Greek icon of the second coming, c1700
Come again? Barney Smith takes a second look
‘Britain in the 1650s was in a period of heightened spiritual awareness, but it wasn’t the end of time.’
I recently re-read Heaven on Earth, that remarkable collaboration between Timothy Peat Ashworth, Douglas Gwynn and Ben Pink Dndelion. They were all tutors at Woodbrooke in 1997 and brought three strands of scholarship together. Timothy Peat Ashworth brought his enthusiasm for the teaching of Paul the apostle and his research into Paul’s original message. Douglas Gwynn brought his admiration for the witness of early Quakers and his research into their original message. Ben Pink Dandelion brought both his Quaker faith and his knowledge of research into Quakerism.
They focussed on the tradition of Christ’s second coming represented by Paul, George Fox and the subsequent periods of Quakerism up to the present stage. Paul believed in an imminent second coming, Fox believed in a current second coming. Subsequent Quakers either delayed their expectations or completely forgot about the subject. There is something profoundly perplexing and paradoxical about what this reveals. Paul and the early Friends were very wrong and very right at the same time. But they were both strikingly successful.
Paul’s teaching was made up of two main elements. One was the message of compassion, community and cooperation – the best of what Christianity has to offer. The other was that there was going to be, very shortly, a second coming that would transform the world and bring humanity and God together, with very specific ideas about bodily resurrection. Where these notions came from is not clear but they were proved (so far) totally unfounded.
Early Friends shared the message of compassion, community and co-operation, putting it boldly into action and annoying those who disagreed with them. They understood their spiritual experience to be the second coming promised in Paul’s teaching and the Book of Revelation. Britain in the 1650s was in a period of heightened spiritual awareness, but it wasn’t the end of time of biblical tradition.
But what if Paul had had no vision of a second coming? Would Christianity be merely a footnote in Mediterranean history? What if early Friends were not convinced of their unique role in living out the end of time? Would they have set off to convince their known world and created a denomination that has grown and evolved over 370 years?
Ben Pink Dandelion explains how Quakers put the second coming on hold, then ignored it in order to concentrate on the first coming (the evangelical emphasis), and then (the liberal version) returned to it in a vague, continuing experience stripped of Biblical references.
Subjectively we know that the message of compassion, community and cooperation is profoundly right. Objectively we know that notions of a second coming of Christ are (so far) demonstrably wrong. Is it possible to be sufficiently enthusiastic in spreading the best of the Christian message, now that we understand it to be universal not unique? Do we have to have a wrong but topically attractive set of notions in order to go out and spread our ‘good news’?
