“But today we know that Paul’s expectation of God’s imminent kingdom, an expectation which he seems to have shared with Jesus and his disciples, was mistaken. Injustice, horror, and death have not been vanquished; the “new heavens and new earth in which justice dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13) have not appeared. The possibility of faith and hope as Paul understood them is ended for us not by the eschaton but by its failure.”

I disagree with this conclusion, George. If one looks outward at social conditions for proof of the validity of scriptures or early Friends theology, one misses the mark. The purpose of the writings of our tradition is not to describe outward events but instead to assist human beings in developing a higher awareness of reality than what is given naturally – or descended to unnaturally. Our tradition – both scriptures and early Friends writings – witness to the coming of this new creation; they prod us to find it in ourselves; they admonish our remaining at a human or subhuman level of understanding. These writers of our tradition love God and his creation humanity, and so they work to help raise humanity up, even though they were resented, imprisoned, crucified for their insistent work on humanity’s behalf. That is love expressed. Here’s Penington talking about the work of God as it goes forward and recognition of this inwardly is our Quaker religion:

So that this is our religion, to witness the two seeds, with the power of the Lord bringing down the one, and bringing up the other; and then to witness and experience daily the same power, keeping the one in death, and the other in life, by the holy ministration of God’s pure living covenant. And so to know God in this covenant, (in this covenant which lives, gives life, and keeps in life) and to walk with God, and worship and serve him therein, even in his Son, in the light of his Son, in the life of his Son, in the virtue and ability which flows from his son, into our spirits; this is our religion, which the Lord our God, in his tender mercy, hath bestowed upon us (Works, vol. 2, p. 443).