments:
https://mobile.twitter.com/OpenToInfo/status/984763778402340864
And that was in response to Martin's link to this, Johan. RSOWR is long gone in life's rearview mirror. It was even way back when within GREED-as-go[]d's limited liability law enabled CapitalismFail with its Anthropocene and abrupt climate change. We walk in the name of our go[]d. Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, we cannot NOT! do so. But, thanks to motivated reasoning we can gather to pretend it is possible to serve two masters/mistresses. Regarding point #3, I was released from the covenant relationship of membership to avoid the conversation.
What gather's privileged and pious Friends, and is perceived as 'light' ,is functionally darkness … within our trusted globalized economic meme. Regarding those teachings: Apostate-R-Us./?
https://mobile.twitter.com/OpenToInfo/status/984763778402340864
And that was in response to Martin's link to this, Johan. RSOWR is long gone in life's rearview mirror. It was even way back when within GREED-as-go[]d's limited liability law enabled CapitalismFail with its Anthropocene and abrupt climate change. We walk in the name of our go[]d. Because faith is the substance of things hoped for, we cannot NOT! do so. But, thanks to motivated reasoning we can gather to pretend it is possible to serve two masters/mistresses. Regarding point #3, I was released from the covenant relationship of membership to avoid the conversation.
What gathers privileged and pious Friends, and is perceived as 'light', is functionally darkness … within our trusted globalized economic meme. Regarding those teachings: Apostate-R-Us./?
Johan, Some very good points. And strong questions.
BUT Benson "points out that many of Fox's theological insights were not original but followed tracks laid down by Calvin and others."
I very strongly disagree with that!! Fox--even with all of his shortcomings, was dedicated to a COMPLETELY different God than the horrific god of Calvinism and the Reformed. According to Calvin, God will that all humans would sin, and even foreordained that billions of us would be born sinful and worst of all that this god foreordained that billions of us were to be created without hope, foreordained to eternal damnation.
And Calvin had other horrific "theological insights.":_(((((((((((((((
Hello, Daniel. Concerning total depravity and predestination, Friends (for example, Fox and Barclay) were on a radically different page from Calvin, using the same arguments you might use. I just did a search for "Calvin" in Barclay's Apology and found ten mentions, among them only one mildly positive reference! He reserves his bitterest invective for Calvin's teaching on reprobation. Benson's reference was specifically for Fox adopting some of Calvin's vocabulary on Christ's "offices," although of course Fox's main point was that Calvin and everyone else taught a fatally inadequate understanding of the work of Christ.
To use the tradition as a standard but not as an object of adulation is, in fact, part of our tradition: Scriptures are read as the words of God but not the Word of God. It seems a constant in human nature to either ignore the teaching of the past or to believe it can magically elevate one by simply paying lip service to it. Both these tendencies miss the mark, and different branches of Quakers fall one way or the other. Thankfully, the writings - both biblical and those of early Friends - are available to us and will be for those in the future. Peter in his second epistle sets out the priority between respecting the prophetic excellence of our past and coming into that life and power ourselves: "All this only confirms for us the message of the prophets, to which you will do well to attend, because it is like a lamp shining in a murky place, until the day breaks and the morning star rises to illuminate your minds (1:19).
Thanks for this, Johan. These are good things for us to be thinking about together!
There's an old tradition [I can't begin to guess where it might have first been mentioned; for me it was a hint in a book I glanced at in a Sufi friend's bookcase.] that God is always teaching each person Godself.
You can look at this in a more institutional sense: that a Friends Meeting is a sort of classroom (and treatment-room?) which generates/receives lessons from God, sometimes digesting the results into 'minutes'. In that model, the teachings are being learned by the class together -- but don't we individually leave as pretty-much the same person we hauled into Meeting an hour before?
Do we talk about whatever-it-is we've learned there? Not much, that I know of. Whatever-it-is isn't verbal, then. And because Friends don't often try to articulate it, it doesn't seem to have much impact on the group's everyday belief systems.
Is 'unspoken' necessarily deeper? Sometimes (and sometimes maybe it's just hoping to pass?)
I find the process much more observable on an individual level: Answers to my prayers-of-curiosity arrive in a strikingly timely fashion, new insights developing gradually upon older insights as these ripen...
Should this have become a Testimony of Learning: that we are 'here' (at Meeting, and on this Earth) to learn something, and might best strive to get on with it?
How well have we-all learned to learn, or to pass on what we learn? Do conscious, purposeful efforts work better (or perhaps worse?) in our current condition?
Post a Comment