Saturday, July 24, 2021

Shades of Marcellus of Ancyra?

Edward "Burrough defended the Quaker position on the historical Jesus, explaining that whilst Christ 'is one with the Father, and was with him before the world was', he was also 'made manifest in Judea and Jerusalem. … and was persecuted of the Jews, and was crucified … was buryed & rose again, according to the Scriptures'. Nonetheless, he went on to state that 'the same that came down from Heaven, is ascended up to Heaven, and the same that descended is he that ascended'. This suggested a denial of any true hypostatic union, as it implied that a spiritual presence had descended to earth, separate from humanity, and had returned to heaven untouched by the Incarnation. The same was reinforced by his highly spiritualized understanding throughout the piece, constant reiterations that God is Spirit, and reluctance to talk about Christ’s body."

     Madeleine Pennington on early Quaker spiritualism in general, Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2021), 97.  On Marcellus of Ancyra, see this post.  Cf. the Quaker George Whitehead in 1669:  "Where doth the Scripture speak of a Humane Nature of Christ in Heaven?" (111)  And again in 1674 (Christian-Quaker, 141):  ". . . we cannot own these to be Scripture Language, viz. 1. That Jesus Christ consisteth of human Flesh and Bone.  2. That the glorious hypostacical Union consists of a human and divine Nature, or that they are hypostatically one. . . ."  Though this seems damning enough, I have not nosed around in context, but am relying, for now, on Pennington's reading (126).  Some of what Whitehead says (just above this point) of the Son seems patently orthodox.  But he wants to restrict the concept of a hypostatic union to the doctrine of the Trinity, where it would be profoundly unorthodox, and denies to it here, within Christology (its only home!), any place whatsoever for a human nature.  Wow.  I'm beginning to see why it might once have been—to speak only of roots very, very deeply buried—a surprise to me to learn that God (which is to say, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity) is still—and will be forever—incarnate.  It's not "Scripture Language" to be sure, but then that's why you need the rest of the canonical tradition.
     Cf. Hugh Barbour:  The early Quakers "tended to make Jesus' life simply the ultimate instance of a human life and a human body taken over by the power of God:  'Distinguish . . . between that which is called Christ, and the bodily garment which he wore.  The one was flesh, the other Spirit.  The flesh profiteth nothing. . . .  The body of flesh was but the veil' [(Isaac Penington)].  Friends insisted that Christ's soul was not human, and that his body was not in heaven.  His earthly nature did not share in the resurrection" (The Quakers in Puritan England, Yale publications in religion 7 (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 1964), 146).

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