Quaker Theology #14

We Are the Missing Link -- Page 6

Concluding Reflections

The Human Being is well organized, although the writing rambles somewhat. Its thesis is massive and complex. It is a large-scale remythologization of the New Testament witness in terms of Jungian archetypal psychology and evolutionary historicism. Thankfully, Wink resists reductionism: he doesn’t try to tell us that the gospel is really about archetypes and species evolution. He respects the faith of those who believe in more traditional terms. But he holds both theists and humanists accountable to a faith that is socially liberating, engaged in unmasking and transforming the powers around us.

Wink notes that, although the Domination System has held sway over much of Christian history, the liberating power of the Son of Man has been rediscovered and reclaimed by many individuals and groups over the course of Christian history. George Fox and early Friends could certainly be counted among them. Early Friends did not focus on the Son of Man tradition as such. Their Christology was high and transcendent. But Fox’s emphasis upon personal experience ("What canst thou say?") consistently humanized his theology spiritually, morally, and socio-economically. For example, in the early chapters of his Journal, George Fox finds his personal transformation replaying the salvation history of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. He summarizes his approach to Scripture:

I saw the state of those, both priests and people, who in reading the Scriptures, cry out much against Cain, Esau, and Judas, and other wicked men of former times – but do not see the nature of Cain, of Esau, of Judas, and those others, in themselves. And these said it was they, they, they, that were the bad people; putting it off from themselves: but when some of them came, with the light and spirit of Truth, to see into themselves, then they came to say, ‘I, I, I, it is I myself that have been the Ishmael, and the Esau’, etc. For then they came to see the nature of wild Ishmael in themselves, the nature of Cain sitting above all that is called God in them.

I saw also how people read the Scriptures without a right sense of them, and without duly applying them to their own states. For, when they read that death reigned from Adam to Moses, that the law and the prophets were until John, and that the least in the kingdom is greater than John, they read these things without them and applied them to others without them, and the things were true of others without them, but they did not turn to find the truth of those things in themselves (Fox, Journal, 1952, pp. 30-31).

Fox counseled that the light first reveals one’s own darkness. In other words, it emerges from the shadow, the eclipse of the ego, or socially constructed self. The light reveals not only the things one knows are wrong in one’s life, but things one is told are good, or good enough. By standing still in this light, one sees what is to be kept and what is to be renounced. It amounts to what Wink would call the integration of the shadow into a more adequate new construction of the self.

In the passage above, Fox describes how the light causes one to stop projecting upon others and find the truth in oneself. One receives power over time to choose the good and serve the truth (Jung’s Self). Early Friends strongly held to the transcendence of the light. But because it is an inward (not inner) light, it comes deeply into one’s experience. One must be willing to turn and stand in the light, to surrender to its teaching. So transcendence and immanence are held in tension in early Quaker understanding. Living in that tension, the early Quaker movement generated enormous powers of personal and social transformation.

I met Walter Wink again in 2000, while I was Quaker Studies Tutor at Woodbrooke, the Quaker study center in Birmingham, England. He was leading a workshop there for staff and committee members of Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Peace and Service. (He told me that in recent years he has become a member in New England Yearly Meeting). In the workshop, he read from the first chapter of the Book of Revelation, where John has a vision of the risen Christ and falls prostrate. Christ orders John to rise up and start writing letters to churches.

To help us gain a more embodied feel for the text, he asked us all to lie prostrate on the carpet of that large room. I must admit, I peeked. It’s not every day one gets to see 30-40 liberal, activist Friends prostrating themselves before the Lord! He then instructed us to rise and write a letter of our own. It proved to be a good exercise in engaged, embodied theology.

More than that, it was gratifying to participate with a group open to new insight from old sources, while engaged in work for a more peaceful and just world. Quaker social witness today ranges from larger, more bureaucratic institutions like QPS (now Quaker Peace and Social Witness) and AFSC, to smaller, more improvised, grassroots groups of all kinds. None of them is perfect. But, as Wink emphasizes, our journey toward authentic humanity must be experimental, with much trial and error along the way.

I conclude with two songs. I wrote the first before reading Wink’s book, but it contains perspectives consonant with his. It goes with the guitar riff from Muddy Waters’ blues classic, ‘Mannish Boy’:

Son of Man

Doug Gwyn, September 2005

Son of Man like a flash of light, lightning from east to west
Son of Man like a thief in the night, like an uninvited guest

Son of Man
there in the burning tower, there in the Gitmo cell
there in the halls of power, yeah, he descends to every hell

Son of Man
well, the experts all declare, he’s just an old superstition
they made a raid on his lair, they found nobody here but us Christians

Son of Man
oh, the politicians have designs, Republicans and Democrats
to tie him to their party line, but it’s more like herding cats

Son of Man
if you know where to look, you can find him near
read his story in the Good Book, then start looking here
bend down ‘til you’re almost fetal, and look for a narrow gate
then pass through the eye of a needle, and pray you’re not too late
hear the groans of humanity, feel the ravages of sin
then the next human being you see – yeah, that’s him

Son of Man
you can’t seem to find him, you’re wondering why
set aside your ideals, boy, you’re aiming way too high
check at the local jail, check the hospital bed
and if that still fails, check to see if you’re dead

Son of Man
feel the heat of his Passion, now you’re getting warm
then follow your own compassion, to where your heart is torn
stand naked in the blinding light of his God awful truth
don’t turn to the left or the right, just be his living proof

Son of Man

The second song is new. It has something to do with global warming and the economy. It goes to the tune of the old revival hymn by the same name.

Higher Ground

Doug Gwyn, April 2007

the waters are rising, I wonder why
is it national debt or that hole in the sky?
but one thing’s for sure, the broad, fruited plain
is quickly becoming a bounding main

well say what you will about human rights
all power is theirs who command the heights
and the prayer of millions, all milling around
is "Lord, plant my feet on higher ground!"

now health care goes boom as the nation goes bust
the stock market zooms as factories rust
the media feed our commodity lust
and the dollar bill smirks, "In God We Trust"

the poor tread water as common sense teaches
preyed on by sharks and all manner of leeches
while middle-class folks stand by and frown
praying, "Lord, plant my feet on higher ground!"

Katrina was just a toe in the water
wait til it gets a little bit hotter
when some die of flood while some die of drought
and Washington keeps on messing about

and the President swears with one hand in the till
while millionaires sit up on Capital Hill
and the Religious Right votes yet one more round
of "Lord, plant my feet on higher ground!"

some say the bell rings from the church steeple
to sell opiates to desperate people
but the drug that works on the ninety-nine sheep
just won’t seem to put that last one to sleep

‘cause you cannot cheat that one honest soul
so ask not for whom that old Church bell tolls
the Son of Man came for the lost and the found
to plant all our feet on common ground

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