From: redingtn@athena.mit.edu (Norman H Redington)
Subject: Re: Inner Light
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:35:56 GMT

Friends:
   David Harwood's posting reminded me of my own experiences
so strongly that I am moved to share the testimony of my own
ongoing convincement. I was for several years a member, (or
perhaps an attender, as we were somewhat disorganized), at a
small unprogrammed Friends group under the care of Albuquerque
Monthly Meeting. I had discovered Quakerism through the peace
movement, and initially supposed it to be synonymous with the
apostolic Christianity about which I had read in the Gospels.
   My impressions began to alter, however, almost at once. On
the one hand, the silence of the meeting was everything which I
had imagined, filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit, and
the Friends themselves were almost without exception amazing,
Christ-bearing people, full of love and radiating the Inner Light.
On the other hand, they were for the most part only marginally,
if at all, believers in Jesus Christ. As a Christian, I found 
this very disturbing.
   I still remember my chagrin when a young couple of clearly 
Fundamentalist background visited the meeting.  They were system-
atically visiting every church in town to find one which had
"good Gospel doctrine". They were impressed with the meeting and
wanted to cite some scripture they thought was relevant, but the
meeting had no Bible in its small library. It did have a Tao Te 
Ching.
    I began, like David Harwood, to turn to the Seventeenth Century.
Here were Friends as impressive as their modern counterparts, but
unembarassed by the name of Jesus. Fox' Journal seemed almost a
continuation of Acts -- almost. But here, too, I began to feel dis-
comfort: the austerity and puritanism of the early Friends, and
much of their theology, seemed to grow from a complete rejection of
matter; this Gnostic tendency inevitably led to the rejection of
the Incarnation by the time of the Hicksites. The early Quaker with
whom I came to feel the greatest kinship was the wise Margaret Fell,
and her saying that the teachings of the first generations were not
landmarks but desert campfires has influenced me from the moment I 
encountered it.
   The discovery which resolved my confusion was the realization that
the Inner Light was not some new discovery by George Fox, or even
a rediscovery of something unknown since apostolic times (as the early
Quakers themselves sometimes claimed). The same concept, even the 
same terminology, has always been known in the Christian East. The
Inner Light is the Uncreated Light of Mt. Tabor, which shines from
the icons of the Orthodox Church. The Quaker silence is the silence of
the Hesychasts; the Quaker consensus is the conciliarity of Orthodox
theory. In 1988 I entered the Orthodox Church.
   Nevertheless, I still consider myself a Friend. While the outward
differences are vast, the inward differences between the Society and
the Church are very small. (At a World Council of Churches meeting 
some years ago, the Orthodox delegate was seated with the Old Lutherans,
the idea being that such quasi-mediaeval High Church groups would
have a lot in common. The Orthodox delegate objected; it was the
Quakers to whom he felt theologically closest, and they were being
seated at the opposite end of the hall!)
   I believe that in times to come many other Friends will make the
same transition; indeed, although it sounds impossible, I believe
that the Society as a whole will do so. When this happens the Quakers
will discover who they really are.

Norman


    
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