Patricia Dallmann's Posts - New Foundation Fellowship2024-03-28T15:30:20ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmannhttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/372647374?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://nffquaker.org/profiles/blog/feed?user=2y7w35e9woscq&xn_auth=noSome Observations on Revelation 10:5-7tag:nffquaker.org,2020-03-02:6286598:BlogPost:404062020-03-02T13:49:33.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants…</p>
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<blockquote><p>And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets (Rev. 10:5-7).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These verses from Revelation have a majesty about them. Something of gravity and magnificence is being revealed by this “mighty angel come down from heaven” (10:1). As such, his words are given the appropriate frame of reference: the earliest story we have in Scripture, the Creation story in Genesis. This passage from Revelation draws upon images and words that are recounted in the story of Creation. Thus we’re being told that the angel’s message is of highest importance – on par with Creation itself.</p>
<p>Not only do these verses from Revelation refer to the Creator and His first work, but they also develop particular elements found in the Creation story. For example in verse 5, the evangelist tells us that he sees the angel stand with one foot upon the sea and one foot on the earth. The statement alludes to the verse in Genesis where the land is divided from the sea:</p>
<blockquote><p>And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good (Gen. 1:9-10).</p>
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<p>The angel bridges previously separated areas. Where there was division of land from sea, there is now connection through the angel’s stance: “his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth”(2). The act is of such portent that the words bear repeating, which the evangelist does in verse 5.</p>
<p>In Creation God differentiates one thing from another, such as land from water. (See other divisions in Genesis 1 in verses 4, 6, 7, 14, and 18.) Division separates; whereas “one” implies unity and resolution, “two” suggests movement, change, comparison, or activity: for example, up/down, lesser/greater, solid/fluid, left/right, etc. With the appearance of the angel, the division of two Earth surfaces—land and sea—is bridged: that is to say, figuratively they are made one. With his stance, the angel transcends the structure of Creation and presages unity and wholeness. When fulfillment is come, when “the mystery of God [is] finished”(10:7), there is unity; there is peace and rest.</p>
<p>Another item presented in the first chapter of Genesis and addressed in these few verses from Revelation is the element of time: (The angel swears “by him that liveth for ever and ever. . .that there should be time no longer”[6].) In Genesis, time is introduced through the numbering of days that follow each specific creative act. (See verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31.) For example, “And the evening and the morning were the first day”(5). Things are created in sequence, and time marks each change, activity, and division, like a poem’s refrain, anchoring and imbuing each stanza.</p>
<p>Verse 6 in the Revelation passage shows the power and authority the eternal God has over time: “that there should be time no longer.” The angel states God’s intent to eliminate that element of Creation which separates Him from His mortal creature. No longer is humanity to be a time-bound captive to death, and separated from life eternal. Fox wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>Ye coming out of that which was in time, ye come up to God, who was before time was. This is a mystery, he that can receive it let him (7:57).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Through his stance and words, the mighty angel tells us the coordinates of space and time, which have previously defined our life, set our bounds as creatures, these no longer hold sway. Where we have been formerly is not where we are now to be: outside of time and in unity with God.</p>
<p>A Precious State</p>
<p>In the following quotation, Fox identifies time as the element in which all “troubles, persecutions, and temptations” occur, and he presents the alternative: the safety of the everlasting power of the Lord. As one would expect, Fox’s understanding is in agreement with the angel’s message of moving beyond time into that power that is everlasting and over all.</p>
<blockquote><p>All trials, troubles, persecutions and temptations, came up in time; but the Lord’s power, which is everlasting, is over all such things, in which is safety (Bi-centennial Edition of <em>The Journal of George Fox</em>, II, 418).</p>
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<p>Upon awakening very early in the morning this past “time called Christmas,” I was surprised to receive a gift. It was an insight: All I had experienced in my life was to a single end, and that end was to know and be in unity with God. Taking this newly given, trustworthy certainty into my barely conscious mind led to a delightful first thought of the day: that all the calamities, tragedies, and effort, all the betrayals, injuries, and mistakes I had made and endured from others. . . all of it had been ultimately to good purpose. All the mini-narratives I had composed and accumulated—drawn from my earliest memory to those of yesterday—did not define my being but were instead a kind of school to bring me to everlasting life, where true being is known. Furthermore, whatever remaining trials were to come, I could accept with quiet assurance, lightly and gracefully, for all was in good order, and the end was, and would ever be, life in Christ.</p>
<blockquote><p>He who feels the covenant in Christ and life streaming into his heart through the covenant, and the seal of eternal peace to his soul, and that he shall never be left nor forsaken by the fountain of mercy, but all that ever befalls him shall conduce towards the working out of the perfect redemption and salvation of his soul; this is a precious state indeed; and this is the state which the feeling of the faith, and the living obedience in the Spirit leads to (<em>Works of Isaac Penington</em>, II: 268).<a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3984957241?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3984957241?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" width="500"/></a></p>
</blockquote>Some Observations on John's Second Epistletag:nffquaker.org,2019-12-03:6286598:BlogPost:401042019-12-03T14:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>For many deceivers have come forth into the world, who do not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such is the deceiver and the antichrist. Look to yourselves, so as not to lose what we have done but receive your full reward. Whoever breaks forward and does not abide by the teaching of the Christ does not have God; the one who abides by his teaching has the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not take him into your…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>For many deceivers have come forth into the world, who do not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such is the deceiver and the antichrist. Look to yourselves, so as not to lose what we have done but receive your full reward. Whoever breaks forward and does not abide by the teaching of the Christ does not have God; the one who abides by his teaching has the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not take him into your house, and do not give him any greeting; for anyone who gives him a greeting shares in his evil deeds (2 Jn. 1:7-11).</p>
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<p>Recently a friend and I were discussing the second epistle of John. She had brought up the above passage and was specifically interested in the seventh verse:</p>
<blockquote><p>For many deceivers have come forth into the world, who do not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such is the deceiver and the antichrist (7).</p>
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<p>And within that verse, the phrase “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” stood out for her. “Do you have an idea of what this means”? she asked.</p>
<p>Just a few days before, I’d read this epistle and had thought about the very verse she’d pointed out. I suggested that the words “in the flesh” did not refer to Jesus’s earthly life of a few decades. Rather, it seemed to me, the apostle was alluding to the presence of Christ Within; it was <em>our flesh</em>—the believers’ flesh—to which the Light of Christ is come. And “acknowledg[ment]” that Christ is come in the flesh is predicated upon that inward encounter with him, with his Presence.</p>
<p>A week or so later, my thought was confirmed when I read one of Fox’s tracts titled “A Word,” from which the following excerpt is taken:</p>
<blockquote><p>Who loves the light that he hath given them, witness Jesus Christ come in the flesh. . . and you that hold up the figures, deny Christ come in the flesh (<em>The Works of George Fox</em>, IV: 33).</p>
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<p>Loving the light Jesus Christ has given us (having first received it!) is inherent in any authentic witness that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. And conversely, to “hold up the figures” (“figures” being concepts provided by bygone prophets) is to “deny Christ come in the flesh.”</p>
<p>Those not having known this encounter-cum-revelation can only posture an attitude of faith, and thus deserve the designation the apostle gives them: deceivers. John sought to distinguish between those who’d experienced the arrival of Christ Within and those “deceivers” or “antichrists” (signifying enemies of Christ) who had not. In short, John was telling us that the essential defect of “the deceiver and the antichrist” is profession without possession.</p>
<blockquote><p>Whoever breaks forward and does not abide by the teaching of the Christ does not have God; the one who abides by his teaching has the Father and the Son (9).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>To “abide by the teaching of the Christ” is to learn from the one who “is come to teach his people himself,” Christ who inwardly reveals himself that we may learn the Father’s will and do it. And “whoever breaks forward,” and distances him- or herself from this condition of hearing obedience, “does not have God” but are instead “presumptuous talkers of God, who see him not” (<em>Works</em>, IV:30).</p>
<p>“Do not take him [the deceiver] into your house”(10) is a warning to readers to keep some distance between themselves and deceivers, but the warning can also be interpreted figuratively. One must not allow a conceptual approach to faith to enter and occupy the living space where only an experience of faith should reside.</p>
<p>The apostle knows the danger of losing “what we have done”(8) and cautions rigorous care when dealing with conceptual faith and those who harbor it: to refuse to offer even a greeting. For to greet is to acknowledge, and thus, in a minor way, to sanction. And to sanction deceit even in a minor way is to participate in and promote it: “for anyone who gives him a greeting shares in his evil deeds”(11).</p>
<blockquote><p>That mind, which doth speak of God, but lives not, dwells not, nor abides in the fear of God, that mind must suffer, and pass under the judgment of God, for the curse of God is upon that mind. . . . And that mind may talk of God, and speak of God, but not in union with God, nor from enjoyment of God in the spirit, nor from having purchased the knowledge of him through death and sufferings; but from hear-say of him, and from custom and tradition (<em>Works</em>, VII:32).</p>
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<p>__________________________________________________________________________________________</p>
<p>Thus far this essay has considered the second half of John’s epistle, which, with its warning about deceivers and antichrists stands in contrast to the epistle’s first half, concerned as it is with truth and love. See how frequently the word “truth” appears in the epistle’s first sentence (italics mine):</p>
<blockquote><p>The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the <em>truth</em>; and not I only, but also all they that have known the <em>truth</em>; For the <em>truth’s</em> sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever (1-2).</p>
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<p>Love is the outgoing expression of truth, which resides within, and thus not only does the apostle express his own love for the “elect lady” but is confident that “all they that have known the truth” will also love her: not because she elicits his or their affection but because the truth dwells within them, and is the living source and impetus of love.</p>
<blockquote><p>And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another (5). And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it (5-6).</p>
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<p>In verse 5, we read that love for one another is commanded, and has been so “from the beginning”: “the beginning” referring to that glorious, singular event when one is “born. . . of God” (Jn. 1:13). And so to love is to bring forth, to express, the Life that began and is continuing in Christ, the Truth.</p>
<p>In verse six, a significant distinction is made between 1) the inward hearing of the Source and 2) its conveyance outward into the world. This distinction is made by the use of one letter: the letter “s” added to the word “commandment,” making the word either singular or plural. The Source is one, and to attend to that Source is the one commandment (no “s” added). The expression of that Source will vary according to whatever teaching or guidance He gives at particular times and places: that is, there will be various, specific commandments (and so an “s” is added). These commandments (with an “s”) are what we Quakers call “continuing revelation.” So verses 5 and 6 diagram the economy of parousaic revelation: the Source being God, the Father, and the various, particular expressions of His person being love brought into the world through His Son, His substance and body: the elect people of God.</p>
<blockquote><p>Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God (1 Jn. 4:7).<a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3753181415?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3753181415?profile=RESIZE_710x" class="align-center" width="500"/></a></p>
</blockquote>On Redemption in John 11tag:nffquaker.org,2019-11-03:6286598:BlogPost:398032019-11-03T12:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><em>He who expects to arrive at . . . the union of the soul with God, by means of consolation and comfort, will find himself mistaken. For, having sinned, we must expect to suffer, and be in some measure purified, before we can be in any degree fitted for a union with God, or permitted to taste the joy of his presence. Be ye patient, therefore, under all the sufferings which your Father is pleased to send you. If your love to him be pure, you will not seek him less in suffering than in…</em></p>
<p><em>He who expects to arrive at . . . the union of the soul with God, by means of consolation and comfort, will find himself mistaken. For, having sinned, we must expect to suffer, and be in some measure purified, before we can be in any degree fitted for a union with God, or permitted to taste the joy of his presence. Be ye patient, therefore, under all the sufferings which your Father is pleased to send you. If your love to him be pure, you will not seek him less in suffering than in consolation. A Guide to True Peace – Jeanne-Marie Guyon</em></p>
<p>This essay is about the final stage in the process of redemption: when we have observed and embodied the demands of the Law; when we have heeded faithfully the requirements of conscience; when we have watched and waited expectantly, and yet have come up empty, and not known why. I will examine crucial verses in John 11 that point to the condition that immediately precedes the inward resurrection to life eternal. This chapter in John is about Lazarus being raised from the dead, but the verses I will focus on replicate the conditions of inward death and inward resurrection that are to be visited upon all.</p>
<p>The Meaning of <em>Embrimáomai</em></p>
<blockquote><p>When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, <em>he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled</em> (Jn. 11:33 KJV).</p>
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<p>Because the King James Version doesn’t translate verse 33 well (“he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled”[33b]), I’ll be using instead a literal translation of the New Testament by Richard Lattimore, titled <em>The New Testament</em> ([New York: North Point Press, 1996]). In his preface, Lattimore describes his technique:</p>
<blockquote><p>I have held throughout to the principle of keeping as close to the Greek as possible, not only for sense and for individual words, but in the belief that fidelity to the original word order and syntax may yield an English prose that to some extent reflects the style of the original (vii). . . . [M]y aim has been to let all of my texts translate themselves with as little interference as possible (ix).</p>
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<p>Lattimore’s translation of verses 32 and 33 reads (the relevant sentence italicized):</p>
<blockquote><p>When Mary came to where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him: Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, and saw the Jews who had come with her weeping, <em>he raged at his own spirit, and harrowed himself</em>.</p>
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<p>The Greek word in question is “embrimáomai.” Whereas the KJV translates this word as a gentle groan (“he groaned in the spirit”), Lattimore translates it as an intense, explosive anger: “he raged at his own spirit.” Lattimore’s choice is supported by New Testament scholar Rudolf Schnackenburg, who wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>The word [embrimáomai] indicates an outburst of anger, and any attempt to interpret it in terms of an internal emotional upset caused by grief, pain, or sympathy is illegitimate (<em>The Gospel According to St. John</em>, 3 vols. [London: Burns and Oates, 1968-82], 2:335.</p>
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<p>The text itself supports these scholars’ findings: The Jews interpret Jesus’s weeping as arising from grief (“Then the Jews said: See how he loved him” [36]), but as the Jews in this story always come to the wrong conclusion, we can assume that here their reasoning about Jesus’s weeping is also wrong. Finally, <em>The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia</em>, informs us that “embrimáomai” “suggests indignation and fault-finding.”</p>
<p>Universality of Blaming</p>
<p>Indignation and fault-finding is what Mary does: finding Jesus along the road, she greets him with an accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”(32). Blame follows loss and suffering, a pattern of behavior not unique to Mary. Her sister Martha speaks the same words when she confronts Jesus. The repetition implies both react to loss and suffering in the same way: with resentment and blame (21). That resorting to blame be seen as a universal and not solely a family characteristic, we’re told that the Jews also suffer (33) and blame Jesus. (“Could not he, who opened the eyes of the blind man, make it so that this man also might not die”? [37]) We cannot miss the idea that loss, suffering, and resentment universally fuel blame. (It’s the property of the first Adam—the one who blamed Eve—the one who blamed the Serpent.) Given all the examples in this 11th chapter, we find the question of whether or not one dies to the self depends upon whether, having suffered loss, one chooses or refuses to cast blame elsewhere.</p>
<p>Another Way</p>
<p>Verse 33 presents Jesus modeling a new and different way to handle loss: “he [Jesus] raged at his own spirit, and harrowed himself.” Like the rest of humankind (“by nature children of wrath” [Eph. 2:3]), Jesus rages at life’s limits, rage that is typically redirected outward. (“If thou hadst been here my brother had not died” say each of Lazarus’s sisters.) Always quick to blame another for one’s suffering, one assumes if only others changed—or were manipulated, controlled, or somehow gotten rid of—one would not have to suffer.</p>
<p>Jesus upends this fallacy by instead choosing to embody the human frailty and limitation without casting responsibility for it elsewhere: he feels the weakness that comes with loss; acknowledges the finitude that leads to suffering; and endures the rage of resentment that follows. Instead of looking outward to blame another, however, he holds the awareness of his finitude and endures; that is the meaning of “he . . . harrowed himself”: he subjected himself to the distress and torment incumbent upon his being mortal, and refused to obscure or deny it by looking for externalities to hold accountable. In short, he refused to blame. This is what it means to take on the sins of the world—whether grand or small—and absorb their effect, which will be loss to the self, its fleshly image and temporal equilibrium in the world. Absorbing the effects of sin is nicely described in this verse from 1st Peter:</p>
<blockquote><p>He committed no sin, he was convicted of no falsehood; when he was abused he did not retort with abuse, when he suffered he uttered no threats, but committed his cause to the One who judges justly (2:23 NEB).</p>
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<p>Returning to the passage in John, we are told: “Jesus once more was inwardly raging, and went to the tomb”(38). The rage accompanies one all the way to the tomb, wherein lies death to the self. God raises a person up from there. . . and from there only. The risen Christ abiding within restores abundant well-being (life eternal), and thereby, is the sin of the world borne and overcome.</p>
<p>The Inward Resurrection: Jn. 11:42</p>
<blockquote><p>So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said: Father, I thank you for hearing me, and I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd which surrounds me, I said it so that they should believe that you sent me (41-42a).</p>
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<p>Jesus knows the Father hears him, even when he doesn’t speak aloud. Their communication is in the inward parts; he speaks aloud only that the crowd might hear. His spirit spoken (the apex of words!) manifests the unity of God and man, and enables others to sense and believe in God’s power to send His Word to us. Such is prophetic ministry—as understood by Friends. It is the manifestation of the inward resurrection to life in Christ; that is to say, it is faith heard (Rom. 10:17).</p>
<p>Shall he find faith on the earth? (Lk. 18:8b)</p>
<p>Some have the form of godliness, acknowledging the need to undergo the cross within, yet in their hearts reject it, seeing no more than a stumbling block or foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23). This is hypocrisy: dwelling in form without substance. Others go on with their worldly lives, having no sense of what they’ve forfeited, and one feels their loss, their emptiness, with compassion. Some from an early age have so felt truth’s pervasive demand that the cross has been with them, a constant companion, though for a time unnamed. And there are some worthy folks who begin to feel truth’s insistence after long years spent captivated by other concerns: social position; empty, intellectual notions; worship of power, or other idols. These folks mend, as they find the peace that comes with living authentically. Other conditions and paths could be listed, but whatever the variation, there is one universal constant that is observed in every soul that enters its rightful place in unity with God: suffering in and for the truth.<a href="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3695076131?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3695076131?profile=RESIZE_710x" style="padding: 100px;" class="align-right" width="500"/></a></p>On Presumption and Belief in John 11tag:nffquaker.org,2019-10-01:6286598:BlogPost:393102019-10-01T13:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>Of the 21 chapters in John’s Gospel, chapter 11 has been for decades the least interesting to me. It was its scattered quality that put me off: too many characters, most of them contributing only snippets; vignettes that seemed to go nowhere; dialogue that just didn’t connect or flow; inexplicable actions and reactions. Where was the throughline? I asked myself: the coherent theme that took shape with each succeeding verse.</p>
<p>As a narrative, this chapter seemed more like a script out of…</p>
<p>Of the 21 chapters in John’s Gospel, chapter 11 has been for decades the least interesting to me. It was its scattered quality that put me off: too many characters, most of them contributing only snippets; vignettes that seemed to go nowhere; dialogue that just didn’t connect or flow; inexplicable actions and reactions. Where was the throughline? I asked myself: the coherent theme that took shape with each succeeding verse.</p>
<p>As a narrative, this chapter seemed more like a script out of Theater of the Absurd, a movement that began in the late 1950s that took its cue from Existentialism, and featured works that showed the breakdown of communication and its replacement with irrational and illogical speech. It turns out, this impression was not so far from the truth: chapter 11 is about the breakdown of communication that occurs when people work exclusively from their own presumptions and complacent certainties. Unlike the works by the existentialists and the absurdists, however, this chapter not only illustrates the problem but shows the way out of it. Far from being a jumble of discord, this chapter has a tightly organized structure that showcases the dysfunction arising from human presumption; the presupposing nature that Jesus identifies with the epithet “the sickness unto death (4).”</p>
<p></p>
<p>Introduction of Theme and Characters</p>
<p>No time is wasted in setting up the forces at play in this narrative and the personae that represent those forces. The chapter begins:</p>
<p><em>Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick (Jn. 11:1-3).</em></p>
<p>As readers of gospel narratives may have come to expect, Jesus sets out a succinct description of the situation and its end, its telos, which is not death but is instead, the glory of God:</p>
<p><em>This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby (4).</em></p>
<p>In these opening verses, we’re told all is not well; there’s sickness in the household: that is to say, there’s sickness in the place where one dwells, and Jesus is sent for, because he is known to heal that which is not well in the place where one dwells: that is to say, Jesus heals the soul.</p>
<p>Mary and Martha are in close relationship with the sick one (just like the self is in close relationship with the soul!); and as such, we will see later in the chapter how each of these different “selves” responds to the Lord. (We are given some foreshadowing when we’re told early on that Mary attends to the Lord [anoints him and wipes his feet with her hair] but find no mention made of Martha.) These sisters - each in her own way - will represent a particular response to the Lord: one spiritual and the other spiritless. Interpreted, the chapter’s first few verses tell us that a soul can be sick, and Jesus called upon; yet not every manner of being will reach to and engage him.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Illustrating the Problem</p>
<p>We will pick up this theme of the manner of being that does - or does not - reach to Jesus after first taking a detour to examine the sickness that Jesus is called upon to heal. We’re given to see its nature: the natural human tendency to presume to know what is right and true, when, in fact, one doesn’t.</p>
<p>This segment starts with verse 5 and runs through 17. In these 13 verses, there are several examples of what at first glance – and perhaps at second or third glance! – appears to be confusion and absurdity. I’ll briefly list these examples, as their significance lies not so much in each one separately but in their assembly into a unit, a few of the many varied expressions of the “sickness unto death.” Look for absurdity, confusion, and presumption in these verses.</p>
<p>Here we go:</p>
<ol>
<li><em>Verses 5 and 6: Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>Jesus’s abiding two days in the same place after hearing Lazarus was sick seems to make no sense: Wouldn’t he want to get to Lazarus as quickly as possible? is our presumption. Look how we are implicated in presumption right from the start! A little reasoning goes a long way---too far in fact, as we’ll see confirmed later in the text.</p>
<ol start="2">
<li><em>Verses 7-10: Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again. His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>The disciples presume Jesus should consider the danger of entering Judaea. Jesus’s answer (Are there not twelve hours in the day?) seems to absurdly miss the point.</p>
<ol start="3">
<li><em>Verses 11b- 15: Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>The disciples presume Lazarus sleeps, as Jesus has said so. Jesus seems to contradict himself, creating confusion.</p>
<ol start="4">
<li><em>Verse 16: Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow disciples. Let us also go, that we may die with him.</em></li>
</ol>
<p>Thomas (Didymus), who represents being of two minds, would prefer to have the matter settled, and so presumes it is, assuring himself with a display of flamboyant resolve.</p>
<p>Verse 17 states a numerical fact (Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.) and as math partakes of the absolute and certain, the numerical reference signals the end of this segment of confusion, which began in like manner with a similar numerical fact in verse 6 (…he abode two days still in the same place); this befuddling segment is hemmed in on both sides with number facts, thereby containing the apparent disorder. We’ve been given a glimpse into the miscommunication, confusion, and absurdity that characterizes our natural condition, as well as our varied attempts to corral that disorder with fact and presumption. It is our “faith” in our own faculties to control the vicissitudes of life that is “the sickness unto death.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Jesus’s words throughout this section, though seeming to contribute to the confusion, are clear and consistent. I’ll not go through all four examples one-by-one but will instead offer just one explanation: to the second example in the list (7-10): </p>
<p>Jesus has informed his disciples that they will go into Judaea to assist Lazarus, and they respond that there is danger there: possible stoning. Their presumption is that Jesus must assess the outward circumstances before deciding to act: are circumstances favorable? dangerous? worth the risk? Although Jesus’s answer seems to have nothing to do with their question (Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him [9 and10]), his response does answer their concern. For he is teaching that one’s actions should not derive from one’s assessment of outward circumstance, as the disciples presume, but instead from inward direction found through “the light of this world.”</p>
<p></p>
<p>The Self that Presumes and the Self that Waits</p>
<p>Now we can return to the theme of the manner of being that does – or does not – reach to Jesus. The next passage in the chapter (18-35) features a contrast between the opposing ways the self can function: the first, characterized by Martha, is the proud, arrogant self whose presumption fills up the self, puts itself forward, and spills out its presumptions onto others; and the second, characterized by Mary, is the humbled, empty self that waits to be given, to be filled with what she knows she does not herself possess. The distinction between the two is made immediately:</p>
<p><em>Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house (20).</em></p>
<p>Conversely, Mary comes out to meet Jesus only after first learning that she has been called:</p>
<p><em>And when she [Martha] had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him (28 and 29).</em></p>
<p>Martha “went her [own] way,” and there’s evidence of her self-direction in her encounter with Jesus, who can teach her nothing. Look how frequently she presumes, using the words “I know”:</p>
<p><em>Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But <u>I know</u>, that even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, <u>I know</u> that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day (21 – 24).</em></p>
<p>Jesus’s response (I am the resurrection, and the life…) completely glances off her, and she falls back onto her stockpiled “knowledge,” which bears no relevance to the powerful words she’s just heard. With all the assurance of ignorance, she repeats her catechism:</p>
<p><em>Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world (27).</em></p>
<p>Although Mary’s encounter with Jesus begins with the same words her sister spoke (Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died [32, 21]), she utters these words having first fallen down at his feet (32). Her spirit is humble, as we learned early in the chapter when she was first introduced: lowly, wiping his feet with her hair (2). Unlike her sister, she doesn’t presume to be higher than she is, neither in knowledge nor in life. So low and empty of life is she that she weeps her emptiness before the Lord. And he, sensing the depth of her sorrow at loss of life, is reached, joins with her, and likewise weeps (35). It is the felt despair that - if we’re honest - comes to us in our earthly life, and does elicit the Lord’s compassionate response, his unity with us, and we feel his love.</p>
<p>The Prevalence of Presumption</p>
<p>To emphasize the prevalence of the error of presumption, we are given yet more examples. The “Jews” fare no better in this chapter than they do in the rest of this gospel. Here they as a group have a single voice, and form a kind of backdrop chorus that stands for humankind in general, repeatedly in error to the point of comic absurdity. Situated midway between the accounts of each sister’s meeting with Jesus are the Jews… presuming they know:</p>
<p><em>The Jews…when they saw Mary… went out, followed her saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there (31).</em></p>
<p>Mary is not going to the grave but is going to find Jesus, who has called for her. Later presuming again, the Jews mistake the cause of Jesus’s tears: that he weeps out of love for Lazarus, rather than his sorrow and rage at the misbegotten suffering he’s sees in front of him. More presumption follows, as the Jews speak among themselves about Jesus’s supposed failure to prevent Lazarus’s death:</p>
<p><em>Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died? (37)</em></p>
<p>And Martha, who from the start has modelled the presumptuous mode of being, again speaks after the Lord has commanded the stone that seals the cave where Lazarus lay be taken away. She does not surprise us when she jumps in with yet another mistaken presumption, this time relying on absolute, certain mathematical fact: “Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days (39).” Jesus’s gentle reminder to her goes unanswered---and likely unheeded. (Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?)</p>
<p></p>
<p>Belief versus presumption</p>
<p>At key points in this chapter, Jesus has spoken of belief: he gives his reason for not immediately setting out to assist Lazarus, his intent being that his disciples might <em>believe</em> (15); he identifies <em>belief</em> as necessary for coming out of spiritual death and into life, and remaining there (25 and 26):</p>
<p><em>I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.</em></p>
<p><em>Belief</em> is needed to see the glory of God (40); he states the cause for voicing his gratitude to the Father for having heard him: that his hearers might <em>believe</em> that he had been sent (42). Finally the story ends with our being told “many of the Jews which came to Mary [interpreted, which came to Mary’s condition], and had seen the things which Jesus did, <em>believed</em> on him (45).”</p>
<p>It is in verses 41 and 42 that we see the crucial distinction made between belief and presumption, which is the overriding lesson of this narrative. Jesus says:</p>
<p><em>Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.</em></p>
<p>Verb tenses are important here as they indicate timing: past, present, or future. (This is one example of the KJV providing the necessary nuance to enable sound interpretation.) Jesus knows he has been heard by the Father---not that he <em>will be</em> <em>heard</em>, or that he <em>is</em> <em>heard</em> but that he <em>has been</em> <em>heard</em> (past tense)<em>.</em> Whereas presumption gets out ahead of what is known; belief follows behind what <em>has been known</em>; belief is a result of experience, presumption the result of intellectual speculation.</p>
<p>The second sentence is also in the past tense: Jesus does not say, I <em>know</em> that thou hearest me always, but “I <em>knew</em> (past) that thou hearest me always.” He does not speak so that the Father will hear him, for then his speaking would be a presumption on his part; rather he <em>knew</em> (past) that he is heard “always.” He<em>“said”</em> (Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.) so that others may hear/believe that the Father has sent him (42). And surely they will have done so (future perfect!), when they too <em>have seen</em> (past) the power of God raise one from the dead, and <em>having seen</em> (past) Jesus’s part in the action, they may now believe – not presume – that he has been sent by the Father.</p>
<p>One becomes able to distinguish intellectual presumption from experiential belief when one has been called forth by Christ into life, as was Lazarus (43). Then setting aside the trappings of the grave and spiritual death, that is to say, setting aside presumptuous, self-affirming tendencies, we have learned to wait in emptiness of soul, in the spiritual tomb where we dwell, anticipating the freedom afforded to each of us when we have felt the decree: “Loose him, and let him go.” In that resurrection to life, we see the glory of God, and we glorify his Son whom we have known.</p>
<p><em>This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby (4). </em></p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>Dialogue on Quaker Understanding of Free Willtag:nffquaker.org,2019-07-08:6286598:BlogPost:388072019-07-08T11:59:28.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>This is a transcript of a dialogue between Stuart Masters and me that occurred in early to mid-December 2017 in the comment section of Stuart’s blog post “<a href="https://aquakerstew.blogspot.com/2017/11/friends-of-martin-luther-quakers-and_29.html">Friends of Martin Luther? Quakers and the Protestant Reformation</a>.” The point I challenged was Stuart’s assertion that by a free act of will man participates in his transformation from sinner to saint. I contended early Quaker understanding…</p>
<p>This is a transcript of a dialogue between Stuart Masters and me that occurred in early to mid-December 2017 in the comment section of Stuart’s blog post “<a href="https://aquakerstew.blogspot.com/2017/11/friends-of-martin-luther-quakers-and_29.html">Friends of Martin Luther? Quakers and the Protestant Reformation</a>.” The point I challenged was Stuart’s assertion that by a free act of will man participates in his transformation from sinner to saint. I contended early Quaker understanding held that the will is not free until liberated by Christ.</p>
<p>(This essay was first posted at <a href="http://patradallmann.com/2019/02/01/introduction-to-the-gospel-and-self-knowledge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Abiding Quaker</a> where it is followed by several comments.)</p>
<p>_____________________________________________________________________</p>
<p>Pat wrote (quoting from Stuart’s post):</p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;"><em>While people may be incapable of transforming themselves, humans have sufficient free will to make this fundamental choice, and when they do, by God’s transformative power, it is possible for them to come into perfect conformity to the will of God (i.e. holiness or perfection</em><em>).</em></span></p>
<p>Stuart, your stating that Quakers believed that “humans have sufficient free will to make this fundamental choice” is not accurate. Nayler writes:</p>
<p><em>There is no will free for God but that which is free from sin, which will man lost in the fall, when he let in the will of the devil and entered into it; wherein man became in bondage. And all that man in that state knows of the free-will, is that which moves in him against the will of the flesh and of the devil, which is seen in the light of Christ (Works, III, 132-3).<br/></em> <br/> Man is either in the will of the devil or he is in the will of God, the latter moving in him against the will of the devil. There is no neutral state from which man chooses the one or the other. To claim otherwise encourages “self-willed” man to remain self-satisfied, imagining himself in an innocuous, autonomous state, rather than his true state of being poor, helpless, blind, and naked, and without God.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart wrote:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Hi Pat,</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Thank you for your comment! I am aware of this Nayler passage, which I think comes from ‘Love to the Lost’. However, I cannot believe that Nayler means what you suggest he means.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Since early Friends rejected Calvinist double predestination, logically, they had to accept that there was a degree of human cooperation with God in the salvation process. They much have accepted the need for a human response to the divine offer. If not, there would have been no point launching the massive preaching campaign during the 1650s. The essential exhortation to turn away from carnal things and toward the light of Christ in the conscience, requires a response from its hearers.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">I agree that they limited the extent of free will (and saw human wilfulness as a key aspect of sin). However, no free will, no choice to turn to Christ, only God’s action (which in this sense would have to be coercive, and against the free choice of the individual, which then leads to the problem of explaining why God might force this on some but not on others, bringing us back to the issue of predestination).</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Shalom,</span><br/> <span style="color: #008000;">Stuart.</span></p>
<p>Pat wrote:</p>
<p>I think if you read through the section titled “Concerning Free-Will” in “Love to the Lost,” you will see that I am correct in saying that Nayler asserts there is either God’s will or the devil’s will, with no free will (in our contemporary understanding of the term as autonomy) that stands apart from the two. The passageway from one to the other is given through the quickening Word of God. Nayler writes:</p>
<p><em>and as the spiritual man is quickened by the word of God, and that man born which is not of the flesh, nor of the will of it; so is that will seen again in man which is free, wherein the creature is made free from the will of the flesh, which is bondage (133).<br/></em> <br/> As it is not within man’s ability to give birth to himself, it cannot be he who autonomously wills to be born from above; he is born of God. To be born of God occurs not from the will of the flesh, nor the will of man (Jn. 1:13). It was the Word of God that seventeenth-century Friends preached, to the end that others could feel the quickening seed of God within (as they themselves had been given), and feeling that quickening they found entry into God’s will, and thus experienced their freedom, which hitherto they had not known.</p>
<p><em>So man hath not free-will further than he is free-born from above of the seed that sinneth not (134).</em></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart wrote:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">My view has always been that the Early Quaker position was closer to that of Wesley than to Calvin. However, I need to be open to the possibility that their roots in Calvinist Puritanism left a legacy in their faith and practice.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">My interpretation of Nayler’s words are that he is emphasising the view that salvation comes by the work of God alone and not by the effort of the individual. I agree with this and feel that it is consistent with the early Quaker position generally.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Early Friends were clearly very ‘black and white’ in their understandings; one was either in darkness or in the light, in God’s will or the devil’s will, in the first birth or the second birth etc… That need not imply that they did not feel that all people were faced with a choice; to turn to God or to remain in darkness. Such a choice presumes a degree (however limited) of free choice.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">However, that does not resolve the very serious problem I outlined in my first response, which you have not answered. If humans have no free agency or choice in the salvation process, then we are left with the Calvinist positions of predestination and irresistible grace. This implies that God chooses some for salvation and others for damnation, without any human choice or decision.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">I cannot accept that this was the message of the first Friends.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Shalom,</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart.</span></p>
<p>Pat wrote:</p>
<p>The Cain and Abel story offers information on how to understand Friends perspective on God’s acceptance of man, or lack thereof. Following the telling of each brother’s sacrifice, God’s respect to Abel’s but not to Cain’s, and Cain’s anger, He speaks:</p>
<p><em>If thou doest well, shall thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door (Gen. 4:7).<br/></em> <br/> What is interesting here is God’s speaking as though Cain knows what doing “well” entails, and is not doing it. The text presents what appears to be identical behaviors between the two brothers: They both bring offerings of their labor, described with almost identical words, but only one’s is accepted while the other’s is not. We can’t see what’s amiss with Cain’s offering, but God can and does, and furthermore knows Cain does as well, and holds him accountable. By having nearly identical descriptions of the brothers’ sacrifices, but God’s judgment differing towards them, we see a narrative device by which the difference between the brothers is located: the difference between them lies within, invisible to us on the outside (and invisible to those who prefer darkness to light) but visible to God, who knows the heart.</p>
<p>Where has Cain failed? A strong clue is the word Jesus uses in Mt. 23:25 to describe his brother: “righteous Abel.” God expects Cain (and each of us) to live up to the capacity given: first, to love truth/righteousness; second, to recognize our limits in knowing truth/righteousness; and third, to hunger and thirst after righteousness (Mt. 5:6), that we might be filled. This love of truth requires an inward sacrifice, and Fox affirms Cain’s lack of it when he wrote in “The Papist’s Strength”: “he [Cain] observed outward things, and comes not to witness the spiritual sacrifice” (51).</p>
<p>“I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not” (Isa. 65:1) is a verse that points to the heeding of the seed of God within before it is known that there is such a thing; it is those who heed and love and seek a place to stand that only truth can provide; that mourn its lack with heart, mind, soul, and strength; it is these who come to be comforted through the mercy of God in His sending of His Spirit. It is not our choice or decision to suffer such need; but sensing its truth, we do not muffle or darken, obscure or deny, but instead, feelingly know the emptiness of the heart, which cannot, should not, and will not be placated by any means at our disposal or will.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart wrote:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">I am currently doing research for a book on James Nayler’s theology and so will need to address this matter.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">I agree that the work of salvation is God’s work alone, and not about our personal effort, but maintain that, unless we at least have the freedom to respond to God’s offer of salvation, we are left with the irresistible grace of Calvinism.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Early Friends, like many others, separated from their parish churches and were seekers of truth. That seems to imply an act of choice, even if it was divinely guided. Fox exhorts people not to quench the Spirit, which implies a decision not to follow its leadings. The very act of Adam’s disobedience implies making a choice against the way of God.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">If no-one has choice, no-one can be held responsible or accountable. They could do nothing else.</span></p>
<p>Pat wrote:</p>
<p>Your reasoning is sound, Stuart, but it starts from the wrong premise. We are not like a King who sits on a throne deciding and choosing what will be the law of his land: God’s salvation or the devil’s perfidy. Rather we are like a subject deep in a pit with no way out. It is not by choice or decision that we see our pitiful state, because, in truth, it is impossible not to see it—for those who have eyes to see. We do not choose to mourn our condition, as, in truth, it is impossible for a creature not to mourn its captivity—for those who have a heart that feels. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24-25) Paul is showing the necessity of seeing and feeling our true state, and the means of our deliverance. Truth, truth, truth from first to last, from captivity to freedom!</p>
<p>I’ve tried to show that there is another way to understand the solution to our condition other than (1) a participatory use of human will, or (2) election via the doctrine of predestination. I am convinced that it is the one understood by first Friends, and is also in accord with Scriptures. I’m grateful for this opportunity to have discussed the issue with you.</p>
<p>May the love of Christ be with us.</p>
<p>Patricia</p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Thank you Pat, I am certainly willing to take account of the perspective you have outline[d]. In any event, I need to do more work on this issue.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">In the love of Christ,</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart</span></p>
<p>The discussion continued one week later.</p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart wrote:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Hi Pat,</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">I have been doing some research on how human ‘will’ was understood in the early modern period. It seems that ‘will’ primarily related to human to our emotions, motivation and affections, rather than agency or the capacity to make choices. On this basis, I can agree with what you have said about the position of early Friends without rejecting my belief that Friends accepted that humans could make a choice about whether to respond to God’s offer of regeneration and salvation.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Essentially, I think we were simply defining the term ‘free will’ differently.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Shalom,</span><br/> <span style="color: #008000;">Stuart.</span></p>
<p>Pat wrote:</p>
<p>Stuart, your new definition of “will” does not affect the argument that there is no neutral ground from which to exercise free will, which is the position of first Friends, which I’ve explained. It is not possible to “choose,” because the will is captivated until it is set free by Christ, the truth. Here’s Penington’s clear refutation of the will standing of itself “free to both equally”:</p>
<p><em>But as for your speaking of free will, ye do not know what you speak of; for the will with the freedom of it, either stands in the image and power of him that made it, or in a contrary image and power…[Mark this.] The will is not of itself, but stands in another, and is servant to that in whom it stands, and there its freedom is bound and comprehended. For there is no middle state between both, wherein the will stands of itself, and is free to both equally, but it is a servant and under the command of one of these powers…such free will as men commonly speak of is mere imagination (Works, I, 77).</em></p>
<p><em> </em><span style="color: #008000;">Stuart wrote:</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #008000;">Well we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this issue.</span></p>Advice to a Young Christiantag:nffquaker.org,2019-05-18:6286598:BlogPost:389032019-05-18T10:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>The following was first posted as a response to the previous post titled "When Words Fail." As the comments in the Latest Activity section are difficult to access (for the time being), I've decided to give this response its own posting.</p>
<p>+ + + </p>
<p>That people use the language and ideas of Christianity for their own selfish ends is commonplace. You are seeing some gross forms of this perversion in South America, but subtle forms of it are just as deadly to the souls and…</p>
<p>The following was first posted as a response to the previous post titled "When Words Fail." As the comments in the Latest Activity section are difficult to access (for the time being), I've decided to give this response its own posting.</p>
<p>+ + + </p>
<p>That people use the language and ideas of Christianity for their own selfish ends is commonplace. You are seeing some gross forms of this perversion in South America, but subtle forms of it are just as deadly to the souls and cultures who succumb to this or to any other corruption. The need to dominate is always a fear of death, which is Satan’s reign, whether it’s dominating women; other cultures; or language, as did Humpty-Dumpty! (See reference below.)</p>
<p>Upon seeing corruption, you must take care of yourself first (like putting on your oxygen mask before trying to help others with theirs): don’t let resentment or grief take up residence in your soul. Recognize the corruption you’re seeing, but don’t let negative emotion or thought overcome you; despair is “of the world,” and Christ within overcomes the world. You can be ready to act on the Lamb’s behalf only if you abide in his name: Let his light preserve you in righteousness, his power be your readiness to act, and his wisdom your guide to victory.</p>
<p>The victory will not always manifest as an immediate reversal of the world’s corruption, but it will always manifest as soul-satisfying peace and joy, which gives you strength to continue in the face of what appears to be overwhelming odds, for the whole world lies in wickedness. Though you may or may not effect change in outward circumstances, know that you are not working alone: For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men (Titus 2:11). Though it be in the darkness of men’s hearts, the light, grace, and truth shine in everyone, and is forever one’s Lord: in faith, a formidable ally.</p>
<p>+ + +</p>
<p>”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”</p>
<p>“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”</p>
<p>“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.</p>
<p>― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass</p>Introduction to "The Gospel and Self-Knowledge"tag:nffquaker.org,2019-03-13:6286598:BlogPost:379162019-03-13T13:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>The following introductory essay was first posted on my blog site, <a href="http://patradallmann.com/2019/02/01/introduction-to-the-gospel-and-self-knowledge/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Abiding Quaker</a>, and can be found there in the archives under February 2019. The lecture by Lewis Benson that is introduced in this essay can be found on this New Foundation Fellowship site under the Resources tab. Here is a link to this…</p>
<p>The following introductory essay was first posted on my blog site, <a href="http://patradallmann.com/2019/02/01/introduction-to-the-gospel-and-self-knowledge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Abiding Quaker</a>, and can be found there in the archives under February 2019. The lecture by Lewis Benson that is introduced in this essay can be found on this New Foundation Fellowship site under the Resources tab. Here is a link to this <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/657607615?profile=original" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lecture</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>“The Gospel and Self-Knowledge” is the fourth of five lectures in the series titled <em>A New Foundation to Build On</em>, given by Lewis Benson in 1976 in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The lecture (along with an Appendix of questions and answers following the presentation) can be found on the New Foundation Fellowship site.</p>
<p>Benson begins this fourth lecture with a survey of types of religious consciousness that characterized different historical periods. His review provides context for the primary focus of the lecture: our modern era, which began more than a century ago. Benson contends modern “mass man” no longer sustains an integrated identity; this calamity manifests itself widely in the personal sense of “lostness.” This feeling of being lost and the subsequent search for identity is, Benson asserts, the distinguishing ethos of our age.</p>
<p>Wide-ranging, broad analysis is uncommon among scholars, and the reader’s immediate reaction may be to discount grand-scale assertions as devoid of nuance, and therefore inaccurate. Such a prejudice might arise in those who’ve yet to come to a vantage point from which can be seen the essential properties of different religious understandings. This vista is one Benson can and does offer in this lecture, and here he states his theme:</p>
<blockquote><p>The purpose of this paper is to compare some modern philosophical approaches to the problem of self-knowledge to the prophetic Christian understanding as exemplified by George Fox (1).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first philosophy Benson brings to light is the system of self-realization that was set forth by George Gurdjieff, an early twentieth-century teacher with whom Benson studied as a young man. Though Benson did not find in Gurdjieff that which he sought, he was, nevertheless, strongly affected by his time spent in Gurdjieff’s compound near Paris. This impact is evidenced in the disproportionate attention given in the lecture to Gurdjieff’s understanding of the problem of self, and his method of developing consciousness through motivated self-interest and disciplined control of the will. Benson later came to realize that Gurdjieff’s reliance on methodology signaled its faulty grounding in human endeavor, and thus revealed its disparity with the prophetic faith of George Fox that Benson later came to know and affirm.</p>
<p>Benson next moves through a brief summary of both the techniques and suppositions found in Socrates’s philosophy and in classic Western Mysticism—giving each but a paragraph to set out their respective deficiencies. He then proceeds to his main topic, the Christian approach to the problem of self-knowledge.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Christian approach to the problem of self-knowledge takes as its starting point the view of man that is set forth in the Bible: that people were not created to have a self-conscious existence independent of God. It is the Creator who reveals what is good and what is evil. Man’s life is characterized by his dependence on God. When this relationship is broken, the primary law of man’s being is broken, and his life becomes a deformation of the life intended for him by the Creator (3).</p>
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<p>Benson turns to Emil Brunner, a prominent Protestant (Reformed) theologian of the last century, who affirms Benson’s position: man’s self-realization is contingent upon his response to God’s call. From there, Benson brings George Fox into the discussion, as one whose initial, broken condition became apparent through receiving Christ, the light, revealing the self:</p>
<blockquote><p>With the light man sees himself, which light comes from Christ ([Works. VII, 142] [p.4]).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Additionally, by obedience to the inward teaching of the light, man is restored to right relationship with God. The light of Christ is the revealer and teacher of a new righteousness, which judges out not only deeds that are manifestly evil but also those deeds which arise from the attempt to live a moral life outside of God and Christ: these attempts, too, are brought under condemnation by the light. Fox says:</p>
<blockquote><p>The light lets you see your deeds…whether they be wrought in God or no ([I,83] [p.4]).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The deeds “wrought in God” is the righteousness that God calls for, as distinguished from humanly discerned self-righteousness, which is often—through ignorance or pride—wrongly attributed to God. Such deeds arise from the less-than-human self “that is gradually formed in us as we attempt to find ourselves outside of God and God’s word to us” (p.4). That self, says Fox, has the “nature of brute beasts” ([IV, 35] [p. 4]), and must be denied. Neither the self-knowledge nor self-righteousness that is assumed independent of the light can begin to approximate the perfection that accompanies our restoration to the image of God in Christ.</p>
<p>In contrast to Gurdjieff’s, others’ philosophy, or theories of psychology that claim self-realization is a function of man’s will and power to uncover his essential being, Fox holds that human personality, or self, is universally fallen and deformed into a sub-human condition, and that we can be restored to our true, intended state only when recast through “hearing and obeying the speaking God”(4).</p>
<blockquote><p>The self or false personality is “judged out” by the light and a new life appears in them who “walk in him the new and living way, out of the old way” ([VII, 52] [p. 5]).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sense of “lostness” that modern man inevitably endures indicates inner change is needed: the revealing of and standing against evil within has not yet taken place; the self or false personality has not yet been denied; the second birth not yet been undergone. Fox’s prescription for this lost, fallen condition is this:</p>
<blockquote><p>wait upon God in that which is pure…and stand still in it…to see your savior to make you free from that which the light doth discover to you to be evil” ([VII, 24] [p.5]).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Christ there is freedom from sin, and only there does one find unity and “fellowship with all who believe in the light, hear the light, obey the light and walk in the light” (p.5).</p>His Seed Remainethtag:nffquaker.org,2019-01-05:6286598:BlogPost:374102019-01-05T14:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;" xml:lang="EN">Having faith, [a person] can thrive even when planted in the chaos of the world that lies in wickedness, even as a sycamine tree could be planted in a hostile environment of the sea (Lk. 17:6). Having faith, the hearing/obeying relationship with his Creator, man is restored, strengthened, and empowered to withstand and rise above such assaults upon his soul. He is given the power of God to rule over his human nature and to…</span></blockquote>
<blockquote><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Having faith, [a person] can thrive even when planted in the chaos of the world that lies in wickedness, even as a sycamine tree could be planted in a hostile environment of the sea (Lk. 17:6). Having faith, the hearing/obeying relationship with his Creator, man is restored, strengthened, and empowered to withstand and rise above such assaults upon his soul. He is given the power of God to rule over his human nature and to thrive regardless of the circumstances (“<a href="https://patradallmann.com/2017/04/01/increase-our-faith-some-observations-on-luke-171-10/">Increase Our Faith</a>”).</span>
</blockquote>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Half a dozen years ago, I was walking with a friend on the Haverford College campus, which is in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the beginning of the school year, and some students—about 30— had gathered on the college lawn to play a game that I’d never seen before. Intrigued, I suggested to my friend that we take a moment to watch the progress of the game. I recall her saying that the game was called “Zombie Tag,” and it began with a few students walking stiffly with arms outstretched among all the others, whose goal was to escape being tagged by them. When tagged, however, each victim also began to stalk others in a like manner—stiffly walking with arms outstretched. It surprised me to see how quickly the game progressed. As their number increased, the “walking dead” overcame “the living ones,” and when all players had joined the ranks of “the undead,” the game was over.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Being a gospel minister and regularly seeing in every day events analogies to the life of the Spirit, it occurred to me that the game modelled some spiritual dynamics: humankind can be alive in the flesh yet dead in the Spirit (just like zombies!) and in both the game and real life, the walking death spreads by contact between one person and another. In the game, it is simple tagging, but in life, the spiritual contagion is spread by deceitful, unjust behavior perpetrated upon innocent victims, who then, in turn, become perpetrators; and on and on it goes. As W.H. Auden quipped:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return.</span></p>
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<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">The game did not mimic life, however, in one very significant way: whereas the game ends when all are caught and have become “zombies”; in real life, the death and darkness that consume need not be final: not all remain captive to the demonic forces that entice away life.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">The good news is that while yet on earth and yet in time, we can receive life that is not subject to death, i.e. eternal life and the indwelling seed that keeps us from succumbing to the evil that men inflict upon their neighbors, and upon their brothers, as did that first perpetrator, Cain. (And wherefore slew he [Abel]? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous [1 Jn. 3:12].)</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">For not only was Jesus sent to raise up humankind above the throes and threat of spiritual darkness and death, but he is now sent to retrieve us into and sustain us in his own unassailable state, where he—and thus we—have power over the living death and living hell.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death (Rev.1:18)</span></p>
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<p><span style="font-size: 10pt;">. . . . .</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">In the great prayer found in John 17 and expressed shortly before his execution, Jesus asks God to keep his disciples from the evil (15). Jesus was not asking that his disciples be removed from the trajectory of evil released by the animus of others, for ill-treatment comes to everyone in this world, and—as Jesus knows—those who “are not of the world” (Jn. 15:19) will be targeted assiduously by the prince of the world through those who have come unwittingly to do his bidding.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">In asking that his disciples be kept from the evil, Jesus is asking that the inward condition of their souls be kept inviolate and uncorrupted by the evil that will—without question—assault them. It is the soul’s condition for which Jesus prays, that nothing in his disciples give foothold to the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2); i.e. that his disciples heed no temptation, that they forfeit no blessedness.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light (Mt. 6:22).</span></p>
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<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Through singleness of mind, purity of heart, focused obedience, do his disciples overcome distraction and temptation. The physical sensation of being indwelled by the Spirit—the body full of light—is more than metaphor; it is actual experience arising from the blessed integration of one’s entire being: body and soul. It is the perfection of Christ’s joy fulfilled in those who have been born of God, and do not commit sin, for his seed remains in them.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN" style="font-size: 10pt;">Whoever is born of God doth not commit sin: for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother (1 Jn. 3: 9-10).</span></p>
</blockquote>Opening the Scriptures: Parable of the Wheat and the Tarestag:nffquaker.org,2018-11-04:6286598:BlogPost:368152018-11-04T13:47:02.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><em>He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice…</em></p>
<p><em>He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one. The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!</em> <em>(Mt. 13: 37-43)</em></p>
<p>Jesus is here privately explaining to his disciples the parable of the wheat and the tares (Mt. 13: 24-30), one of the stories he had given to the multitude a short time before. The parable itself, as well as Jesus’s explanation of it, is usually interpreted in the following way: those people who are good will go to heaven when they die, and those who are bad will be thrust into hell.</p>
<p>It’s a comforting affirmation for those who consider themselves righteous: in the by-and-by, all will receive their just deserts. Furthermore, such an interpretation quiets the urge to take matters into one’s own hands: to wreak justice as spiritual vigilante, punishing wrong-doers who have disturbed one’s well-being, or egotistic self-regard.</p>
<p>Through the ages, this particular interpretation of the parable has likely saved many from abuse, and some of them----perhaps in greater proportion to their number---were prophets. As well as safeguarding would-be victims from the misguided and malicious, this interpretation may also have benefited potential perpetrators, restraining hubris from descending into action.</p>
<p>Although it’s had its beneficial uses, this interpretation of the parable of the wheat and the tares is not the one that George Fox presents to us. Fox sees from a different perspective and therefore arrives at a different interpretation. We can study his interpretation of this parable, because Fox reveals it in his third epistle. Here is the sum total of that short epistle:</p>
<p><em>Friends,---There is an eye, that hath looked to see the good seed, that was sown, and queried, from whence came these tares? The answer was and is; “The wicked one hath sown them.” Now read the tares, and what is the effect of them, and their work? And what they do, and have done? How they hang amongst the wheat? But now is the time of harvest, that both wheat and tares are seen, and each distinguished, the one from the other. G. F. (Works, 7: 17-18).</em></p>
<p>To understand Fox’s perspective, one begins by isolating his own words from those which are found in the original Bible passage. His own words indicate his interpretation of the text.</p>
<p>For example, the epistle’s first sentence is “There is an eye”: no such reference to this “eye” occurs in the text of the parable; it is strictly Fox’s expression. In communicating his first response to the parable by referring to “an eye,” he asserts the parable is about seeing; it is about seeing or knowing the difference between good and evil (good seed or evil tares). With that much information given, we know that Fox is relating the parable to the Fall, for to “know[ing] good and evil”(Gen. 3:5) independent from God’s guidance was the temptation offered by the Serpent. In taking that bait---to no longer eye God’s Will---humanity became spiritually blind, unable to see, to discern good from evil. The “eye” Fox refers to is that which has overcome that blindness by again eyeing God; this “eye” sees: “both the wheat and tares are seen, and each distinguished, the one from the other”(p. 18).</p>
<p>That the “eye” is but one eye—and not the two eyes given by nature—implies a special kind of seeing, the seeing that metaphorically refers to understanding, or insight. Fox refers to seeing "the good" and the evil that exist within each unredeemed human: “[the tares] hang amongst the wheat.” For Fox, the parable is first a lesson on spiritual discernment: seeing, and second a lesson on what one sees: evil is within oneself; with surprise, one asks: “from whence came these tares?”(p. 17)</p>
<p>Fox urges an examination of the evil that grows within. (“Now read the tares”; that is to say, now that you see the evil in yourself, learn about it.) He directs the reader to examine the characteristics and consequences of that inward evil:</p>
<p><em>what is the effect of [the tares], and their work? And what they do, and have done? How they hang amongst the wheat? (pp. 17-18)</em></p>
<p>Fox is compelling the reader to see the effects of sin and wrong-doing in his life, and the stubborn persistence of sin in human nature, as tares “hang amongst the wheat.” For to see---to sense---the distinction between good and evil, and the harm evil does to oneself and others, is the first step to knowing to refuse the evil, and choose the good (Isa. 7:15).</p>
<p>The “harvest,” a word found in both the original text and Fox’s epistle, does not refer to physical death, and neither does it refer to some cataclysmic end of all life on earth, as is often portrayed in non-Quaker interpretations. These wrong interpretations result from assigning a literal meaning to Jesus’s words: “the harvest is the end of the world” (v. 39).</p>
<p>For Fox, the end of the world is the end of the worldly self, the unredeemed, fallen self that is in opposition to and independent of God. Dying to that self, the inward cross, is the worldly death that entails “wailing and gnashing of teeth” (v. 42). Once this inward separation of spirit from worldly flesh, wheat from tares, good from evil, has taken place, and the tares gathered and burned, “then,” says Jesus, “the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Mt. 13:42-43)</p>
<p>Jesus’s final statement (“He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”) informs us that not all will grasp his meaning. He and other prophets realize comprehension comes only when the mysteries of the kingdom are unveiled by the Holy Ghost (Jn. 14:26). In his speech to London Yearly Meeting in 1675, Fox identified the parables, however, as one tool that prepares humankind to receive the Holy Ghost: “Here is the bundle of life opened, the end of the parables, and of the figures, and law, and who fulfilleth it.”</p>
<p>When Jesus’s disciples asked him why he spoke in parables, he said:</p>
<p><em>Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given….Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them (Mt. 13:11-15).</em></p>
<p>As did the prophets before them, seventeenth-century Friends understood that the worldly nature (described in this excerpt where Jesus quotes Esaias [Isa. 6:10]) could not understand the Scriptures. It is “by the inward testimony of the Spirit we do alone truly know [the Scriptures],” wrote Barclay in <em>Apology for the True Christian Divinity</em> (Quaker Heritage Press, p. 62). No amount of scholarship, knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, nor seminary training could explicate the words given through the spirit of prophecy. The same dependency on the Spirit is required to understand early Friends’ writings: no amount of reading, training, or knowledge of history or doctrine can open the meaning of their writings. Because they are written from the spirit of truth, they must be read in that same spirit.</p>
<p><em>For I saw in that light and spirit which was before the scriptures were given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that spirit, if they would know God or Christ, or the scriptures aright, which they that gave them forth were led and taught by (Works, 1:89).</em></p>
<p>Fox here confirms the Scripture message that all must come to that Spirit (Rev. 22:17), if they would understand the words of the prophets and apostles that have come before. It is this Spirit of Christ that enables us to understand the writings of these prophetic men and women, regardless of the century in which they wrote---first, seventeenth, in between, or after---and to discern the spirit of truth from the spirit of error: to distinguish the wheat from the tares.</p>
<p><em>Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world; therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God; he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error (1 Jn. 4:4-6).</em></p>
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<p> </p>Hear Ye Him: Some observations on Matthew 17tag:nffquaker.org,2018-09-02:6286598:BlogPost:364142018-09-02T12:01:25.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the…</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? Of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou has opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee (Mt. 17: 24-27 KJV).</p>
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<p>This isn’t your ordinary fish story, though it is incredible. Nevertheless, there’s a lesson about reality being taught here, a lesson to be confirmed by experience alone. For the experience goes well beyond that which we have learned is possible in nature, just like the story itself.</p>
<p>Peter is being taught in this passage that the new way that Jesus embodies will free him from the confines of the first nature, the nature given to all humankind. The story conveys this lesson by transcending nature at large, i.e., by presenting a miracle. The story’s miracle implies our human nature can likewise be transcended. By grace and truth, humankind’s state can be moved beyond its corrupt, sinful nature into a new and living perfection.</p>
<p>Several other passages in this chapter (a couple such verses are listed below) affirm the real possibility of transcending our first-birth nature. When an idea is presented convincingly a number of times and in various ways, the likelihood of its being grasped is increased. One instance among the plethora of argument, evidence, and conviction may at last raise the veil that darkens the mind, plant a seed that grows in the heart.</p>
<blockquote><p>If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you (20).</p>
<p>And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again (23).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jesus’s question to Peter (of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? [25]) begins a course of reasoning designed to teach Peter that he has closer connection to God (as His child) than do those religious authorities who (alienated strangers to God) uphold religious, social regulation, such as paying and demanding tribute. Jesus is teaching Peter that he is beyond that alienated, tribute-paying nature of the world; he has a closer relationship to God: that of a son.</p>
<p>To finish his lesson with a demonstration of its truth, Jesus instructs Peter to perform an act that is impossible in nature: to get money from a fish’s mouth. He has taught Peter that (human) nature can be transcended, and now he wants Peter himself to partake of this knowledge, to have it confirmed by experience.</p>
<p>This passage is about coming into gospel freedom, freedom from captivity to corrupt human nature: the final line Jesus speaks to Peter before sending him off to find the fish is “Then are the children free” (26).</p>
<p>There’s a thematic symmetry in this chapter. The opening verses (1-5) also carry the lesson that with the coming of the new, living way, the paying of tribute is become defunct. In paying tribute, choosing what resources to give over to God, one assumes control, and then asserts this arrangement is just and adequate. In the new way that Jesus brings to the world, humankind no longer arbitrates the dispensing of resources to God, no longer pays tribute, but instead yields to God’s command. Power and predominance of will have their locus shifted away from ourselves and onto God, to their rightful place that has been from the beginning.</p>
<blockquote><p>And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart. And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him (1-5).</p>
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<p>We are told only of Peter’s reaction to the appearance of Moses and Elias: he wants to honor them and Jesus—to pay tribute—by building tabernacles, one for each. (The tabernacle was a type or figure of God’s dwelling with his people [Ex. 25: 8-9].) Even as Peter speaks of his intent to pay tribute, however, he is interrupted by the voice coming out of a bright cloud: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him”(5). God’s command, “hear ye him,” disrupts Peter’s plan. The voice commands the new way God is to dwell with his people: no longer through man-made tabernacles, but by hearing the Word of God, which is Christ. The enveloping structure of the tabernacle is superseded by the enveloping cloud of light; paying tribute is superseded by hearing the beloved Son.</p>
<p>The middle passages of this chapter teach a variety of lessons about the work Peter and the other disciples will soon take up after Jesus has been killed. The timing, sequence, and history; the expectations of suffering and frustration; and the healings, their source, and how to perform them are all lessons covered in the middle portion. Yet standing like bookends at either end of this chapter is Jesus teaching the difference between the man-made religion of paying tribute, and the nature-transcending faith that comes down from above. The prominent position afforded this lesson in the first and last passages of this teaching chapter bespeak its significance as the first and last lesson that a disciple must learn.</p>A New Foundation to Build On: Introduction to “The Power of the Gospel”tag:nffquaker.org,2018-08-14:6286598:BlogPost:364082018-08-14T13:22:26.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><em><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%;">The Quaker’s revolution was a movement to recover the experience of the power of God through the recovery of that gospel of power which had been lost “since the Apostles’ days.” -- Lewis Benson</span></em></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">In August 1976 at Haverford College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,…</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><em><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%;">The Quaker’s revolution was a movement to recover the experience of the power of God through the recovery of that gospel of power which had been lost “since the Apostles’ days.” -- Lewis Benson</span></em></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">In August 1976 at Haverford College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Lewis Benson gave a series of five lectures titled “A New Foundation to Build On.” The second lecture in this series is called “The Power of the Gospel.” It begins with a brief history of George Fox’s early life at the time he felt near despair of finding a way to live a right and true life, a crisis that was resolved when he was given to know Christ experientially. In this essay, Benson alludes to the same stultifying difficulty early in his own life. As a result of having passed from darkness to light, both Fox and Benson, for the remainder of their lives, made their first concern the presentation of the gospel and its message, for the gospel conveyed the power to overcome the human condition of alienation from God.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">Though Scriptures bear witness to the availability of and necessity for coming into the gospel, the church of Fox’s time no longer taught this message, and it was no longer known. Though isolated groups throughout the centuries had known and practiced this faith, it had been absent from the church for 1600 years. It was the Quaker mission to recover the gospel and present it to the world.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">Benson spends a major portion of the lecture describing the content of the gospel message that Quakers preached; it was most briefly formulated in the statement “Christ is come to teach his people himself.” In the seventeenth century, this summary expressed a unique understanding of Christ’s salvific work: his being present and active, with particular emphasis on his prophetic office or function as the teacher of righteousness.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><em><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%;">Whenever [Fox] preached the gospel, he preached the “offices of Christ,” and especially the office of prophet, because it is by hearing Christ the prophet that the knowledge of God’s righteousness is received and the power to obey is given (Benson).</span></em></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">The essay concludes by referring to the 1945 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a discovery that confirmed seventeenth-century Friends’ assertion that the gospel they preached was the same that was held by the Jewish Christians of the first century. Though it was a significant discovery, it had little impact on Quakers then or since, nor on Christians in general, for an apostasy is overcome not through gospel-corroborating scholarship but through the gospel itself.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;">This lecture series can be found under the Resources tab and Lewis Benson’s writings.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 11px;"><span style="margin: 0px; line-height: 107%; font-size: 14pt;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p>Dynamics of Eviltag:nffquaker.org,2018-07-01:6286598:BlogPost:360052018-07-01T10:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p><em>And why is the devil, and they that be of him, called a deceiver, because he is out of the truth, and would draw others from and out of the truth, and so destroy them both body and soul, but Christ destroyeth him (George Fox,<span> </span></em>Headley Manuscript<em>, Friends House London, p. 311, catalogue item number 8, 82F).</em></p>
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<p>In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film<span> </span><em>Schindler’s List,</em><span> </span>there was a scene that has remained with…</p>
<blockquote><p><em>And why is the devil, and they that be of him, called a deceiver, because he is out of the truth, and would draw others from and out of the truth, and so destroy them both body and soul, but Christ destroyeth him (George Fox,<span> </span></em>Headley Manuscript<em>, Friends House London, p. 311, catalogue item number 8, 82F).</em></p>
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<p>In Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film<span> </span><em>Schindler’s List,</em><span> </span>there was a scene that has remained with me as an accurate portrayal of the dynamics of evil. This particular scene offered a glimpse into the suprahuman power of darkness that lies behind the temptation to evil to which we, as humans, are exposed and regularly succumb as a matter of course. The state or condition produced by such yielding to temptation is called in our tradition’s parlance “worldliness,” “the world” being the term that signifies humanity’s opposition to God. George Fox writes: “All relations in the world are Devilish, Selfish, heathenish and earthly” (Cadbury,<span> </span><em>Annual Catalogue of George Fox’s Papers</em>, item 6, p. 61).</p>
<p>The recalled scene from the film centers on an interaction between a commander of a camp and a young female Jewish engineer. She has discovered that one of the camp’s buildings has a faulty foundation that will inevitably lead to the building’s collapse, if not corrected. The scene begins with her rushing into the presence of the camp’s commander and his men who listen to her confident, fervent warning. After the commander has heard her out, he pauses a moment to consider the situation, and then promptly orders one of his men to shoot her. The scene ends with her murder.</p>
<p>Nearly a quarter century after having first seen this film, I mistakenly recalled the woman being dragged away while continuing to protest the commander’s failure to understand the danger: the building would collapse if nothing were done. Having recently again watched the film, I found a different, more powerful ending to the scene from what I had previously imagined.</p>
<p>The scene ends with the woman being shot, but immediately before her murder, she and the commander exchange one line each of dialogue. The brief exchange unmasks and displays the forces of good and evil that lay behind the conflict just played out between them. As the woman is forced to her knees prior to being shot, she defiantly asserts: “It will take more than that.” To which the camp commander readily replies: “I’m sure you’re right.”</p>
<p>Her dying assertion (“It will take more than that.”) implies the truth cannot be altered or destroyed by the silencing of those who speak it. Truth, the Word of God, is eternal and unchanging, and as such, it remains unaffected by that which was “a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth” (Jn. 8:44). In this scene, that point is made when the woman withstands the demonic assault by remaining grounded and speaking the truth until the end.</p>
<p>The commander’s reply (“I’m sure you’re right.”) while mockingly affirming the right and the true, simultaneously conveys a readiness to continue destroying beings who—alone of all God’s creatures—can know and speak truth. By ordering the murder of the truth-speaker, the commander unmasks a satanic defiance that would always have the exalted truth subjugated: whether that dominance is gained overtly by the killing of the body (as in this scene); or covertly, insidiously, through eliciting an overriding fear of diminishment or death.</p>
<p>Such fear quickly draws the mind away to creaturely self-service, and leaves the soul languishing unattended and desolate, its lifeline to God abandoned. For it is only in attentive relationship with God that the soul lives (Jn. 17:3). The forfeiture of the living relationship with God is signified in our tradition by the term “the Fall of man.” “By their fall they came under another power, another image, another likeness, and another god, even the god of the world” (<em>The Works of George Fox</em>, vol. 8, p. 136).</p>
<p>Though there were many other scenes in the film where destruction occurred on a larger scale, this one scene stood out because of the stark depiction of the characteristics of evil, and not simply its consequences. As opposed to satanic evil, the distinguishing mark of human sin is weakness: a refusal to honor truth when tempted by the possibility of possessing whatever one loves instead of truth. A weak succumbing to temptation is the mark of human sin. In this scene, however, we see not only human but also demonic evil, the origin of the temptation of human beings, who in weakness yield. Writes Emil Brunner in<span> </span><em>Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Human sin, thanks to the fact that we are not pure spirits, but body-mind creatures, is never “complete.” Its negative “perfection” would be pure defiance, pure arrogance, that is purely spiritual sin. But our sin, thanks to the fact of our human constitution as “body-mind,” is always a mixture of defiance and weakness, of tendency to temptation both on the side of the mind and of the senses (139).</em></p>
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<p>In its demonic form, evil is “perfect” defiance of God; it originates in the rebellion of “that being who could not endure not to be equal with God” (Brunner, 145), and it manifests in willful rejection of the divine imperative to obey the God of truth. In fact, George Fox identifies the rejection of truth as the defining act by which the devil became the devil: “he became a devil by going out of truth and so became a murderer and a destroyer” (Nickalls, 212).</p>
<p>Evil is perpetuated by tempting weak humans to reject the truth, and thus dishonor our Creator who has created us in His image, as beings enabled to discern and participate in truth, which is Christ (Jn. 14:6). To abdicate our humanity’s gift of the ability to know and participate in the truth, and thereby to defy God’s will, is to become less than human; it is not to become more than human, as the serpent enticed, “ye shall be as gods”(Gen. 3:5). Fox expressed this loss of humanity in the following passage from his<span> </span><em>Journal</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Now some men have the nature of swine wallowing in the mire, and some men have the nature of dogs to bite both the sheep and one another; and some men have the nature of lions, to tear, devour, and destroy. And some men have the nature of wolves to tear and devour the lambs and sheep of Christ; and some men have the nature of the Serpent (that old adversary), to sting, envenom, and poison. “He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear,” and learn these things within himself. And some men have the natures of other beasts and creatures, minding nothing but earthly and visible things, and feeding without the fear of God. Some men have the nature of an horse, to praunce and vapour in their strength, and to be swift in doing evil; and some men have the nature of tall, sturdy oaks, to flourish and spread in wisdom and strength, who are strong in evil, which must perish and come to the fire. Thus the evil is but one in all, but worketh many ways; and whatsoever a man’s or woman’s nature is addicted to that is outward, the Evil One will fit him with that, and will please his nature and appetite to keep his mind in his inventions, and in the creatures, from the Creator (Nickalls, 59).</em></p>
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<p>Regardless of the extent of the consequences–-whether vast societal destruction or a single lie confined to a single, corrupted mind–-the dynamics of human evil are always the same: assent to temptation coupled with defiance. Its outward consequences are indicative only of its extent but not of its intrinsic character, for that is determined at its inception, not in its effects. That evil is first acceded to within underscores the inescapability of personal responsibility. Taking personal responsibility is the sole human act that can hinder both succumbing to personal sin as well as to the social sin of conformity, necessary for scapegoating and other grander-scaled, collective expressions of evil.</p>
<p>Holding the line, speaking the truth is the Christian’s (Quaker’s) obligation in the Lamb’s War. If the God of truth is honored in just one mind, heart, and soul, the world is not lost, as Jesus showed us by prototypal example. In this statement given before Pilate shortly before the end of his earthly life, Jesus identified his life’s purpose not only for himself but for us all.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice (Jn.18:37).</em></p>
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<p>Seventeenth-century Friends of the Truth heard his voice and preached the Word of reconciliation to the fallen world. And we continue, grounded and speaking the truth until the end.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>The ministers of the word that preached that, preached the word that reconciled people to God, and did hammer down and cut down and burn up that which was in them and had made a separation betwixt them and God, so it’s called the word of reconciliation and reconciles all things to God in one, both things in heaven and things in earth (</em>Annual Catalogue of George Fox’s Papers<em>, pp.179-180, catalogue number 15, 40G).</em></p>
</blockquote>A Poem for Pentecosttag:nffquaker.org,2018-05-20:6286598:BlogPost:355132018-05-20T18:34:14.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>The dove descending breaks the air<br></br>With flame of incandescent terror<br></br>Of which the tongues declare<br></br>The one discharge from sin and error.<br></br>The only hope, or else despair<br></br>Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-<br></br>To be redeemed from fire by fire.</p>
<p>Who then devised the torment? Love.<br></br>Love is the unfamiliar Name<br></br>Behind the hands that wove<br></br>The intolerable shirt of flame<br></br>Which human power cannot remove.<br></br>We only live, only suspire<br></br>Consumed by either fire or…</p>
<p>The dove descending breaks the air<br>With flame of incandescent terror<br>Of which the tongues declare<br>The one discharge from sin and error.<br>The only hope, or else despair<br>Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-<br>To be redeemed from fire by fire.</p>
<p>Who then devised the torment? Love.<br>Love is the unfamiliar Name<br>Behind the hands that wove<br>The intolerable shirt of flame<br>Which human power cannot remove.<br>We only live, only suspire<br>Consumed by either fire or fire. </p>
<p> T. S. Eliot, from "Four Quartets"</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407704141?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407704141?profile=original" width="614" class="align-left"></a></p>Introduction to "The Christian Universalism of George Fox"tag:nffquaker.org,2018-05-11:6286598:BlogPost:349922018-05-11T12:07:01.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><em>When I began to concentrate my studies on all the writings of George Fox more than forty years ago, it was during the period of Quaker history that might be called the “high tide” of the mystical interpretation of Quakerism. And when I had first encountered Fox’s Journal just fifty years ago, I was not a professing Christian. If I had any bias when I read the Journal for the first time, it was in the direction of hoping to find in Fox the “perennial philosophy” of the mystics. But as I…</em></p>
<p><em>When I began to concentrate my studies on all the writings of George Fox more than forty years ago, it was during the period of Quaker history that might be called the “high tide” of the mystical interpretation of Quakerism. And when I had first encountered Fox’s Journal just fifty years ago, I was not a professing Christian. If I had any bias when I read the Journal for the first time, it was in the direction of hoping to find in Fox the “perennial philosophy” of the mystics. But as I continued to study Fox, I became convinced that the great work on which he labored so faithfully all through his life was to preach the good news concerning Jesus Christ and how he saves people, and I became convinced of the truth of this gospel message. – Lewis Benson</em></p>
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<p>“The Christian Universalism of George Fox” is the tenth and final lecture in the series <em>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</em> that Lewis Benson gave at Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting in 1982. These lectures were prepared with those in mind who had been reached through hearing gospel ministry and, as a result, had wanted to “become involved in the work of preaching it again.” Each of the first eight lectures in this series covers a specific area of Fox’s teaching. The final two lectures (this and the previous one: “Fox’s Teaching on the Holy Spirit”) were included to prepare those who will go out to preach the gospel, and who can expect to “run into questions about holy spirit religion and about non-Christian universalism.”</p>
<p>In this essay, Benson distills significant points from various scholars’ writings regarding the interface between universal mystical faith and Quakers. Rufus Jones figures prominently in this inventory, and Geoffrey Nuttall, Melvin B. Endy, and John Yungblut are mentioned as well. Going beyond scholarly positions, however, Benson presents Fox’s moving past intellectualism and into the wisdom of sequential, inward experience, which culminates in the knowledge of the inward Christ <em>as person</em> (i.e., having a face). The verse from 2 Corinthians 4:6, encapsulated in the following, was frequently referred to by Friends:</p>
<p><em>Believers in Christ Jesus and the apostles and disciples…preach Christ the covenant of light among the Gentiles, and so bring them from the darkness to the light, from the power of Satan to God…and brought them inwardly to the light that shines in their hearts, to give them the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.</em></p>
<p>A frequent charge from the earliest decades of the movement was that Quakers eliminated from their faith Jesus Christ “who dwelt in Galilee and Judea and was crucified, buried, and rose on the third day.” Though Friends always denied the accusation, and owned Christ’s “appearance of him in his body of flesh,” they formally stated their position in “The Christian Doctrine of the People called Quakers Cleared.” Benson quotes from this document, which was prepared in 1694 by trusted ministers and leaders in the Society. Here is one statement from that document: “The son of God cannot be divided…nor is the sufficiency of his light within set up by us in opposition to him.”</p>
<p>Benson identifies a more recent challenge to the early Quaker message as “denominational-mindedness.” The principle behind this thinking is that different “natures” require different philosophies or theologies, thus accounting for the many denominations. Since Benson’s time, denominational-mindedness has gained ground among Quakers, and a diversity of philosophies is now seen as valid not only for those outside of the Society but for those within. A tightening conformity to the doctrine of individualism has accelerated the proliferation of ideologies within the Society. Resisted by most is the observation that human nature is intrinsic and universal, the same in every time and place, and that Jesus Christ speaks to this universal condition.</p>
<p>Benson concludes this lecture series with the following:</p>
<p><em>[Early Quakers] were proclaiming that Christ, who is present in the midst of his people in all his offices, is the means that God has provided to save not just the Jews, or the Christians, but all people, all nations. The need today is for more men and women who are prepared to go forth and proclaim this gospel to Quakers, Christians, and people of all faiths, or none. “It is a wonderful thing to be called to the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” </em></p>
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<p>This tenth lecture can be found under the Resources tab in Lewis Benson Writings. </p>The New Waytag:nffquaker.org,2018-03-25:6286598:BlogPost:351772018-03-25T16:31:02.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<div class="entry-content"><p>The following is based upon vocal ministry given in a Philadelphia meeting on 11/5/17.</p>
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<p>There is a story about Jesus that takes place after he’d been ministering for a while. He was at home, visiting with his brothers shortly before a festival was to occur in Jerusalem. His brothers were planning to go to the festival, but Jesus was not planning to go with them. The brothers spoke to Jesus, perhaps to chastise him for not going, or perhaps to mock…</p>
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<div class="entry-content"><p>The following is based upon vocal ministry given in a Philadelphia meeting on 11/5/17.</p>
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<p>There is a story about Jesus that takes place after he’d been ministering for a while. He was at home, visiting with his brothers shortly before a festival was to occur in Jerusalem. His brothers were planning to go to the festival, but Jesus was not planning to go with them. The brothers spoke to Jesus, perhaps to chastise him for not going, or perhaps to mock him. They said to Jesus, if you have a message for the people, why don’t you go to the festival and give it? No one who wants to be known acts in secret. Show yourself to the world. Jesus responds by saying: “My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready”(Jn. 7:6).</p>
<p>What Jesus is saying here is that he must wait for guidance before he acts; he doesn’t act on his own power and volition, as do his brothers, but he waits until he’s been given understanding from God for what he is to do, and when he is to do it. It is a new way to be, to regulate one’s life. And this is the content of Jesus’s ministry: there’s something new.</p>
<p>When I come to meeting, I arrive early and, a little while later, listen as people begin to enter the meeting room and settle in. I like to hear all the sounds: the coughing, the sniffling, the shuffling of feet. These are cozy human sounds; there’s a warmth in hearing them, like sitting in front of a fire. And then there are the messages: people’s opinions and ideas. People have always had opinions and ideas. They, too, are human, a natural part of us. Some may be good ideas and some not; some may be productive and others destructive; some dutiful and others careless; some creative and others unimaginative, but whatever their qualities, they are all ideas. They come with our being human, along with all the other capacities that have been given to us by our Creator.</p>
<p>When Jesus spoke about his time being “not yet come, but his brothers’ time being always ready,” he was making a distinction between the new nature and power he’d been given by God–an inspired, divine nature–and the old human nature in which we are confined to knowing and receiving only human ideas and opinions.</p>
<p>To inform of, to manifest, and to witness to this new way of being–partaking of the divine nature–was the purpose of Jesus’s ministry; it is the new way given by God.</p>
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<p></p>Moses and the Burning Bushtag:nffquaker.org,2018-01-11:6286598:BlogPost:353052018-01-11T13:00:54.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>[The following is based upon vocal ministry given at Germantown Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Twelfth month, the 31st.]</p>
<blockquote><p><em>And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed (Ex. 3:2).</em></p>
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<p>One of the significant things about the burning bush that Moses saw was that it continued to burn. The bush burned and was not…</p>
<p>[The following is based upon vocal ministry given at Germantown Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Twelfth month, the 31st.]</p>
<blockquote><p><em>And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed (Ex. 3:2).</em></p>
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<p>One of the significant things about the burning bush that Moses saw was that it continued to burn. The bush burned and was not consumed. And so, Moses was drawn to look at it: he’d not seen anything like it before. For fire burns while it has fuel: wood, gas, or some other material. But when the fuel has been consumed, the fire goes out. The fuel is finite, and once it is gone, the fire no longer burns.</p>
<p>We humans are like fire in that we have a finite amount of substance to fuel our lives. We have limited time to live; our understanding is limited by history and circumstance; our capacity to love is limited by our affections, and often fails when we come into conflict with others. Our life powers are limited, much to our chagrin.</p>
<p>Moses was a man who was intensely aware of his limitation: he couldn’t speak properly; he had run away from his people whom he knew to be suffering; he had even killed a person. He felt his shortcomings keenly. When God spoke to him from the burning bush and told him that he would send him to Pharoah to liberate the Israelites, Moses–feeling his limits and doubting his ability–replied:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? (11)</em></p>
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<p>Because Moses felt and knew his limitation, he was prepared to become a spokesperson for God (a prophet); his sensing the truth of himself readied him to respond to God. We, too, may heed the promptings of truth about ourselves, and be led by the seed of God within. We, too, may be given to see the light, to know eternal life that is beyond our finitude; we, too, may be delivered from captivity and led into the promised land.</p>
<p>Contrarily, we may be hemmed in, enslaved by the inward Pharoah. Who is this Pharoah within, who will not let us go? He it is who would prevail; who would control and dominate; and who’d refuse to see what is, in truth, immediately before him.</p>
<p>To Moses, who saw his limitation and confessed his need for strength, God replied: “Certainly I will be with thee (12).” The power and wisdom of God, Christ the light within, visits, empowers, and sustains our lives indefinitely, eternally. Like a fire whose fuel is not consumed in burning is the life he brings to us: a life whose substance is not consumed in time but is eternal.</p>Called to Christtag:nffquaker.org,2017-10-03:6286598:BlogPost:336142017-10-03T15:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">[The following is based upon vocal ministry given at Germantown Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 1 Tenth month 2017.]</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I<font face="Calibri" size="3">n his Journal</font> George Fox spoke of three kinds of dreams:</font></p>
<p><i><font face="Calibri" size="3">For there were three sorts of dreams: for multitude of business sometimes caused dreams; and there were whisperings of Satan in man in the…</font></i></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">[The following is based upon vocal ministry given at Germantown Meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 1 Tenth month 2017.]</font></p>
<p></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">I<font face="Calibri" size="3">n his Journal</font> George Fox spoke of three kinds of dreams:</font></p>
<p><i><font face="Calibri" size="3">For there were three sorts of dreams: for multitude of business sometimes caused dreams; and there were whisperings of Satan in man in the night-season; and there were speakings of God to man in dreams (Journal, ed. Nickalls, 9).</font></i></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">In dreams we may learn something of ourselves that lies hidden during waking hours. The dream state allows access to a deeper awareness of who we are and what we think and feel. The self is not covered and veiled but revealed, and we can apply insights from dreams to better understand and improve our lives. We welcome this truth about ourselves and would like to always live with a deep awareness of truth, for there is freedom and comfort in it. Jesus said the truth makes us free, and he also said that the Comforter is the Spirit of truth. There is freedom and comfort in truth.</font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">Fox also spoke of the two kinds of messages that the first Friends gave to people. To those who had not yet come into knowledge of God, Friends preached repentance. For repentance is an intentional uncovering of the truth about the self: what it is that must be seen and then laid down. In repentance, one chooses the light of truth over obscurity. The other kind of message that Friends preached was to those who had already gone through this coming into self-knowledge and had been given to see themselves as they were, without the Lord. They had been open to the truth of themselves, and had discovered that the truth that is Christ soon after was revealed in them. </font></p>
<p><i><font face="Calibri" size="3">To the world the apostles preached repentance, and to believe in Jesus Christ; and taught faith towards God. But to them who were redeemed out of the world, in whom the son of God was made manifest…preaching repentance and the doctrine of baptism was needless, in whom it was fulfilled, to and in such as were brought to God (Works, 7:143).</font></i></p>
<p><font face="Calibri" size="3">They who saw themselves as they were without the Lord already knew the value of repentance, as it had led to their entry into the way, into the truth, and into the life that is Christ. They were free men and women who knew the Comforter, the Spirit of truth. To these people, Friends preached Christ in them, because they were folks who sought to hear Christ, the Word, preached: it brought them to the living God; <font face="Calibri" size="3">it was their life.</font> </font></p>
<p><font face="Calibri"><font size="3">Fox writes: “There is a time of preaching faith towards God; and there is a time to be brought to God” (Ep. 151). Whether we are in need of repentance or whether we are in the life of Christ, we are all human beings and must move forward from the position we are in. For it is to Christ that we are called: Christ in us the hope of glory. </font></font></p>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox: Introduction to "Restoring the Church of the Cross" (Eighth lecture)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-08-25:6286598:BlogPost:329092017-08-25T15:28:22.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><i>The fellowship of the cross of Christ…is not of man, nor by man; for it is in the everlasting power of God; therefore, no longer do you keep in fellowship, but as you keep in the cross of Christ (</i>Works<i>, 8:67).</i></p>
<p>“Restoring the Church of the Cross" is the title of the eighth lecture in the series <i>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</i> given by Lewis Benson in 1982 at Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting. In this lecture, Benson explores the meaning and relevance of…</p>
<p><i>The fellowship of the cross of Christ…is not of man, nor by man; for it is in the everlasting power of God; therefore, no longer do you keep in fellowship, but as you keep in the cross of Christ (</i>Works<i>, 8:67).</i></p>
<p>“Restoring the Church of the Cross" is the title of the eighth lecture in the series <i>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</i> given by Lewis Benson in 1982 at Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting. In this lecture, Benson explores the meaning and relevance of these theological terms: the cross of Christ; the Church, as fellowship of the cross; the righteousness that is given through Christ, and defines the community; and the consequent suffering entailed in bearing witness to the Truth in a world devoid of understanding.</p>
<p>People gather and come together for many different reasons, but the Church, as George Fox averred, was a coming together and fellowship of people who knew—understood through experience—the cross of Christ, and kept to it. Since the days of the apostles, the knowledge of the cross as the defining characteristic of the faith community had been lost, said Fox. This loss was called “the apostasy.”</p>
<p><i>Here began the apostasy…when they…apostatized from the true cross, the power of God, and from the true church (4:171).</i><i> </i></p>
<p>It was Fox’s mission to bring people out of the apostasy, to gather a people to Christ by the power of the gospel. Benson writes:</p>
<p><i>[Fox’s] gospel message that “Christ has come to teach his people himself” is a call to people to become disciples of Christ, to be taught the principles of God’s righteousness by him, and to come into a fellowship that learns together, obeys together, and suffers together.</i></p>
<p>First Friends had discovered the one thing needful: the living purveyor of righteousness. Without the coming of Christ to teach his people his righteousness, no valid claim to righteousness could be--or can be--made: neither the Old Testament law in the apostles’ days; nor the Bible’s prescriptions in the seventeenth century; nor the testimonies and self-edification of our own times. Christ, the Lord of righteousness, “is not of man nor by man.” Nor is the fellowship of Christ determined by man’s rubrics.</p>
<p><i>He that is in Christ, is at the end of the law, and the precepts, and the statutes, and the ordinances, and the commandments, and is in the substance, God’s righteousness (3:270).</i></p>
<p>Suffering for bearing witness to the Truth that comes from God and Christ is a well-known part of Quaker history, and Benson spends much of the latter part of this lecture discussing what precipitates suffering and how suffering for righteousness of Christ is distinct from other kinds of suffering. He writes:</p>
<p><i>Thus Fox is teaching that suffering, in the Christian sense, is for the sake of bearing a faithful testimony to the Truth that comes from God and Christ, and especially for the righteousness that comes from God and Christ.</i></p>
<p>Ample supporting quotations in this and other lectures of this series may mislead readers into thinking that Benson’s work is primarily a scholarly endeavor. Although he does present modern Friends with information and analysis of our Society’s beginning, his intent is not confined to presenting his scholarship. Benson had undergone the inward dying to self that results from a keen drive to have something solid on which to stand as one assumes inward maturity, as well as gazes out and navigates life with all its pitfalls. Benson, as many others, had discovered the life that Fox, too, had discovered. For both men, the purpose and direction of the remainder of their lives was set: to communicate and to challenge lost and fearful humanity, floundering in apostasy, to once again come to the great discovery: Christ in whom there is “no shadow, variableness, nor turning” (7:295).</p>
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<p>This lecture can be found under the Resource tab under the listing of Lewis Benson’s writings: <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407699791?profile=original">eighth lecture</a>.</p>In Him We Live, and Move, and Have Our Being (part two)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-07-02:6286598:BlogPost:321042017-07-02T11:17:55.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>Before beginning a verbatim account of Paul’s sermon, the scripture writer provides some background information about Paul’s situation in Athens: While waiting for two helpers to join him, Paul assesses the spiritual condition of the city and finds its idolatry distressing. He goes to the synagogue to reason with both Jews and Gentiles, and argues in the marketplace with whoever is willing. He preaches the gospel of Jesus and the resurrection, and the philosophers are privately critical and…</p>
<p>Before beginning a verbatim account of Paul’s sermon, the scripture writer provides some background information about Paul’s situation in Athens: While waiting for two helpers to join him, Paul assesses the spiritual condition of the city and finds its idolatry distressing. He goes to the synagogue to reason with both Jews and Gentiles, and argues in the marketplace with whoever is willing. He preaches the gospel of Jesus and the resurrection, and the philosophers are privately critical and insulting, but curious to hear more. Then they all go to the Areopagus where Athenians regularly resort to hear the latest ideas, and Paul begins to preach:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you (Acts 17:22-23).</span></p>
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<p>At the start of his sermon, Paul sets out a major difference between his faith and the condition of his hearers: Paul knows God, and the philosophers do not. The Athenians, by their own admission, claim God is “Unknown,” and therefore, by implication, unknowable. It is experiential knowledge of God that enables us to worship Him as He would be worshiped: in spirit and in truth. Jesus draws the connection between knowledge of God and true worship when he speaks to the Samaritan:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>Ye worship ye know not what: <u>we know what we worship</u>: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (Jn. 4:22-24).</span></p>
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<p>Unlike the Greeks who worship an “Unknown God,” Paul <em>does</em> know God, and is thus enabled to declare God’s work and humanity’s relation to Him. The following precepts in Paul’s sermon would have been foreign to the Athenians:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things (24-25).</span></p>
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<p>Paul contends that God is Creator and Lord, and thus the giver and ruler of life; man receives life and is subject to God’s power. He is not, as the Greeks would have it, a builder and maker of ideas (notional speculations) or buildings (temples) that house God; for God does not dwell in temples made with hands (made by man). Rather, it is God who acts and reveals himself to man. We wait upon him to move, like the Spirit upon the face of the waters. We wait upon the Lord; this is the way of prophetic Quaker worship.</p>
<blockquote><p><span>And [God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; <u>that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him,</u> though he be not far from every one of us (26-27).</span></p>
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<p>In saying that God has made “of one blood all the nations of men,” Paul identifies man’s condition as universal. What is the condition that is true for all people in all times and places? It is <em>the felt need for God</em>, not the possession of “that of God in every one,” but <em>the need for God</em>. A sense of alienation from God suffuses each human psyche, and leads to a search to overcome the corresponding anxiety that is felt by every person in every time and in every nation. God has decreed each person will feel his or her need for God, and, in feeling this need, should seek the Lord.</p>
<p>Idolatry corrupts the search. Some poor substitute for God is found, the soul assuaged, and the search stopped. Some item, some loyalty, some pleasure, some theory, some circumstance, some obligation, some obsession stands in for God, numbing or distracting man from his true feeling of need. God is ready to meet our need for Him, and when He reveals Himself, then, and only then, is our felt need truly met: life’s meaning and fulfillment is known.</p>
<blockquote><p><span>For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as, since, as also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring (28).</span></p>
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<p>We are His “offspring,” a word denoting kinship, relationship. Says Brunner: “For man’s being created in the image of God does not imply any kind of divine spiritual substance in man, but only <u>his relation to God</u>“(78). We are separate from but related to God:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God</span> (Jn. 1:11-12).</p>
<p><span>Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent (Acts 17:29-30).</span></p>
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<p>God has ever had a plan for humanity’s restoration, Paul avers. Now the time is come that a new thing is commanded: repentance. We are to repent of our attributing divinity to ourselves (“ye shall be as gods” [Gen. 3:5]); that is, repent of the claim “that of God” resides within, when God is yet unknown, yet unrevealed. God is not mocked. True authority, the author of our faith, suffers outside the gate of our habitation, and we must become subject to his enlarging jurisdiction. The world in the human heart is judged:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead (31).</span></p>
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<p>It is a foolish idea to the Greeks that a human being might be raised from the dead; it is beyond reason. For the Epicureans, death was the end of all things, and for the Stoics, death was followed by the soul being absorbed into that from which it sprang.</p>
<blockquote><p><span>But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:23).</span></p>
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<p>Paul speaks beyond the Greeks understanding, beyond their reason. Through repentance we condemn to death the reprobate mind: having seen that our inward condition is inadequate to meet our felt need. It is a universal verdict of the universal judgment appointed by God. We are given to know the risen one, even Christ Jesus, who is ordained by God to judge and to speak to this condition, this fallen state. We are raised to life in unity with him that has been raised from the dead. Beyond our comprehension, our reason, beyond our philosophy, we are given to know the inward resurrection experientially.</p>
<p>In the final words of his sermon, Paul presents the most conclusive difference between Christian faith and the philosophical mysticism of the Greeks. It is <em>a person</em> we encounter in the risen Christ, and this person, Christ Jesus, becomes the foundation for our life. Impersonal mystical openings occur, but only foreshadow the subsequent restoration of personal relationship with God, drawing us to Christ, his Word. Lewis Benson states in his essay “Prophetic Quakerism”:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>Wherever the philosophical type of mysticism has found expression within the limits of the Christian community, it has sought to reduce the saving Word of God addressed inwardly by the Voice of Jesus Christ to <u>something less personal</u> </span>(<span>The Truth is Christ</span>, 16).</p>
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<p>That seventeenth-century Friends understood the person of Jesus Christ to be inwardly revealed is apparent in George Fox’s most frequently used phrase that expressed the basic tenet of Quaker faith: “Christ is come to teach his people himself.” Christ is active: coming to us and teaching us as only a person can. The basic law of man’s being is to live by the Word of God. We must come into an experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Word of God.</p>
<p>The statements in Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus accord with Jesus’s and first Friends’ teachings, because every one of them spoke from the same source: the knowledge and power of God. As their source was the gospel, the power of God, there was unity in their understanding.</p>
<ul>
<li>There is one God who is Creator and Lord. (25-26)</li>
<li>God has made all humanity to feel their need of him, for in relationship with him our being is completed and perfected. (26-28)</li>
<li>God is not like that which we can devise by thinking or making. (29)</li>
<li>It is time to repent and end the ignorance of idolatry. (30)</li>
<li>Each is to be judged in his spiritually deadened state and resurrected to life in Christ. (31-32)</li>
</ul>
<p>In the face of last century’s Liberal Quaker communities turning away from prophetic faith and, in its stead, adopting a philosophy of values, Lewis Benson re-introduced the prophetic, primitive Christianity held forth by George Fox and other first Friends. Benson also discovered in the work of theologian Emil Brunner (referred to at the start of this paper) a worthy analysis of the progress and consequences of the loss of Christian understanding in history, its usurpation having begun in the alternative metaphysics of Greek philosophy.</p>
<blockquote><p><span>The ground, root, and foundation of the Quakers’ faith…begins with belief in God who created all things out of nothing and who created man as a being with whom he could converse. Man is a being whose creator visits him and speaks to him, demanding a reply. Brunner says, “God has a different relation to man from what he has to other creatures….He has intercourse with man; He reveals His will to him and expects obedience and trust from him. <u>It is not that man as he is in himself bears God’s likeness, but, rather, that man is designated for, and called to, a particular relation with God.”</u>…The conversational relationship with God for which man was designated is essential to man’s life. When this relationship is broken, the ground of man’s life is broken and instead of life, he knows only death. When man is separated from the word that God speaks to him, then death and darkness overtake him….There is no coming out of darkness and death while man is alienated from God and does not listen to his word or fails to obey his command. This dialogic relationship to God is not a special religious consciousness but it is the basic law of man’s being (Catholic Quakerism, 13-14).</span></p>
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<p>Benson, Brunner, early Friends, and the apostle Paul all find unity in the truth of prophetic Christian faith. The unity of their understanding witnesses to the universality of the God’s call to each person to come into a conversational relationship with Him, and furthermore, witnesses to the potential for each person to answer His call in righteousness. In every century, place, and culture, there are those of us who have come to know experientially the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He has sent, whom He raised from the dead, the one in whom we live, and move, and have our being.</p>In Him We Live, and Move, and Have Our Being (part one)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-07-01:6286598:BlogPost:320022017-07-01T12:14:18.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>In the preface to <em>Christianity and Civilisation,</em> first delivered as Gifford Lectures in 1947, the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner sought “to formulate and to justify [his] conviction that only Christianity is capable of furnishing the basis of a civilisation which can rightly be described as human”(v). A civilization is largely determined by the prevailing answers that its various cultures give to basic questions about being, truth, time, man’s place in the universe, meaning, justice,…</p>
<p>In the preface to <em>Christianity and Civilisation,</em> first delivered as Gifford Lectures in 1947, the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner sought “to formulate and to justify [his] conviction that only Christianity is capable of furnishing the basis of a civilisation which can rightly be described as human”(v). A civilization is largely determined by the prevailing answers that its various cultures give to basic questions about being, truth, time, man’s place in the universe, meaning, justice, freedom, and creativity, and these are the topics Brunner examines in <em>Christianity and Civilisation</em>. In his lecture “The Problem of Meaning,” he asserts:</p>
<blockquote><p><span>Apart from the answer of the Christian Gospel…the most important solution of the problem of meaning within Western history is that of Greek philosophy(63).</span></p>
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<p>Narrowing his exploration to these two worldviews, Brunner traces each of their origins and principles, and the effects of each upon Western civilization throughout historical periods and into our own modern time.</p>
<p>In this preface, Brunner speaks of his hesitancy to take on this work, feeling a disproportion between the topic and his “equipment for dealing with it,” as it is a vast subject requiring expertise in many areas. He commits himself to this labor, however, as he believes it to be a topic in urgent need of explication.</p>
<p>A feeling of urgency likewise compels me to look at these two prevailing Western worldviews, but within a greatly narrowed scope: one encounter between a minister of the Christian gospel and some Athenian philosophers: Paul’s sermon given in the middle of the first century on the Areopagus (Hill of Ares) to the Stoics and Epicureans, as recorded in Acts 17. This encounter is the earliest record of the Christian gospel confronting Greek humanism, and so Paul’s impressions, actions, and statements are worth close examination, as they provide inspired insight into the fundamental differences between these two worldviews, differences that were apparent to each of their proponents, but whose significance was fully understood only by the Apostle who, having been given Christ, the wisdom of God, had superseded the parameters of mind-bound philosophy. As George Fox said, “They that have Christ within have that which is above the heathen philosophies.”</p>
<p>Through this exercise, I hope to introduce Friends to the claim (or to substantiate it, for those already familiar) that original prophetic, primitive Christianity differs from the precepts informing Liberal Quaker belief and practice today, based as they are upon suppositions whose roots lie in Greek metaphysics, and not prophetic faith. The one thing needful–discovered, proclaimed, and suffered for by early Friends, as well as the prophets and apostles before them–has been lost to our religious society, and I hope that those who share my concern for reclaiming prophetic Quaker faith–or who are willing to hear more of this matter–will later turn to Brunner’s lecture series for a more comprehensive treatment of the differences between these two worldviews: <a href="http://www.giffordlectures.org/lecturers/emil-brunner">Gifford Lectures.</a></p>
<p>In the following paragraphs, which are taken from his lecture “Man in the Universe,” Brunner sets out the fundamental conception of Greek humanism; in the second paragraph, he presents the contrasting principle of Christian humanism:</p>
<blockquote><p>[Greek humanism]<span> Man discovers in himself that which distinguishes him from the animal and nature as a whole and elevates him above, the Nous or the Logos, that spiritual principle which underlies all specifically human activity and gives man’s work the character and content of human dignity. Now, this Nous or Logos is, at the same time, the principle which links mankind with the divine; the Logos is not merely the principle of human thought and meaningful action, but also that divine force which orders the world and makes it a Cosmos. It is the divine spark in human reason by which alone man emancipates himself from nature and places himself above it. It is that same divine spark in his reason in which he experiences the divinity of his innermost being….Just as the divine Logos permeates nature and orders it, so it also permeates and orders man. But in man this divine principle becomes conscious knowledge. <u>It is in the recognition of himself as partaker in the divine Logos that man becomes conscious of his specific essence and value; his humanity is, at the same time, divinity.</u></span> [Underlining is mine in this and other quoted passages.]</p>
<p><span>In Biblical revelation the continuum of primitive mind is disrupted in an entirely different manner….<u>God is no more the immanent principle of the world, but its Lord and Creator. He, the Lord-creator, alone is divine</u>….Man in spite of every thing he has and is, with his spiritual as well as natural powers, is not divine. He is a creature…Man alone is created in the image of God…And this </span>imago dei<span> is the principle of Christian humanism as distinguished from Greek….<u>man’s being created in the image of God does not imply any kind of divine spiritual substance in man, but only his relation to God</u>….Christian humanism therefore, as distinguished from the Greek, is of such a kind that the humane character of existence is not automatically a possession of man, but is dependent on his relation to God, and remains a matter of decision (77-79).</span></p>
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<p>Some forms of false worship–idolatry–are easier to recognize than others: the lust and determination to secure social position and power; to indulge in animal sensuality; or to wield brute force are obvious signs of error. More difficult to discern are the indicators of a subtle idolatry in which natural human power is worshiped for its ability to orchestrate the good life, indicated by elevation of values and principles to highest prominence. Such idolatry is rarely challenged in Scripture, perhaps because it comes to the fore only when civic life is stable and free from grosser error. Paul’s sermon on the Areopagus is the earliest example of a challenge to this form idolatry, namely, a challenge to the proposition that divinity resides within human beings as a natural attribute.</p>
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<p>(I hope to post the second part of this paper tomorrow.)</p>
<p></p>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox: Introduction to "The New Ministry" (Sixth lecture)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-04-17:6286598:BlogPost:312312017-04-17T14:39:14.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>First, they must be made alive by Christ, [who] is alive and liveth forevermore … and quickened by him, before they…can be ministers of the spirit, [and] be able to receive heavenly and spiritual things….So, all must be called by Christ…out of the world…and receive his power, spirit and grace and truth and faith [before] they can preach Christ…. They must see him and know him and hear his voice, and have spiritual things from him …and they must all receive their gifts from him…</p>
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<blockquote><p>First, they must be made alive by Christ, [who] is alive and liveth forevermore … and quickened by him, before they…can be ministers of the spirit, [and] be able to receive heavenly and spiritual things….So, all must be called by Christ…out of the world…and receive his power, spirit and grace and truth and faith [before] they can preach Christ…. They must see him and know him and hear his voice, and have spiritual things from him …and they must all receive their gifts from him for the work of their ministry….It is Jesus Christ that doth make and ordain…ministers by his power and spirit. (from "The Call to the Ministry,” a 1671 paper by George Fox)</p>
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<p>"The New Ministry" is the title of the sixth lecture in the series <i>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</i> given by Lewis Benson in 1982 at Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting. Having begun with some preliminary comments on the history of studies and efforts to rejuvenate vocal ministry since the mid-19th century as well as references to present-day, alternative interpretations of ministry work, Benson moves on to the lecture's main purpose: "to explore the implications for us today of the Everlasting Gospel that Fox preached, and especially to learn how it may bring us closer to the practice and experience of a living ministry."</p>
<p>Fox believed that the preaching and receiving of the everlasting gospel would lead to the recovery of all that had been lost since the apostles' days. Benson states that it was recognized that "'many through his [Fox's] ministry were turned from darkness to light... for he did not preach himself but Jesus Christ.' Fox declared that 'the work of the ministry [is] to bring people to the knowledge of the son of God.'"</p>
<p>Benson expands on the nature of gospel ministry work. He briefly covers the qualifications of a gospel minister (seen in the opening quotation given above) and speaks of the different approaches required for ministering to different groups of people. Ministering to the world ("breaking up the clods") is different from ministering to settled meetings ("keeping the sheep"). Whether threshing, plowing, or keeping the sheep, gospel ministers were intensely dedicated to their work. Meetings--both home and those visited--understood, valued, and supported prophetic, itinerant, non-professional ministers in their work, caring for their practical and personal needs. </p>
<p>One example of the latter is a recounting of an opportunity given Benson as a young minister, his receiving personal affirmation from a highly esteemed older minister. It was a memorable event for Benson that confirmed the weighty and wonderful calling he had been given.</p>
<p>Necessary to include in a talk on prophetic Quaker ministry is some discussion of its demise. Benson writes (in the early '80s): "there are now very few who have knowledge from <i>experience</i> of the <i>itinerant, prophetic, non-professional</i> Quaker ministry. People have just never met a minister of the type that was characteristic of the Quaker ministry in the 18th or 19th centuries...We know about it only by hearsay." </p>
<p>Benson ends this talk with an affirmation of gospel ministry's power to enliven and restore the true beginning and purpose of the original Quaker movement, as well as that of the apostles, which is to turn people from darkness to light through preaching the Word of God. The talk concludes:</p>
<p>Now that the everlasting gospel is being preached once more, this will certainly lead to a better understanding of the ministry that belongs to this gospel and to the new covenant. The preaching of this gospel has begun to stimulate interest in the nature of Quaker ministry, and this is sure to be the case wherever the everlasting gospel is preached and received.</p>
<p>Benson's talk can be found through the Resources tab.</p>
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<p> </p>The Cross in Quaker Faithtag:nffquaker.org,2017-04-14:6286598:BlogPost:312292017-04-14T11:40:18.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life [Jn. 3:14-15].</p>
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<p>For Friends, the historic event of the cross is only a part of the fulfillment of God’s plan; the actual atonement takes place within the human heart. Though the cross shows a fulfillment of the prophets and the Law, Friends claim that the fulfillment of the prophets’ words and…</p>
<blockquote><p>And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life [Jn. 3:14-15].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For Friends, the historic event of the cross is only a part of the fulfillment of God’s plan; the actual atonement takes place within the human heart. Though the cross shows a fulfillment of the prophets and the Law, Friends claim that the fulfillment of the prophets’ words and actions is the experiential knowledge of Christ risen within, that the inward event is the resurrection to eternal life. In the opening quotation, Jesus refers to three consecutive dispensations, and in this essay I want to show the sequential and progressive relationship among them.</p>
<p>To help envision the incremental process leading to completion, we can imagine a jointed spyglass with three parts or tubes that collapse together. As the parts extend one-by-one, greater vision is gained. For the first part, Jesus draws from Israel’s history: Moses’s lifting up the brass serpent in the wilderness. Jesus then ties this event to the cross on Calvary: the lifting up of the Son of man. The final segment is inward and spiritual, rather than outward and historical. Whoever <em>believes</em> in this lifted up (resurrected) Son of man has eternal life and does not perish. Later in the Gospel of John, eternal life is defined as “know(ing) the only true God” (Jn. 17:3). Jesus’s end goal is to have others enter a particular awareness or “knowing,” an inward state.</p>
<p>Prefiguring the Cross</p>
<p>First, we’ll examine the event from Israel’s history. We turn to the people of Israel led by the prophet Moses through the wilderness:</p>
<blockquote><p>And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died (Num. 21: 4-6).</p>
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<p>Because the journey was hard, the Hebrews came to regret their reliance upon God who had brought them out of Egypt for what seemed to them no other reason than to die. They spoke against their Creator and thus alienated themselves from the source of life. The serpents bite; the people die. Seeing the consequences and confessing their error, they reaffirm their dependence and seek to re-establish their connection to God through their prophet. They ask for life, that the death-bringing serpents be taken away:</p>
<blockquote><p>Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us (Num. 21:7).</p>
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<p>The serpents are left to plague them, though God does give an antidote to the poison, and they overcome death:</p>
<blockquote><p>And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived (Num. 21:8-9).</p>
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<p>This story is rich with information about the relationship between God and humanity; no wonder it sprang to Jesus’s mind! God would have the people in relationship with Him, even providing for their restoration after they have separated themselves from Him. The Hebrews recognize their error—their sin; they petition for help and then obey God’s command. The relationship is restored, and God can work with them once again. The event itself is mysterious. The restoration to life occurs when the people obey the command to look at the raised brass serpent. To cast their gaze, to behold the serpent of brass, is to overcome death. The people’s attention is refocused away from their mortal plight and toward that which God has provided. We can see some foreshadowing of what is to come—the Son of man lifted up.</p>
<p>The Cross on Calvary</p>
<p>Quaker understanding of the cross differs from that of other Christian ideas. However, in the year before the great opening that revealed Christ alive, present, and speaking to his condition, George Fox described the significance of the crucifixion in this way:</p>
<blockquote><p>At that time the sins of all mankind were upon him, and their iniquities and transgressions with which he was wounded, which he was to bear, and to be an offering for them as he was man, but died not as he was God; and so, in that he died for all men, and tasted death for every man, he was an offering for the sins of the whole world (<span>Journal</span>, 5).</p>
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<p>John Curtis, a New Foundation Fellowship worker, noted in his study guide to Fox’s <em>Journal</em> that this description is very like the “well-expressed view which is held by many types of Christians.” With his opening in 1647, Fox’s understanding changed, leading him to differ from other Christians in holding that the essential sacrifice and atonement must occur within each human heart, a sacrifice prefigured on Calvary. Fox writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>In the flesh without them [in history], he [Christ] is their example or figure, [while] “Christ in his people is the substance of all figures, types, and shadows, fulfilling them in them, and setting them free from them (<span>Works</span>, 3:592-3).</p>
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<p>Jesus’s submission in Gethsemane (“nevertheless not as I will, but as thou [wilt],” [Mt. 26:39]) must be our own, if the actual reconciliation or atonement is to follow.</p>
<p>It is separation from God that is the problem to be overcome and to which all solutions allude: the brass serpent, the cross on Calvary, and the inward submission to God. And each situation calls for a re-direction of intention. In the wilderness, the people are to cast their gaze upward toward the raised ensign of the brass serpent. People are likewise to cast their gaze to the historic cross, and further, to recognize that the Son of man has taken on their situation, has assumed humanity’s spiritual state. In both of these situations, there has been a shift in people’s awareness: In the first, people simply <em>behold</em> the uplifted ensign; while in the second, they not only behold the uplifted one but <em>become beholden to</em> the one who has acted on their behalf. Greater ties result, reaching into the inner man—to his sense of gratitude and obligation for the sacrifice that has been offered on his behalf.</p>
<p>The Cross, the Power of God</p>
<p>Friends have recognized that more than gratitude and obligation are required of humankind; it is eternal life to which we are called—that we may know the only true God (Jn. 17:3). This is the final and end purpose of the plan of which the first two developments have been described. How different is the account of the inward atonement from that of Fox’s earlier explanation of the outward cross on Calvary! And yet, in his description, Fox returns to the outward event as the corporeal model of his experience:</p>
<blockquote><p>None know the atonement of Christ but by the light within…Mark! He saith, the light is that which gives the knowledge, and the light within doth not set up another atonement: but they that deny the light within set up another atonement than Christ. We should be made free from the law of sin and death while we are upon the earth. And here the blood of Jesus is witnessed, and the atonement, and the Father and the son; and this is all seen with the light within (<span>Works</span>, 3:121).</p>
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<p>The seventeenth-century Puritans objected to this claim. The Quakers call the light within Christ the redeemer, and thereby, the Puritans said, the Quakers had set up an idol, which denied the things that God had already done for humanity. Quakers countered this attack with the assertion that they did not deny the person of Christ but vouched for the re-enacting of his historic work within the heart. Says Isaac Penington:</p>
<blockquote><p>That charge of thine on us, that we deny the person of Christ, and make him nothing but a light or notion, a principle in the heart of man, is very unjust and untrue; for we own that appearance of him in his body of flesh, his sufferings and death, and his sitting at the Father’s right hand in glory: but then we affirm, that there is no true knowledge of him, or union with him, but in the seed or principle of his life in the heart, and that therein he appears, subdues sin, and reigns over it, in those that understand and submit to the teaching and government of his Spirit (<span>Quaker Spirituality</span>, 144).</p>
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<p>But what if the inward experience does not occur? What if there is no comprehension of the cross as an inward condition, no owning it as a just paradigm for our limited and alienated state? Instead, what if the cross on Calvary is revered with a false confidence, which claims to stand in good stead in the here-and-now and in the hereafter? If the cross is viewed as a culminating historic event by which we are somehow mysteriously reconciled to God<em>, it does become an idol.</em></p>
<p>If we return for a moment to the brass serpent and locate its whereabouts sometime later, well after it has served its intended purpose, we find it under the censure of the prophet Hezekiah. He saw that the brass serpent had become an idol for the Hebrew people, and so he destroyed it:</p>
<blockquote><p>He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it (2 Kings 18:4).</p>
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<p>On the other hand, what if the cross is set aside as irrelevant and given no place within present-day Liberal Quaker faith and practice? Dismissing this reference point of the cross (and thereby denying the reality of the sin and alienation that it is meant to overcome) do we not humor ourselves into claiming that our best efforts and intentions are already divinely inspired? Remember the error–the profound human error–made by the Hebrews in the desert: we usurp God’s wisdom and authority and replace them with our own lesser capacities. Says Rufus Jones:</p>
<blockquote><p>If any supposes that Friends have inclined to be “humanists” and to assume that man is so inherently good that he can lift himself by his own belt into a life of consummate truth and beauty, he has not yet caught the deeper note of Quaker faith (<span>Quaker Spirituality</span>, 278).</p>
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<p>The “deeper note” to which Jones refers is the cross,“the power of God,” as Fox reminds us. By the power of God, which is known <em>only </em>through the inward cross, can we carry forward the hope and obligation enjoined upon us.</p>Increase Our Faith (Some observations on Luke 17:1-10)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-04-02:6286598:BlogPost:311202017-04-02T12:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<blockquote><p>Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I…</p>
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<blockquote><p>Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith (Lk. 17:1-5).</p>
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<p>One of the more difficult facts of life is that “offences will come.” Being on the receiving end of an offense and mulling over the injustice suffered from another’s selfish or wicked act, one is likely to find that one’s equanimity and focus have been lost. This loss of orientation is recognized and conveyed in a more literal translation of the first verse of this passage:</p>
<blockquote><p>It is impossible that there should come no causes to make man go astray (<span>The New Testament</span>, Lattimore).</p>
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<p>This literal rendering foregrounds the danger to the soul that results from having undergone an offense: the wounded soul may “go astray.” Having suffered injury, the soul is tempted to covet and use power to restore its broken equanimity in what seems like just retribution. Brandishing power over others in order to restore sense of self perpetuates the offense. And this dynamic repeated indefinitely becomes a de facto principle undergirding human interaction, and results in a world of fear, anger, and misuse of power. “The whole world lieth in wickedness”(1 Jn. 5:19), thereby ensuring that, as Jesus said, “offenses will come.”</p>
<p>In this passage, Jesus walks his disciples through this problem and into the solution. He begins by addressing the issue of justice: the offender has trespassed a boundary; violated an understood agreement, spoken or not; and caused misery to another who is innocent. Though accountable, he himself seems not to have suffered at all. Not so, says Jesus; there is justice within, and the offender can expect great misery:</p>
<blockquote><p>woe unto him, through whom [offenses] come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones (1, 2).</p>
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<p>Being sunk into the darkness and chaos of the sea (with a millstone necklace!) with no firm ground nor hope of life is the justice meted out to the offender’s soul. The victim’s sense that the miscreant should suffer for his misdeed as much or more than he himself has suffered is satisfied by Jesus’s pronouncement; in the soul, justice is served. Not only does this vivid image of punishment reassure the victim that an equal or greater suffering will come to the wrongdoer, but it also warns him to stand guard against the temptation to likewise become an offender and undergo such a punishment himself. Jesus would put a stop to the chain reaction of victim becoming offender.</p>
<p>Assuring the disciples that inward justice will always be in force, Jesus stills the impulse to take retribution, to pay back. As an alternative to this natural destructive impulse, he then sets out a rightly ordered procedure for handling offenses:</p>
<blockquote><p>Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him (3 and 4).</p>
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<p>The soul speaking truth to power disencumbers itself of the burden of injustice and puts it in the open. Should the offense have been unintended, the misunderstanding is brought to light and can be explained. If the wrongdoer recognizes that he’s overstepped the boundary, behaved unjustly, and in the future is willing to abide by agreed limits–signaled by his repentance–then forgiving is in order. Conversely, if there’s a refusal to recognize acceptable limits and no repentance forthcoming, the relationship is not to be restored.</p>
<p>These are all principles that can be practiced using the powers available to our nature: reason and conscience can get us this far. Beyond the restoration of relationship by truth-telling and re-affirming social boundaries, however, is a call to handle offenses in a way that requires more than human ability. Jesus calls us and the disciples to this new way: to reframe the event and see it differently; to see it through the perspective of faith, rather than perspective of our limited worldly nature. Doing so will enable us to see that we can lose nothing that can truly affect our well-being.</p>
<p>When the events of life are seen through the eye of faith, one cannot be deprived of anything necessary for one’s happiness. If one’s treasure is in heaven, can anyone break in and steal? No. It is only when there is a failure to see that one’s treasure is in heaven that one can be rattled or devitalized by worldly loss. Living in faith, no power or principalities,</p>
<blockquote><p>nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-9).</p>
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<p>Living in a world where offenses inevitably come, the disciples feel their well-being to be under threat. They also intuit that faith is the sole guarantee of their inward peace…if they just had enough of it. So sensibly, they ask of Jesus: “Increase our faith” (Lk. 17:5). Jesus responds:</p>
<blockquote><p>If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you (6).</p>
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<p>Implied in the apostles’ request for increased faith is the assumption they already have a certain degree of faith, and they just need more. Jesus corrects them: If they had even a tiny amount of faith (even as “a grain of mustard seed”) they could do a mighty act of power: they could command a tree to uproot itself and be “planted in the sea; and it should obey.” (Note the echoing imagery: the offender who sinks in the sea [2] and the tree, which, through faith, can thrive there [6].) Man’s lack of faith entails a lack of power over nature: his own human nature. Without faith, Man has no power to avoid disorder and weakness, and he sinks into the chaos of external threats, the offences that are bound to come, and into the ocean of darkness.</p>
<p>Having faith, he can thrive even when planted in the chaos of the world that lies in wickedness, even as a sycamine tree could be planted in a hostile environment of the sea. Having faith, the hearing/obeying relationship with his Creator, Man is restored, strengthened, and empowered to withstand and rise above such assaults upon his soul. He is given the power of God to rule over his human nature and to thrive regardless of the circumstances.</p>
<p>Though the disciples think they already have faith and simply need more, Jesus knows faith to be something other than what the disciples understand by the word. Likewise, the seventeenth-century Friends carefully distinguished the difference between what was commonly thought to be faith and the meaning given to the word by Jesus. Penington asserts (emphasis his):</p>
<blockquote><p>That <span>the true faith </span>(the faith of the gospel, the faith of the elect, the faith which saves the sinner from sin, and makes him more than a conqueror over sin and the powers of darkness) is a belief in the nature of God; which belief giveth entrance into, fixeth in and causeth an abiding in that nature….And nothing can believe in the nature, but what is one with the nature. So then faith is not a believing the history of the scripture…or a believing that Christ died for sinners in general, or for me in particular…but a uniting to the nature of God in Christ (Works, I: 239-40).</p>
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<p>Faith is “a belief in the nature of God”…which causes “an abiding in that nature.” It is “a uniting to the nature of God in Christ” that is the true faith which keeps us in peace, empowered to withstand all the assaults that will come. In the final verses of this passage, Jesus instructs the disciples in the way to receive faith.</p>
<blockquote><p>But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do (Lk. 17:5-10).</p>
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<p>Jesus is telling his disciples to attend to the work that is set before them and not to get ahead of themselves. As is often the case, Jesus uses rhetoric to make his point. Notice the shift in point of view in this passage indicated by the use of different pronouns: first, Jesus puts the disciples in the position of master (“But which of <em>you</em>, having a servant”); second, the pronoun shifts from the second to the third person, and the master is referred as “he,” no longer as “you” (“Doth <em>he</em> thank that servant”); and third, Jesus moves to the first person pronoun “we,” thus putting the disciples in the position not of the master, nor the onlooker, but of the servant (“say, <em>We</em> are unprofitable servants”). Jesus has gently moved the disciples to seeing themselves as servants rather than seeing themselves as masters, the latter being their natural inclination. Faith is the hearing/obeying relationship with our Creator, and we are not our own masters, though we have claimed to be so since the Fall.</p>
<p>We are to serve righteousness, whether instructed by the conscience or later by the law of faith to serve the Lord our Righteousness (Jer. 23:6); that is our duty. That duty will vary from person to person, but the rigorous standard of adhering to what is true and right does not vary from person to person. That standard is righteousness, and the soul must hunger and thirst after it, that it may be filled with faith. It is the sincerity of pursuit that is judged by Christ. We cannot obtain righteousness ourselves, any more than we can judge ourselves; we are subject to judgment. We, however, can and must do, like the servants in this parable, “all those things which are commanded” to us, laboring inoffensively and honestly that we may in faith come to cease from our own works.</p>
<blockquote><p>For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do (Heb. 4:10-13).</p>
</blockquote>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox: The New Worship (lecture four)tag:nffquaker.org,2017-01-30:6286598:BlogPost:308182017-01-30T17:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><i>Fox repeats this call over and over: "Keep your testimony...for your worship in the spirit and in the truth, that Christ Jesus hath set up" (Works, 8:34); "keep up your testimony in the light, power, and spirit of God, for the worship that Christ set up above sixteen hundred years since, in spirit and in truth,...which is a worship that cannot be shaken." (8:84) This is a testimony that the Quakers had before the peace testimony was formulated in 1660, and I think in Fox's mind it was the…</i></p>
<p><i>Fox repeats this call over and over: "Keep your testimony...for your worship in the spirit and in the truth, that Christ Jesus hath set up" (Works, 8:34); "keep up your testimony in the light, power, and spirit of God, for the worship that Christ set up above sixteen hundred years since, in spirit and in truth,...which is a worship that cannot be shaken." (8:84) This is a testimony that the Quakers had before the peace testimony was formulated in 1660, and I think in Fox's mind it was the most important of the Quaker testimonies. It is the thing that brings people to Christ, as they see that we are gathering together to feel his living presence in our midst. -- Lewis Benson</i></p>
<p><i> </i>In the fourth lecture of the series <i>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</i> given at Moorestown meetinghouse in 1982, Lewis Benson examines the origin and nature of early Quaker worship. His intent is "to get a new perspective on the problems of contemporary Quakerism, and to bring something into the life of the Society of Friends today which is the heritage of all Quakers but has not survived in any living tradition."</p>
<p>There is an assumption among Liberal Quakers that waiting in silence during the hour of worship replicates the early Quaker practice, an assumption which fails to take into account that the intent of early Quakers was entirely different from that of contemporaries, centering on personal reflection, sequentially shared. Early Quaker worship was attended by "people who had heard and received this everlasting gospel and who were filled with a fervent desire to gather together in the name of Jesus to wait to feel his presence in their midst as their living teacher, leader, ruler, counsellor, and orderer." Early Friends gathered together and quieted themselves in order to receive and hear their heavenly prophet, receive intercession from their heavenly priest, be ruled as a people by their heavenly king, and be fed by their heavenly shepherd. Their cohesion was the result of waiting together for guidance, acceptance, and instruction that came from heaven, and not from one another's personal perspectives. </p>
<p><i>For Fox, meeting in the name of Jesus has a very definite content, and it has to do with the gospel experience, the experience of Christ as present, and present in a functioning way. I have found 22 references where Fox makes it clear that "meeting in the name" involves such a definite experience (Benson).</i></p>
<p>That this revolutionary way of worship should have been lost from Quaker communities in the last several hundred years is not surprising; for it had likewise been lost since the apostles' days and not recovered until the early Quakers practiced it 1600 years later. Yet worship in spirit and in truth, meeting "in the name of Jesus," remains forever available to reclaim yet once more by the "children of the New Covenant."</p>
<p>This essay can be found under the Resources tab which features Benson's writings. Here's a link: <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407697931?profile=original" target="_self">The New Worship</a>.</p>
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<p><i> </i></p>The Mediate Role of Virtuetag:nffquaker.org,2016-12-15:6286598:BlogPost:299412016-12-15T14:00:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
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<blockquote><p>Love mercy and true judgment, justice and righteousness; for the Lord delighteth in such. Consider these things in time, and take heed how ye spend your time. Now ye have time, prize it; and show mercy, that ye may receive mercy from the Lord: for he is coming to try all things, and will plead with all flesh as by fire (Works, 1:115)</p>
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<p>This statement is from a letter that Fox wrote in 1651 while he was being held in Darby jail. In this letter, Fox…</p>
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<blockquote><p>Love mercy and true judgment, justice and righteousness; for the Lord delighteth in such. Consider these things in time, and take heed how ye spend your time. Now ye have time, prize it; and show mercy, that ye may receive mercy from the Lord: for he is coming to try all things, and will plead with all flesh as by fire (Works, 1:115)</p>
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<p>This statement is from a letter that Fox wrote in 1651 while he was being held in Darby jail. In this letter, Fox admonishes local judges to love virtue, specifically “mercy, true judgment, justice and righteousness.” Notice that he does not reason with the judges about their duty, nor does he argue that virtuous behavior would benefit society. Both of these arguments would call upon the judges to choose virtue so that some ideal of character or society could be met. Fox, instead, gives different reasons for being virtuous: 1) the Lord delights in virtuous behavior; and conversely, 2) the Lord will judge and punish harshly those who refuse virtue, “[he] will plead with all flesh as by fire.” Fox is claiming that virtue is a necessary mediate condition for receiving the proximate favor of God, not a practical measure for achieving some human ideal.</p>
<p>Implied in this understanding is the belief that there’s some advantage to receiving God’s favor and avoiding his wrath. Convincing people of this who are without the fear of God (that is to say, the knowledge of God) is difficult. It seems natural and obvious to the reprobate mind that each person must chart his own course toward maximum personal advantage, navigating around or conquering whatever obstacles impose themselves, even when those obstacles are the demands of virtue. Choosing virtue over opportunity for personal gain often does not seem wise to the man who does not know Christ: “for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light”(Lk. 16:8).</p>
<p>That this worldly wisdom is, in fact, not life-enhancing but instead is life-inhibiting ignorance that can and must be contradicted is the primary theme of Scriptures and seventeenth-century Friends writings. Both sources hold up the pursuit and acquisition of virtue as an intermediate and necessary step that prepares one to receive eternal life, knowledge of the living God. This assertion is reinforced repeatedly throughout these writings, one example being the sixteenth chapter of Luke.</p>
<p>At the beginning of this chapter, Jesus tells a story of a man who is lacking in virtue: a steward who has been wasteful of his master’s goods, and as a result is fired. In straits for how he will live, the steward decides upon a plan: he will curry favor with those who owe his employer goods by reducing their liability. Not only does this steward lack prudence and economy, he also lacks the virtues of honesty and righteousness:</p>
<blockquote><p>How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, an hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore (5–7).</p>
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<p>Once the man no longer has the job of steward, he will call upon these people for return favors: quid pro quo. The text then has the steward’s employer evaluate the scheme: “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely”(v.8). How reasonable is it to praise fraud that has been injurious to oneself? The master praises the steward who cheated him; in a world devoid of virtue, reason also is in short supply.</p>
<p>This praise of the dishonest steward accelerates the chaos that began in the first line of the story: we were told that the steward was not doing what a steward does, which is care for his master’s goods. When a word no longer signifies its meaning, confusion results. When a steward no longer cares for his master’s goods, when a master praises his servant’s thievery, chaos and confusion abound. In verse nine, this chaos crystallizes into a maxim:</p>
<blockquote><p>And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fall, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.</p>
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<p>At this point in the story when confusion is rife, having gained the apex and planted a senseless maxim as its flag, the narrative voice shifts. Suddenly appearing in the passage’s final verses (10–13) are cogent, inarguable assertions that follow one upon another. One senses that Jesus, having finished his story, is now presenting its moral:</p>
<blockquote><p>He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much(10). If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches(11)? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own(12)? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon(13).</p>
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<p>With the exception of the first part of verse ten, all these statements are put into a negative rather than a positive form: “…if ye have <i>not</i> been faithful” (11, 12); “<em>No</em> servant can serve…,” “Ye <em>cannot</em> serve…” (13). One may state with assurance that a sinful (negative) condition will <i>not</i> enter the Kingdom, but one cannot positively state that behaving virtuously will ensure entry; for that entry is determined by God alone (Mk.13:32). We cannot assess whether we ourselves are virtuous; God alone, who is a consuming fire, tries the heart. Lack of virtue prohibits receiving Christ, but even one’s very best effort to be virtuous does not guarantee the coming of Christ. For that, one can only prepare oneself, and then wait and watch(37).</p>
<p>Last First-day in worship at a meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, there were five messages given during the hour. Each contained a personal narrative which held up a particular virtue: benevolence, bravery, tolerance, empathy, and helpfulness. All the messages followed the same narrative arc: virtue was exhibited and virtue was rewarded. Embodying virtues is often rewarding, useful, and practical in shaping and improving our individual lives and of that of the social groups to which we belong. That is not, however, the reason for embodying virtue that either Jesus or first Friends give. For them, the condition of virtue is a mediate state, which is neither accommodated in the world nor yet given entry into heaven. Virtue’s purpose and value is that it prepares the heart to be acceptable to God. Virtue affirms and signals a desire and humble willingness to sacrifice and then to wait upon the coming of the Lord. It is faith before faith is given.</p>
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<p> </p>The Everlasting Gospel Preached by George Fox: Lewis Benson's second lecture from the series "Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox"tag:nffquaker.org,2016-11-02:6286598:BlogPost:300212016-11-02T13:30:00.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p><em>Ye that have seen the everlasting gospel, and known the everlasting gospel preached again, which was among the apostles, and have been reaped out from among the apostates, got up since the apostles’ days; I say, live in it, and dwell in it; in which life and power ye see over to the apostles’ days (The Works of George Fox 7:268).</em> </p>
<p>"The Everlasting Gospel Preached by George Fox" is the second of ten lectures given by Lewis Benson in his lecture series <i>Rediscovering…</i></p>
<p><em>Ye that have seen the everlasting gospel, and known the everlasting gospel preached again, which was among the apostles, and have been reaped out from among the apostates, got up since the apostles’ days; I say, live in it, and dwell in it; in which life and power ye see over to the apostles’ days (The Works of George Fox 7:268).</em> </p>
<p>"The Everlasting Gospel Preached by George Fox" is the second of ten lectures given by Lewis Benson in his lecture series <i>Rediscovering the Teaching of George Fox</i>, given at Moorestown (N.J.) Meeting in 1982. It is now available for reading and can be found here: <a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407696898?profile=original" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/407696898?profile=original</a><a href="http://api.ning.com/files/VQvbBACfG9oFZIsRRp4Jg15LesxL9gZhR3efoXSUv5JSJNm"></a></p>
<p>In this lecture, Benson identifies the heart of Fox's message that Christ Jesus is alive and present among us in a functional way through the inward exercise of his offices: "Christ is come to teach his people himself" is the shorthand version of Fox's message. It was the recovery of this gospel message, which had been lost since apostolic times, that enabled the early Quaker missioners to preach the same message with the same power that had been known to the apostles. With the recovery of the gospel, the power of God, Friends expected a new era in Christian history (one in which Christ is present, not absent), and this message drew many together into a people who gathered to receive the living and present Christ as their prophet, priest, king, shepherd, and bishop. For as long as prophetic gospel ministers preached, the Quaker movement grew, for the gospel had power by which many who heard it were convinced and convicted. As the apostles were sent to teach and gather, so were the first Friends; both groups were commissioned and sent by the transcendent, living God. An excerpt from Edward Burrough's description of the Valiant 60's commission can be found in this lecture. </p>
<p> </p>Doing Our Parttag:nffquaker.org,2016-10-06:6286598:BlogPost:298022016-10-06T16:47:19.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>A year and a half ago I wrote an essay titled “The Only Antidote,” in which I argued for the need to think critically: to use natural powers of reason and conscience to honor, discern, and communicate the truth. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the cause behind the rise of Fascism and also referring to a Bible story of John the Baptist’s execution by Herod, I pointed to the crucial and perennial role of critical thought in containing the spread of evil.</p>
<p>Although critical…</p>
<p>A year and a half ago I wrote an essay titled “The Only Antidote,” in which I argued for the need to think critically: to use natural powers of reason and conscience to honor, discern, and communicate the truth. Referring to Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the cause behind the rise of Fascism and also referring to a Bible story of John the Baptist’s execution by Herod, I pointed to the crucial and perennial role of critical thought in containing the spread of evil.</p>
<p>Although critical thought can check evil, I contended that ultimately it is no match. Nonetheless, the exercise of thinking critically benefits the soul immeasurably. In subjecting oneself to reason and conscience, we prepare the way of the Lord; decent, honest effort precedes the gift of faith that comes only from God. It is only through the power of God that evil can and will be overcome and destroyed, both within and without. “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” say those who have known what is necessary and possible.</p>
<p>At the time I wrote that essay, our country was not in imminent danger of electing to its highest political office a man who sports an Orwellian disregard for truth. Now, however, that threat looms: we the people of the United States might, in fact, elect to the presidency a man who represents, enables, and lauds speech and behavior that is beyond the pale of reason and conscience.</p>
<p>Stated at our country’s founding was the claim that we are endowed by our Creator with “certain unalienable rights.” We have, in fact, been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable responsibilities, that among them are right use of reason and conscience. Let’s use them well.</p>
<p>If we assume that pervasive, severe moral catastrophe is not possible in our own country, we do well to heed those who have lived through complete breakdown in their own regions. In the following paragraph, Swiss theologian Emil Brunner, who witnessed firsthand Europe’s descent into Fascism, traces the progression from idealistic humanist philosophy to tyrannical totalitarianism, inevitably occurring, says Brunner, when unchecked by a Christian tradition within that society:</p>
<blockquote><p>That is to say that idealistic humanism leads to an individualistic conception of society, which in the end must have anarchical consequences. That is why modern society in so far as it has relinquished its Christian basis appears to be in a state of latent anarchy or dissolution. With the middle of the 19th century, there begins a fierce reaction against this individualism, and this collectivist reaction in its turn is worked out logically from a naturalist philosophy. The alternative to idealistic individualism is not free communion but primitive tribal not to say animal collectivism. It is the de-personalised mass-man, the man forming a mere particle of a social structure and the centralised automatic mechanical totalitarian state, which inherits the decaying liberal democracy. Only where a strong Christian tradition had prevailed was it possible to avoid this fatal alternative of individualism and collectivism to preserve a federal non-centralised, pluralistic organic structure of the State, and therefore to avoid that sudden transition from a half anarchic individualism into a tyrannical totalitarianism. But the societies of the West, which abhor the way taken by totalitarian Russia, Italy, and Germany, do not yet seem to have grasped that if the process of de-Christianisation goes on within their society, they too will inevitably go the same way. (The Gifford Lectures, Emil Brunner’s “Christianity and Civilization”<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.giffordlectures.org/lectures/christianity-and-civilization">http://www.giffordlectures.org/lectures/christianity-and-civilization</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By the 1940s the philosophy of idealism, against which Brunner warns, had begun in Quaker circles to displace the original prophetic, apostolic Christian faith of earlier centuries. This trend was recognized and revealed by Lewis Benson. In an excerpt from his essay “Prophetic Quakerism,” Benson describes the difference between the two doctrines of the Inner Light: prophetic and philosophical (italics mine):</p>
<blockquote><p>First, the <u>philosophical</u> interpretation understands the Inner Light to be that innate capacity of human beings to comprehend rational and ethical truth….This view tends to make the concept of ‘spirit’ in man identical with the concept of ‘mind.’ The ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ of man is the seat of the divine element in man <span>and the essentially divine reality is not external to the soul.</span>…This view affirms the inherent spirituality of the human psyche due to the presence of a native rational and ethical principle which is divine.</p>
<p>Secondly, the <u>prophetic</u> doctrine of the Inner Light understands that man may become completely spiritualized, that is to say, brought into perfect harmony with the will of the Creator God who is spirit. <span>But the agency for this spiritualization is not to be found by an inventory of man’s native capacities. Man is made spiritual and godly by a power which operates <u>in</u> man but which is nevertheless not <u>of</u></span> <span>man.</span> It is always the working of a sovereign will distinct from one’s own. Thus there is accessible to man a light which illuminates his moral life, but this life is not present in man as his own psychological possession. It is imparted to man and man has received the promise that it will never be withheld. The condition of the operation of this light within man is his willingness to submit both conscience and reason to this objective and superhuman light. The conception of the Inner Light does not displace human reason, but says Joseph Phipps, it does caution ‘against…the setting up human reason above its due place in religion, making it the leader instead of the follower, the teacher instead of the learner, and esteeming it vested with a kind of self-sufficiency, independent of the direction and help of God’s Holy Spirit.’ Likewise conscience or the ‘sense of ought’ is a quality of human life but it should not be regarded as autonomous and it cannot lead to the ultimate principles of righteousness unless informed by a higher authority. (<span>The Truth is Christ</span>, “Prophetic Quakerism,” pp. 14-15)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The doctrines of “that of God in every one” and “the power of love and good will to overcome war and hate” are derived from the idealism that originates with the philosophical interpretation of the Inner Light. This doctrine is a tribute to human capacity and thus differs from the prophetic doctrine, which places man in total dependency on the power of God to inform his understanding of right and wrong, and to gather, govern, and preserve a people who have Christ as their head: “whose dominion and strength is over all, against whom,” says Penington, “the gates of hell cannot prevail.”</p>
<p>Benson’s piece, written in the middle of the Second World War, when civilization hung precariously in the balance, recognizes the limits of human ability and power to order and preserve the world and the necessity of coming into the knowledge of and obedience to the Will of God, as did the first Friends.</p>
<p>The essay “The Only Antidote” can be read at my website <em>Abiding Quaker </em>under the heading of September 2016. <a rel="nofollow" href="https://patradallmann.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/the-only-antidote/">https://patradallmann.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/the-only-antidote/</a></p>Partaking of the Sufferings (part three)tag:nffquaker.org,2016-08-23:6286598:BlogPost:292572016-08-23T12:13:47.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>Receiving faith through hearing Christ, the Word of God, was the life-changing event for Fox, and so it is for everyone who follows the same excruciating path of partaking of sufferings.</p>
<p>Receiving faith ends the old, worldly order of misery as well as the moral evil that arises from humanity's determination to muffle and quell the fear of weakness and self-diminishment, the fear of death.</p>
<p>Emil Brunner in <i>The Christian Doctrine of Church, Faith, and the Consummation…</i></p>
<p>Receiving faith through hearing Christ, the Word of God, was the life-changing event for Fox, and so it is for everyone who follows the same excruciating path of partaking of sufferings.</p>
<p>Receiving faith ends the old, worldly order of misery as well as the moral evil that arises from humanity's determination to muffle and quell the fear of weakness and self-diminishment, the fear of death.</p>
<p>Emil Brunner in <i>The Christian Doctrine of Church, Faith, and the Consummation</i> outlines the inevitable progression from fear of death to wickedness:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Between death and moral evil there is from the standpoint of experience a scarcely comprehensible, but none the less real, relation. Moral evil, in so far as it is not pure defiance but also weakness, is rooted in anxiety, and this anxiety is in the last resort always the fear of death. All insatiable hunger for power, all the cruelty of tyrants, all the timidity of the narrow-minded--what are they but attempts to find security from an unknown threat? Our wickedness--human wickedness--is not so much...a defiant "no" to the Creator's will as the expression of a latent panic in the face of coming death. Fear of death is the secret cause of moral evil, as death itself is moral evil's manifest result: "the wages of sin" (437).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Glancing backward to the Roman revelers, we see the crowd pressing each person into keeping a vigilant eye focused outward: One's stealthy neighbor might put out one's flame! How humiliating and diminishing that would be! Like a symbolic death! Better to put out another's flame first! thinks each anxiety-filled reveler.</p>
<p>What abundant conflict is entailed in this routine aggressive/defensive behavior! And what diversion! The conflict--playful here but serious in society, and deadly serious among ethnically diverse societies--keeps people busy and avoiding the hard work of looking within, and each seeing himself as he is. One might occupy oneself indefinitely brandishing and thwarting power for term of life! One might never move beyond this state of sin in which fear of death, and thus death itself has its reign.</p>
<p>If in place of the lit candle of Roman Moccoletti, we substitute rights, property, status, influence, opportunity, dignity, or physical life itself, the senseless conflict in the world arising from fraud, abuse, violence, and war is seen for what it fundamentally is: an outward distraction that enables and promotes the refusal to suffer honest self-scrutiny that is, in truth, the obligation of each human being to undergo. For it is undergoing self-scrutiny that a person prepares himself to receive God's gift of grace and life.</p>
<p>Fearful defense of natural assets is just as surely an outward diversion as is the aggressive acquiring of them; therefore are we told: "If a man wants to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well" (Mt. 5:40). All the aggression and defensiveness denies and masks the naked truth that we each in our human nature are not complete, not whole, not absolute, not total, not immortal. Shameful as that feels, we need to partake of that knowledge: the revealing of the self that does not know God, and instead lawlessly attempts to usurp His place by claiming our natural being is whole, absolute, independent, autonomous, and in charge.</p>
<p>The problem for the person of sin is a lawless, false self-projection arising from a terror of truth that can be revealed at any moment. In the day of visitation, however, all is revealed: </p>
<p> </p>
<p>for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God (2 Thess. 2: 3b-4).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Though it's not always Carnival season in the mid-1800s, the carnal mind sets itself in the aggressive/defensive posture that is found in the Carnival game, often without an awareness of having done so. For example, many Quakers presume their calling to be working to eliminate social ills that beleaguer our world, and accordingly have focused their attention outward to extend or defend contemporary Quaker values that are referred to as the testimonies. A rationale of improving social conditions through championing causes provides ample assignment to occupy time and consciousness, and substitutes human aspiration to virtue over knowledge of and hearing/obeying response to God.</p>
<p>Neither entertaining diversion nor a focus on social justice work honors or manifests the faith found by Fox and other early Quakers who braved examining their souls in the light of the standard of truth, the divine law. Instead, people refuse to endure the inward scrutiny that reveals the failure of usurped autonomy. Again from <i>The Christian Doctrine of Church, Faith, and the Consummation,</i> Brunner shows the correlation of this false claim to independence and a life given over to death:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When man as a sinner denies his dependence on God and turns it into independence, he is severed from God, the original source of all life; his guilt stands between the living God and himself as he actually is. Thus the creature destroys the root of its own life, its fellowship with God. But man is unable utterly to destroy the relation to God which was established by God the Creator. He remains bound to God, but now instead of living in the love of God, he is under God's wrath....The shadow of judgment lies upon his whole life and makes it a life in darkness, in exile. This life in its totality is in fact a "being unto death."</p>
<p></p>
<p>William Stringfellow in his <i>An</i> <i>Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens in a Strange Land</i> identifies all nations, all institutions as embodying a demonic idolatry of death. He argues that a fear and worship of death is the attempt to furnish meaning but results in social chaos in many forms: racism, ecological corruption, misogyny, conformity, violence, etc. This situation can't be eradicated, he claims, but he does offer guidance on how to live humanly in the midst of it: resistance to the power of death and a "biblical style of life." The following excerpt from Stringfellow on resisting the power of death would certainly have been agreed to by Fox:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>In the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and verbiage and falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death's works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It is through a humble willingness to endure the truth of ourselves, even unto the brokenness that is typified by death on the Cross, that we become prepared. This partaking of the sufferings, we discover, is followed by the Lord's coming to dwell with us, a resurrection to unforeseen, abundant life. No longer do we depend on the powers of nature to vivify and secure ourselves; no longer do we fear the loss of our natural powers, for, as the prophet Isaiah proclaims, the Lord shall be our everlasting light, and the days of mourning shall be ended.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> The sun shall no longer be your light by day,</p>
<p> nor the moon shine on you when evening falls;</p>
<p> the Lord shall be your everlasting light,</p>
<p> your God shall be your glory.</p>
<p> Never again shall your sun set</p>
<p> nor your moon withdraw her light;</p>
<p> but the Lord shall be your everlasting light</p>
<p> and the days of your mourning shall be ended. (Isa. 60:19-20)</p>
<p> </p>Partaking of the Sufferings (part two)tag:nffquaker.org,2016-08-22:6286598:BlogPost:295592016-08-22T12:29:28.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p> Two centuries before Dickens wrote about the Roman Carnival, the seventeenth-century men and women that would bring forth the Quaker movement had been engaged in something like a Lenten practice. George Fox and others subjected themselves to rigorous self-examination that was, in fact, the awareness the Lenten discipline was intended to evoke. That Friends opted to undergo this self-scrutiny in the absence of any cultural prod vouches for their having been guided not by a culturally…</p>
<p> Two centuries before Dickens wrote about the Roman Carnival, the seventeenth-century men and women that would bring forth the Quaker movement had been engaged in something like a Lenten practice. George Fox and others subjected themselves to rigorous self-examination that was, in fact, the awareness the Lenten discipline was intended to evoke. That Friends opted to undergo this self-scrutiny in the absence of any cultural prod vouches for their having been guided not by a culturally religious prescription but by "the light of [their] nature," as Paul describes some Gentiles in the book of Romans. They were</p>
<p> </p>
<p> their own law, for they display[ed] the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts. Their conscience [was] called as witness, and their own thoughts argue[d] the case on either side, against them or even for them, on the day when God judges the secrets of human hearts through Christ Jesus (Rom. 2:14-16 NEB).</p>
<p></p>
<p> Both the Gentiles that Paul refers to in these verses and the early Quakers subjected themselves to the dictate of the pure law of God:</p>
<p></p>
<p>the light in the conscience before faith. And the law is the light and the schoolmaster until faith...men have this light before they believe in it, and are children....then afterwards [to] believe in it; and with it they see the author of their faith, Christ Jesus, from whom it comes" (Works, 3:68).</p>
<p></p>
<p>This standard of righteousness (the law, the light in the conscience, the schoolmaster) when attended to and learned from does ensure that all that must happen, will happen:</p>
<p></p>
<p>Do not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to complete. I tell you this: so long as heaven and earth endure, not a letter, not a stroke, will disappear from the Law until all that must happen has happened (Mt. 5:17-18 NEB).</p>
<p></p>
<p>In the first few pages of George Fox's <i>Journal</i>, we learn of his attention to righteous behavior. Before he had received faith from Christ, he diligently attended to the light in his conscience, the schoolmaster. He speaks of his early memories of feeling offended at seeing "old men carry themselves lightly and wantonly towards each other" (Nickalls, 1) and of his aversion to "foul ways and devouring the creation":</p>
<p></p>
<p>But people being strangers to the covenant of life with God, they eat and drink to make themselves wanton with the creatures, devouring them upon their own lusts, and living in all filthiness, loving foul ways and devouring the creation; and all this in the world, in the pollutions thereof, without God; and therefore I was to shun all such (2).</p>
<p></p>
<p>Unlike the Roman populace, Fox felt repulsed by self-indulgent, corrupt behavior, and instead was drawn to behaving in a way that is in "unity with the creation." Those who attended to the light in their consciences were, says Paul, "their own law." Within themselves, there would be an honest struggle to discover and live by what was right, even if it required inner conflict: "their own thoughts argue the case on either side against or even for them." Fox engaged in such conscientious self-questioning and argument, as here is shown:</p>
<p></p>
<p>And I wondered why these things should come to me....Then I thought, because I had forsaken my relations I had done amiss against them; so I was brought to call to mind all my time that I had spent and to consider whether I had wronged any....I was about twenty years of age when these exercises came upon me, and some years I continued in that condition, in great trouble; and fain I would have put it from me (Nickalls, 4).</p>
<p></p>
<p>He "would have put it from [him]" because his self-questioning was troublesome, painful to the point of despair. Yet he willingly endured this painful uncertainty about himself; he willingly partook of these sufferings, because he could accept no false solution or relief from them: no provisional cultural, social, intellectually speculative, or theological answer could suffice for him: he honored the truth and endured the cost. Neither able to deny his inner reality nor to anticipate any resolution, Fox simply partook of the suffering: "I cannot declare the misery I was in, it was so great and heavy upon me"(10). Unlike most, he endured this severe tension without resorting to hypocrisy, aggression, legalism, conformity, or dissipation. He partook of the suffering that accompanies knowing oneself to be in existential need with no real solution in sight: in truth, he felt and saw himself as he was—without God.</p>
<p>Fox's misery departed after he had been given faith, immediate knowledge of God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent. At ease in God's love, Fox could now view himself with equanimity:</p>
<p></p>
<p>Then the Lord gently led me along, and let me see his love, which was endless and eternal, surpassing all the knowledge that men have in the natural state, or can get by history or books. <em>That love let me see myself, as I was without him</em>; and I was afraid of all company: for I saw them perfectly, where they were, through the love of God which let me see myself (Works I: 74) [emphasis mine].</p>
<p></p>
<p>Receiving faith through hearing Christ, the Word of God, was the life-changing event for Fox, and so it is for everyone who follows the same excruciating path of partaking of sufferings.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(end of part two)</p>Partaking of the Sufferings (part one)tag:nffquaker.org,2016-08-21:6286598:BlogPost:295572016-08-21T17:01:45.000ZPatricia Dallmannhttp://nffquaker.org/profile/PatriciaDallmann
<p>[This essay was first presented at our annual gathering last month. This is the first part of three, and in the next couple days, I expect to post the second and third parts.] </p>
<p></p>
<p>And our hope of you is steadfast knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation (2 Cor. 1:7).</p>
<p>In a world that is ever plagued by deceit and cruelty, suffering seems unavoidable. Yet Paul in this verse implies that suffering is optional: one may choose…</p>
<p>[This essay was first presented at our annual gathering last month. This is the first part of three, and in the next couple days, I expect to post the second and third parts.] </p>
<p></p>
<p>And our hope of you is steadfast knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation (2 Cor. 1:7).</p>
<p>In a world that is ever plagued by deceit and cruelty, suffering seems unavoidable. Yet Paul in this verse implies that suffering is optional: one may choose to partake of the sufferings or refuse to partake; one may accept or reject suffering. How is it possible to refuse to suffer when loss, injury, abuse, and death come to everyone? Not only does Paul advocate partaking of the sufferings, he makes being "of the consolation" contingent upon it. Assuming Paul is correct that salvation follows a partaking of suffering and this partaking is not automatic but must be chosen, the meaning of the phrase "partakers of the sufferings" is worth looking into.</p>
<p></p>
<p>A feeling of diminishment, whether from loss or the fear of loss, comes into every life, and we are free to respond in any number of ways. Paul advocates for a particular handling of these feelings, in such a way that we are prepared to receive the consolation of Christ, and he also implies that a contrary approach does not lead to receiving Christ. Examples of each will illustrate the difference between the two, and so, I will present the approach of first-generation Friends by looking at some passages from George Fox's <i>Journal</i> that document his early years. Before doing so, however, I'll present a diametrically opposed approach to that of the first Friends. This contrasting ethos is embodied in Roman Carnival revelers of the nineteenth century. Though these two approaches differ, the challenge that each group faced was the same, and is, in fact, universal.</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center">It was once a custom among the inhabitants of Rome to celebrate Carnival in the time before Lent. The word "Carnival" is drawn from its Latin root <i>carnem levare</i> and means "remove the meat." The Latin root has also given us the word "carnal," which is used in Scripture to signify that which is not spiritual; "fleshly" and "worldly" being synonyms. The distinction is made clear by early Friend Edward Burrough in the following passage in which he refers to Paul's use of the word "carnal":</p>
<p> </p>
<p> If they be not carnal, then they are spiritual...things seen...are temporal and carnal; and what is temporal is not eternal, nor spirit. The apostle speaks of "carnal weapons," 2 Cor. 10:4, and "carnal ordinances," Heb. 9:10 (Works, 3:78).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Carnival was a time of self-indulgent and thoughtless behavior, a time of personal display, extravagance, masquerades, contests, and parties. On the final night of Carnival, Romans crowded into the main thoroughfare of their city to play a game called "Moccoletti" in which each celebrant lit and carried a candle. The goal of Moccoletti was to extinguish another's flame while keeping one's own burning. Any ploy, subterfuge, or fraud was to be expected in this contest, as there were no rules. Charles Dickens in <i>Pictures from Italy</i> describes the scene:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then everybody present has but one engrossing object, that is, to extinguish other people's candles and to keep his own alight; and everybody: man, woman, or child, gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner yells and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, "Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo!" (Without a light! Without a light!) until nothing is heard but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals of laughter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At midnight with the ringing of church bells throughout the city, Moccoletti was over; Carnival was finished and Lent began. At that moment, the highest contrast in behavior could be observed: the frenzy of Moccoletti vanished into the somber season of Lent. Dickens describes the abrupt changeover in this way:</p>
<p> </p>
<p>When in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant—put out like a taper with a breath!</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Since first learning many years ago of this Roman Carnival practice, I have thought of it as a metaphor for the spiritually darkened, routine happenings in our world that result from a prevailing "carnal" or worldly approach to being alive; and conversely, Lent, which immediately follows Carnival, as its antithesis. Lent occurs in the 40 days preceding Easter and is a time of socially enforced asceticism, in which participants refrain from self-indulgence, reflect upon their misdeeds, and thus come to feel a heightened sense of personal emptiness, absence, and need. It is a time of penitence, of thoughtful self-scrutiny. That the two seasons of Carnival and Lent abut is no accident; the stark difference between their respective worldviews is accentuated by their proximity: the natural, mundane life followed by a disciplined restraint that would prepare for some new and better way of life, a way yet unknown to either the carnal-minded or the ascetic.</p>
<p>(end of part one)</p>