Comment by Forrest Curo on 12th mo. 6, 2014 at 11:13pm

Hello William Rushby. I wouldn't try too hard to make the distinction!

Some people tend more inclined towards recognizing and adoring God's presence; some seem more inclined towards working to express and fulfil God's will in the world; and no doubt there are different mixes of those gifts, all from God.

People tend to raise issues of 'this is higher' or 'this is more useful'; but it's God who inclines each person more one way or the other!

Comment by Mark Frankel on 12th mo. 7, 2014 at 3:15am

As has been said, the early Quakers were more in the prophetic than mystical tradition.  Barclay, for example, is definitely not a mystic.  He holds Christ is knowable not just through a meeting for worship but for all men and women and for all time, confronting head-on the scandal of particularity.

Comment by William F Rushby on 12th mo. 7, 2014 at 8:15am

In her book Quaker Ministry, Lucia Beamish offers an insightful explanation of the difference (as she sees it) between mystical and prophetic modes.  I need to reread it before attempting to describe what she wrote.  This being Sunday, I have to get farm chores done and get ready for church, so I can't report on Beamish until later--perhaps as late as tomorrow!

Comment by James C Schultz on 12th mo. 7, 2014 at 2:19pm

I'm going to punt and sit on the sidelines for now and listen but I do have universalist tendencies which I base on not limiting the work accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ.

Comment by Jim Wilson on 12th mo. 8, 2014 at 1:44pm

An interesting thread.  A few observations:

The discussion seems to revolve around whether or not the Quaker traditions is inherently a mystical tradition.  I would like to suggest another framing.  My view is that some Quakers are mystics and some Quakers are not; that the Quaker tradition is spacious enough to hold both.  Having said that, I believe that at this time Quaker mystics are marginalized, mainly by activists whose views seem to dominate. 

My view if mysticism is that the epxerience of God takes place in a field that lies beyond names; that such a direct experience is beyond name and form, beyond affirmation and negation.  It is a kind of luminous darkness.  The approach that mystics take to reach such an experience is typically a series of negations; the negation of  sensory experience, of thought, feelings, emotions, and ideas.  When all and everything is put aside, what remains is that upon which all of these things depend; at the same time that ineffable presence transcends any particular manifestation.  I believe that some Quakers took this journey, and some still do.  But I am not convinced that being a Quaker requires that one embark on this via negative.

Mark: I was somewhat surprised by your view that Barclay is more prophetic than mystic.  I had placed Barclay in the mystic camp because of his view that the approach to the inner light must be passive, that we must be passive to the light. 

David: I don't consider the Gospel of Thomas to be a mystical work; I would argue that it is profoundly anti-mystical, elitist, and anti-woman as well.  Pagels has an axe to grind, and a reputation she has built on a highly suspect interpretation of Thomas.  If you want to get to the 'first stirrings' of the idea that God resides in all of us, you need look no further than those passages in the standard Gospels where Christ says 'the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' 

My view is that Gnosticism was an elitist movement, profoundly hostile to women, and hostile to creation as well.  The last saying of Thomas actually states that Mary Magdalene can enter the Kingdom only if she takes on a male body.  It is my view that the last saying is actually the climax of Thomas, and that all the other sayings lead up to it.  Pagels dances around the deeply anti-female sayings of Thomas, but there is no avoiding their presence.  I know this might sound counterintuitive these days, but I suggest that it is actually the orthodox tradition (with a small 'o') that preserved and passed on the mystical element found in Christianity, while the Gnostics were attempting to undermine mysticism.

Thanks,

Jim

Comment by Forrest Curo on 12th mo. 8, 2014 at 8:52pm

No, the Gnostics in many respects represented a more Quaker-flavored understanding than their 'Orthodox' counterparts. ie, their insistence that 'Salvation' wasn't about receiving sacraments administered by authorized personnel  but about receiving communion & revelation directly.

The culture they were embedded in -- all of the different 'Christian' factions -- was deeply anti-female; and if anything they followed Jesus' example in resisting that trend.

The trouble is, as Jacob Needleman nicely put is somewhere sometimes: ~There's a tendency for people to turn an experience of gnosis into a gnosticism.

Once you had a group of people insisting that direct revelation trumps written texts, you also had conflicts over 'whose interpretations of texts' and 'whose direct revelation'. Instead of pulling rank on each other, I wish they could have more often come together to consider such questions in a more Quakerish spirit.  What Gnosticism developed into looks just as hierarchical and Authority-ridden as The Church.

Comment by Craig Dove on 12th mo. 9, 2014 at 9:09pm

I like Forrest's response - God's categories not being the same as ours - but I'm also curious as to the distinction between the mystical and the prophetic. 

I haven't yet read all of Tracy's essay, but I find that idea of God being "both transcendent and immanent, present among us, even within us" very powerful and essential in guiding the work that I do. I'm looking forward to reading more!

Comment by Keith Saylor on 12th mo. 10, 2014 at 5:14am

In "Lucia Katherine Beamish, The Quaker Understanding of the Ministerial Vocation; with Special Reference to the Eighteenth Century (University of Oxford: D.Phil thesis, 1965)" the author writes:

"Beamish holds that the prophetic experience of God involves an ‘inner voice’, and the mystical ‘inner illumination’. The latter is a gradual process leading to union, involving contemplation and meditation leading to a love of God surpassing feeling. This was characteristic of 17th c Quietist writers such as Fenelon and Mme Guyon. For Fox and his followers, on the other hand, there was an ‘inspirational suddenness.’ Just as for the Hebrew prophets, God was experienced as near at hand but also over and against. Fox kept a self-effacing silence about his own love for God. Quaker ministry lost sight of Fox in this respect, and sapped its potential strengthen by an inordinate introspective subjectivity, which can be a subtle form of pride. This was never a wholly unmitigated process, however. Story asks to be created anew after God’s image, and disposed according to his will, to show Him to the nations: this expresses a prophetic, ministerial side to Story as well as the mystical."

The direct unmediated experience of Christ's presence anchoring conscious and informing conscience is essentially an "inner voice" and an "inner illumination." In the conscious, illumination happens and in the conscience, the inner voice is heard. The prophetic experience is the lichenization of voice and illumination. The profound experience of Being "near at hand but also over against" is the coming together of two distinct experiences into a completely new, distinct, and independent experience ... a new Being/being ... the former and the latter lichenized.

Is it not a wonder and to live this symbiotic grace! To experience directly the very generation of new Being through the volition of Christ's inward Light ... the second coming.

Thank you William for your mention of Beamish that lead to my finding the piece quoted:

Link to full piece

Comment by William F Rushby on 12th mo. 10, 2014 at 5:43am

Keith Saylor wrote: "Thank you William for your mention of Beamish that lead to my finding the piece quoted"

Thank you, Keith, for finding this summary of Lucia Beamish's thesis.  I have her mimeographed book, Quaker Ministry, but was unaware that her thesis had been summarized online.  I wish that her thesis would be published in book form in its entirety.

Comment by Jim Wilson on 12th mo. 10, 2014 at 10:21am

Good Morning Forest:

Thanks for posting your take on the Gnostics and Thomas.  As usual, we see things differently.  When I first read Thomas and other Gnostic scriptures I was very enthusiastic about them.  Slowly I came to see them as profoundly hostile to a view of spirituality that I wish to cultivate, and, I believe, contrary to what the Quaker tradition offers.  Online forums are not a good place to go into a lot of detail, so I will just summarize my current understandings:

1. The Gnostics were an anti-female tradition.  The closing of the Gospel of Thomas states this clearly.  From the Gnostic perspective you have to be a guy to get into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Nowhere in the traditional New Testament Canon can one find this teaching.  For this reason I disagree with you that the anti-female teachings of the Gnostics are on a par with those found in the NT; I think they are of a different order and magnitude.  The idea that the NT is anti-female is mostly based on a few passages from Paul; though Paul does not exclude women from Heaven.  For a defense of Paul I recommend Paul Among the People by Sarah Ruden, a Quaker author.

2.  The Gnostics were extreme dualists.  And this dualism was configured in such a way as to denigrate creation.  The Gnostics actually argued that an evil deity, the demiurge, created our world.

3.  The Gnostics were hostile to creation; as noted above.  I put this forward as a separate point because those who are attracted to Earth Witness would find themselves in very hostile territory among the Gnostics.  It is the traditional teachings that value creation, not the Gnostics.

4.  The Gnostics were elitists and esotericists, an approach traditionally critiqued by Quakers.  The idea in Thomas is that by comprehending the cryptic ‘Secret Sayings’ of this Gospel you will gain the Kingdom of Heaven (if you are a guy).  This kind of teaching is only for a select few, it is not a universal view of God’s grace.

5.  The Gnostics were an anti-Jewish tradition.  It is notable that there are almost no references to the Old Testament in the Gnostics scriptures.  The anti-Jewish tendency among the Gnostics could, at times, be extreme.  For example, Marcion wanted to eliminate the Old Testament entirely, and further edited the New Testament so as to eliminate all Jewish references.  In contrast, the traditional New Testament scriptures are thick with Jewish culture and scriptural citations. 

6.  The Gnostics were anti-mystical.  Christian mysticism, and mysticism in general, is an approach open to all.  Gnosticism was open only to select, elite few.  It is the orthodox Christians who preserved the open mysticism that is the hallmark of the Christian mystical tradition.  I reference Dionysius the Areopagite’s Mystical Theology as a significant example.  This openness of Christian mysticism is also explicitly stated in a work like Madam Guyon’s A Short and Easy Method of Prayer.  Guyon’s mysticism is not just for a highly educated elite, it is open to all.  In contrast, the Gnostics were explicit elitists.

There are contemporary critiques of Gnosticism which are valuable.  The critiques done by orthodox Christians, such as Irenaeus, tend to be dismissed on sectarian bases.  But there is one outstanding critique of Gnosticism by a contemporary and a non-Christian.  Plotinus, who lived in the third century, and likely knew Gnostics during his long period of study in Alexandria before he settled in Rome, has an extended analysis of Gnosticism in his Enneads.  It is Ennead II.9 and is titled ‘Against the Gnostics’.  It is a difficult read, kind of technical, but well worth the time.  Plotinus, again, was not a Christian so in terms of an analysis of the meaning of Gnosticism I think his analysis is particularly valuable.  It demonstrates that Gnosticism was rejected not just by traditional/orthodox Christians, but also by thoughtful Pagan philosophers.

Brian Hines has written an introduction to Plotinus called Return to the One.  On page 230 Hines writes, “Plotinus strenuously disagreed with the Gnostics of his time who held that the universe was bereft of God, having been created by an evil maker [yes, that is what Gnostics taught], and that salvation was promised to only a select few.”

For those who want to explore modern views about Thomas that differ from Pagels, there is a lot of material available.  John and Thomas – Gospels in Conflict? By Christopher Skinner is a good start.

Having said all of the above, I realize that other people will see things differently and come to different conclusions.  And I am fine with that.

Best wishes,

 

Jim

 

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