1.3 Quaker Inwardness: Relevant previous scholarship (Academic) Introduction
1.3.1 The focus of knowledge gained in and through Inwardness
This section highlights questions about the experiential focus of Inwardness and the manner in which the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ are felt to be related.61 Notions of the consequences of Inwardness are introduced.62
In examination of Inwardness, it might seem self-evident that any knowledge gained would be classified as ‘inward knowing’. However, this would be a misleading
simplification, since the significance of what is known inwardly is often for the consequences it entails outwardly. Many of the authors write of the importance of distinguishing between the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ both as reality and as experience:
they acknowledge the relationship between the two in different ways. For Creasey, there has been a ‘false severance’ between the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’. He claims that this has resulted in Quakerism being in the ‘unenviable position of a religious movement lacking an adequate intellectual formulation and means of self-criticism’ over a
considerable period of time.63 Endy’s examination of religious thought in the growth of Quakerism, distinguishing between inward and outward knowing, accepts a degree of confusion even ambiguity in usage of terms, most probably due to the fact that ‘dualism played a part’.64 For Gwyn, there is a ‘mutually informing relation’ between the two.
However, Gwyn suggests that outwardness is beguiling:
Forsaking inward knowledge for the outward one forsakes the one living path for the many, all dead-ends in a wilderness of confusion; one worships not the one God but many gods, all of them changing and contradictory; one hears not the one Word but many words with no understanding.65
61 Changing perceptions of this relationship are discussed more fully in connection with ‘growth of measure’ in chapter 6.
62 See further discussion under the heading ‘Purpose of knowledge gained’, below.
63Creasey, M., ‘“Inward” and “Outward”’, Journal of the Friends Historical Society, Supplement No. 30 1962: p. 23.
64 Concerning. ‘Ambiguity’ in terms of lack of clarity regarding ‘the Quakers and “Inward”
Religion’. See Endy, M., William Penn, pp. 75-6.
65 Gwyn, Apocalypse, p. 99.
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It is in the multiplicity of the outwardly turned focus that, for Gwyn, human kind is confused and the knowledge of Inwardness becomes veiled.
Creasey, Endy and Gwyn consider the inward and outward as related but, to some degree, distinct, whereas Hinds claims that Quakers knew a continuity or ‘seamlessness’
between not only inward and outward, but also the social dimension of life. Hinds
observes, quoting Richard Bailey, that for Quakers, ‘a new dispensation of the Spirit’ was already in place, in which ‘the indwelling Christ remade the subject not only spiritually but also corporeally’.66 This view leads to consideration, similar to that of Gwyn, of eschatological issues in the revelatory experiences of Friends. Hinds claims that:
King Jesus was already returned, as the inward light dwelling within each believer.
This led, potentially and ultimately, to a quite different relationship to kairotic time, because the inward light brought with it the possibility of ‘the regaining of Paradise in the present’, and with it the end of chronos…’67
The interpretation of Quakers as living ‘out of time’ is important in the sense that Fox preached of the Eternal Being, as known to himself and potentially accessible to Friends in their worship. It is not that kairos and chronos are in themselves crucial to understanding Inwardness in Quaker theology, but rather that Fox himself seems to preach from a
transcendental perspective that acknowledges the universal, immanent nature of Christ the Word kairotically.68 This position is analogous to mystical perspectives in that spiritual experience is found to be timelessly interwoven in the ever-present moment.69 Of
additional importance, from the Quaker perspective, is Keiser’s view that the inward is not
66 Hinds, George Fox, p. 18. Bailey, R. New Light, p. 12, concerning Christ as ‘an operative power of the innermost being’.
67 Hinds, ibid, p. 90, (original emphasis).
68 Smart, N, (in Shepherd, J. ed.) Ninian Smart and World Religions, (Vol. 2), (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p. 98 (Myth and transcendence, p. 483). For Smart, ‘Transcendence … is only intelligible by reference to five elements: nonspatiality, secret omnipresence, special presence, independence and creativity’. His discussion concerns the manner in which these elements are ‘compatible’ and ‘hang together’. These elements are not considered fully here but may have relevance to any future research into the subject of this thesis.
69 See below, next section – on the nature of knowledge gained.
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separate from the outward, but rather exists as the ‘depth within, it is the inner dimension of everything’.70
Knowledge that is termed ‘inward’ is often related to recognition of ‘that of God’ in everyone. However, Creasey holds the view that ‘in Jesus Christ the word became flesh, the divine and eternal manifested and embodied itself in the human and the temporal, the
“inward” made itself known in and through the “outward”’.71
A further point of note is that Creasey speaks of doctrinal differentiation between the Quaker notions of:
‘That of God in everyone’ and
Jesus Christ as ‘speaking to all conditions’.72
He identifies not only the origination of this differentiation but also the leap-frogging resurgence and ascendancy of each at particular times and places in the history of the Religious Society of Friends.73 It might appear that the appeal to ‘that of God in
everyone’ relates to, what he terms, ‘Inner Light issues’, since ‘that of God’ is for Quakers often referred to as the Light within.74 Additionally it might appear that Christ ‘speaking to all conditions’ is a matter of Christology, since Quakers hold that Christ is the Inward Teacher. However, it would seem that there is overlap between these two aspects of Quaker theology. For Gwyn the very nature of Inwardness, as preached by Fox, is to do with the incarnation of Christ, as full embodiment of the Light, but also with the
incarnation in humankind of the gospel that brings knowledge which exceeds the law.75 Within inward knowing is the promise of transformation that has the potential not only to
70 Keiser, ‘The Growing up of Principles’, also Table 6, with reference to the manner in which this thesis claims that Inwardness and outwardness become porous to each other.
71 Creasey, M. ‘“Inward” and “Outward”’ p. 24. See also Thomas, O. C. ‘Interiority and Christian Spirituality’, The Journal of Religion, 80, No. 1 (2000): pp. 41-60.
72 Creasey, Early Quaker Christology , p. 8 and 9.
73 Creasey, ibid, pp. 8-10.
74 On Inner/Inward Light, see chapter 5.
75 See next section relating to covenantal knowledge.
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fulfil personal life but also to in-fill a social community to live in the Spirit. It is then more accurate to accept the two notions, ‘that of God in everyone’ and Jesus Christ as
‘speaking to all conditions’, as concerning two aspects of one truth.
Reference to ‘that of God’ within is framed, by some authors discussed, in terms of the
‘inner light’.76 Issues concerning the Inner Light, as of the pre-existing Christ and the Light that humankind receives only in and through Christ Incarnate, are raised in Eeg-Olofsson’s examination of Barclay’s Apology.77 So also are those of the Light as an
‘object perceived’ or as a ‘means of knowledge’ by means of which theology is lived as personal devotion within a community.78 In the latter interpretation, what becomes opened, or revealed, to awareness as experiential knowing, is sometimes categorised as inspirational and revelatory79 and at other times as practical.80 There is, of course, no reason why it should not be both.
There is little disagreement between these scholars that what is known inwardly is, in Endy’s terms, spiritual and vital reality rather than corporeal, as a dead notional
description of reality. The focus of knowledge gained is worthy of the term ‘wisdom’, and as such it supersedes any trivial notions of human knowing. Inwardness leads to inspirational knowing. Gwyn quotes Fox, saying that having mortified the ‘earthly and natural knowledge’:
Keep to that of God in you, which will lead you up to God, when you are still from your own thoughts, and imaginations and desires and counsels of your own hearts, and motions, and will; when you stand single from all these, waiting upon the Lord, your strength is renewed; he that waits upon the Lord, feels his shepherd, and he shall not want; and that which is of God within everyone, is that which brings them together to wait on God, which brings them into unity, which joins their hearts
76 Dismissed by Creasey as “un-Foxian”, Creasey, Essays, p. xxxix.
77 Eeg-Olofsson, ‘Inner Light,’ p. 34. See also chapter 5. On ‘Inner’ and ‘inward’ light.
78 Note relevant consideration in Blaiklock E. M. (Tr.), The Confessions of St. Augustine, (London:
Hodder and Stoughton, 2009). According to Maggie Dawn’s foreword, theology is not, for Augustine, something to be thought out in private, but rather it is a personal devotional involvement in gaining knowledge to be lived with others as a dynamic discovery. This position pertains also to Quakers.
79 See below on the nature of knowledge gained.
80 See below on the purpose of knowledge gained.
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together up to God. ... Now thou must die in silence, to the fleshly wisdom, knowledge, reason and understanding.81
This is a clear statement of Fox’s recognition of the manner in which God, in
humankind through the Word that is Christ, enlightens not only individuals independently but also, in due time, everyone in unity. Eeg-Olofsson writes of this in terms of ‘right knowledge’, and of main significance here is the question, “what does the ‘right
knowledge of God’ consist of?”82 Eeg-Olofsson maintains that Barclay’s view of ‘right knowledge’ is that it is ‘inner, immediate, certain, and spiritual’. He suggests,
additionally, that Barclay’s concern is to ‘… maintain the necessity and the possibility of mystical knowledge of God, in which this kind of knowledge of God is conceived of as something that cannot be attained by man’s own efforts, neither intellectually nor morally, but is entirely as a gift of God’.83 Endy regards this knowledge as the provider of
‘ultimate authority’ for the individual.84 In turn, Hinds claims that:
Dwelling at the intersection of the still fallen and always renewing world, their [Quakers’] singular discourse ceaselessly recognised the dangers of divisive duality and testified to the power of unity. From there, the doctrine of the indwelling Christ unleashed a productive energy–religious, social, and rhetorical–that galvanised its adherents, as it returned them to a seamless field of divine
signification, where the dualities of here and there, now and then, human and divine dissolved in the unbounded and ubiquitous timelessness of the kairotic moment of life dwelt in the inward light.85
Hinds’ contribution to an understanding of Inwardness hinges on an interpretation of individuals as ‘redeemable, transformable, by the godly action of the catalysing Christ within, in which the seamless material-spiritual world of the early Friends is [once again]
81 Fox, Works iv, p. 132 (my emphasis).
82 Eeg-Olofsson claims that right knowledge, relates to knowledge gained that is mystical versus psychological.
83 Eeg-Olofsson, Inner Light, p. 9.
84 For Endy the individual alone is able to determine and accept the authority of personal experience.
85 Hinds, George Fox, p. 154.
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revealed, enacted and affirmed’.86 The indwelling light (of Christ) is universally present and universally accessible; what is necessary is that Quakers bear witness to the presence, by turning to this ‘single spiritual condition–the universally present inward light’.87 Hinds refers to this as a habitation of ‘unbounded and unified unity’.88 Although the universal immanence of the light within is asserted as present, it is to be enlivened and
particularised in the lived experiential knowing of individuals.
There is too a recognition within much of the work reviewed that experience of Inwardness has consequences. The result of such revelatory knowing is guidance for living. In the main the model of Christ provides the way. Creasey suggests that:
It is generally recognised that the central and distinctive doctrine of the Society of Friends is its doctrine of ‘the Inner Light’. It may, however, be less generally recognised that the features of the doctrine which can truly be said to be distinctive of Quakerism are those which result from the Quaker attempt to express, in terms of the doctrine of the inner light, an interpretation of the Person and work of Christ.
In other words, the distinctive character of the Quaker doctrine of the inner light is that it is a Christological rather than an anthropological one. 89
Whilst acknowledging the Christian framework, Eeg-Olofsson, referring to the work of W. C. Braithwaite, claims that Quakers belong to a type of ‘mystical-spiritualistic Christianity’.90 He adds that present day Quakers also call themselves ‘mystics’, and have a better acquaintance than Barclay, whom he is discussing, with the ‘long tradition of their type of piety’.91 The Christian interpretation of knowledge gained is accepted by Eeg-Olofsson, thus it is the Christian perspective that forms doctrinal guidance. For Gwyn, such guidance leads to covenantal living: what is written ‘in the heart’ covenantally aligns human beings with Christ’s teaching.
86 Hinds, George Fox, p. 120.
87 Hinds, ibid, p. 148.
88 Hinds, ibid, p. 148.
89 Creasey, ‘Early Quaker Christology’, p. 1 (my emphasis).
90 Braithwaite, Beginnings. p. xxxiv.
91 A view referring to a form of ‘rational mysticism’ is expressed by Caroline Stephen, who writes ‘I have no hesitation in describing myself as a ‘rational mystic’. She explains her views in Light Arising, pp. 1-23.
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The focus of knowledge gained in and through Inwardness is thus significantly experiential, personal and, to a large extent, inspirational, and there is the sense that the knowledge is ‘given’ by God rather than gained by human effort.92 Of particular
significance is the manner in which the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ are felt to be related.93 It is also important to note that it is through the corporate understanding of Friends that such knowledge informs and supports ‘gospel living’. [g]94