A Quaker Understanding of Jesus Christ, Part 4

Can we sustain a Christian understanding of the Spirit while rejecting the outward authority of the Scriptures which our fore parents stoutly declared were given forth by the Spirit? No. We may quibble about interpretation, and we shall continue to seek guidance of the Spirit in discernment, but Friends cannot, without squandering their theological inheritance, deny the Scriptures as providing "clear testimony to the essentials of the Christian faith" and the "only proper outward judge of controversy among Christians." (Robert Barclay, Apology, III, VI). I ask Bible scholars and ministers to approach the text with reverence befitting the "words of God" lest notional religious activity erode the work of the Holy Spirit, lest Bible study become a trade and not prayerful inquiry into the will of God.

Last year on the Internet occurred an extended discussion of George Fox's Letter to the Governor of Barbados. It is well known that some Friends are uncomfortable with it, claiming that such propositional orthodoxy was contrived for prudential reasons. A Friend from Spain, however, discounted the issue of political correctness. He writes of this document: "We can see the first ideas of Friends referring to Jesus and the Bible. They were not humanistic, secular or philosophical ideas. They were really biblical. What was most characteristic in a Quaker was to be biblical! We have walked a long way from then to now and I think that the way has been not the best. In Jesus, César Vidal."

David Johns sent the following quotation, which shows the Barbados letter to be consistent with other testimony. George Fox wrote from Worchester prison, "Something in answer to all such as falsely say, the Quakers are no Christians ..." (Andrew Sowle, 1682).

We believe concerning God the Father, Son and Spirit, according to the testimony of the holy Scripture, which we receive and embrace as the most authentic and perfect Declaration of Christian Faith, being indited by the holy Spirit of God that never errs. 1st that there is one God and Father, of whom are all things. 2ndly, that there is one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom all things were made (John 1; 17) Who was glorified with the Father before the World began, who is God over all blessed forever (John 14). [3rdly] That there is one holy Spirit, the Promise of the Father and the Son,

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