Readings For Universalists
edited by Ralph Hetherington
I The Universality of Revelation
The central theme of Universalism is that
spiritual enlightenment may be achieved by everyone everywhere. It may
be experienced in the teachings of all the great religious systems or in the
personal and private experiences of the individual seeker who may have no
religion at all.
Quakerism testifies to the reality of the
inward Light which is available to everyone, be they heathen, Turk or Jew. It
is not surprising, therefore, that Quaker literature from its very beginnings
has reflected the theme of the universality of revelation.
Isaac
Pennington
All
Truth is a shadow except the last, except the utmost; yet every Truth is true
in its kind. It is substance in its own place, though it be but a shadow in
another place (for it is but a reflection from an intenser substance); and the
shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance.[1]
William
Penn
The
humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one
religion; and when death has taken off the mask they will know one another,
though the diverse liveries they wear here makes them strangers. This world is
a form; our bodies are forms; and no visible acts of devotion can be without
forms. But yet the less form in religion the better, since God is a Spirit; for
the more mental our worship, the more adequate to the nature of God; the more
silent, the more suitable to the language of a Spirit.[2]
John
Woolman
There
is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different
places and ages hath different names; it is however pure and proceeds from God.
It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion, nor excluded from any,
where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and
grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren.[3]
Caroline
Fox
I
have assumed a name today for my religious principles—Quaker-Catholicism—having
direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma, yet recognizing the high
worth of all other forms of Faith; a system, in the sense of inclusion, not
exclusion; and appreciation of the universal and the various teachings of the
Spirit, through the faculties given us, or independent of them.[4]
Henry
T. Hodgkin
By
processes too numerous and diverse even to summarize, I have reached a position
which may be stated in a general way somewhat like this: “I believe that God's best for another may be so
different from my experience and way of living as to be actually impossible for
me. I recognize a change to have taken place in myself, from a certain
assumption that mine was really the better way, to a very complete recognition
that there is no one better way and that God needs all kinds of people and ways
of living through which to manifest Himself in the World.”[5]
Margaret
Hobling
We
are conscious of Christianity as one among a number of religions competing for
the allegiance of intelligent and spiritually minded men and the relationship
between them exercises men's minds and hearts. The world is much smaller, much
more interdependent than it used to be and Christendom is no longer a
self-contained unit. Few may have had the benefit of intimate friendship with
the saints of other faiths like Gandhi or Vinoba Bhasve, but . . . increasing
numbers of people have had personal contact with humble men and holy of heart
in all walks of life whom they dare not deny that they have been taught of
God.[6]
II The Mystical Nature of the Inward Light
It is increasingly the practice now for
Quaker writers to regard the experience of the Inward Light as being mystical.
A lucid expression of this view now follows.
Daniel
Seeger
Mysticism
is one of the slipperiest words in the English language and much trouble can
admittedly come from its careless use. It is a relatively new word, probably
one which was unknown to most of the people to whom it is, in retrospect,
applied. Yet when George Fox hears a voice which says, “There is one, even
Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition,” and when he understands this voice to be the voice of
God, and when the Lord shows him from atop of Pendle Hill a great people to be
gathered, these are what in any standard use of the English language are termed
to be mystical experiences.
Similarly,
if it is presumed that an individual attending to an Inner Light, or a group
alive to the Presence in the Midst, can know the Divine Will, such a
presumption is an assertion of the validity of experiences ordinarily termed
mystical. Indeed, most prophets base their teachings on mystically apprehended
understandings of God's will.
Mystical
people--people who have openings to God's will—are always regarded as
subversive by institutional ecclesiastical authority, for mystics believe that
in their quest for Truth it is possible to bypass such authority. Hence the
trouble in which such people, including the Quakers, frequently find
themselves. Although there has been a strong stream of mysticism in Christian
history, . . . it might be argued that mysticism is subversive to Christianity
itself, since the entire concept of Christ's unique saving mission as a
mediator between God and his people, who are presumed to be confined in
darkness unless they respond to Christ's saving call, tends to be undercut by
mystical assumptions.[7]
In
light of this view, the following quotation from John Ferguson's Encyclopaedia
of Mysticism is relevant. “The Society of Friends is perhaps the most
remarkable demonstration in history of the availability of mystical experience
to groups of open but otherwise ordinary people. [8]
III The Primacy of Revelation Over Scripture
From the earliest days Quakers have
asserted the primacy of the Inward Light, that is of direct revelation, over
scripture. From George Fox onward, this assertion has been repeated over the
years, sometimes in the face of severe opposition from institutional churches,
and occasionally even from within the Society of Friends itself.
George
Fox
Now
the Lord hath opened to me His invisible power how that every man was
enlightened by the Divine Light of Christ; and I saw it shine through all, and
they that believed in it came out of condemnation and came into the Light of
life, and became children of it, but they that hated it, and did not believe in
it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw
in the pure openings of the Light, without the help of any man, neither did I
know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the
Scriptures, I found it. For I saw in that Light and Spirit which was before
Scripture was 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.[9]
Margaret
Fell
And
the next day, being a lecture on a fast day, he went to the Ulverston
steeplehouse, but came not in till people gathered; I and my children had been
a long time there before. And when they were singing before the sermon, he came
in; and when they had done singing, he stood up upon a seat or form and desired
that he might have the liberty to speak. And he that was in the pulpit said he
might. And the first words he spoke were as followeth: “He is not a Jew that is
one outward, neither is that circumcision which is outward, but is a Jew that
is one inward, and that is circumcision which is of the heart.” And so he went
on and said, How that Christ was the Light of the world and lighteth every man
that cometh into the world; and that by this Light they may be gathered to God,
etc. And I stood up in my pew, and wondered at his doctrine, for I had never
heard such before. And then he went on,
and opened the Scriptures, and said, “The Scriptures were the prophets ‘words and
Christ's and the apostles’ words, and what they spoke they enjoyed and
possessed and had it from the Lord.” And said, “Then what had any to do with
the Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that gave them forth. You will
say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this; but what canst thou say? Art
thou a child of the Light and hast walked in the Light and what thou speakest
is it inwardly from God?”[10]
Isaac
Pennington
And
the end of words is to bring men to the knowledge of things beyond what words
can utter. So, learn of the Lord to make a right use of the Scriptures—which is
by esteeming them in their right place, and prizing that above them which is
above them.[11]
Robert
Barclay
Because
the scriptures are only a declaration of the fountain and not the fountain
itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principle ground of all truth
and knowledge, nor yet the adequate, primary rule of faith and manners. Yet,
because they give a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they
are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which
they have all their excellency and certainty for, as by the inward testimony of
the Spirit we do alone truly know them, so they testify that the Spirit is that
Guide by which the saints are led into truth. Therefore, according to the
Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and Principle leader.[12]
Balby
Elders
Dearly
beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk
by, but that all, with the measure of light which is pure and holy, may be
guided: and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the
Spirit, not from the letter; for the letter killeth but the Spirit giveth
life.[13]
In the early days as much as at the
present time, this Quaker view about the validity of personal revelation
contrasted sharply with the fundamentalist viewpoint which placed absolute
authority in the scriptures. In the passage from Rufus Jones quoted below, he
describes how Puritan fundamentalism directly opposed the Quaker view.
Rufus
M. Jones
For
the Puritan, revelation was a miraculous projection of God’s Word and Will from
the supernatural world into this world. This miraculous projection had been
made only in a distinct dispensation, through a limited number of Divinely
chosen, specially prepared instruments, who received and transmitted the pure
Word of God. When the dispensation ended, revelation came to a definite close.
No word more could be added, as also none could be subtracted. All spiritual
truth for the race for all ages was now unveiled; the only legitimate function
which the man of God could henceforth exercise was that of interpretation. He
could declare what the Word of God meant and how it was to be applied to the
complicated affairs of human society. Only a specialist in theology could, from
the nature of the case, be a minister under this system. The minister thus
became invested with an extraordinary dignity and possessed of an influence
quite sui generis.
For
the Quaker, revelation was confined to no dispensation, it had never been
closed. If any period was peculiarly the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the
Quaker believed that it was the present
in which he was living. Instead of limiting the revelation of the Word of
God to a few miraculous instruments who had lived in the remote dispensation,
he insisted that God enlightens every soul that cometh into the world, communes
by His Holy Spirit with all men everywhere, illuminates the conscience with a
clear sense of the right and the wrong course in moral issues, and reveals His
Will in definite and concrete matters to those who are sensitive recipients of
it. The true minister, for the Quaker of that period, was a prophet . . . a revealer of present truth, and not a mere interpreter of a past
revelation.[14]
IV The Validity of Light from Whatever Quarter
With the collapsing of barriers between
the cultures of the world, and the consequent mixing of people from all the
great religions, the universalism implicit in the Quaker view has become
explicit. This openness is enshrined in
Query 12:
Are you striving to develop your
mental powers, and to use them to the glory of God? Are you loyal to the truth;
and do you keep your mind open to new light, from whatever quarter it may arise?
Are you giving time and thought to the study of the Bible, and other writings
that reveal the ways of God? Do you recognize the spiritual contributions made
by other faiths?
Isaac
Pennington
Even
in the Apostles’ days, Christians were too apt to strive after a wrong unity
and uniformity in outward practices and observations, and to judge one another
unrighteously in those things, and mark, it is not the different practice from
one another that breaks the peace and unity, but the judging of one another
because of different practices. . . .
And
here is true unity, in the Spirit, in the inward life, and not in an outward
uniformity. . . . Men keep close to
God, the Lord will lead them on fast enough . . . for He taketh care of such,
and knoweth what light and what practices are most proper for them.[15]
Gerald
Hibbert
Every
religious system has its Quakers—those
who turn from the outward and the legal and the institutional, and focus their
attention on the Divine that is within.
There is much fellowship between Friends and the mystics of other
religious systems. Let a Mohammedan or
Hindu mystic teacher come to this country, and we realize at once how much we
have in common with him. We believe we have something we can give him, but we
realize also that he has something to give to us . . . . The mystics of the
world everywhere join hands. Their spirits leap together in a flash of joyful
recognition; in the great depths they find their unity and their abiding
home.[17]
Janet
Scott
Thus
we may answer the question, “Are Quakers Christian?” by saying that it does not
matter. What matters to Quakers is not the label by which we are called or call
ourselves, but the life. The abandonment of self to God means also the
abandonment of labels, of doctrines, or cherished ways of expressing the truth.
It means the willingness to follow the spirit wherever it leads, and there is
no guarantee that this is to Christianity or to any happy ending except the
love, peace and unity of God. Like the sword which Fox told Penn to wear as
long as he could, we take our religion and beliefs as far as we can. All these
are good. But they are not what we seek. In the end, we place them into the
hands of God, in trust, to make or break, to crown or destroy, for they are nothing
in themselves, but God is in us all.[18]
Gerald
Priestland
But
now comes a scandal—literally a stumbling block—jutting out from chapter 14 of
the Gospel according to St John: Jesus said unto
Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no man cometh to the Father,
but by me.” Here is the Scandal of Particularity: the exalted claim that Jesus
is the one and the only way to God, which Christians have extended to mean that
this first century Jew was utterly unique—once for all time—and that the Church
he founded has something other faiths can never have. I must admit that this
apparently arrogant proclamation has always been a stumbling block to my
progress. I have spent part of my life in the Middle East and South Asia, and
now I live among Jews. Are my Hindu, Sikh, Muslim and Jewish friends second
class souls? Is it just bad luck that they have never seen the New Testament?
Surely a loving God cannot be as narrow minded as that?[19]
Lorna
Marsden
Despite
all its lacks and defects the modern world has given to us one supreme gift—the
sense that the closed mind is no longer operative for humanity. The world of
science has built up its achievements on a basis of unbounded inquiry,
inevitable progression from one hypothesis to the next, refusal of unalterable
certainty. This is the climate of the mind in which we live, in its positive
aspect. Uniquely in the Christian tradition, the Quaker stands at the same
point. The true Quaker is open to new knowledge from whatever quarter it may
come. When we seek for certainties in an uncertain world, or cry out for a
return to the safety of what is known as fundamentalism, we forget our
heritage. We are not answering Fox's challenge: “What canst thou say?” The
Inward light by which the Quaker lives, falls not on the closed circles of an
institution walled against experiment, but on the open ground whose darkness is
illuminated step by step as he proceeds—and the illumination that he carries
with him has come to him from the past.[20]
John
Hick
Theologians
have usually been very good at taking account of all sorts of abstruse or
obscure data; but sometimes failed to notice the obvious facts which is obvious
to ordinary people. And one of the things which are obvious to ordinary people,
and yet sometimes not noticed by the theologians, is this: that in the great
majority of cases—say, 98 or 99 per cent of the cases—the religion in which a
person believes and to which he adheres depends upon where he was born. That is
to says, if someone is born to Muslim parents in Egypt or Pakistan, he is
likely to be a Muslim; if to Buddhist parents in Sri Lanka or Burma, he is very
likely to be Buddhist; if to Hindu parents in India, he is very likely to be a
Hindu; if to Christian parents in Europe, North America or Australasia, he is
very likely to be a Christian. Of course, in each case he may be either an
authentic or merely nominal adherent of his religion. But if one is born in
this country, for example, the religion which one accepts or rejects will
normally be Christianity. If you undergo a religious conversion to Christian
faith rather than to some other faith. And even if you are a humanist or an
atheist, you will be a recognizably Christian one—quite different from say, a
Chinese or Indian humanist. In short, whether you are a Christian, a Jew, a
Muslim, a Sikh, a Hindu, a Buddhist—or for that matter a Marxist or a
Maoist—depends nearly always on the part of the world in which you happen to
have been born.[21]
Harry
Williams
As
one fed by the Christian religion I find it necessary to distinguish between
the historical Jesus and what could be described as the Christ Reality. I
believe that the historical Jesus embodied Christ Reality to a unique degree.
But I don't believe that the Christ Reality was confined to him or that he
monopolized it. And I see that if I had been fed by another religion I should
call the Christ Reality something else—the Buddha nature, for instance,
especially with regard to the compassion shown by the Buddha when he refused
Nirvana for himself in order to bring enlightenment to men. Many of the hymns
addressed in the Japanese Buddhist tradition to Amida Buddha are in content
identical to hymns addressed by Christians to Jesus.
The
historical Jesus embodied and bore witness to the Christ Reality, but it was
found in many places centuries before he was born and continued to be found
among people who had never heard of him: in the experience of the Hebrew
prophet Hosea and the vision of that unknown prophet of the Exile whose words
are found in our book of the prophet Isaiah. And in various degrees the Christ
Reality was embodied and shown forth by the Buddha, Lao-Tse, Mohammed, Hafiz,
Kabir, and countless others who have left no memorial.[22]
Mahatma
Gandhi
I
do not know what you mean by the Living Christ. If you mean the historic Jesus,
then I do not feel his presence. But if you mean a spirit guiding me, a
presence nearer to me than hands or feet, than the very breath in me, then I do
feel such a presence. If it were not for the sense of that presence the waters
of the Ganges would long ere this have been my destination. Call it Christ or
Krishna: that does not matter to me.[23]
V Universalism in its Historic Quaker Setting
Universalism has figured neither largely
nor explicitly in the various Quaker histories until John Punshon published his
short history of Quakerism in 1984. What he has to say is important on two
counts. The first that he established grounds for taking Quaker Universalism
seriously, and the second that he suggests reasons why universalists in the
Society of Friends may be misunderstood. Four passages from various parts of
the book are quoted below.
John
Punshon
The
Starting Point from Barclay’s Theology—
Barclay’s
first controlling assumption is that scripture is neither the principal basis
of knowledge nor the main standard of faith. You can deny this assumption
either because you think it wrong, or because the small print of his argument
makes it an overstatement. If you are right, the way is clear for evangelical Quakerism.
Barclay’s
second controlling assumption is the unity or indissoluble link between the
spiritual reality he calls the light, and Jesus Christ as an historical figure.
If you take the view that modern biblical and theological scholarship renders the
traditional Christian doctrines obsolete, and you are right, the way is clear
for mystical universalist Quakerism.
Either
of these courses can be taken, but each is in turn vulnerable to the criticism
that it tends to fragment the Quaker tradition as Barclay develops it, by
concentrating on one aspect of a balanced whole. If the work of Barclay was
instrumental in stimulating divergence, a re-examination of the issues he
raises might also be instrumental in recovering that wholeness.
A
Possible Source of Misunderstanding—
If
you are willing to retain a biblical faith, the word Christ will operate as a reference on to the Lord of the New
Testament as described in scripture and experienced in the Church. On the other
hand, if liberal tradition has encouraged you to look skeptically at the
authority of the Bible and credibility of the twin doctrines of incarnation and
atonement, then the word will have a different reference. You will rend to
understand it more as the name used by people who have fortuitously been
brought up as Christians for the ultimate reality which is given other names by
other people. This difference between a name and a description gives rise to
different ways of approaching the problem of religious diversity and helps to
explain the significant differences between the universalist Quakers and the
others which they do not always themselves perceive.
The
Mystical Appeal of Universalism—
Religious
pluralism . . . sees the great faiths as special interpretations of truth with
their own special dynamics. They are in a sense languages for talking about
God. No one has the monopoly of truth, or even a preponderance of it, for all
are equally acceptable paths, to vary the metaphor, up the same mountain, and
they meet at the peak. This view is almost unavoidable if the claims of
Christianity about Christ are found to be unacceptable. Few articulate
universalists are syncretists, that is wanting to create a new faith out of
various bits of the old: most have a serious concern to be open to new leadings
of truth, whatever its source. Their position is encountered widely in the
silent tradition among Friends. Its great strength is its tolerance in a world
of prejudice. It appears to have been particularly appealing to Quakers because
of the universality of the mystical mode of religious experience.
Katherine
Wilson
Would
it be true to say that Quakerism is not so much one specific sect of
Christianity, or one specific religion, as (it is) the core that makes the
centre of every religion? Hence both the ease with which we make contact with
men and women of all religions, and the impossibility of describing what our
distinguishing marks are. Is it that we hesitate to claim anything for ourselves
alone because it belongs to everyone by nature? . . . . Do our experiences and
attitudes indeed imply that what we profess and practice is basic religion? It
may be that Friends did not discover anything new at all but only what is at
the heart of all religions if freed from their cultural trappings. Although
this discovery was given a Christian framework by Friends of the 17th
Century, now that we know more of other religions many Friends feel that this
supporting Christian frame is not our distinguishing mark.[25]
REFERENCES
1.
Christian Faith and Practice: London Yearly Meeting 1960. To the Reader.
2.
C F & P. op. cit.: section 227.
3.
John Woolman, The Journal and Essays, ed. Gummere: 1922.
4.
C F & P. op. cit: section 76.
5.
C F & P. op. cit: section 102.
6.
C F & P. op. cit: section 225.
7.
Daniel Seeger; AFSC, “Convinced in the Present Day”: 1982.
8.
Encyclopaedia of Mysticism: 1976.
9.
C F & P. op. cit: section 163.
10.
C F & P. op. cit: section
20.
11.
C F & P. op. cit. section 204.
12.
C F & P. op. cit: section 200.
13.
C F & P. op. cit: To the Reader.
14.
Rufus M. Jones; The Quakers in the American Colonies: 1911.
15.
C F & P. op. cit: section 222.
16.
C F & P. op. cit: section 224.
17.
Gerald Hibbert; Swarthmore Lecture: LYM 1924.
18.
Janet Scott; Swarthmore Lecture:
LYM 1980.
19.
Gerald Priestland; Reasonable
Uncertainty 1982:QHS.
20.
Lorna Marsden; A Discipline of
Waiting.
21.
John Hick; QUG Pamphlet Number 3.
22.
Harry Williams; Someday I'll Find
You: 1982.
23.
Horace Alexander, QUG Pamphlet Number 2.
24.
John Punshon; Portrait in Grey:
1984.
25.
Katherine Wilson; The Friend,
January 1968.
Ralph
Hetherington, joined British Friends as a young conscientious objector
during World War II. A psychologist by profession, he has been active in the
Society for over 40 years and was the Swarthmore lecturer at London Yearly
Meeting in 1975. He has been a member of the Quaker Universalist Group almost
from its beginnings in 1977.
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