Thought for the Week: Encountering Robert Barclay
Mark Frankel writes about Robert Barclay's 'Apology'
Robert Barclay’s An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1676) is a classic statement of Quaker faith. A copy will be found in the libraries of most Meeting houses, but I doubt that it is often read.
There are selected passages from Barclay in Quaker faith & practice, and these show him at his best because there is much to dislike about the Apology. In the course of a long and difficult book, Barclay is disputatious, sectarian, dour and puritanical. He condemns apostasy, which means all other Christian denominations, for he holds that the surest way to be a Christian is by the Quaker route.
He dismisses the ritual and practices of other Christians, particularly Catholics, as human inventions and imaginings; condemns Islam; and describes the zeal of Jews as the ‘prejudice of education, and the love of self, more than that of God’. He upholds the power and authority of the elder and the right of churches to discipline members in error, by excommunication if necessary. He criticises frivolous pastimes, such as the theatre; instead we should spend our spare time gardening or doing mathematical puzzles. However, once one gets past the antiquated language and the disagreeable tone, Barclay has much to offer. In a set of fifteen propositions he makes an intellectual case for Quakerism that is still good today. In particular, in the second proposition Barclay asserts the possibility of religious knowledge. He gives a convincing explanation of what this means and sets out the basis for the testimonies.
Barclay asserts we know God through Christ by the Spirit, or what he calls ‘immediate revelation’, which means by experience and without the mediation of church or scripture. Importantly, he says divine revelation cannot contradict the testimony of scripture, or right and sound reason, but at the same time revelation is more certain than scripture and the ordinary reason of man because it forces assent. In other words, we can identify divine truths as those that cannot be denied. Barclay lays, as the theological and theoretical basis for discernment, Quakers’ bold claim that through worship and ministry we can know the will of God.
All religions and sects claim to know God’s truth, but in the case of the Quakers we have a basis for our claim that is more than just blind faith or reliance on authority, tradition and scripture. Barclay’s point about divine revelation forcing assent means that the fictions he condemns in other religions cannot be true, because they cannot force agreement. It is inconceivable that God would require us to believe in mere human inventions or to deny the findings of science. At the same time, divine knowledge cannot be the same as secular reason, which is prone to error, because God can never be wrong. The Spirit and revelation lead us to the fundamental truths of the testimonies, to agreement about right ends, such as love and peace, and concomitants such as respect for others and the environment, the principles of which cannot be denied, however much we might disagree about means. To put it in nontheistic terms, the testimonies are a set of irrefutable propositions that compel assent. Barclay tells us that there are absolute truths but that Quakers are more discerning and so more correct than others in identifying such truths.
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