===================
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_
==========================

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

[paused at 28:40]