Tim Peat Ashworth: 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-----------