Wilburite Friends and the Atonement

Remember old Elias Hicks, the long Island recorded minister who was such a central figure in early 19th century Quaker history? There’s an old story about told about Hicks, making trouble in Philadelphia many years ago. Hicks did this regularly, but one day it finally came to a crisis. Walt Whitman tells it this way:

 . . . a meeting of Friends in Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with Elias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument he made use of these words: “The blood of Christ—the blood of Christ—why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was no more effectual than the blood of bulls and goats—not a bit more—not a bit.” At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a great tumult. Hundreds rose to their feet . . . . Canes were thump’d upon the floor. From all parts of the house angry mutterings. Some left the place, but more remain’d, with exclamations, flush’d faces and eyes.

Elias was elaborating on his view of the atonement, using terminology from Hebrews 10:4:

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

In Hick’s view, the physical body of the Jesus Christ was just a physical thing, like yours and mine. His blood was ordinary blood. As Elias preached here and elsewhere, the important part of Jesus’s sacrifice was inward, not outward:

And what was it that was a Saviour? Not that which was outward; it was not flesh and blood: for "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven;" it must go to the earth from whence it was taken. It was that life, that same life that I have already mentioned, that was in him, and which is the light and life of men, and which lighteth every man, and consequently every woman, that cometh into the world.

As Whitman described it, the Orthodox Friends in waiting worship broke concentration to express cane-thumping disapproval of this heretical doctrine, which seemed to devalue the atoning physical death of Jesus Christ. The story is often quoted to show that Elias denied the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, a denial which would lead to the First Separation of 1827-1828, and the subsequent creation of Liberal Friends as a separate wing of the Society.


Now, I wasn’t there, but I have a very strong suspicion that this furious disapproval was not a united expression, even factoring out the contingent of Elias’s supporters that tried to be present whenever he spoke. In my opinion Elias ran ahead of his guide on some very significant issues, but on this matter the old farmer was mostly right. His views were very similar to those of the earliest Friends, including George Fox, and very similar to many of the Friends also in attendance there in Philadelphia, who in a few more years would be called “Wilburites.”


The Wilburites would themselves break from the cane-thumping Orthodox on just this issue, as well as others. But at that time the future Wilburites and the Orthodox were uneasily united in a front against the creeping Unitarianism that many of Elias Hicks’s followers were running into. I can imagine the Wilburites sitting in that meeting house groaning inwardly, saying to themselves, “Oh, Elias, why does it have to be thee who preaches what we believe?”

So just what exactly did the first generations of Friends see in the atonement? What did the Wilburites think of this idea?

The answer is in two parts, and has to do with how the earlier Friends saw the historical Jesus and the Inward Christ as two manifestations of the same entity: one whose atoning death would both put man in a capacity to be saved, and whose Inward Light would teach him and enable him to do the inward work to then allow it to happen. There are many competing theories about the atonement, but C. S. Lewis said it best:

Theories about Christ’s death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works.


Essentially, atonement theory doesn’t matter. Whether Jesus’s death on the cross was a substitutionary blood sacrifice to appease a wrathful god, or whether it was a ransom of captive hostages, or whether it was a moral example, or whether it was any of the other competing theories, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the Quaker view that something very significant happened there for all people:


(John 1:9) That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.


(2 Corinthians 5:19) To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

The Quakers asserted that the atonement was the essential, timeless, and worldwide universal reconciliation of Jesus Christ, and was provided for all men, everywhere, of every kind of man. It had redeemed all people, had paid the price for all people, had put all people right with God, and it served as an example for all people. The atonement had wiped the slate clean, so to speak, and had given humanity a fresh start, one somehow free from the encumbrance of the sin that came with being a creature born and raised in a fallen world. Importantly, you didn’t have to know about it, understand it, or have faith in it for it to be effective—Christ died for us while we were still sinners, like the apostle wrote. His redemption was a gift for all men and women, freely given, with no strings attached, including the strings of knowledge, understanding, and faith.

So this was the first part of the original Quaker message about the atonement, but only the first. The necessary second part was what got Quakers thrown into prisons, flogged, and executed. It also made the Orthodox thump their canes in disagreement that day in the Philadelphia meeting house when they heard it from Elias Hicks, who was doing no more than asserting a Quaker truth that dated from the beginning of Christianity, but that the Orthodox Friends were beginning to openly reject. This second part was the recognition that the physical death of Jesus Christ, by itself, was indeed ultimately no more efficacious than the blood sacrifice of bulls and goats denied by the author of Hebrews. His physical death in his earthly body set the stage, but it didn’t lower the curtain. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ remits sins, enlightens us, and puts us in a capacity to be made righteous, to actually be justified. But it is the subsequent inward work of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ that actually enables us to be sanctified, to put on Christ, to be renewed inwardly, and then to experience the justified state in which we are saved. By itself, the atonement didn’t save you—what it did was make it possible for you to be saved, to be put into a relationship that you weren’t in before. It was the gift of the Light.


Robert Barclay devotes page after page to this two-fold nature of Christ’s work in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity. A single excerpt will serve, I hope:

By the first of these two . . . we are out into a capacity for salvation, having the glad tidings of the Gospel of peace offered to us, and God is reconciled unto us in Christ . . . By the second, we witness this capacity brought into act, whereby receiving and not resisting the purchase of his death, to wit, the Light, Spirit, and Grace of Christ revealed to us, we witness and possess a real true and inward redemption from the power and prevalency of sin, and so come to be truly and really redeemed, justified, and made righteous, and to a sensible union and friendship with God.

And how do we do this? The answer can be found throughout New Testament Scripture: by not resisting the work of the Holy Spirit, by emulating the Christ, by obedience to his commands, by doing the things he asks us to do, and by accepting the assistance of the Inward Light, that he provides to help us to do it. The Gospels record story after story, parable after parable, teaching after teaching, in which Jesus Christ himself tells us that that we must actively participate with the Holy Spirit in our sanctification. Over and over, the Gospels tell us of a Jesus who came with a message for us to actually be something new and renewed, to act, to follow him, not to rest easy in Zion with a hope of glory founded in a passive acknowledgement of imputed justification. The Protestant opponents of Quakerism derided this belief as “works righteousness.” The Quakers countered by pointing out that it was what Jesus told us to do.


This was what old Elias and generations of Friends before him had to say about the atonement. But what did the Wilburites themselves say about the matter? Were they quiet, and content to let the Orthodox thump their canes and carry the flag of Quakerism back 150 years into the Protestant camp of it had left behind? Because, after all, the Orthodox view was essentially Protestant in nature, and would come to another crisis in the Second Separation in just a few more years.

In fact, the Wilburites weren’t shy about expressing their view that the outward atonement was insufficient by itself to provide salvation:

In attempting to counteract the sorrowful effects resulting from a denial of the benefits which accrue to mankind from the sufferings and death of Christ, as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, the subject has been pressed so far as to give the countenance to the idea that Christ has paid the debt and done the work for us, without us; and that by a profession of faith in and reliance upon him, as their atonement and righteousness, the ungodly may be justified without experiencing sanctification through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Elsewhere:

There is hence a danger of separating what our blessed Lord has done for us, without us, from what it is indispensible to experience him to do for us within us; and of thinking that a man may be a true Christian because of religious belief, and without his doing the will of God through submission to the power of the cross of Christ.

This was a major point upon which the Wilburites differed from the Orthodox, and could hardly be put more clearly: Christ’s material death, alone, was not sufficient to ensure salvation—he required something more from us than merely showing up, so to speak. The Wilburites explicitly denied the Protestant belief that the death of Christ imputed sufficient righteousness to the faithful, and warned against the hazard of believing in it:


Is it not possible for persons who have been educated in the belief that Christ has suffered in their stead, the penalty due to their sins, and that they are saved by his imputed righteousness, to place their whole reliance for their salvation on his sacrifice, and to conclude that they are perfectly safe, while they are rejecting the visitations and requisitions of his Spirit, and are no better than nominal believers of the truths of the Gospel? Can such a literal belief make them participants of the body and blood of Christ, while they know nothing of the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, not having been made conformable to his death?


Pretty plain speech for 19th century Wilburites, and hard core Barclay, as well. The atonement is the overture that precedes the performance. It is Christ knocking at the door, where he waits, ready to enter. But the actual putting on of Christ is what does the trick: the subsequent washing and sanctification is where the justification comes in.



This two-part view of the work of the historical Christ and the Inward Christ is one that Conservative Friends today sometimes lose sight of. Although we descend from the Wilburites, many of our modern beliefs seem more similar to those of the Orthodox who separated from us than those of the earlier Friends and of the Wilburites who tried to conserve their message. Many of our members seem unaware of the changes and as a result don’t see a difference today between the beliefs of our spiritual ancestors and those who took the Protestant path instead.

But I believe that the original Friends had it right, and that the Wilburite view had it right as well.

Perhaps it’s time to abandon the Conservative reticence to talk about these things, and to spend some time in contemplating just where we came from, where we are now, and where we’re going. Because doing the will of Jesus Christ is what’s it’s all about, I think. And troubled though our beginning was in the 19th century, when it comes to what God expects from us, I think the Wilburites mostly got it right.

And even old Elias Hicks, troublemaker as he so often was, mostly got this one right, too.

Simplicity

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

Simplicity.

Try just repeating it to yourself: simplicity. The word itself sounds so, well, simple.

Why is it that we Friends are so concerned with simplicity? We seem to write about it a lot. I’ve thought about it a lot, too, and as I see it, simplicity is not as easy as you might think. Simplicity means very different things to different groups of Friends. Most Friends’ books of Discipline or Faith and Practice will address the issue somewhere, either under “Testimonies” or the category of “Advices and Queries,” if they still maintain them. In the older Disciplines, it won’t appear as “Simplicity,” but will show up here and there under “Temperance and Moderation,” “Plainness,” and the like. We don’t know where to put it, but we manage somehow.

In general, the recommendations fall into two categories. First, the pursuit of simplicity calls upon Friends—and everybody else, too—to avoid superfluous possessions, expenditures, and consumption, so as to simplify our responsibilities and impacts as stewards of the creation. That’s commendable and pretty straightforward. Second, it calls upon people to avoid activities, occupations, and excessive attention to anything that might result in a lack of attention being devoted to more eternally significant spiritual matters.

My own Ohio Yearly Meeting’s Discipline section on “Simplicity” follows our traditional practice of never stating anything clearly when oblique and vague alternatives are available. (You gotta love us.) “Simplicity” is talked about in several places, but never defined. The best we can do is to state this much about simplicity:

The heart of Christian simplicity lies in the singleness of purpose which is required by the injunction to seek first the Kingdom of God. As men seek to express the spirit of God in the daily lives they realize the necessity of putting first things first . . . . The call to each is to abandon those things that clutter his life and to press toward the goal unhampered. This is true simplicity.

Actually, this isn’t so bad, for Conservative Friends, anyway. We also mention it in other places, too, here and there, without really going into why simplicity is less distracting than complexity. After all, having too much of something is sometimes less distracting than having too little of it. Food, for instance. Or shelter. Many years ago, George Orwell wrote that the only people who didn’t think about money were people who had lots of it; people who had very little money thought about it all the time.

And is there a point where the pursuit of simplicity becomes a distraction? Can simplicity itself become a notional pursuit that enslaves, rather than frees, the follower? What about Zen and the art of archery, or Lao Tzu and his impossible parables? And voluntary poverty, and those annoyingly persistent Franciscans?

It turns out simplicity is actually sort of complicated.

In my own case, the pursuit of simplicity has been a calling that I have pursued all my life, consciously, actively. With greater and lesser success in different ways, at different times. When choosing between two tools to add to my inventory, I generally choose one that solves the problem with the fewest unnecessary features. Features are the enemy of simplicity, the mission creep of non-necessities that whittle away at our attention. When selecting a new pocket knife, for example, I avoid the all-in-one tools with a gadget for every purpose. My pocket knives all have a single blade, one that locks in place so that it won’t fold shut on my fingers, and a design that can be opened with one hand. That’s it. I used to carry switch blades because they satisfied all these conditions admirably, but that particular tool makes me unpopular in some circles, so I don’t carry them anymore.

There are other examples. In automobiles, I prefer cheap and easy standard transmissions to automatics, windows that crank open without a motor, rubber mats rather than carpets, and mechanical actuators and control systems rather than hydraulic, electric, or solid state. I also prefer carburetors to fuel injection, and no, I don’t care if it’s just a throttle body. In kitchen tools, I avoid anything with a power cord, and when I cook (rarely now that I live in my truck) I generally cook from scratch. (Ask me sometime about how I discovered that you can buy cornbread mixes in a box—I hadn’t a clue that you could do that.)

I bought a used motorcycle when I was in school, years ago. It worked okay for me, and so I’ve kept it for the last 33 years. It works better now than it did when I bought it, and I don’t see the need to replace it with something else. It’s not as quick or as fast as a newer, more complex machine, but I know every single part inside it personally and if I twist the throttle it will still double the legal speed limit.

And I’ve ditched televisions sets for many years now, and almost completely abandoned radios, too. I don’t have a lot in the way of recorded music, and I don’t pursue a lot of time-consuming entertainments: motion pictures, sports, politics and so on. Let’s not talk about books. I’m no good at getting rid of books, and besides, I don’t have to. God regularly destroys the books I accumulate in traumatic ways, so I try not to worry about them much anymore.

In a previous life, I used to consciously try to add to the complex of data available in my head. For instance, I made it a point to learn to identify all the species of mammals in my state, all the genera in my country, all the families in the world. Not so hard with mammals, actually, as there’s not very many of them, and most are my favorites anyway: bats and rats. I can still identify most of the canids in North America (wolves, coyotes, and various foxes) by nothing more than isolated lower jaw bones. But I’ve mellowed on mammalogy, and while I still enjoy the critters, now I’m not so intense. I’ve mellowed on a lot of things, actually, as I’ve learned that spreading myself too thin with interesting but distracting matters lessens the time I have available for each one of them. I try to limit my attention to fewer but more important things, and work on deeper understandings of each of them.

There are exceptions to this pattern, of course. I accept necessary complexity in aspects of my life that require more of it. I dress in the manner generally referred to as plain, and it adds complexity to my life that clothing myself more simply would avoid. It’s hard to get certain types of clothing in certain places, for example, and often more expensive. But I don’t dress the way I do as a witness to simplicity, I do it as a witness to other things. And living as I do out in the country with a wife and five kids, a four-ton pile of coal for heat, a twenty-four foot hole in the ground for intermittent drinking water, and a four-foot hole in the ground for a toilet, also adds complexities to my life that just living in town would remove. But I do that for other reasons as well.

I consider it distracting to have to relearn the same things over again unnecessarily, if obsolescence or progress renders a satisfactory system unviable. I recognize that my time is limited, and so is the attention that I can afford to devote to mastering duplicate additions to my mental chores. There are things that I want to know, and things that I want to become better at, and things that I want to understand. But there are also lots of intrusions into my sphere of simplicity that I reject out of hand, even if they might make something easier, quicker, or even cheaper. Like Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, I believe that I have reached the point where I don’t learn something new without forgetting something that I learned before—I can’t become better at certain things without sacrificing time and mental energy to them that I might want to devote to other things that I think are more important.

I’m not always successful. I once spent most of a day experimenting with an electric fan and plastic airfoils mounted on the tops of toy cars, proving to myself that it was actually possible to sail a boat into the wind in the way my lovely wife patiently explained. I had never really believed it, but now I know it’s true. Could I have done something more spiritually useful to my life that day? Maybe. The problem with simplicity is that sometimes it’s not really obvious what things are actually distractions, and what are thresholds to new ways of looking at something important. There’s lots of things that still continue to clamor for my attention. Gyroscopes (try holding a spinning bicycle wheel by the axle), and mixing colored light, and how music works, and why salmon swim up into little creeks to breed, and the different types of woven textiles. Maybe I’ll have time to figure them out someday, or maybe not.

I choose simplicity, in the end, mostly for the reasons described in my meeting’s Discipline. I choose it because it frees me from distractions, and allows me to spend my energy, time, and thoughts pursuing other aspects of life that I find more important, rather than catering to the ephemera of transient complexity. I spend a lot of my time now thinking about God, and thinking about how other people have thought about God, and trying to get better at thinking about God. At least in the sense that I’m trying to get better at doing the things he wants me to do, and being the kind of person he wants me to be.

And I actually do end up with more time for reflection about God, and trying to understand more of what I’m to do in my life here in that context. By reducing distractions, I do find that I have been able to concentrate more on spiritual issues, and applying them to my life. So it does work, when I let it. But I have a very long way to go.

The problem is that these other various other topics are so interesting. But maybe some of them will turn out to be important to the way I think about God, and need to be added to the short and simple list of things that I pay more attention to.

Did you know that there are only 130 species of ferns in the whole world? Why did God do that? Ferns represent the only major biological group of organisms that a single systematist can ever hope to master in a lifetime. And there’s two species that I know of right down by the creek. I could start right there. Just a few months. How hard could it be?

You know, simplicity just isn’t easy.

Perfection

And now for something completely different. Perfection.


Perfection is a concept used frequently by the first generations of Friends to speak of the foundations of the Quaker revelation of Christianity, both in the usage that we choose today, and in several other senses. Where a modern speaker might restrict the use of the term “perfection” to mean flawless, unblemished, or without error, a speaker from the 17th century would also use it to denote the related ideas of being complete, blameless, mature, unspoiled, repaired, and so on. In the Authorized Version, the English word “perfect” is translated from several corresponding Greek terms, including teleios, katartizō, holoklēria, epiteleō, artios, and plēroō. All mean approximately the same thing, but the two terms used most frequently in the NT are forms of telios and katartizo. In the first, “perfect” means “complete,” indicating maturity, something of final stature, a finished work. In the second, “perfect” indicates the state of something that had been broken and is now mended.

The Friends’ understanding of perfection was foundational to their beliefs, and was one of the unique aspects of the Quaker revelation of Christianity that got the early Friends into hot water with the Reformed Protestants and Anglicans of 17th century Britain and America. To Friends, perfection was the end-product of sanctification, of becoming holy. Friends’ understanding of perfection was closely tied to their belief that genuine, internal righteousness was a requirement imposed by God in order to justify a human and grant salvation. Perfection was the ultimate state that the Friend hoped to attain, the degree of sinless immunity to temptation assigned to them as his or her unique measure of the Light.

On the other hand, the Puritan interpretation of grace was that God imputed righteousness to you, and accounted you justified, while in life you remained depraved, a helpless prisoner to sinning “in thought, word, and deed.” The Friends’ view was vastly more optimistic and generous. The function of the Light was not to impute a forced righteousness, but to lead to a life of genuine righteousness, to a real state of inward holiness. George Fox regularly accused his opponents of “pleading for sin” when they cried that earthly righteousness was beyond man’s reach. Fox countered with the words of Paul from Ephesians 4:13 that “a measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” is not only attainable but an essential step in the Christian walk of faith. In his Epistles, “perfection” comes up frequently:

“Now what value, price and worth have they made of the blood of Christ, that cleanses them from sin and death, and yet [they] told people that they would bring them to the knowledge of the son of God and to a perfect man, and now tell them that they must not be perfect on the earth, but carry a body of sin about them to the grave?” Fox, Epistle 222.

But were the early Friends always “perfect?” Did they exhibit a state of complete sinlessness, of mended completeness, of total spiritual maturity? It doesn’t seem so. They feuded at times, and were unquestioned backsliders at times. What does this mean?

Robert Barclay provides the concise Quaker answer in the Apology for True Christian Divinity. For most of us all of the time, and for all of us some of the time, “perfection,” “completeness,” or “maturity” is not a static event, but a benchmark in a process. Just as all of us have been granted different measures of the Light, all of us have been assigned different levels-- and schedules-- of expectation. What is “conformed to the image of his Son” may be different for one believer than for another, and it may be a lesser value at one time in the life of a believer than it may become for him later in the process. Barclay is very careful to emphasize that this is what he usually means by “perfection:”

“. . . by this we understand not such a perfection as may not admit of a growth, and consequently mean not, as if we were to be as pure, holy, and perfect as God in his divine attributes of wisdom, knowledge and purity; but only a perfection proportionable and answerable to man’s measure, whereby we are kept from transgressing the law of God and enabled to answer what he requires of us . . . “ Robert Barclay, Apology

Barclay states that Christian perfection is exactly parallel to the perfection of the “good and faithful servants” in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). In that example, the servant who did his best with only two talents was just as justified as the servant who did much better with ten. It isn’t the amount of the Light that we have that is important, for all of us have enough. Rather, it is important that we are completely faithful to the measure of grace with which we have been blessed.

Fox puts it clearly: “Therefore comes Christ, the first and the last, to destroy the devil and his works in men’s hearts and sanctify them by his blood, his Life, which was the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world and destroys the devil and his works through death . . . and sanctifies and washes men and women, and presents them back again to God perfect . . . .” Epistle 232.

Barclay devoted the whole of his Eighth Proposition to this subject in the Apology: “Yet we do believe that to those in whom Christ comes to be formed and the new man brought forth and born of the incorruptible seed, as that birth and man in union therewith naturally doth the will of God, so it is possible so far to keep to it as not to be found daily transgressors of the law of God.” Apology.

And in his writings, John Wilbur refers repeatedly to sanctification as the endpoint of the workings of grace. In his second letter to George Crosfield, for example, he refers to the workings of the Holy Spirit within men and women, in order to keep the opportunity presented by Jesus Christ’s atonement from being wasted:

“. . . for without [the mediation of Jesus Christ], man could not so much as be brought to repentance, and much less, to that which is the hardest of all attainments; the forsaking and ceasing from sin . . .”

And later, “And here we see the supreme excellency of the light and grace of this provision; that if observed, is able to keep us from a state, out of which the atonement itself is not designed to redeem us—even that of sinning against the Holy Ghost.”

A very important additional point is often forgotten, which is that achieving Christian righteousness is a gradual process, and not one of instantaneous, permanent salvation based on a snatch from the hands of the devil. It is achieved by steps, accompanied by works of faith performed through grace, by being faithful to one’s measure of the Light. And next, by receiving more Light and being faithful to that increased responsibility as well. Fox described his own first steps in his Journal:

“Now I was come up in 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 into the state of Adam which he was in before he fell. . . . 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 . . .”

Even though the initial event lasted no more than a few minutes, it impressed Fox so singularly that it became the turning point of his life. Similarly, when the Apostles were granted the infilling of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), this state of sinless grace didn’t persist uninterruptedly for the rest of their lives. The tongues of fire went away, after all. But the Holy Spirit didn’t leave them, and it returned again and again, working within them again and again.

And it can do the same for you. Have you ever experienced a moment, a minute, an hour or two, when you felt the Light so strongly influencing you to the good that all thought of sin passed away? A time when your soul was so perfectly in time with the rhythms of God that unfaithfulness was not even conceivable? Were you “sinning in thought, word, and deed,” even as God breathed the power of the Holy Spirit into you? Or were you experiencing the workings of the Light: perfection, sanctification, holiness, during that time, however long it was? The Friends’ message was that these moments were possible, and should be expected, if we remained faithful. And that they would continue, and continue to build holiness within us. Because over and over, Jesus Christ commands us to live without sin, and if this command is not achievable, then the Gospel is false.

Barclay is quick to point out that it would be presumptuous to pronounce himself sinless, and denies that he has achieved the state. “Others may perhaps speak more certainly of this state, as having arrived to it.” But perfection is the goal for Christians to pursue, as they work out their own salvation with fear and trembling (Philomen 2:12), the life of holy righteousness that Jesus told us to live when he said, “You are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you,” (John 15:14). Friends of the 17th century died in prison for making this command of Jesus their goal.

Freedom from sinning in this life is a traditional goal of the Society of Friends, and perfection in this life can be expected to arrive in steps and stages, as events, rather than as a full-blown conversion. This is encouraging, as small steps to a goal are more easily accomplished than attempts to leap a giant chasm all at once, and more easily attained for most of us. But history repeats itself. Just as the Puritans denied this to be possible in the 17th century, the Gurneyite Orthodox Friends would deny it to be possible in the 19th. What has been the belief of our own tradition, of the Wilburite Ohio Yearly Meeting Conservative?

There are various journals and records available to us. One such is a treatise entitled An Appeal for the Ancient Doctrines of the Religious Society of Friends, originally published in Philadelphia in 1847, and officially adopted by OYM in 1848. In that Yearly Meeting, clerked by Wilburite Benjamin Hoyle, the Meeting for Sufferings directed that 1500 copies were to be printed and distributed among the Ohio quarters in 1848, as representing the sound doctrine of the Society.

This lengthy treatise expresses the sentiments of OYM prior to the Gurneyite departure in the 1850s. It is hard-core Wilburite in tone, emphasizing the primacy of the Spirit over Scripture as the chief guide to faith and practice, the fallacy of imputed righteousness, and the Wilburite interpretation of the crucifixion as only the first step in the salvation process. It refers repeatedly and at great length to the writings of Robert Barclay. Sanctification in this life is mentioned repeatedly as a point upon which the Wilburite Friends differed from Protestants, and from those following the Gurneyite path that would soon lead to the second separation. The OYM opinion on perfection is concisely summed up in the introduction, which ends with this criticism of the non-Wilburite Friends: “Accordingly, under a high profession of religion, but in an intolerant spirit towards those who differed from them, they denied the possibility of being made free from sin in this life, at the same time that they considered themselves justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So Friends, when you feel the Holy Spirit filling you with Light, when the grace of God commands you to rise atop of sin and overcome it, when you feel both the call to be perfect and the strength to achieve it, don’t reject these gentle promptings in your heart. Receive them, keep them, live them, but never view them as unattainable. The belief that perfection in this life is the goal of the Christian is one of the founding beliefs of the Society of Friends, and one of the points upon the Wilburites divided from the old Orthodox Friends, creating Ohio Yearly Meeting. In the words of the Apostle:

“But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” (1Peter 5:10).

Inspired or Inerrant?

Just how ecstatic do we have to be to use the word "inspired" when we talk about what we do in obedience of the Holy Spirit? Just how letter-perfect do our words have to be before we can trust them to be from God? The reason I'm asking is that as a Friend, I am accustomed to sitting next to ordinary people in meeting who stand and speak as prompted by the Holy Spirit. To me, this is what "inspiration" is all about--a motivation by the influence of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ to respond to an immediate leading with a thought, word or action, as directed by the Spirit. But they are often somewhat ordinary about it.


Back in the old days, ordinary Quakers flopped on the floor and foamed at the mouth under "inspiration." Some still do, I suppose, but it isn't routine by any means, at least where I live. But I know people who do suddenly have things to say in meeting that are clearly directed by outside supernatural forces. Or they walk up to my wife and say things that seem incomprehensible but which mean something to her. This is what I know of as inspiration in the real world. I believe that this inspiration is the same as that granted the apostles, and as far as I know may be granted to a modern Friend in the same measure.


But I don't think it follows that inspiration from the Holy Spirit requires inerrancy in the delivery of the inspired Friend's message. When a minister in my meeting stands to speak, she does so with a distinct Ohio accent, and her words are constructed out of the cultural context of the Ohio River Valley, in the eastern United States. She may make an inspired point that is True while using imperfect grammar, or she may later write an inspired letter that contains spelling mistakes. Her inspired words may illustrate a point using an incorrect knowledge of fact or circumstance. It's the letter that's inspired, not the envelope.


Likewise, when a first century epistle writer sat down at a table, it's clear that he wrote using the vocabulary and cultural framework of a first-century Christian. This epistle writer might have written an inspired book that was preserved as Scripture for the future, but which reflected his contemporary knowledge of factual matters that we know more about today. Those mistakes don't make the words or writings of the author any less inspired, or any less True, in the areas in which he was ministering--just human. An imperfect implement, but good enough for the task.


I've written elsewhere about the inarguable fact that Christian Scripture contains errors of geography, history, and science. The errors are easy to find, and the fact that they're there doesn't impress me. The point that I want to make is that these errors do not in any way by themselves render Scripture uninspired, or faulty, or without the value given it by the Holy Spirit. Just as a Quaker minister may misidentify the species of a bird in a parable about God, a Jewish author might misidentify a mustard seed as the smallest of all seeds, or a Greek writer misquote an Old Testament prophet, in an account where that information is not the point.


Many times people attack inerrancy by assembling lists of various Scriptural errors or inconsistencies, and then trot them out to say that because Scripture is erroneous in these small details, it must be untrustworthy in a larger context. They often wrangle with people who defend inerrancy, who themselves say that if Scripture is believed to be capable of errors in details, then it can't be trusted in a larger context. The arguments work from the same assumption--that Scriptural Truth depends on inerrancy. As I see it, the value of Scripture as the inspired words of God do not rise and fall on unrelated errors or the writer's lack of a modern education.


My faith in the message of the Scriptures isn't shaken by the many minor internal inconsistencies or the contradictions with modern knowledge, because I don't expect them to be perfect or treat them as a science textbook. Likewise for geography, or history. Their value is elsewhere. I believe the messages are True, so I don't worry about the little stuff that crept in here and there, or the hiccups in the delivery. This is hard for some Christians to accept, because they have been taught to look to a Book for the direction they need, instead of the Author patiently standing next to them, waiting for them to notice.


But I think it's what we're called to. So I don't sweat the small stuff.

Speak in a Large Voice

My Meeting House is an old one, and is very large. It holds 2000 people when all the 75 benches are filled, and people are sitting on the steps, and in the upper galleries, and in the doorways, and standing along the walls. It hasn’t held that many people for a long time, but that’s a different story.


The building was put together with an ear to vocal ministry from the days before sound amplification. The ceiling is high and smooth, the roof above the minister’s facing benches is curved, and the floor slopes gently down to the front. Everything is focused on taking a clear voice and projecting it across a room over 100 feet wide and 60 feet deep. When you lift your head up and speak with a large voice, the room joins with you and gives you a strength, volume, and clarity that doesn’t come from inside you.


But if you don’t speak with a large voice, if you don’t direct your words upwards and outwards, if you speak softly and in a quiet voice, you often can’t be heard. Sometimes we have visitors who are inspired to pray or give ministry, and who end up mostly just speaking to themselves. Some are shy, some are not accustomed to a clear and open space, and some seem more interested in ruminating quietly than in sharing a message with others. Some simply talk to their shoes. This problem has plagued speakers in my Meeting House for 130 years—the old newspaper accounts of the Yearly Meeting often identify a speaker by name, but point out that nobody could tell what they were saying. Their voice was not a large one, and while people could see them, their message was not heard.


In the same way, we in the Religious Society of Friends often fail to be credited in important ways because we don’t speak in a large enough voice. George Fox used to say, “Let your lives be patterns, examples. Let your lives preach!” Modern Friends often take the first part of his message to heart, and forget the rest. When I came to Quakerism years ago, I didn’t know any members of the Society. I came to the practice as an isolate, and my first experience with waiting worship was alone, without models, examples, or fellow travelers. I had other friends and colleagues I associated with, but nobody who I could turn to for guidance about the Society. When I finally located a meeting and asked where it was to be held, I was astonished to find that it was in the home of a man I had known for years.


Richard was a fine man, serious and dedicated to many important aspects of the world he shared with me. He worked for the state Agricultural Department—I was a commercial beekeeper. At the county fair he volunteered to spend hours taking down our beekeeping exhibit and loading it into the truck with us. I always thought, “What a kind and helpful man.” Richard was a Friend, but I didn’t know it. His life was a pattern, and an example, but because he never let on that he was a Friend, his life didn’t preach. His witness was a good one, but not one that helped me to locate the Society that caused him to be that way, to share in his journey. Richard didn’t speak in a large voice, and the important part of his message—why he was the way he was—didn’t make it through. And I struggled without companions for longer than I might have.


In our larger Society, we often take part in exemplary causes. We are active in our communities, both our religious and our secular ones. (If we are fortunate, they’re the same.) We feed the hungry, we clothe the naked, we comfort the widows, and we visit the prisoners. We often do these things, though, without letting people know that we do these things because we have been called to do it as Friends, as servants of a God who has told us to love each other and to live our lives as an expression of that. And people say about us, “What a nice thing to do,” and turn away. We hide our Light under a bushel, and our witness remains a mystery to those who might benefit from the explanation.


Sometimes we don’t speak about our religion because we seem to think that it’s a secret thing, a hidden thing, something that we’re not supposed to share. I’ve heard Friends explain that they don’t tell people about God because they don’t think they’re supposed to, because they follow an unwritten creed that states, “Thou shalt not proselytize.” Sometimes we don’t tell people who we are because we feel that it’s forward and intrusive to mention religion, as if a strange and restrictive secular etiquette were more important to us than sincerely sharing what we are. Sometimes we don’t speak about it because we don’t think we have the words to express it, and don’t trust ourselves to represent what it is that guides us.


When we do this, we ignore the advice of George Fox. We do not let our lives preach. Because no one knows why we do these things, we do not become the patterns, the examples that we were charged to be by the first generation of Friends. We are good enough in what we do, but we don’t share a path that others can follow in order to do likewise. And if we don’t share that path, then ultimately we have failed at the most important part of being patterns and examples. We walk our trail without blazing it, and others do not follow us because they don’t see the trail we follow.


Friends, the next time you perform an action in faith for your fellow creatures, tell them why you do it. When you hand the homeless woman on the street your lunch because she’s hungry, tell her that you’re a Friend, and invite her to your meeting. When you help a man with a flat tire on the highway, and he thanks you, tell him that he’s welcome, and that as a Friend, you look out for people like him. When you join with like-minded people in a public demonstration of support for a worthy cause, put the religious basis for your action on your sign. When your lives come up in conversation, point out the reason you live the way you do. Don’t hide who you are. Share the message that made you that way with people who want to be that way too, but don’t know how.


Don’t think for a moment that it can’t be your job to lead people to the Religious Society of Friends, that God will do it when the time comes. God chooses tools as he pleases, and sometimes your responsibility is to be that tool. When he chooses, he might speak in a still, small, voice; but that's his prerogative, and not yours. Take a step forward, and stand still in the Light that reveals the truth of what you are, both to yourself and to the world. Speak in a large voice, and let your whole message be heard.

Is it really Quakerly to Go Slow?

Is it really Quakerly to go slow? Is deliberate slowness in our actions a submission, an acknowledgement that we seek to follow God in our decision-making so sincerely that we will postpone action of which we are unsure? To wait expectantly until our path is made clear before we go ahead?


Maybe sometimes it is, and maybe sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I think we go slowly because we have enshrined going slow as matter of human doctrine, not as divine direction. We have created a "Quaker style" that we are comfortable with, in the same way that the Orthodox Churches are known for "smells and bells," or the Epsicopalians for processions. But does our slowness come from God, or from our own preferences for an identifiable "tradition?" Jesus criticized the Pharisees repeatedly for substituting their human traditions for the commands of God. Does Scripture say to go slow?


God is written to have made the universe in six days.


The founding members of our Society never had anything to say about slowness being close to Godliness. In fact, they tended to act quickly, even on leadings whose means and ends were unclear. One early critic of the Friends wrote of a visit by George Fox, who knocked on the door one evening with a companion and was invited in. His host asked for the reason for the visit, and reported that Fox said he didn't know, that he came to deliver a message but didn't know what it was. After more conversation of equal confusion, George excused himself and left, leaving his amused host alone to write for posterity about the visit from the half-crazed Quaker.


I like this story, because it points out that Fox was willing to step out and act immediately upon leadings whose ends he was unable to see. George didn't know what he was supposed to say to that country gentleman, but he went anyway and knocked on the door. And ultimately, it seems that George was not intended to deliver a message at all, at least in the way he expected. One was not forthcoming, anyway.


George acted immediately on a half-baked leading, because he trusted in God to make it clear as he went along, if that was the plan. Slowness, and quiet feeling for the right way to go forward was not part of George's style. When God said "Jump," George Fox jumped.


Is that what we do?


Or do we sit quietly and wait, and let our fires go out, reassuring ourselves that going slow is always better than going rapidly? Is slowness a tradition, a "Quaker process" that we have invented all on our own? Is it possible that God sometimes wants us to jump, and right now? I'm not talking about jumping out far ahead of our corporate body here, and striking out on our own like some modern-day John Perrot. I'm talking about moving ahead on a leading where the initial impetus is clear, but where the ultimate direction and goal is obscure. A situation where being responsive to the leading requires simply moving forward on it in faith. Like George, who knew he was to deliver a message, but didn't have a clue as to what it was supposed to be.


Perhaps that message is only just now being delivered to its intended recipient.


To you?

The Curse of the "Early Friends"

I read a lot about Quakerism. I'm always interested in what other people have had to say about it, because hearing from a variety of interpreters helps me understand what it is that I hear myself. I'm especially interested to read someone's observations made hundreds of years ago, and to be able to say, "Yes! That is the experience that I also have had!" I learn more about the way God works with me by reading how he worked with others. The founders of the Religious Society of Friends pioneered a re-discovery of the living, risen Christ, walking among them, teaching them, immanent.

But there is a danger in this studying of others. Not because they don't have something of value to offer, but because sometimes we forget that their discovery was that we all have to make our own discovery.

I call this, The Curse of the "Early Friends."

Too often these days, when I read of a particular practice or belief, very early in the discussion the Curse appears. Someone or other will describe an opinion, and someone else will comment, "The Early Friends believed in this or that..." Or perhaps, in describing what Quakerism is, someone will say, "These were the practices recognized as normative by the Early Friends..." Or in describing worship, I will hear, "The Early Friends did/did not worship in this way..."

Now conversationally, this is useful information. But the problem with the Curse of the Early Friends is that very soon it seems to become a metric, a canon, an instant tool for assessing the validity of an assertion. As if the Early Friends experienced and expressed the totality of the Christian Revelation, and if they didn't experience it, then it can't be valid.

Folks, not one of the Early Friends ever experienced a flush toilet, either.

Now before I take a rock tossed at my head, let me point out that the Early Friends did indeed experience a noisier, more vibrant, and more contagious experience of corporate Quakerism than I see in most of my Yearly Meeting, and most everybody else's too. In about 30 years Quakers in Britain went from nothing to about two percent of the entire population. That's a startling growth, and more so because it happened in the face of continuing legal and social persecution. That growth is something I'd like to see again, here, today.

So I can understand and sympathize with those who have an interest in the Early Friends. They had something that we'd like to have ourselves, a fire, a message so true and so obvious that entire towns could be converted almost overnight, like the Biblical accounts of the Samaritans discovering the Messiah, or the Jerusalem church growing by hundreds and thousands.

But there is an old Eastern proverb, that says in these words or some similar: "Don't seek to follow in the footsteps of the masters. Instead, seek the same goal that they did, and make your own footsteps." My own goal in the practice of my religion isn't to study the Early Friends so that I can mimic their technique, it's to reach the same discoveries myself. Which, in fact, is what their own discovery was in the first place.

So the next time you're reading about what Quakerism is, or what it isn't, and you come across a sentence that contains the words "...the Early Friends," watch out! The chances are good that someone is trying to create his own autobiography, but using someone else's life.

A Caution on "Tradition"

As Quakers, we need to be very careful when we invoke an automatic and inflexible “tradition” to justify any of our practices without thought and prayer. It is certainly true that we should learn from the valuable past experience of others in our Society. But our Society was founded on the premise that it is our own present-time experience with the Inward Light of Jesus Christ that should guide us personally and corporately, not the discoveries and habits of others, no matter how exemplary. We are directed to seek unity with God and loving agreement with one another, not conformity to a history of rules, written or unwritten.

Tradition is a useful but explicitly limited tool in our Society, no matter how attractive its authority. If tradition becomes the primary rule, then shadow has triumphed over substance, and the Holy Spirit is pressed down as a cart under sheaves. Jesus scorned the Pharisees and their love of tradition. He told his contemporaries that he would disregard their traditions if it conflicted with his teachings, and His disciples should do likewise. He healed on the sabbath, handled lepers, tossed moneychangers out of the temple on his own authority, commended David for eating the showbread, called the lovers of tradition vipers for upholding it instead of his commandments, and redefined 613 detailed Mosaic ordinances into two short sentences. None of this sat well with Tradition, or those who defended it.

On Honoring Jesus in the Absence of a Clear Leading

Just what is a clear leading? Friends talk about leadings a lot, but how often do we discuss what to do if we can’t tell if they’re genuine? Not often enough, I think. Our Discipline explains where we believe they come from, and what we should do about them: “As within ourselves we become conscious of the Inner Light or the Christ within and submit ourselves to His leadings, we are enabled to live in conformity to the will of our Heavenly Father.” (OYM Discipline 2001, p. 4). A leading, then, is a prompt from Jesus to make a choice in a certain way, to honor him by living our lives in a certain manner. Our Discipline goes on: “Each person must humbly and prayerfully seek individual guidance and follow his understanding of God’s leading. He will be helped by reading the Bible, and especially by pondering the marvelous life and teachings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (OYM Discipline 2001, p. 5). By correctly responding to the leading we are given an opportunity to honor Jesus by obeying his commandments.

So far, so good. But what do we do about leadings that aren’t clear? In my own experience I have found that the “still, small, voice” of Elijah’s God is often hard for me to distinguish from my own willful plans and desires. Certainly my own inner urgings to engage or withdraw from various actions are often at the heart of my motivations. What do I do then?

When Group Discernment Works

One solution is to seek clearness from our meeting or group. As Friends, we believe that the corporate body can often discern the purposes of God when an individual might not be confident of the leading. This is certainly not always the case--on some occasions an individual is being given a leading in order to redirect the group, and not otherwise. Even so, it is true so often that it should always be tried first. In particular cases, we may request a clearness committee, but joint discernment is routinely used in all decision-making, from allocating budgets to doing business at Yearly Meeting. A group of concerned and receptive Friends, listening carefully in worship and prayerful conversation, may achieve an insight that transcends the original understanding of the Friend with the leading. Jesus signals that the understanding is genuine after a time, when the participants achieve a unity of understanding about the issue, and a clearness that the unity is derived from the Inner Light. Often, a leading will be modified by the process in ways that were not predicted by anybody in advance.

The Fork in the Stream

But here is the difficulty that prompts my question. Sometimes even a group seeking to be led by the Inner Light will not be able to reach clear unity. Sometimes this happens when some Friends involved sincerely believe that the Inner Light is guiding them in a different direction from others in the group. What do we do then? Often, we Conservative Quakers have defaulted toward inactivity, reasoning in our minds that if we cannot corporately discern clearness with respect to a leading, then the correct response is to set it aside until some other time. Sometimes this turns out to have been correct, and a patient waiting for unity will provide a clearer answer later on. But sometimes it isn’t correct, and we use the excuse of waiting for unity as a means of avoiding issues upon which we have divisions. The problem with making any choice reflexively is that taking no action is always an action of another kind--always, in every case. When we reach a fork in the stream, our boat will go one way or the other, like it or not. Choosing to take no action does not prevent us from floating down one or another of the branches, and it constrains our subsequent choices just as effectively as charging down either one on purpose. Reflexively choosing inaction does not honor Jesus, who would have us do His will. “ The man who has received my commands and obeys them--he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father; and I will love him and disclose myself to him.”

"Come Back Later"

Sometimes a continuing lack of clearness is caused by our own failings, where the Inner Light is genuinely trying to shine into us, and our own flawed discernment of it is the cause of a protracted lack of unity within the group. We all know that this happens sometimes, because we are all imperfect, after all. But always responding to a lack of clear unity by choosing inaction ensures that we dishonor Jesus by ignoring His call in every situation where our discernment of the Inner Light was faulty. “Come back some other time,” we say to Him, “We can’t tell if it’s really You today.”

Is this the answer we should return when Jesus attempts to speak to a people who cannot or will not respond? I don’t think so. In my own opinion, an inability to discern corporate unity one way or another on a significant issue is a signal that we are not attending well enough to the urgings of the Inner Light, that we are not allowing ourselves to be led. God is not divided, and a question put to Him will always have an answer, whether we discern it clearly or not. Jesus calls us to mind the Inner Light by continuing to consider until we achieve unity with one another, whether finally shown in going forward, backward, or in standing still.

Looking for Unity

We achieve this unity by waiting upon the Lord together, by prayer, by laboring gently and charitably with one another, and by meditating on the issue alone with our Guide. Sometimes a decision might indeed be postponed, while the Body prepares itself to respond, but if the stop is maintained without continued deliberation, then an active choice has indeed been made. We cannot hold our boat in place above the fork, and not to choose is always to choose. Jesus Himself described this dilemma, when He said, “He who is not for us is against us.” Sometimes we do not discern clear unity to go forward. But if we also do not discern clear unity to stand still, then Jesus has not been honored if we discontinue discussion.

So What Do We Do?

Sometimes when we choose inactivity or put off actively considering a topic we say that we are being careful not to outrun our Guide, to run out ahead of the leading of the Inner Light. We say that we are not led to further activity or consideration. In this way we hope to avoid creaturely activity that is not of Divine origin. But creaturely activity comes in the form of a stop, too, and if Jesus is genuinely beckoning, then our failure to trust in Him and follow is just as disrespectful.

There is no easy answer to this problem, except to say that it has been a concern of Quakers for hundreds of years. In The Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers, William Penn expressed the dilemma:

Wherefore, brethren, let us be careful neither to out-go our Guide, nor yet loiter behind him; since he that makes haste, may miss his way, and he that stays behind, lose his guide.

The only thing that is clear is that the response to a lack of clearness regarding a leading should be to continue until unity and clearness are achieved. Jesus teaches us that unity is our goal, and our duty is to have faith that we can achieve it, and then to do so. If we do not clearly perceive our leading as a corporate body, whether by uncertainty of the appropriate course, or by significant disagreement about whether unity has been achieved, then we honor Jesus and each other by moving forward in deliberation until unity and clearness is achieved.od’s words become clear.