A Quaker Understanding of Jesus Christ, Part 4
2. Is Christ one term in a series of culturally-based synonyms or a unique and essential referent for these linguistic variables? Do advances in human knowledge through the sciences and through global cultural and technological interaction require Friends to subsume their story to a larger one? If so, would that larger story be ecumenically Christian or ecumenically religious? Can one with integrity assert that early Friends "were on the right track" to a larger religious vision but were restrained by the boundaries of a now outmoded world view? I think not. Such a judgment strikes me as parochial in making contemporary western culture the test of truth. Such a judgment seems both narrow and elitist. It denies the "scandal of particularity" which is Jesus Christ, the Word of God for all persons for all time. To resolve the problem requires a patience with how people use culturally variable synonyms to signify the spiritual reality that is Jesus Christ. As Augustine said, God is greater in our thoughts than in our words and greater in reality than in our thoughts. But we can also firmly resolve fully to affirm the referent of such linguistic signs - the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us, whose glory we, too, have witnessed.
3. What is phenomenal and what is epiphenomenal? Does a reality affirmed by scientific reason and logic carry the Gospel reality on its back, as it were, or is the Word spoken in Jesus Christ the reality that carries reason and logic? To use a Venn diagram, which circle encloses other manifestations of reality: revelation or science? To use another metaphor, which is text and which is commentary? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, said the Psalmist. So said the early Friends. So say I. To stand in awe before a transcendent God may require of Quakers a needed poverty of spirit, which in Jesus' list constitutes the first step toward the virtues of peacemaking and holiness.
4. Is the early Quaker view of the Bible, as the inspired words of God, central or peripheral to Quaker understandings about spiritual reality? Some critics have claimed the Gospels were written to rationalize the failure of Jesus. Some Friends eagerly embrace the views of the Jesus seminar people who deny historicity to the accounts of Jesus, particularly the miraculous claims about nativity and resurrection. Are we to replace Barclay with Borg? Can
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