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+++ b/HeavenOnEarth/notes.txt	Wed Jun 16 21:23:53 2021 +0100
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+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-----------
+