“Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”
(Deuteronomy 30:11-14, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
What does it mean for Quakers to believe in continuing revelation?
You could say it means that God hasn’t given up on us yet—that God still coaches us from the sidelines, offering messages of encouragement (or warning) at appropriate moments.
As I write that, though, I wonder if the phrase “from the sidelines” implies a greater distance between us and God than might actually exist. (For the purposes of this message, let’s stipulate the existence of something that the Quaker tradition, rooted in Christian faith, has identified as “God” or alternatively “Spirit.”) The earliest Friends felt the divine presence in their world; that presence guided their faith and their actions.
In the final chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses advises the Israelites on how to fulfill their covenant with God. I find myself drawn to his insistence that they could hold up their end of the bargain with ease, that God had not set them up with an impossible task. I wrote about this in an earlier message, looking at the scene in Mark where Jesus reminded the Sadducees of God’s two greatest commandments: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
In that message, I mentioned Rabbi Shai Held’s description of “a God of love and kindness who summons God’s people to live lives of love and kindness.” But to hear that summoning, Moses says, we don’t have to travel to the far ends of the world or beyond.
“No,” Moses declares, “the word is very near to you.”
Similarly, Friends believe that God gives every person “a measure of Grace,” as the 17th-century Quaker theologian Robert Barclay put it in An Apology for the True Quaker Divinity. Having done so, Barclay continued, “in and by this Light and Seed, [God] invites, calls, exhorts, and strives with every man, in order to save him; which as it is received, and not resisted, works the salvation of all.” Just as Moses says, God’s word has already been placed in our hearts, waiting for us to recognize its presence.
(Art Institute of Chicago/Gift of Mrs. James Ward Thorne)
Revelation, then, may not impose God’s will upon us so much as it draws out the potential already within us. When we make the deliberate decision to enter into the covenant of loving God and our neighbors, God provides a power boost: “The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants,” Moses promised, “so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.”
If you believe you have experienced a genuine spiritual revelation, after all, it only makes sense that you would choose to reorganize your life around it. In the New Testament, one reads of “repentance.” The original Greek word, metanoia, can also be translated as “a change of mind.” Not “change” in the sense of small decisions like apple juice with breakfast instead of orange juice—more like the “transformation” of big life decisions, like, say, leaving the military to become a peace activist. Or, to make this more immediate to our present context, joining the Religious Society of Friends. Or realizing that you have a specific leading as a Friend.
Quakers believe not only in the possibility of such transformations, but in their reality.
Furthermore, we believe that while human psychology can help us understand such life-changing experiences, it cannot always completely account for them. A full reckoning often requires acknowledgement of a divine element igniting the transformation—the source of a moment of revelation.
Each of us defines the contours of that divine element for ourselves. Many Friends see the God of the Hebrew Bible and the Christ of the New Testament in it. Others may describe Spirit by drawing upon concepts they’ve learned from other religious traditions, or adopt a broadly universalist perspective, or treat the numinous as an abstract force without recognizable “personality.”
Whatever God may look like in our imaginations, though, Friends have the common experience of moving through this world as if we have had “life and death, blessings and curses,” set before us—and, as Moses called upon the Israelites to do, we have chosen life.
My understanding of the Holy & Eternal One(ness) is that it is the “ground of all being” (Paul Tillich). This universal spirit animates everything in the Universe(s). “God” is the One in All and the All in One…both immanent and transcendent. To simplify what is ultimate mystery — the physical Universe, and everything & everyone it contains, is the bodily manifestation of the Holy & Eternal One(ness). I reject the anthropomorphic deity of God, as presented in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, that make God in our image & likeness. True spirituality helps us to manifest the God within our humanity, as did Jesus & all the great prophets & saints of all religions.