BIO: Robert Barclay, Quaker theologian (3 Oct 1690)


A list of related biographies follows:
  MARY DYER, QUAKER MARTYR (1 JUN 1660)
  ROBERT BARCLAY, QUAKER THEOLOGIAN (3 OCT 1690)
  GEORGE FOX, FOUNDER OF THE QUAKERS (13 JAN 1691)
  WILLIAM PENN, QUAKER STATESMAN (30 JUL 1718)
  JOHN WOOLMAN, QUAKER VOICE OF CONSCIENCE (7 OCT 1772)
  ELIZABETH GURNEY FRY, QUAKER HELPER OF PRISONERS (12 OCT 1845)
  JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, EVANGELICAL QUAKER (4 JAN 1847)
  STEPHEN GRELLET, QUAKER ARISTOCRAT (16 NOV 1855)
  RUFUS JONES, QUAKER MYSTIC AND SOCIAL ACTIVIST (16 JUN 1948)
  KENNETH BOULDING, QUAKER ECONOMIST FOR PEACE (19 MAY 1993)
  (Many of the biographies have appended sections on aspects of the
  Quaker mvement.)

$$$ ROBERT BARCLAY

     Robert Barclay was an aristocratic convert to Quakerism, the
movement founded by George Fox (see 13 Jan). (His mother was a
Gordon, related to the House of Stuart.) He was born in 1648 at
Gordonstoun <57:42 N 3:23 W> in northern Scotland. In 1666 he became
a Quaker, and in 1670 he married a Quaker woman, Christian Molleson.
Being rich and aristocratic did not protect Barclay from
persecution. He was imprisoned at Aberdeen <57:10 N 2:04 W> during
the winter of 1677, and suffered greatly from the cold in his
unheated cell.  His friendship with the Duke of York (later King
James II) ultimately got him a land grant in the Americas, and he
was governor of what is now Northern New Jersey <@ 40 N 72:30 W>
from 1682 to 1688.  He died on 3 October 1690, just a few weeks
before George Fox.

     Barclay devoted his life to the systematic formulation and
defense of the Quaker position. He began with a pamphlet called
THESES THEOLOGICAE, setting forth fifteen propositions which he was
about to defend. He followed this with his AN APOLOGY FOR THE TRUE
CHRISTIAN DIVINITY, BEING AN EXPLANATION AND VINDICATION OF THE
PRINCIPLES AND DOCTRINES OF THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS. The APOLOGY
[="Defense"] was published in Latin in 1676 and in English in 1678.
If any book is to Quakerism what the INSTITUTES is to Calvinism,
this is it.
     However, the reader who expects a systematic account of Quaker
theology will be disappointed. Barclay devotes 500 pages to fifteen
propositions. The Second Article, CONCERNING IMMEDIATE REVELATION,
set forth the doctrine of the Inner Light. Fox had testified that it
was revealed to him "that there was a mystical, but Divine, light in
the hearts of men, a light which would, if followed honestly and
steadfastly, infallibliy lead to God: and that without the aid of
either the Bible or any ordinances." Barclay devotes the Second
Article to explaining and defending this doctrine. The Third Article
deals with the Scriptures. The following ones proceed to denounce
the errors of other groups. (One impatient reader complained that
Barclay "seems to have no religion except to denounce everyone
else's religion.") The main point of the APOLOGIA is that the Inner
Light will tell us everything we need to know. But what precisely is
it that the Inner Light tells us? It tells us that the Inner Light
tells us everything we need to know.
     To complain that this is vacuous is perhaps to miss the point.
Fox tells us that on one occasion he heard an inner voice say,
"There is a living God, who made all things." We may feel that this
is not a particularly profound insight. But what mattered to Fox was
his experience of the Presence of God, guiding and instructing him,
and not the mere statement of the insight, which is all that he can
communicate to us.
     I was recently told of an occasion when the late Lady Diana,
Princess of Wales, made an official visit to a beekeeping exhibit,
and on her way out saw a small girl looking at her. She smiled,
shook her head and said, "All those bees! Buzz, buzz, buzz!" The
girl was utterly overwhelmed at being spoken to by the Princess.
What was said was utterly beside the point.
     Again, we note the difference (mentioned under Fox), between
knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance or experience
or insight. Consider a statement like, "Today is the first day of
the rest of your life." To most of us, most of the time, this sounds
trite, trivial, and not worth saying. Yes, of course, today is the
first day of the rest of my life, and of the rest of the century,
and so on. Similarly, Tuesday is the first day of the rest of the
week (the part of the week starting with Tuesday), and similarly
with Wednesday, and so on. So what? But to someone whose life seems
a hopeless mess, and who cannot seem to summon the will or the
energy to do what needs to be done about it, the message, "Today is
the first day of the rest of your life!" may, perceived in just the
right way, come as a shattering realization. "Hey, that means that
my failure to do the right thing yesterday and the day before and so
on doesn't mean that I can't do the right thing today. I'm free! The
door isn't locked. I can get out! How wonderful!" And if we ask him,
"What is going on? Why are you suddenly grinning from ear to ear and
walking with a bounce in your step?" he replies, "Because someone
just reminded me that today is the first day of the rest of my
life!" and we reply, "Huh??"

$$$ QUAKERS AND UNIVERSALISM

     The Quakers believe that the opportunity of salvation is
universal. As Barclay writes in his APOLOGY, they believe "that God,
who out of his infinite love sent his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
into the world, who tasted death for every man, hath given to every
man, whether Jew or Gentile, Turk or Scythian, Indian or Barbarian,
of whatsoever nation, country, or place, a certain day or time of
visitation; during which day or time it is possible for them to be
saved, and to partake of the fruit of Christ's death."

     Fox taught that the Atonement of Christ for the sins of men was
retroactive, and universal in time as in space. In this he agrees
with Justin Martyr. The same conviction was shared by Archbishop
William Temple, who wrote:
     All that is noble in the non-Christian system of thought, or
conduct, or worship, is the work of Christ upon them and within
them. By the Word of God--that is to say, by Jesus Christ--Isaiah,
and Plato, and Zoroaster, and Confucius, conceived and uttered such
truths as they declared. There is only one divine light; and every
man in his measure is enlightened by it.

$$$ DANGERS OF SUBJECTIVISM

Trueblood writes (see booklist below):
   Robert Barclay argued that the direct leading of the Spirit
   ought not to be judged by reason or any other criterion,
   because that would be judging the greater by the lesser. "We
   then trust to and confide in this Spirit, because we know and
   certainly believe that it can only lead us aright, and never
   mislead us."
        What Barclay failed to see, along with most of the early
   Friends, was the inevitable subjectivity of all human
   judgement. The truth is objective, but judgement about it is
   necessarily subjective. Though the Spirit does not deceive, men
   can be deceived. Finite men can never distinguish, with
   absolute certainty, between what God is saying and what they
   think that they hear. All of the crude aberrations in Quaker
   history have arisen from the failure to give full assent to
   this fundamental fact about the human situation. The supposed
   direct leading caused some of the early Quakers to walk naked
   through the streets. We see how easily sincere people may be
   misguided, even when they suppose that they are divinely led.

James Naylor was an early follower of Fox, and an eloquent speaker.
He spoke in glowing terms of how the Spirit of Christ dwelt within
him. His followers listened and cheered him on, saying that they did
indeed hear Christ speaking through him. In 1656 a group of his
followers placed him on a horse and led him into the city of Bristol
<51:27 N 2:35 W>, spreading their garments before him and shouting,
"Hosannah!" He was arrested and tried for blasphemy. He undertook to
explain that the honor was done, not to him, but to Christ dwelling
within him. He had difficulty in explaining the distinction, and was
sentenced to be flogged, branded, and imprisoned. Fox and other
leaders of the movement emphatically disowned his action.

Trueblood writes):
   This distortion of the Inner Light was a danger that Fox had
   not foreseen. He had not made it clear enough to those he had
   convinced that God was not speaking through an infallible
   mechanical instrument which only reproduced God's voice. God
   was speaking through the very fallible human heart. And when
   God speaks through the human heart, something of the person who
   carries the message is bound to intrude.
        The conviction that the light of Christ could shine
   directly in each heart led to disorder in some groups, where
   the insights of some members contradicted those of others, and
   within twenty years Fox acknowledged the need for some kind of
   formal structure.
        Fox began to teach that there is a higher thing than
   individual inspiration--the check and balance of collective
   inspiration. He wrote: "Feel the power of God in one another,
   and know one another in this love that changeth not.... The
   Light is but one; and all being guided by it, all are subject
   to one, and are one in the unity of the Spirit."

     In 1661 Quakers were troubled by the "hat controversy". They
had been accustomed to take their hats off to God, and only to God.
Now John Perrot claimed a revelation from the Inner Light that he
must keep his hat on even when praying. His followers denounced all
structuring of the services, even agreeing on a set time for
meeting, on the grounds that this was a "quenching of the Spirit."
     In 1673, John Story and John Wilkinson, who had been among the
earliest Quakers, denounced the prominent role of women in Quaker
meetings. At first they based their case on quotations from the
letters of Paul; later they claimed personal revelations from the
Inner Light. When Fox disagreed with them, they accused him of being
against the Inner Light. Finally Fox announced that those who agreed
with Story and Wilkinson ought to leave and form their own group. In
1678 they did. By 1700 the dissident group had died out.

     The American Quaker Elias Hicks (1748-1830) thought the Inner
Light made outward study and learning superfluous--not only study of
the Scriptures, but other studies as well. He wrote: "Now what vast
toil and labour there is to give children human science, when the
money thus expended might be better thrown into the sea." Those who
agreed with him formed a separate organization in 1827, informally
known as the Hicksite Quakers, or officially as the Friends General
Conference. The Gurneyite (Evangelical) Quakers were officially
known as the Friends United Meeting. My Quaker friends, Hicksites
all, do not care to have the distinction between the groups
expressed by saying that the Gurneyites believe in the Bible and the
Jesus of history and the Hicksites do not. They prefer to say that
the Gurneyites have programmed meetings with regular ministers and
planned sermons, while the Hicksites do not, but speak without
premeditation as the Inner Light moves them. The two groups held a
joint meeting in Philadelphia <40 N 75:10 W> in 1946, and were
formally joined in 1955.

$$$ QUAKER WORSHIP

A card given to visitors at one Quaker Meeting reads:
   Worship, according to the ancient practice of the Religious
   Society of Friends, is entirely without any human direction or
   supervision. A group of devout persons come together and sit
   down quietly with no prearrangement, each seeking to have an
   immediate sense of divine leading and to know at first hand the
   presence of the Living Christ. It is not wholly accurate to say
   that such a Meeting is held on the basis of Silence; it is more
   accurate to say that it is held on the basis of "Holy
   Obedience." Those who enter such a Meeting can harm it in two
   specific ways: first, by an advance determination to speak; and
   second, by advance determination to keep silent. The only way
   in which a worshipper can help such a Meeting is by an advance
   determination to try to be responsive in listening to the still
   small voice and doing whatever may be commanded. Such a Meeting
   is always a high venture of Faith and it is to this venture we
   invite you this hour.

Trueblood comments:
        The members of that Meeting look for the prompting of the
   Spirit during the meeting. Other Quakers would point out that
   this can occur as truly on Tuesday as it can on Sunday. It is
   wholly reasonable, therefore, for a devout person to be led,
   early in the week, concerning what he ought to say on Sunday.
        There is great merit in keeping still when one does not
   have something valuable to say. Sometimes, especially when men
   are distraught, silence can be healing. The very discipline of
   getting one's body still and one's mind still, dismissing the
   multitude of worries and concerns, is often highly beneficent,
   and the best of it is that such a process does not require any
   special talent or aptitude. The whole of the Quaker experience
   gives abundant evidence that it can be learned by all kinds and
   conditions of men, including those of low degrees of learning.

Thomas R Kelly (1893-1941), writes:
   In the gathered meeting the sense is present that a new Life
   and Power has entered our midst.... We are in communication
   with one another because we are being communicated to, and
   through, by the Divine Presence.... When one rises to speak in
   such a meeting one has a sense of BEING USED, of being played
   upon, of being spoken through. It is as amazing an experience
   as that of being PRAYED THROUGH, when we, the praying ones, are
   no longer the initiators of the supplication, but seem to be
   transmitters, who second an impulse welling up from the depths
   of the soul.

     Traditional Quaker meetings have no prearranged speakers. All
are equally free to speak if the Spirit moves them. However, in the
nineteenth century, many Meetings in America became pastoral
Meetings, with regular clergy and a service much like that of a
Methodist or Baptist church. In the rural settlements of the
frontier, traveling ministers (usually Methodist or Baptist) went
from place to place preaching. Often they spoke in the Quaker
Meeting-House because there was no other suitable building. If they
were good speakers, they might be asked to stay, and their
congregations would be mixed Quaker and non-Quaker. Thus the local
Quaker Meeting took on a Methodist-Baptist flavor.

$$$ QUAKER ORGANIZATION

The basic unit of Quaker organization is the Monthly Meeting. A
congregation normally meets once a week, on First Day (Sunday), for
worship. Its members are also members of a Monthly Meeting. A
Monthly Meeting consists of a few congregations, or often just one,
that meets once a month to transact business, to admit new members
and, when necessary, to admonish, discipline, or disown old members,
and to make and implement policy for the group. A Quarterly Meeting
consists of members or delegates from several Monthly Meetings,
gathered every three months to consider common concerns. A Yearly
Meeting is a larger unit, and is a gathering once a year of members
or delegates from its constituent Quarterly Meetings. Some Yearly
Meetings are grouped into a Five-Year Meeting, others into a General
Conference, and some are not grouped.

Gerald Jonas, in his book, ON DOING GOOD, describes the procedure at
a business meeting as follows:
      They have avoided all forms of balloting in the conduct of
   their own business. Rather than force a question to a vote,
   which might freeze a minority in permanent opposition to the
   majority, the Quakers prefer to continue the discussion until
   everyone present feels comfortable with the "sense of the
   meeting" as articulated by the presiding clerk.
      The disussion proceeds freely--everyone speaks out when he
   wishes, without having to be recognized by the chair--until the
   clerk says something like, "Friends, aren't we at the point now
   of very clear judgement on this matter?" If no one objects to
   his brief summary of that judgement, it is recorded in the
   minutes as the will of the entire assembly. On the other hand,
   if it becomes clear in the course of the discussion that there
   is no unity whatever on the subject, the clerk may say
   something like, "I get two strains of thought on this," or,
   "Some Friends have expressed reservations about going ahead."
   After summarizing what seem to be the conflicting opinions, he
   may suggest referring the matter back to a smaller committee
   for further clarification. Again, if no one objects, the
   suggestion is considered to be "carried."
      Theoretically, if just one member out of a meeting of a
   thousand feels that his conscience will not allow him to unite
   with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine on a certain
   decision, the nine hundred and ninety-nine will wait until the
   lone dissenter can be reconciled to their view, or until a
   compromise embodying his objection can be worked out. In
   practice, a Quaker consensus does not mean that every
   participant enthusiastically supports the proposed action, but
   it does mean that everyone with reservations has been given
   full opportunity to make his view known, and, if these go
   unheeded by the majority, has voluntarily agreed to "stand
   aside" and let the others proceed. It is understood that once a
   consensus has been reached in this manner, the responsibility
   for the recorded decision falls equally on ALL participants.

It will be noted, of course, that the success of this procedure
depends heavily on the skill of the clerk in formulating the
statement to be recorded, and on the willingness of the participants
to respect those with whom they differ, and to consider their
arguments fairly, looking for truth rather than for victory.  It is
possible to have a Meeting in which these conditions do not prevail,
and two opposed factions sit glaring at one another, each determined
to wait until the other gives in. It is also true that a minority
does not have an unlimited power of veto. For example, Quaker
Meetings in the late 1700s, having "labored with" those of their
members who insisted on holding slaves, finally disowned those who
would not give in.

$$$ FOR FURTHER READING

 @@@ BARCLAY, ROBERT
     BARCLAY'S APOLOGY IN MODERN ENGLISH, ed. Dean Freiday, 1991,
465pp, $15, Barclay Press, 0-913342-69-6
     D Elton Trueblood, ROBERT BARCLAY, 1968, Harper & Row, NY, LC
68-11731

 @@@ HICKS, ELIAS
     Bliss Forbush, ELIAS HICKS, QUAKER LIBERAL, 1956, Columbia U
Pr, NY, LC 56-6250
     H Larry Ingle, QUAKERS IN CONFLICT: THE HICKSITE REFORMATION,
310pp, 1997, $10pb, Pendle Hill, 0-87574-926-7

     D(avid) Elton Trueblood, THE PEOPLE CALLED QUAKERS, Friends
United Press, Richmond, Indiana, ISBN 0-913408-02-6 pb

     Gerald Jonas, ON DOING GOOD, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1971,
SBN 684-10317-6