From: valenza@bigq.enet.dec.com (Michael K. Valenza)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker
Subject: Re: Inner Light
Date: 12 Jan 93 11:47:50 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation

In article <1993Jan12.060638.4351@athena.mit.edu>, redingtn@athena.mit.edu (Norman H Redington) writes...
>Christianity and Quakerism, which ultimately are the same thing,
>are not supposed to be religions, living or otherwise. Valenza
>perceives this, but he wrongly supposes that Christianity is a
>system of fixed creeds, appeals to authority, etc. Creeds, and the
>Bible itself, were not given to be objects of idolatrous worship
>(as the early Friends so courageously testified). They were,
>however, given, to be antidotes to human overconfidence. It is
>not easy to distinguish the promptings of the Holy Ghost from
>the _created_ and therefore fallen "light" which we all have as
>well: the case of Naylor illustrates this.  I see the Scriptures,
>as do the early Friends and the Orthodox Teachers, as vectors pointing
>to the truth. How does a vector become outmoded?

>Christianity and Quakerism, which ultimately are the same thing,
>are not supposed to be religions, living or otherwise. Valenza
>perceives this, but he wrongly supposes that Christianity is a
>system of fixed creeds, appeals to authority, etc. Creeds, and the
>Bible itself, were not given to be objects of idolatrous worship
>(as the early Friends so courageously testified). They were,
>however, given, to be antidotes to human overconfidence. It is
>not easy to distinguish the promptings of the Holy Ghost from
>the _created_ and therefore fallen "light" which we all have as
>well: the case of Naylor illustrates this.  I see the Scriptures,
>as do the early Friends and the Orthodox Teachers, as vectors pointing
>to the truth. How does a vector become outmoded?
> 

I think I have not made my position clear.  I am not suggesting that
Christianity is a fixed system of creeds or appeals to authority.  I am
suggesting, on the other hand, that Christianity should not be institutionally
enforced by Quakerism through the imposition of creeds or appeals to authority. 
I recognize and respect Christianity as a living faith, and I was not seeking to
debate or discuss the value of the Christian faith.  My interest was
specifically in institutional role that Christianity plays or should play
within Quakerism.

I also agree that the perceived promptings of the Light should never be taken
simply at face value.  Quakerism is not an individualist religion, nor should it
be, as the Nayler incident shows.  The Bible, as a record of a people's attempts
at understanding God, can be valuable and instructive in that way--just as our
faith community can also be valuable and instructive as we struggle with
continuing revelation.  This was a point that I was attempting to make in an
earlier posting, in which I said

    Quakerism is a living faith, but it also is important to realize that it
    is not an individualistic one.  Quakers form a community of people,
    sharing in their experiences of divine revelation.  We attain value, we
    attain reality checks, we attain spiritual nourishment from others in
    the faith community, just as we provide those things for others.  It is
    a mutual process of give and take, as we struggle with the process of
    continuing revelation.  Turning to any single authority as the final
    source would convert this process from being mutual to being unilateral.

I think that the Bible, despite its flaws, can be instructive, just as the rest
of our faith community can be instructive, despite the human flaws of our fellow
Friends.  From a Quaker perspective, the biblical assertion that God ordered
massacres at Jericho and Ai or endorsed the Holy War thesis of the book of
Joshua does not make the Bible worthless; such ancient expressions of theology
reflect the best that human authors of that work could do as they struggled to
understand God--just as we also struggle to understand God (or the Ultimate, or
whatever word we choose to use).  Friend Gracia Fay Ellwood, in a Pendle Hill
pamphlet "Batter My Heart" published a few years ago, discussed the use of
sexist and patriarchal images in the Bible and the cultural values of violence
and abuse that were associated with these images.  There is, as she pointed out,
both good and bad to be found there:

	The cause of equality, justice, and peace requires...a deep-level
	understanding of the bases of hierarchy, oppression and violence;
	and an important source of these evils in our culture is, unhappily,
	the Bible, the very source that has often inspired its readers to
	oppose them.  I do not refer only to its influence upon those
	Christians and Jews who consider it absolutely authoritative; the
	Bible has done much to shape Western culture as a whole, to influence
	commonly-held views as to the proper relationship between male and
	female, between ruler and ruled, between the Divine and human.  Its
	effect has been ambivalent, tending to put out the fires of violence
	and oppression by day while relighting them by night.

This ambivalence is a necessary response to the Bible becuase the Bible is a
complex collection of works.  Ellwood applied this to a specific issue, that of
sexist and patriarchal images of the Divine that are found within the Bible. 
Yet she also praises the Wisdom literature and particularly the Song of Songs
(also praised by Jewish author Arthur Waskow for similar reasons) for their more
egalitarian images.  She points out the need for us to re-image God 

	Can we continue to use male images for God in the old manner without
	implicitly supporting patriarchy?  Can we use any hierarchical
	images for God (either male or female), or any images of submission
	for humanity, without in some way fostering oppression?

	I see no way that we can do so and remain loyal to our
	testimonies...

This process of re-imaging God is an expression of the process of continuing
revelation that Quakers participate in.  The Bible, as a foundational work in
Western theology, is inevitably a part of traditions that founded our faith. But
we need not be bound by this collection of works as the be all and end all of
what must be.   I am thus not suggesting either that we take the Bible as a
cookbook (the fundamentalist position), or that we jettison it as worthless, but
rather a middle position, in which we respectfully consider the Bible as an
instructive but flawed work that is part of our traditions and heritage.

Mike Valenza
Newsgroups: soc.religion.quaker