Reproclaiming the Everlasting Gospel
Introduction to Fox's Teaching on the Holy Spirit
There are two compelling reasons for devoting a whole session in this series to Fox’s teaching about the Holy Spirit. The first is that Quakerism is now being categorized as belonging among the many Christian movements that make the Holy Spirit central to faith and experience. The other reason is that those who are now being called to re-proclaim the everlasting gospel will encounter many Quakers, and many Christians in all denominations, who make the Holy Spirit central. I have found in my own experience that where the charismatic or Pentecostal movements have established themselves there is a built-in resistance to the gospel that Fox preached. Therefore we have to study these movements and be prepared to respond when they say there is nothing in Fox’s understanding of the gospel that they do not already have.
Thus Lewis Benson began lecture #9, Fox's Teaching on the Holy Spirit, of his 10 Moorestown Lecture Series, given in the fall of 1982. His contention is that rather than making the Holy Spirit central, the early Quakers knew/experienced Jesus Christ as the center of their life and worship. Is this really the case? To answer that question, I went to Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of Friends, Held in London, to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings in Great Britain, Ireland, and Elsewhere, From 1681 to 1817, Inclusive: With an Introduction, Comprising an Account of several preceding Epistles, and of the Early Records of the Yearly Meeting; Also An Index Of Some Of The Principal Matters. (Available from archive.org.) Following are some examples of what I found.
<...In the ancient pure and precious Truth...is the very endeared salutation of our tender faithful love to you all, in which is the blessed fellowship of life felt, enjoyed, and maintained...O! blessed be his Eternal Arm of power, that hath made us sensible of this unity, and gathered us out of this worlds' spirit...into this sweet, pure, and peaceable society...Dear Friends, his dew descendeth, his rain falleth, and the light of his heavenly countenance is lifted up, and shineth upon us; our hearts are affected, our souls are overcome, he hath filled us with his blessing, and caused our cups to overflow; he hath spoken such peace to his people, as the world can neither give nor take away, and therefore, they dare not return to folly… (p. xvi, from The Yearly Meeting Paper, 1678)
<...Finally, dear Friends and Brethren, "we commit you to the Lord God, to be ordered by his divine wisdom and counsel; and therein continue your love and tender care one for another, and for Truth's prosperity. All dwell in the love of God, in unity and peace in Christ Jesus, the prince of life and peace; and therein go on in his service, and keep your habitations over all that which is contrary, or would hinder you therein, or disturb your peaceable societies. (p. 3, Epistle 1681)
And this from George Fox’s Epistles:
<…so in his name keep your meetings, in whom you have salvation; and these are the true meetings and true gatherings who feel Jesus Christ in the midst of them, their prophet, their counsellor, their leader, their light and life, their way and their truth, their shepherd that laid down his life for them, that has bought you, his sheep, who feeds you in his pastures of life; and your heavenly bishop to oversee you, that you do not go astray again from God. And so it is that through him you overcome, and he that overcomes shall go no more forth out of his fold, out of his pastures, who shall sit down in heavenly places in Christ Jesus who is your priest that offered up himself for you, and sacrifices for you and makes you holy and clean, that he may present you blameless up to the holy and pure God and here you come to witness him and to know him in his offices, by his light, sprit, and power;… (Works of Fox, Vol. viii, p.77)
Those early epistles were not written to appease someone looking over their shoulders, scrutinizing their words. Neither are modern epistles afflicted with any dread that I would look critically at their wording. Therefore, the differences in mood, in attribution, and in language indicate a real difference in experience. It is not so much that the early Friends refrained from mentioning the Holy Spirit, but in reading through their epistles I sense the critical importance of Jesus’s presence in all his offices.
Finding modern Quaker epistles is not so easy, but let us look at a couple of statements from a group that proclaims themselves to be “passionately Christ-centered” and “passionately Quaker.”
Their definition of Christ/Christ-centered is:
http://www.freedomfriends.org/FF-WGloss.htm#Chr)
And the body of Christ is defined as:
http://www.freedomfriends.org/FF-WGloss.htm#bo)
And then there is the epistle from a recent gathering of Quaker ministers and elders from several Yearly Meetings which contains the following:
And
The two definitions quoted from Freedom Friends above are markedly different from statements made by Fox and other early Friends expressing the reality of Jesus Christ’s presence, rather than a representative spirit, in and among them. The epistle from the gathering of ministers and elders makes no mention at all of Christ’s presence among them fulfilling his offices.
The expression of the centrality of Christ’s presence and function is what first drew me to the message of the early Friends and gave me an understanding that in that message is something that the rest of Christendom lacks. Many things have changed in the 48 years since I first read the Journal of George Fox, but the need for this message has intensified rather than diminished. Lewis Benson’s lecture #9 is essential for understanding the distinctions between the early Quaker message and the various “gospels” presented today.
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Comment by Patricia Dallmann on 10thMo. 23, 2017 at 13:41
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The following comment is an excerpt from a discussion following Hye Sung Francis's post titled "Quakerism as a Charismatic Tradition: Introduction," in which several NFF workers affirmed the differences between the Quaker faith and Charismatic belief and practice. The reader should keep in mind that in the following excerpt from that discussion, I am addressing Hye Sung Francis. The post and discussion can be found here: https://hyesungfrancis.com/2015/08/20/quakerism-as-a-charismatic-tr...
Here begins the excerpt from one of my comments in that discussion:
Benson felt that the movement begun by the early Friends and carried on today by New Foundation Fellowship could be undermined by subtle forces more than hostile ones. He identified Pentecostalism as one such subtle force, which could subvert the purpose and meaning of Quaker faith.
“The principle of the Quakers,” says Fox, “is the spirit of Christ who died for us and is risen for our justification, by which we know that we are his.” Quakers did undergo the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit was not the center of their faith: Jesus Christ was.
This distinction has consequences. The Quakers fellowship was a corporate hearing/obeying relationship with Christ their teacher with a corporate testimony to him and his righteousness. When I read your description of the charismatic movement, I see a focus on the ecstatic occurrence of the baptism itself and vague statements about the function of this gathered body to exercise gifts or “revitalize” fellowship. These activities can be simulated by human agency alone. Among Quakers the activities were secondary, the result of obedience to Christ, which was of primary focus.
As there is “diversity among Charismatics,” as you say, there is not among them that having been “made perfect in one,” which Jesus identifies as the quality of “those whom [the Father] has given [him]” (Jn. 17:11 and 21), but the diversity savors of the worldly, the self-determination that the world values. The Quakers came out of the worldly confusion and into gospel order as taught them by our living teacher, Christ Jesus.
If the desire of the Charismatic Movement is “not [to] start a new religious group but instead renew the participants’ respective churches in the power of the Holy Spirit,” as you say, what will be done with the doctrines, traditions of these respective churches, many Protestant churches holding to sin for term of life, predestination, Christ’s having justified mankind on the Cross at Calvary, and salvation only after death? The early Friends went to the root of the apostasy, which, it seems, the Charismatic movement doesn’t find necessary.
Man-made religion, whether of the mind, the emotions, the culture, or the State is always a threat to the true religion that comes down from above. A preoccupation with the ecstatic and the miraculous signs and wonders is problematic, not only for the individuals who are waylaid by them but for their families and the larger society. One needs to distinguish between the thing itself and the secondary characteristics that accompany it (the sense of purpose, community, joy), for the latter can and will be appropriated by adherents to man-made religion.
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Comment by Ellis Hein on 10thMo. 24, 2017 at 13:24
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Patricia Dallman has directed our attention to an important discussion; important because it underscores Lewis Benson's assertion the charismatic and Pentacostal movements have a built in resistance to the message of the early Friends. That discussion reminds me of the following excerpts from Isaac Penington's Preface to The Scattered Sheep Sought After. Penington stated:
"My people have committed two great evils; they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." ...And thus, though their professions were great, and they multiplied prayers, sacrifices, and fasts, and drew nigh to God with their lips, yet their hearts were far from him. They had forsaken the fountain; they drank not of the waters of the spring, of the rock that followed them; but they drank of the waters of their own cisterns. They set up that knowledge of the law for their light which they had hewed out with the tools of their own understanding, without the spirit that wrote it. This was Israel's error of old: they drank very zealously of the waters of the law; but they drank it not from the spring, but out of the cisterns which themselves had hewed.
He then speaks of Christendom saying:
For though they speak great words of their God; yet they themselves are but as the heathen; uncircumcised like them; unacquainted with the virtue and power of life like them; always striving against sin in that which cannot conquer; and so they also are slaves under their lusts and corruptions, like the heathen, and know not the truth, which makes free indeed.
Anyone who goes to the discussion Patricia Dallmann alludes to will notice how apt Penington's remarks are, including his assertion that those who drink of their cistern complain
against the witnesses of God (as Israel did against his prophets) who from the Lord testify against them. And it cannot be otherwise; for the dead waters in Israel's hewn cisterns will never agree with the waters of the living fountain, but will withstand their testimony.
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