===================
Part 1 Tim Peat Ashworth _The Earliest Christians_
===================

Paul as focussed on the transformation of all
creation, originating in the transformation of ourselves.  Finding
that throughout the NT.

"The William": There's a big gap in the New Testament narratives: the
Romans, the resistance, Masada (73 CE), etc.  Why?

Stuart M: Tension between the quiet, inward worship practice and the
noisy, outward, charismatic behaviour it underpinned.

  The struggle to survive post-Restoration plus the failure of the
  expectation of external transformation put the previous public
  aspect of Quakerism had to be reined in.

  Barclay gives up on radical equality: God's plan allows for
  different wealth for different people.

  Branston-Hicks metaphor!  Is there still a real labour and birth
  still to come?

TPA: But note that in early Christianity the challenge of organisation
vs. inspiration leads to an emergence of hierarchy, but that never
happened among Friends...

Ben Dandelion: Fox appealing to "30 minutes of silence" in Revelation,
and the inward communion in Revelation 3:20 (?: "Here I am! I stand at
the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I
will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.").

  Evangelical framing of their situation in the 18th century falls in
  line with the "sometime in the distance" for the expectation of the
  2nd Coming

  How can we reframe the idea of Heaven on Earth, reinvent the
  tradition, to keep the possibility of transformation alive.

  How do we make sense of what is essentially a 2nd coming liturgy?

  If we're waiting for humanity to respond to the opportunity, what
  will it take for that to happen?  [TPA: When we realise there is no
  alternative]

  TPA: What accounts then for the "20% of London and Bristol were
  caught up by Quakerism" in the 1650s?  BPD: [The context: finding
  certainity and hope in a catastrophic situation]

  The contrast of "anyone can be saved" with much of what the other
  churches were saying.

----------TPA video 1----------

Luke: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me" are Jesus's first public
words.  Thereafter we don't hear much about the Spirit, but the
unspoken sub-text is, wrt Jesus himself: "Look at Jesus: This is what
the Spirit-led life looks like".  The Spirit gives a foretaste of what
is to come...  Paul describes the Apostles as 'Ambassadors of life in
the Spirit'.  Manifesting life in the Spirit as it was in Jesus,
because they saw it in him.  [Note that this makes Paul's claim to
_be_ and Apostle a bit tenuous]

Early Christian communities: spiritual families ('brother' and 'sister')
Boundaries crossed/erased -- manifestations of the Spirit -- but a
diversity of gifts.  Their community life is manifesting what the
Spirit is bringing and will bring.

Revelation: taking away a veil, now, and coming.  Normal way of seeing
boundaries between e.g. classes is falling away, seeing things in new
ways.  Not a new set of teachings, but a new kind of perception [and
of living?]

Crunch time: how much can you rely on this?  First conflict over the
dietary laws.  The Law vs. the new vision.  Matthew keeps a strong
place for the Law, Jesus as a teacher in the Jewish tradition
(radical, but in the same tradition).

Humanity is to be transformed, and continue, in the Spirit, (and so
the whole of Creation is transformed).

Luke has what Eden Grace described: "Creation waits with eager/anxious expectation"
A sense of bringing to birth, with the attendant hint of anxiety.
And we have the Spirit as midwife to the change: support with firmness

Humanity refashioned not just in, but as, the image ('ikon') of God

And this has to begin with a dying of the old form of life.
"_I_ live no longer, but Christ lives in me" [Paul, somewhere]

TPA (responding to SM):  There's a _lot_ about newness in the NT, but
it's almost all about people coming into a new understanding of what
it is to be human, and not much about seeing the whole of creation in
a new way, as early Friends would.

PBD paraphrasing TPA (responding to BPD): Jesus's resurrection is the
_beginning_ of the fulfillment of the prophesy of universal
resurrection: "a justification that something major has begun, if if
it hasn't been completed".

TPA (responding so SM 42:10): Was it a time of constant upheaval,
heavy oppresive behavious from the occupying Roman forces, etc.?  A
lot of scholarly debate pro and con on this.  Ed Saunders (sp?) yes
life was tough, harvests failed, but Roman rule was by-and-large _not_
obtrusive, and largely implemented through local intermediaries.

BPD: Are the Gospels trying, as they tell it, to reconfigure what
happened leading up to and in Jesus's crucifixion to fit with new
sense of delay [in the Kingdom] [that they were experiencing 20/30
years later]?

The coming of the Spirit to the Gentiles, which happened very quickly,
was "the knock-down argument" that the coming resurrection was for
_all_ people, not just the (people formerly known as the) Chosen of
God.

==============Forum discussions==========
I need to say something in this thread:
  https://moodle.woodbrooke.org.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=14517
about (FK's reading of) Aquinas's approach to free will and Grace:
not just us, not just God, but (a mystical union of) both...

---------TPA Video 2-----------
Back to what is coming, that is heaven on earth, is understood as the
transformation of humankind.  So, not so much heaven on earth as
heaven _in_ earth, 'in earthy stuff'.  Ref. Phil. 2:5-8
  
  5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

  6 who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God
    something to be used to his own advantage;

  7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a
    servant, being made in human likeness.

  8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by
    becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!

Ref. Genesis -- "made in the image of God" -- we can do this ourselves.

Day of Atonement, in the Temple, in Jerusalem: the only day the High
Priest goes in to the Holy of Holies.  Wearing this-day-only
vestments, with imagery of Creation and the Garden.  In the
forgiveness that follows, the whole of creation is restored to the
purity of the Garden.

The New Testament is usually approached (i.e. we 21st century folk
were taught it) through and from the perspective of the later
developments of the Christian Church.

And of course that also has influenced how it is translated.

As the community/communities of Early Christians grow and stabilise,
external pressure on them grows, which in turn leads to a need to have
an account of their origins that's coherent and reliable, which in
turn leads to downplaying e.g. the early internal frictions, even as
the New Testament is still being written...

At first there's a lot of flexibility, stories, metaphors, adaptations
of the Hebrew scriptures.

But as the community gets more public, more confident, with more
impact on the wider world, pressure from outside grows, which
generates pressure within the community as to how they live in the
world, what must be held on to and what can change to accommodate to
outside pressure...  And so a structure of authority and reliable
doctrine emerges

*Quakers: three keys to unlock what was happening in earliest
Christianity*

1) *The living word*
 'This is the word of the Lord'
 But in the NT, 'the word of the Lord' does _not_ mean Scripture.
 As in the OT, it is something that comes to _people_, in the OT
 the prophets, in the NT the new Christians themselves.
 Ref. Hebrews 8, quoting Jeremiah 31:31-34, several times.  This is
  the longest quote of the OT in the NT:  "The days are surely coming..."

   31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a
      new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

   32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their
      ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
      land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their
      husband, says the Lord.

   33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
      Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within
      them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their
      God, and they shall be my people.

   34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other,
      "Know the Lord," for they shall all know me, from the least of
      them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their
      iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
     [NRSV https://www.biblestudytools.com/nrs/]

    Central to early Christian understanding (note reference to a "new
     covenant", as in the blessing at the Last Supper).

  Hebrews 4:7  O that today you would hear his voice, harden not your
               hearts [TPA]

  Hebrews 4:12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper
               than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides
               soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to
               judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [NRSV]

  Hebrews 6:4 ... those who have once been enlightened, and have
              tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy
              Spirit, (5) and have tasted the goodness of the word of
              God and the powers of the age to come,

  Hebrews 12:22-25

           22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of
              the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to
              innumerable angels in festal gathering,

           23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled
              in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the
              spirits of the righteous made perfect,

	   24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to
	      the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the
	      blood of Abel.

	   25 See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking [NRSV]

2) *Jesus: how do you recognise the living word, the true prophet?*

 A sharpness in the way Luke talks about Jesus, particularly the way
 in which he says you have to see things differently: the old ways of
 recognition are not capable of seeing the new thing that is emerging.

 Unless you change, you will not perceive

 Prompting people into a new way of seeing -- not about ethics in
 Luke, about how to live...

 Luke 7:18--21 - questions about John; how can this man be a prophet
 -- what we you looking to _see_ when you went out to the desert to
 find John?  You get it wrong: John is mad, I'm a drunkard.  [those
 are the old ways of seeing].  At the end [7:35] "Wisdom is justified
 [vindicate] by [all] her children". [NRSV]

 Parable of the Sower explained:  "The seed is the word" [8:11].

 "Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more
 will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to
 have will be taken away" [8:18]

 Who are my mother and my brothers?  "My mother and my brothers are
 those who hear the word of the Lord and do it." [8:21]

3) *All the faithful may prophecy*

 Pentecost
 1 Corinthians 14:

  29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what
     is said.

  30 If a revelation is made to someone else sitting nearby, let
     the first person be silent.

  31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and
     all be encouraged.

  32 And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, [NRSV]
      
  Listen with the same spirit as what is being said...

 The priesthood of all the faithful 1 Peter 2:

   9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

Doesn't last: ref. pressures above, _and_ conflict within[/between]
the communities, bishops 'overseers' and deacons 'servants'
emerge by the end of the NT era.

Prophecy is unpredictable, elusive: importance of community in
discernment, emerging in Paul, prophetic testing, what builds up the community.

-----

The problem of discernment emerges: The development of the Spirit-led
life, but Which of the developments are distortions, which are truly
spirit-led

-----Discussion-------
SM: Wrt the focus being on the person, it's because the _problem_ is with
humanity, the Fall, (ref. Nayler and the Eastern church)

TPA: We are not separate from Creation, and when things go wrong it has
_cosmic_ significance:  if the image of God is lost in us, that's a
fundamental problem.

BPD: What happens to Heaven on Earth as the pressure builds?

TPA: That leads to serious questions about how Jesus is understood.
By John, Jesus has been considerably elevated ("my Lord and my God").
The earliest Christianity as "living the Spirit-led life" is somehow
overshadowed by the role of faith in Jesus -> you will have eternal
life.  The conflict makes the focus be on preservation rather than
growth.  Keeping, protecting, holding the community.

SM: We need to be ordered in order to survive.  Parallel with early
Friends.  Accommodating to the world is precisely what compromises the
vision.  "They were possessed of the Spirit, and lost it" vs. "They
were crazy, and then settled down"  Early Christians, and early
Friends.

TPA: The tension is there, in the NT, between the focus being on
living the Spirit-led life, or being extraordinarily devoted to Jesus.
"If you start only with Jesus's divinity, that's a fixed point: it
[the NT] doesn't reveal its truth".

BPD: So is the problem that they didn't have, as it were, Fox and
Fell, to take things in hand and lead them forward?

TPA: Hmm. The network is there, there are links between the
communities, Paul is travelling, others are too.  And there are things
that are shared/persist, e.g. Jesus, and the life in the Spirit, but
dealing with the world is less systematic, the problem [of outside
pressure] becomes more acute.  This leads towards hierarchy and an
authority structure, centred on Rome by the end of the 1st century.
You have the Bishop of Rome writing to the community in Corinth in
95CE.

SM: Parallel with the shift of power from Swarthmore Hall to London,
with the male Elders in the Second-Day Morning Meeting controlling
what can be published in the Quaker name.  You see the need to control
the public image.

TPA, responding to BPD: You see this in how Jesus goes about his work:
It's not [Gnostic] "we know and you don't", rather "the only way you
can come to this is by seeing it yourself", "there's no bit of
teaching that is going to do this [for you]", difficult, being really
creative:  Parables are _not neat_, they're provocative.

SM: [In a group where] two or three people had had significant
transformative spiritual experiences, and they felt that it isolated
them from their communities, where no-one else had had that...

[Brilliant, speaking with the prophetic voice, post from Linda
 Garrett: https://moodle.woodbrooke.org.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=14564]

==========================
Stuart Masters _The Early Quakers_
==========================

--------------- SM Video 1 ---------
Mainstream Puritanism at the start of the Quaker period is quite
straight Calvanism, with predestination of the Elect as the core.

Radical Puritanism, in contract, really experiencing and knowing God
within yourself, shared with the early Quaker vision.

*The Experience and the Vision*

*Pentecost* -- the catalyst, the enabler

  The spirit of God poured on all people:

  Joel 2:28 (Peter adverts to this in Acts 2:17)

  In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my
  Spirit upon _all_ flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall
  prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
  shall dream dreams. [NRSV] [Emphasis added by SM]

  Made possible by the Incarnation -- a new creation

  Leads to Charismatic aspect of early Quakerism: Embodied
  spirituality Signs, miracles, healing

  [same as TPA above]: The new creation is both individual, and
  universal:

  "...give all diligence to the Spirit's motion and leadings, what it
  moves against, and what it leads to; for now will God make all
  things new: a new creation, new heavens, and new earth, and new
  heart and mind, and a new law, a new man to walk therein with his
  Maker with cheerfulness" James Nayler _Milk for Babes and Meat for
  Strong Men_ [from prison, 1660, published 1661]
  http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/milkmeat.html

*The New Covenant*

  Jeremiah 31:33-34 [loc. cit. above at *The living word*]
   repeated in Hebrews 8
  
  The image of God fully restored, God will teach us Godself.

But the truth of this in the early Church had been lost, people had
turned away from the spirit and power of that experience and that
direct inward intimacy, and had turned again to 2nd-hand, outward,
mediated sorts of ways of relating to God.

  "And this we witness to be that covenant and that power by which we
  are entered into that inheritance which is eternal and are made
  partakers of the divine nature; which nature is righteous, merciful
  and just, meek and patient, faithful and diligent to the obedience
  of the cross, long-suffering, full of love, moderation and
  temperance, and in all things thereby are transformed into his
  likeness,68 so far as we are entered into and abide in this
  covenant, so that we can truly say, here he is all, and self is
  nothing" James Nayler _A Salutation to the Seed of God_ 1655
  http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/sal_seed.html

Christ living in us (ref. Paul in Galatians 2:20)

*The Apocalyptic*

Not about cataclysmic conflict and destruction, but primarily about
God removing the veil that obscures our vision of things.

People begin to see themselves and the whole creation through divine
eys rather than through their limited and often distorted human
vision.

  "The word is that which was in the beginning, and was the beginning
  of all visible things, and that by which all things were made, but
  itself is invisible; which though it be the upholder of all visible
  things, yet can no visible thing reveal it; yet doth it reveal the
  ground and use and end of all visibles. And as without it 'was
  nothing made that was made', so without it is nothing seen as it was
  made, nor anything can be guided nor used in its pure place; but
  whatever man meddles with, not having the word in him to guide,
  order, and sanctify, the same he defiles, and it is polluted as to
  him. Nor can this word be comprehended in heaven or earth; without
  this word can no holy Scripture be read with profit, for it opens
  the Scriptures, and the Scriptures declare of it, yet cannot the
  Scriptures nor all the writings of the world comprehend it nor
  declare the depth and extent of it, which is beyond all generations;
  yet is it the teacher and guide of his own in all generations; and
  in all generations of saints hath been known in measure, more or
  less immediately, though it has no place in the world's profession."
  James Nayler _Love To The Lost And a Hand held forth to the
  Helpless To Lead out of the Dark_ 1656b
  http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/lovelost.html

["I am not the Christ, but Christ lives in me"]

*The Prophetic* - the image of God has been fully restored in the human

Back to Jeremiah and Paul:  In the new humanity, people become vessels
through which God speaks and acts.

This is what humanity was created to be, was lost, and is now possible
again.

  "Verily the Lord God hath sent me to declare and publish, and sound
  forth hsi message unto all Israel, even to declare the day of free
  love, and everlasting consolation, how blessed a thing is it for the
  Brethren to dwell together in the unity of love and the Holy Spirit,
  in the covenant of love and peace, in the union of Saints in the
  Light."  Dorothy White _Unto All God's Host in England_ 1660
  [not online?]

The Fall was a fragmentation, the new opportunity is to find a
communal identify: a temple of living stones.

Rather than sitting helplessly, knowing nothing about your own
salvation or lack thereof.  No, heaven has come down to earth and is
dwelling in us, and we are showing it forth.

  "thus is the Living God Purifying his Temples [us?]; and he is
  making a Glorious Situation, a Heavenly Habitation, and an
  Everlasting dwelling place in the Sons and Daughters of Men; for God
  is now come to dwell in his people, as he hath said, I will dwell in
  them, and I will walk in them, and a people hath God chosen to dwell
  in, and this is Gods everlasting day of loving kindness," Dorothy
  White _A Visitation of Heavenly Love_ 1660
  http://www.qhpress.org/cgi-bin/esrlink.cgi?doc=E27763157&name=dorothy.white
    [page 6]
  http://dqc.esr.earlham.edu:8080/xmlmm/docButtonB?XMLMMWhat=builtPage&XMLMMWhere=E27763157.P00000010-6&XMLMMBeanName=docBean&XMLMMNextPage=/printBuiltPageBrowse.jsp


  "And when God descends from heaven to walk on earth in his temples
   [us], and to require his worship to himself out of all sects and
   traditions, this is his entertainment from all that look for him in
   observations, whose coming is within, and his kingdom is within
   you."  James Nayler _What the Possession of the Living Faith Is_
   (from prison, printed 1659)
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/possess.html

[Note also, and c.f. my earlier understanding of Barclay on the Day of Visitation,
that QHP's vocabulary notes to Barclay's apology say

  "_day_: period of time (not necessarily a calendar day)" ]
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/barclay/apology/index.html#vii.7

Early Friends viewed heaven primarily as a matter of (intimate)
relationship with and participation in God.

  "But his kingdom in this world, in which he chiefly delights to walk
  and make himself known, is in the hearts of such as have believed in
  him, and owned his call out of the world, whose hearts he hath
  purified, and whose bodies he hath washed in obedience <6> and made
  them fit for the Father to be worshipped in,"
  James Nayler _The Lamb's War against the Man of Sin_ (1657)

Scattering and fragmentation brought back into oneness and into union

Choice for humanity: A life focussed on the Creator, or on the
created.

Abiding in that which is uncreated and eternal, revealing the divine
nature and leading to eternal live

Abide in that which is temporary and corruptible leading inevitably to
sin and death

  "But that which is born of the heavenly, is heavenly, spiritual,
  eternal, and incorruptible; which is the state of the new man, which
  of God is begotten of the divine nature; and as is his nature, so is
  his works; and so his delights are spiritual; for as is the man, so
  are his works; and as is the tree, so is its fruit. And so he that
  is born of this seed is born of God; and he that is born of God sins
  not, in whom that seed remains. And all who remain in this seed, and
  it in them, this hath the promise and power that puts off the old
  man with his deeds, lusts, and affections;"
  James Nayler _Love to the Lost_ (1656)
  http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/lovelost.html

[But note that there's still a bit of "jam tomorrow" lurking...]

  "he that puts on truth and righteousness puts on immortality and
  eternal life, and freedom; this is our house from heaven, and hath
  power to save upon earth, and to take us up to heaven, to be with
  God forever, in whom is the kingdom, power and glory over all,
  blessed forevermore."
  James Nayler _The Lamb's War_ (op. cit.)

Early Friends felt that they were living in the same life and power
that the apostles [and the saints in general?] had known following
Pentecost.

  "_To those who are called Papists (and others) who Desires to know our Ground._

  "The ground on which we are is that upon which the prophets and
  apostles and all the holy men of God ever were; and on that
  foundation are we builded, Jesus Christ himself, who is the light of
  the world, which hath enlightened everyone that cometh into the
  world, being the chief cornerstone: which light of Christ is one in
  all consciences, by which we are led out of all the ways of darkness
  into the light of life; which life is in the Spirit, contrary to all
  the former lusts and pleasures which we lived in while we walked in
  the flesh, after the course of this world, following the corrupt
  practices and precepts of men."
  James Nayler _A True Discovery of Faith_ (1654 and 1655)

---------------Discussion

BPD: The Jesus event being central?  Not mentioned much?

SM: Early Friends don't divide Jesus and Christ.  They are accused of
ignoring the historical Jesus.  But it was the Incarnation
(ref. Patristics) "God became human so that humans could become like
God".  If it hadn't been for the Incarnation, and the catalyst of
Pentecost.  It was always the intention that we should be the image of
God in Creation, and the Incarnation makes it possible again.

Without the outward work [the Incarnation], the inward work wouldn't
be possible.

BPD: It's Christ has come again, not Jesus has come again?

SM: That depends on whether you think early Friends had an orthodox
Christology.  Nayler, IMO, is not prepared to separate Christ and
Jesus.  Once the Word became flesh in Jesus, that's a new reality.
Calvinist criticism "Jesus is living bodily at the right hand of the
Father, how could he possibly be in you?".

Quakers are much closer to the Catholic and Lutheran position: the
ubiquity of Christ, Christ is not limited by time and space.

TPA: What about the early _Christian_ emphasis on the idea that the
new reality has to be _communicated_, the Apostolic obligation,
prophecy, we are the ones who are _sent_.

SM: Preaching campaign that was launched in 1654--55 was one of
greatest evangelical exercises in the history of Christianity.  Not
"this is a new set of doctrines, which we want you to believe in" but
"this is an experience that we've had, and you need to join with it as
well!".  It's full of great joy and fearlessness.  But it wanes by the
end of the 1650s, as persecution ramps up.  "Why hasn't it spread, why
aren't they getting on board before the boarding ramp is pulled up"

TPA: So there is a sense among early Friends that there is a
particular time opening up?  Because that was the case for early
Christians:  "the time is at hand".  There's an urgency here, this
_is_ the moment.

SM: Definitely.  Those expectations are very widespread in Puritain
England in the 1640s and 50s, because of the Civil War, you execute a
king.

"Get in there quick, it's happening now and you might get left
behind."

There were people beginning to experience a bit of this in the 1610s
and 20s, but the effort to bring order to the Anglican Church in the
1630s (Charles I and Archibishop Laud crack down on all dissent)
forces this underground (among Anglican clery in many cases), but
in 1642 the outbreak of the Civil War, and the falling away of the
power of the Church and censorship in that situation, releases all a
pent-up explosion of what had been repressed and you get the
proliferation of sects [including Quakers].

--------------- SM Video 2 ---------

So what?

Earthly authority and structures are not eternal

Social divisions and hierarchy are a consequence of the Fall

Those who set themselves above others and demand deference are guilty
of idolatry [wrt of a _human_ creation]

However because _everything_ is changing, there's no particular
impetus towards planning, putting together a program of _earthly_
changes.

   "The first man is proud and lofty, exalted above his brethren, a
   self-lover, lives to the flesh, and follows the lusts of the flesh
   in all things, and brings forth fruit to the flesh in all
   things,...

  "The second man is humble and lowly, meek and full of love to all,
   honors all men according to God, without respect of persons, would
   have all to come to life, stands in the wisdom of God which is pure
   and peaceable, is willing to be a fool to the world and serpent's
   wisdom, content to suffer wrongs, buffetings, persecutions,
   slanders, reviling, mocking, without seeking revenge, but bears all
   the venom the serpent can cast upon him with patience and thereby
   overcomes him and bruises his head, and is made perfect through
   suffering, and counts it joy, and rejoices in the cross and loss of
   all things that are visible, but looks at that which is eternal,
   for he knows that he cannot have both; for to be a friend to the
   world is the enemy of God."

   James Nayler _A Discovery of the First Wisdom from Beneath and the
   Second Wisdom from Above_ 1653 [first single-authored publication]
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/1wisdom.html

  "God is against you... [7 times!]"
   James Nayler ibid.

[The Church [the bride of Christ] should remain silent so that Christ
 [the husband] can be heard]

  "... he [a minister] began to accuse James [Nayler] for holding out
   a light that doth convince of sin, 'which,' saith the priest, 'all
   have not.' To which James said, 'Put out one in all this great
   multitude that dare say he hath it not.' Saith the priest, 'These
   are all Christians; but if a Turk or Indian were here he would deny
   it.' James said, 'Thou goest far for a proof; but if a Turk were
   here he would witness against thee.'"
   James Nayler and George Fox _Saul's Errand to Damascus_ 1653
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/sauls.html

   Ref. Fox "I called an Indian to us" to rebut the doctor while
   visiting the Governor of Virginia
   Journal
   [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43031/43031-h/43031-h.htm#Page_527]

SM: "When humans participate in the new humanity, they are brought back
[from the Fallen state] into right relations with God and the rest of
the creation.  They understand who _they_ are, what _their_ place is
within the creation, and they understand how to use the rest of the
creation as God intended." [quotes?]

  "Now you shall see yourselves without this faith, perverse one to
   another, fighting and brawling and devouring one another, sporting
   and living in wantonness, fullness, gluttony, and abundance of
   idleness, devourers of the just _and the creation_." [emphasis added]
   James Nayler?Richard Farnworth _A Discovery of Faith_ 1653
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/dfaith.html

  "Now I was come up in spirit through the flaming sword [back into
   Eden, past the guardian angels, courtesy of Christ in me], into the
   paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave
   unto me another smell than before, beyond what words can utter. I
   knew nothing but pureness, and innocency, and righteousness; being
   renewed into the image of God by Christ Jesus, to the state of
   Adam, which he was in before he fell. The creation was opened to
   me; and it was showed me how all things had their names given them
   according to their nature and virtue."  George Fox, op. cit.
   https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43031/43031-h/43031-h.htm#Page_97

In the new humanity, Christ is the only true king

Government is needed for a necessary holding action against evil when
we are still Fallen, but their time is coming to an end as they will
no longer be needed.

  "And you rulers of the nation, take heed how you step into the
   throne of Christ or exalt yourselves in his kingdom, and mind what
   power you are entrusted with by the Lord, and be faithful in that
   as the ministers of God, to whom you are to account.o You are to
   punish sin in whom it is, without respect of persons: and if you be
   faithful herein you will find work enough in the nation."

   James Nayler _The Power and Glory of the Lord Shining out of the
   North_ 1653
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/north.html

  "There is no kingdom nor people can truly be said4 to be the
   Lord's and his Christ's, but as they come to be guided and
   governed by the law of his Spirit in their consciences, which
   Spirit and anointinga all must wait for, even from the king that
   sits on high to the least place of government in any people, that
   with it all may know judgment and to do justice, which is of God
   and not of men,"

   James Nayler & Richard Hubberthorne _An Account from the Children
   of Light_ 1660
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/account.html

*The Waning* -- Things begin to soften

  "I would not have any judge, that hereby we intend to destroy the
   mutual relation, that either is betwixt prince and people, master
   and servants, parents and children, nay not at all. We shall
   evidence that our principle in these things hath no such tendency,
   and that these natural relations are rather better established than
   any ways hurt by it."
   Robert Barclay _Apology_, Proposition 15 1678
   http://www.qhpress.org/texts/barclay/apology/prop15.html

A pretty stark change from Nayler, possibly a necessary response to
persecution.

Likewise for women: the principle of spiritual equality is maintained,
but its outward expression is reined in.  Separation of men's and
women's business meeting.

Quaker slave-holding, and particularly the situation in Barbados, also
represents a stepping back from the outward implications of the claim
to the spiritual equality of all humanity.

"Fox affirmed the spiritual equality of slaves, while at the same time
advocatinga  form of 'covenant slavery' which sought to ameliorate the
worst excesses of the practice." SM

Inward spiritual liberation [affirmed] became disconnected from
outward social liberation [dampened].

SM summary of pre- vs. post-1600 Quakerism:
 pre: The new way has come, and we are living in it now, the vanguard
      of the new order
  
      The old ways remain, but are dying, [trouba not, one might say]

 post: The new way is strongly resisted, rejected or ignored

       The old ways begin to reassert themselves

       [People don't talk about living a transformed life in the image
        of God anymore?]

[Perhaps the early Friends depended too much on Cromwell?  They never
even tried to create a little bit of Heaven on Earth in a territorial
sense, the way the Anabaptists did, of course with disasterous
consequences, at Munster]

[I can't help wondering to what extent it was possible to maintain,
throughout the actions that make up most of 'ordinary' life, a sense
of living a transformed life...  Stuart, you've immersed yourself in Nayler's
writings, do you get a sense of how his life seemed to him?  Was life
in the image of God something that came and went, as it were?]

BPD: Christine Trevitt (?) on how Quaker women's publications were
pushed back in the 1670s because they were too enthusiastic/prophetic

TPA: Exactly the same in the early Christian communities!

When you give power to a collective, it tends to move in a kind of
conservative direction [SM, about the loss of the 'mad' life in the
Spirit of the 1st generation of early Friends]

For example wrt slavery, the radical position of individuals comes up
against the collective and gets booted out [ref. Benjamin Lay]

===========SM Two Kingdoms===========

Medieval Catholic Chrisendom: "Two Swords", that is kinds of using force:
   The church can use (lethal) force to defend the faith;
   The state can use (lethal) force to defend the social order.

Reformation: Martin Luther talks about "Two Kingdom":
  A Kingdom of the sword: the realm of public politics, the legitimate
     authority of the state to use force;
  A Kingdom of the Gospel: a personal, spiritual and inward realm,
     ruled by the Gospel of Christ.
Both ordained by God, both legitimate.
One could operate in both, but respecting the relevant authority only
in the relevant sphere.
So you can, as it were, _ignore_ the teachings of Jesus in the public
sphere, and this allows the church and the state to avoid conflict.

But for the _radical_ wing of the Reformation the two kingdoms were
different:
  The temporal state
  The eternal/heavenly state
and they are in _conflict_.  And the Anabaptist expectation was that
the temporal kingdoms were dying and the kingdom of Christ was coming.
And this is the one the early Quakers adopted.

When this didn't happen (for both groups), and the state fights back,
what do groups do wrt the two kingdoms view?  You see yourselves as a
"faithful remnant", managing your boundaries, and keeping yourselves
as perserving the purity of their alternative vision, and so taking
strict control of membership and members' behaviour, "in the meantime".


========== Ben Pink Dandelion - _Later Quakers_ =========

Different churches have different ways to wait faithfully, in the
meantime, prior to the end time.

For early Friends, we've come to the end of waiting, the Future has become the Now

The New Covenant has come in to play.

The rest are being held back by their ministers, so no tithes.

The Christian calendar is not needed, the liturgy of the Mass is not
needed, they were part of the needs of meantime, focussed on
remembering the First Coming.  Ref. Corinthians 11:26
    
   "For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim
    the Lord's death _until he comes_." 1 Cor. 11:26 NRSV [emphasis
    added]

Our communion is Revelation 3:20; Revelation 8:1

 "Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice
  and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you
  with me." Rev. 3:20 NRSV

 "When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven
  for about half an hour." Rev. 8:1 NRSV

No need for separated buildings/times/priests/outward sacraments.

A Second Coming liturgy, _after_ the reunion of Heaven and Earth,
_after_ Jesus has come.

No particular date, it is _unfolding_, a "realising eschatology".

There's a debate in Quaker studies as to when a second period starts,
call it Restoration Quakerism.  Quaker Act of 1662, or the shift in
the Quaker message that begins in 1666, or maybe 1656 with the
beginning of corporate testing, a slightly less prophetic Quakerism
(ref. Moore and Allen).  Joke: perhaps the first period only lasted a
couple of weeks.

Fox goes into some despair in 1658 when Cromwell dies, but recovers in
1659 cheers up a bit.

C.f. 1656 A Trumpet sounded forth out of Zion, with 23 targets, the
first is Oliver Cromwell.

A call to repentance, you've let us down.  It's in your face,
full-blooded spiritual warfare, the Lamb's War.

Three years later, Edward Burrough is writing to government saying "be
nice to us", "are you setting a good example".

Fell, then Fox, in 1661, "we utterly deny all outward wars", c.f. the
Fifth Monarchy Men: we're harmless and innocent.

The beginning of the Peace Testimony, maybe, but the end of a
prophetic visionary outward approach.  Instead, a pragmatic Quakerism
that's trying to cut a deal, to ensure the survival.

By 1666 the rhetoric of Heaven on Earth is pretty much gone, replaced
by a lot of emphasis of regulating the church.  The beginning of the
meantime == the Quietist period.  A snooze button has been pressed.

If you no longer think the future is no longer now.  Barclay hedges
his bets on perfection.

Entering a meantime _could_ have meant a change of liturgy,
instituting some outward forms of remembrance and expectation.  But we
didn't.  Because the stillness still worked, to bring us into a sense
of God's presence.

Of course, the liturgy does change in some parts of the Quakerism, but
not until the late 19th century (1875).

How is humanity to wait faithfully?  We're into the 2nd generation of
Quakers, perhaps not having had the transformative experience
themselves.

  "I knew I should be undone forever unless I experienced that power
   that had wrought such a change in my mother and father" [ref?]

Barclay writes a lot about convincement, will come to _everybody_ ==
Universal Elect.  God will decide when the Day of Visitation will
come, perhaps not until the hour of death.
But you may _outlive_ your Day.  And that's an end to it.  This is
(another kind of c.f. Calvinist) spirituality of anxiety.

Diligence is required.  Already by 1670s and 80s, it takes longer,
it's not instantaneous, it _is_ transformative, but with less
certainty and clarity than formerly.  In the 18th c. it's no longer
in the _image_ of God, but working _under_ God, along side the rest of
(corrupt) society.  So the hedge goes up around the Quaker community.

The last article of Barclay's Apology is not about Heaven on Earth,
it's about putting aside fiction, music, entertainment of any kind.
Plain speech persists, plain dress becomes very strict.

Contradiction between in principle interior emphasis and in practice
exterior regulation of identity.

Paused 34:59
========= Closing session ==========
TA: Had a my own convincement experience [30 yrs ago]
    As much about the past (how limited my life was) as about the
     future
    After 6 months, "it settled", and wasn't solitary

    "Surrendering oneself to a hearing and obeying relationship with
     God in spirit"

    This is the key to Heaven on Earth.

    We do keep trying to hold on to a continuing dissatisfaction with
    the way things are.

    Heaven on Earth needs midwives

SM: 

BPD: (Carol Spencer Holiness) "Spiritual transformation on a Greyhound
     bus"
     Something resonates at a deep emotional level (about the right theology).
     The Future is Now: A _collective_ imperative (as the "School of Midwives").
     A problem for the ecumentical project ("Come on, catch up"!)
      c.f. "We hold these things in trust for the wider church"

---------  Mary Lou Levitt -------
It was not by reading, or even sitting in MfW, that brought me to a
sense of being guided, but rather when I had gotten up and gone out
and tried to _do_ something.

1 John 4 17

BPD: C.f. AA meetings -- You _have_ to go to meetings

SM: Unless you are carrying your cross... [Nayler, _Milk for
babes..._]
[c.f. Didst thou submit?]