The Creation in the Fall

Catherine Wilcox records that early Quakers frequently described the Fall as ‘going forth’ from one state and ‘entering into’ another state, separate and contrary to God, an act of the first man’s and woman’s free will.⁷⁵ Humankind thus lost unity with God, throwing the created order as a whole into disorder. There is some ambiguity over early Quaker statements on the status of the creation in the Fall, in which two rather different emphases can be identified. The first of these sees both humanity and the rest of creation being corrupted, having become ‘enslaved’ to one another. The second contrasts the state of humanity with that of the rest of creation, which remained, at least to some extent, uncorrupted by the fall of humankind.

In the fall, the true authority or ‘dominion’ that God had originally given to humanity over the natural and physical world was lost, and man and woman became slaves to evil and base desires. Fallen humanity’s relations with the products of creation were now typically self-indulgent and contrary to God’s order:

…and the power of the earthly darkness gained dominion over him to sway his affections, desires and lusts into vanities of the earth, and he lost his dominion over the creatures; and they gained dominion over him to serve and worship them, and to please himself with them who became captive with his mind to be ruled by them in vanity and in evil…being turned from the Covenant wherein he was set, into his own, willing and desiring in the outward Creation…⁷⁶

Burrough attributed the corrupted nature of the creation as a whole to human disobedience:

74 Howgill, Invisible Things of God, 184.

75 Wilcox, Theology and Women’s Ministry, 22.

76 Burrough, State and Condition of Mankind, 4.

the first Creation hath been defaced, and lost its Glory; and it hath been corrupted and degenerated quite from the perfect state as it was created in…

and hereby all things have been diverted from their proper and perfect place and service, to which they were ordained in the beginning…⁷⁷

In an earlier work, however, Burrough expressed a rather different view.

Here, he distinguished between, on the one hand, humanity and humanity’s

relationship with the rest of creation as being both ‘out of the covenant of God whilst, on the other, the rest of creation still ‘stands in God’s covenant.⁷⁸ Despite human disobedience to God, the creation other than humanity was thus in some intrinsic sense still ‘pure’:

and [man] being possessed with evil and corrupted, he makes all creatures evil in his exercise of them, and he corrupts them and perverts them to another end than wherefore they were created…and they are become a curse unto man and not a blessing, though in themselves are neither cursed, nor evill, nor

defiled…and ruling over them in oppression and cruelty and hard-heartedness, and not in the wisdom of God…and this ought not to be for it is out of the Covenant of God, in which all creatures were made, and in which they stand, except the creature man, who degenerated out of God’s Covenant…⁷⁹

William Smith also referred to the ‘pure creation being in sore travail and pain’,⁸⁰ suggesting that the creation as a generality was still fundamentally ‘pure’, but

subverted from its true destiny by humanity’s disobedience to God. At the same time, Smith saw the outward creation comprising both divine and corruptible elements. He referred to humanity’s evil deeds arising from ‘the corruptible part of the visible creation’,⁸¹ and having been led astray into the ‘fallen properties of the corruptible part of the creation, in which he is become as a Beast without understanding’.82

77 Edward Burrough, A Discovery of Divine Mysteries; Wherein is unfolded Secret Things of the Kingdom of God (London: Robert Wilson, 1661), 12.

78 Burrough, Standard Lifted Up, 19.

79 Ibid.,19.

80 Smith, ‘New Creation’, 141. See Romans 8: 22.

81 Ibid.,134.

82 Ibid.,138. Smith re-iterated this idea several times in this work. By way of explanation, he referred to a part of the creation ‘which did not keep its station, but moved out of the Wisdom…for which cause it was cast down by the Power, & driven into the lowest parts of the Creation…and this is the place of that part which kept not in the holy Order of the pure Creation…and his name is Serpent, the

Devil…(ibid.,130).

James Nayler, developing a theme from John 1:1-15, also expressed the paradox of God’s unrecognised presence in the creation as a whole:

God is the life of every Creature, though few there be that know it; for the darkness sees him not, nor his life…So this that was in the beginning, is given to keep in order all the Creation…but the darkness comprehends it not, though it shine in it: so all that abide in the darkness are destroyed, not discerning the life, to order and govern the Creation in the light.⁸³

Fox’s Evaluation of the Creation

Although George Fox described himself as ‘a lover of all souls and of the whole creation of God’,⁸⁴ modern scholars have been divided over how to interpret his position on the creation. Evidence presented in this chapter demonstrates that Fox supported the biblical interpretation of God’s creation, in terms of his belief in the original perfection of creation, the fall of creation through human disobedience, and also his own experience of God’s providence in the creation, as well as God’s revelation to him of the true nature and significance of the creation. Nevertheless, Fox clearly perceived evil elements at work in the fallen creation, warning that ‘in the earth dwell all the noisome creatures, and the evil beasts which are hurtful to the creation: for in the earth the devil dwells and walks’.⁸⁵ Fox went so far as to describe the present earth as ‘cursed’,⁸⁶ but linked this to the fall of humanity. Fox’s use of biblical metaphors from the natural and physical world to illustrate human failings

83 Nayler, Love to the Lost, 3.

84 George Fox, ‘A Declaration to the Jews’, in Works 4: 297. Nayler, Burrough and William Smith described themselves in similar terms. Burrough as ‘one who hath measured and viewed in true judgement the condition of all mankind; who is a lover of souls, and a friend to the creation of God’

(Burrough, State and Condition of Mankind, 2). Nayler as ‘one that seeks the redemption of Sion’s Seed, and a Lover of the Creation of God’ (Nayler, title page to Love to the Lost). Smith described himself as ‘one who dearly loveth the Creation of God’ (Smith, ‘New Creation’, 138).

85 George Fox, Epistle XXIV ‘To all Friends every where…’ (1653), in Works 7: 32.

86 George Fox and Ellis Hookes, Instructions For Right Spelling, And Plain Directions For reading and Writing True English (n.p., 1673), 21.

indicates that he saw in the condition of other creatures that they too had fallen into a state of corruption:

The word of the Lord to all ye fruitless trees, ye dry trees, ye oaks, ye tall cedars, ye fat bulls of Basham…which snuff up your noses in the top of the mountains and the Forrests, ye high-way-ground, ye stony-ground, ye goats, ye wolves, ye dogs, ye swine, ye serpents…walking after your lusts: this is not railing, this is the Scripture-language.⁸⁷

Fox also used botanical metaphors to illustrate the superficial and transient qualities of both the physical world, and of human folly and deceit:

O how full is the land of Sorcerers and witchcrafts! The mystery of her hath deceived many through her whoredoms. Green was the grass, and fresh was the flowers, the bay-tree spread itself, and the haw-thorn, but the time is coming of fading; the flower will fade, and the grass will wither, and the whordom and the inchanter must come to judgement…⁸⁸

Thus Fox repeatedly enjoined his followers to abandon earthly desires and the ways of the world in favour of true spiritual knowledge and the spiritual life, urging Friends to be ‘as strangers to the world, and all worldly, created and visible things’⁸⁹ (2.5.3).

Glen Reynolds sees Fox acknowledging ‘a very “real” and active presence of evil associated with the visible and created world’.⁹⁰ Whilst Reynolds admits that Fox

‘does not unambiguously express an ontological aversion to matter and the visible world per se ’,⁹¹ he goes on to claim that such passages ‘arguably illustrate a radically negative evaluation of post-Fall Creation and matter’⁹² and a ‘distinctive negative attitude towards “matter” generally’.⁹³ Reynolds cites the following passage in which in which Fox described the antagonism between the divine spirit and ‘the world’⁹⁴ to

87 George Fox, The Vials of the Wrath of God Upon the seat of the Man of Sin (London: Giles Calvert, 1655), 9.

88 Ibid., 4.

89 George Fox, Epistle CCLXXIII ‘Not to trust in uncertain riches’ (1669), Works 8: 18.

90 Reynolds, Fox a Gnostic, 242.

91 Ibid., 76.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid., 75.

94 Pickvance, Companion, 100-2.

argue that Fox ‘viewed the world and matter [my italics] as being contaminated as if in a fallen state since its foundation’:⁹⁵

be married and joined to the seed Christ the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world; from its foundation, I say. For as you are joined to the seed, and married to that which hath been slain from the foundation of the world, which hath the victory and doth overcome; by this you come to the end of the world;

mark, to its end. And now all Friends, look upon the sufferings that have been since the fall, and since the world began…⁹⁶

However, in the same epistle (see below), Fox went on to state that ‘all things were good and blessed in the beginning before the fall’,⁹⁷ and Reynolds’ argument is based on the highly selective use of Fox’s statements about the creation. Other authors have interpreted the same kind of evidence differently, arguing that Fox did not believe the creation to be intrinsically evil or negative. Whilst Melvin Endy recognised a dualistic separation of ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ in Fox’s thinking,⁹⁸ Endy argued that Fox was less concerned with the distinction between the ‘visible’ and the

‘invisible’ than he was to contrast ‘spiritual’ with ‘sinful’ beings,⁹⁹ and drew attention to the key importance of the Fall for Fox. Thus, visible ‘being did not become

radically distinct and even harmful to spiritual being until Adam (who possessed harmoniously both “outward” and “inward” being) sinned and thereby introduced

“corruption” into the world’.¹⁰⁰ Only in the post-Fall world, Endy argued, were

‘visible’ and ‘sinful’ equated for Fox. Douglas Gwyn considers that Fox’s view was not a ‘gnostic negation of the outward, material world’,¹⁰¹ but of creation being ‘cast adrift from its created purpose,¹⁰² being ‘no longer under human dominion in God’s

95 Reynolds, Was Fox a Gnostic, 74.

96 George Fox, ‘A General Epistle to all Friends’ (1664), Works 7: 259.

97 Ibid., 262.

98 Endy, Penn and Early Quakerism, 76.

99 Ibid., 78.

100 Ibid.

101 Gwyn, Apocalypse of the Word, 115.

102 See Romans 8:18.

image’.¹⁰³ Gwyn describes ‘the spiritual orders of the universe…[following]

humanity into confusion’,¹⁰⁴ and argues that most of Fox’s negative references to the outward world relate to the disorder in creation caused by human disobedience to God. He writes that ‘when Fox speaks of the world, or the ‘flesh’, or even ‘the earth’, he is not referring to matter per se but to the fallen way humans live in the material world, idolatrously and egocentrically fixated on things, on the creature in place of the creator’.¹⁰⁵ Thus the creation as a whole was oppressed, but not intrinsically evil for Fox.

An examination of Fox’s views on the creation, both negative and positive, supports the views of Endy and Gwyn. Thus, in a key passage in which Fox

repeatedly referred to all things being blessed before the Fall [my italics], he clearly stated that all ‘outward things, figures, types, shadows, and inventions, have been set up since Adam fell [my italics]; which inventions Christ destroys’.¹⁰⁶ ‘Outward things’, Fox explained, included ‘goods, houses, lands, or inventions of vanities, in the foolish vain fashions’:¹⁰⁷ in this context he was more concerned with human inventions, possessions and preoccupations than with God’s creation. Similarly, the context in which Fox referred to ‘the foundation of the world’, indicates that he intended this to be understood as the world since the Fall, the consequences of human willfulness and sin, and seduction away from the knowledge of inward truth, and not to the work of the creator God. Thus, Fox shared with other early Quakers the view that the present state of the material creation was fundamentally affected by the fall of

103 Douglas Gwyn, ‘Captivity among the Idols: The early Quaker view of sin and evil’, Quaker Religious Thought 22 no.3 (1987), 7.

104 Ibid.

105 Douglas Gwyn to Glen Reynolds, 1. 9. 2000, pers. comm., quoted by Glen Reynolds, ‘Was Fox a Gnostic?’ (Ph.D diss., University of Sunderland, 2004), 89f.

106 George Fox, Epistle (1664), in Works 7: 265.

70 George Fox, ‘A general epistle to Friends, and all people, to read over and consider in the fear of God’ (1667), in Works 7: 284.

humanity. Whilst there was no suggestion of the possibility of the restoration of the physical world from within itself, redemption was possible for humanity, and by this means the creation as a whole would be relieved of its ‘burden’.