Friends as a "Chosen People" - Continued -- 3
III. Christians, Quakers and Other heretics
This notion of Quakers as being "God’s chosen people" has been troublesome to many in the audiences where I have spoken of it. Such controversy isn’t new. In fact, this issue of particularism and universalism with regard to "God’s chosen people" came into sharp relief very early for the first Christians. They were fine with the idea at first, as far as I can tell from the gospels, and also with the place it had in Hebrew sacred history, because they accepted this history and thought of themselves and Jesus as part of it.
The idea became a problem, though, once it became clear, as it soon did, that most Jews, and in particular their leadership, weren’t buying the Christian version of their history, and in fact wanted nothing to do with it, or with them.
I think it’s important to keep in mind as we look at some of the related New Testament texts that this was not how it was originally supposed to turn out. It seems to me that Jesus stayed largely within the Jewish community and its worldview, and took the basics of the Judaism of his day for granted. In John 4, for instance, when he speaks to the woman at the well, there’s a passage which was a favorite of early friends, but there’s also an important one which is overlooked. Let’s take a look at this, beginning from John 4:19-29:
The woman said to Him, "Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you {people} say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
"God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."
The woman said to Him, "I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us."
Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am {He.}"
At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, "What do You seek?" or, "Why do You speak with her?"
So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I {have} done; this is not the Christ, is it?"
Jesus speaks here of the need for Worship "in spirit and truth" (v.23); if early Friends had had bumperstickers or tee shirts, this phrase would have been on them. But right now, I’m more interested in verses 20 and 22:
The woman says, "‘Our fathers (that is, the Samaritans) worshiped in this mountain Mt. Gerizim, and you people (i.e., Jews) say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’" (Ah, church turf battles. Will they never end?)
"Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is from the Jews.’"
In other words, Jesus was Jewish, with a Jewish belief system.
So a few years later, when his followers found themselves increasingly at odds with the bulk of the Jewish community, this created a problem. How do you become part of "the chosen people" when that people has chosen to have nothing to do with you? When this people, to use the venerable Quaker term, has in fact "disowned" you?
Well, the answer to these questions comes down to two options:
One, you either give up the idea of being part of that chosen people; or
Two, you reinterpret the idea of the chosen people so it does include you.
The early Christians took the second course, and set out to reinterpret the idea and the history of the chosen people. Paul took the lead in this, as we shall see. And the gospel writers, or their editors, soon found sayings of Jesus which pointed in this direction. Let’s look at a few of them. Some are, or should be, familiar to Friends who think of themselves as liberal or universalist:
John 10:14-16:
"‘I am the good shepherd; and I know my own, and my own know me, even as the father knows me and I know the father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
"‘And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one flock, with one shepherd.’"
Another is just a few pages further, in John 14:2. "In my father’s house, there are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you.’"
This verse always reminds me of the story about heaven, where a newcomer comes in and St. Peter is explaining that here everybody gets their heart’s desire, and takes him down a long hallway which has many doors. And as they pass these doors the visitor hears various kinds of sounds, operatic singing, laughter, smells the aromas of great food, and so forth. Then suddenly, they round a corner and approach a very sturdy but plain gray door, and St. Peter puts a finger to his lips and whispers to the visitor to tiptoe quietly past it.
"Why did we have to tiptoe?" asks the visitor once they’re beyond the door.
"Because that’s the room for the silent Quakers," says St. Peter, "and they want to believe they’re the only ones here."
Anyway, such verses as these became part of the basis for the difficult task of reconciling Hebrew particularism with the church’s experience that the Jews largely rejected their preaching of Jesus’ message, whereas they had much more success with the gentiles, who were definitely outside the scope of the "chosen people" as the Jews understood it.
Paul wrote about this whole problem more extensively than anyone else, and he wrote most about it in the Epistle to the Romans. We’re going to sample that, from Chapters 9 and 11.
In Chapter 9, Paul turns to the subject with an emotional declaration, then states the basic thesis (vv 1-8), and follows up in 25-26:
"I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen. Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed."
"As he saith also in Hosea, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people; there shall they be called the children of the living God."
In other words, Paul and the Christians abstracted (a skeptical Marxist might say he "reified"), or spiritualized and –at least potentially–universalized the idea of the chosen people. Paul says this more succinctly in Romans 2:28f: "He is not a Jew that is one outwardly...." This sentiment is echoed in numerous other places among the various epistles.
This new interpretation may have sounded good to gentile Christian ears, because it let them in, it legitimated them. But then what about the "original" Jews, the community of actual people, still centered in Jerusalem, who had rejected this Christian heresy? Was God now finished with them, the way a snake might be finished with an outgrown and discarded skin?
Many Christians down through two millennia have answered this last question with an emphatic yes, with chronically tragic consequences.
But Paul, to his credit, couldn’t follow his logic that far. If he was ready to spiritualize the chosen people, he was unable to let go of the empirical Israel. Romans 11:1-5, (and in fact, when all is said and done, v. 26, "all Israel will be saved.") This is quite a prediction; If Paul is right, obviously we should all become Jewish, because nobody else gets such odds Furthermore, he has advice for his gentile converts about their spiritual forebears: Rom. 11:16-18: "...If some of the branches have been broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, was grafted in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, consider this, that thou dost not support the root, but the root supports thee."
I always loved that verse.
Now this is fascinating stuff, and if it doesn’t entirely square the circle of reconciling particularism with universalism, that’s okay, because that paradox is a perennial puzzle. But the basic idea is reasonably plain: the election of one particular group in history, the "people" Israel, which includes an inheritance and various promises, has been broadened to include non-Jews, through the person and work of Jesus, who was Jewish but was also the saviour of the whole world and all people, past, present and future. From here it’s a short hop to the passage in First Peter that we read earlier: First Epistle of Peter, specifically chapter 2, verses 9-10:
"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God...."
How much continuity there is between the concepts of "peoplehood" in the New and Old Testaments is a subject of theological and scholarly debate, which I don’t propose to settle. In any event, it’s clear that the idea has evolved by the time Paul is done reflecting on it. And among Friends the idea has evolved further.
Much of this evolution has occurred in the twentieth century, as a result of the encounter between Christian Quakers and other religions. One distinguished Friend who lived such an encounter was Henry Hodgkin. A British Friend, missionary in China for almost 30 years, went there with quite evangelical views, and then was asked to be the first director of Pendle Hill. Not long before his death in 1933, he wrote a letter to his brother in which he described how his views had been changed by his experience in China. This statement, a cri de couer, was included in the London book of Faith and Practice for many years, and still is in the new one, though shortened"
"When I was at school and college I had some very profound religious experiences which meant much in shaping my life and to which I now look back with the deepest thankfulness....
"I suppose it is almost inevitable that during such a period one should be so sure of the genuineness and value of one’s own experience as to undervalue other types of experience. It is this which makes people eager missionaries or propagandists and it was as such that I went to China, still very sure of the ‘greatness of the revelation’ and but dimly aware that God, in His many-sided nature and activity, was not one whit less manifest in ways and persons with which or with whom I could have little sympathy. Of course in theory I believed that God used many methods and that all truth was not with me. [But] Down deep I wanted all to be ‘such as I’, because I could not help feeling that, broadly speaking, what meant so much to me must be equally good for others.
"By processes too numerous and diverse even to summarize, I have reached a position which may be stated in a general way somewhat like this: ‘I believe that God’s best for another may be so different from my experience and way of living as to be actually impossible to me. I recognize <a change> to have taken place in myself, from a certain assumption that mine was really the better way, to a very complete recognition that there is no one better way, and that God needs all kinds of people and ways of living through which to manifest Himself in the world."
Hodgkin points toward what has become a new way of reframing the universalist-particularist conundrum:
What if God chose various peoples, for various work, for purposes which we can sometimes get striking glimpses of, but the ultimate character of which can only be guessed at?
Put differently, what if there were more than one divine "election," more than one chosen people?
More recently, one of our most compelling contemporary Quaker theologians, Jim Corbett of Arizona, took this idea further in his fine book "Goatwalking." Corbett describes how he came to feel he was discovering the "true church" as a "living, visible people of peoples" during the time in the early 1980s when he was following the leadings to help Central American refugees in what would become the Sanctuary movement. By that he was referring to the cooperative efforts of congregations from many traditions–Catholic, Jewish, Presbyterian, and more–to help Central American refugees and frustrate the policy of the American government which was sending them back to face more terror.
A fine Jewish writer named Arthur Waskow considers this issue in his fine book, "Godwrestling." He quotes a member of his religious congregation as suggesting the following possibility:
"The covenant between the Jews and God had two sets of observers....One set was the nations–some of which were stirred to make their own covenants with God. But the other observer was God, who was stirred to make a number of other covenants with various peoples. Maybe Sinai seemed like enough of a success–but also enough of a failure–to justify a range of different approaches."(p. 158).
There’s an intriguing hint of this in the book of Deuteronomy, at 4:19-20:
"And beware lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. But the Lord has taken you, and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own possession, as at this day."
This text, which is really a throwaway line, hints at something mind-boggling compared with the usual biblical rhetoric. It suggests that God has made religious arrangements for other peoples, mediated through other beings in the universe. But I believe it is echoed in the sayings of Jesus we looked at earlier:
"Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold..."
"In my father’s house there are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you...."
I believe it is also part of the message of one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables, The Good Samaritan, in Luke 10:25-37:
I want to highlight two features of this story: First, We tend to have it read as a celebration of compassion for innocent victims, especially of violence, which it is, but that’s not the main point. The real point of the whole story is an answer to the question, "What must I do to be saved?" It’s not about compassion; it’s about salvation.
And the other point is this: There’s no indication that the Samaritan became a good Jew. And remember we already saw in the story of the woman at the well that Jesus considered the Samaritans’ theology mistaken. But that didn’t prevent him from doing what was necessary for salvation.
One of the most persuasive biblical expressions of this idea comes in another familiar gospel passage, this time by omission, By what is not spoken. It’s Matthew 25:31-40, the passage about the judgment and the sheep and the goats. Note first in this passage, that it’s "all the nations" who are before him for judgment. This implies that people from all the nations had a fair shot at being saved.
And second, when he tells the sheep why they are getting into the kingdom, there’s not a mention of being in the one chosen people as a criterion. Nothing. Being Jewish in this scenario evidently meant being chosen by God, sure, but it offered no special advantage as far as getting into the kingdom goes. Jesus differs from Paul here. And the same goes for the goats–they are not rejected for failing to be part of the one chosen people.
For me, this train of thought was summed up best by William Penn, in his fine little book, "Some Fruits of Solitude": "The humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout souls are everywhere of one religion; and when death has taken off the mask, they will know one another, though the diverse liveries they wear here make them strangers."
I’d love to put that on a tee shirt; it’s one of the great expressions of Quaker universalism.
This puts a different twist on the "universalist" notions widespread among liberal Quakers today. Seen from the perspective of these passages, "universalism" is not really a matter of taking a pinch of Buddhism here, and a slice of Islam there and sprinkling them on a crust of First Nations’ and feminist spirituality to make some sort of New Age spiritual pizza. Instead, it’s a matter of identifying more fully with the roots and core of our own people’s calling, in order to be able to meet and work meaningfully with other peoples who may be pursuing common efforts to which we have all been called, in different ways and at different times.
Such a reframing is built on the sense that we are indeed a people called out by God, with our own identity, our own gifts and heritage, and our own work; but we were not the only such "people" that God has chosen for some mysterious divine purpose.
What might are gifts look like? And what might our work be? We’ll begin to consider that next.
<<< Back to Theological Resources Page
QUEST, P.O. Box 82, Bellefonte PA 16823
E-mail: quest@quaker.org