My "best book I have read this summer" is Mark Goodacre's The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John's Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2025). It is not a long book but it packs a punch. Written by the New Testament world's leading proponent of the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis (i.e. that non-Markan material common to Luke and Matthew is explained by Luke's knowledge of Matthew rather than by proposing use of a hypothetical document called Q), this book argues that
"the author of John's Gospel knew, used, presupposed, and transformed the Synoptics" (p. ix).
This is not a new position since for most of Christian history Christians have assumed John's Gospel had a relationship to the other three gospels, but it is a renewed position (with good arguments in the light of latest scholarship) since much of NT scholarship since the middle of the 20th century has either argued or simply assumed that John is independent of the Synoptics.
To be fair to the argument that John was composed independently of the Synoptics, there are multiple ways in which John's gospel is very different to the Synoptics. To take a few glaring differences, John reproduces none of the parables we know well from the Synoptics, he places the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and not at the end, and he narrates three Passover visits by Jesus to Jerusalem when the Synoptics know of only one.
Nevertheless, Goodacre argues, with the aid of a number of clearly set out textual parallels (in Greek and in English), that
"there are significant literary parallels between the Synoptic Gospels and John , and that these are sufficient to establish that John was familiar with Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The author of the Fourth Gospel did not use Synoptic-like traditions but the Synoptic Gospels themselves" (p. 17).
I am persuaded that Goodacre is correct (and thus my personal position has shifted from "John seemed to know Mark's Gospel, possibly the other two" to "John definitely knew the Synoptic Gospels and drew on their wording in various parts of his gospel").
If Goodacre is correct, then what implications might that have for how we understand John's Gospel?
In no particular order of priority:
1. We must reckon with how John deals with the three Synoptic gospel accounts which he knows directly rather than allowing a form of wriggle room for John to have known "Synoptic-like" traditions so that where he differs from the Synoptics we can explain that in terms of his receiving variant traditions rather than the actual Synoptic material.
If John knows the Synoptic material he absolutely changes a number of ways in which their collective narrative is conveyed to us.
In particular, note these examples from a larger set of possible examples of Johannine changes:
- the revealing of various titles for Jesus is compressed into John 1 (along with some new John-sourced ones such as "Word" and "Lamb of God.");
- the calling of the first disciples is (so to speak) fish-free in John 1 (though it is possible that there is an initial Johannine calling and a later Synoptic calling from their nets);
- the cleansing of the temple by Jesus is brought forward chronologically (John 2);
- the healing of an official's son (John 4:46-50) is strongly reminiscent of the healing of a centurion's servant (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-20: were there multiple such miracles in Jesus' ministry or has John recast the Synoptic stories?);
- then the healing of the man at the Bethsaida pool (John 5:1-18) recalls the healing and forgiveness of the paralyzed man (Mark 2:1-12 and parallels), with particularly strong verbal links concerning talk of taking up his mat and walking (John 5:8-9/Mark 2:9-12 - see further in Goodacre, p. 7) - again, there were multiple instances of dramatic healings across the gospel narratives, and so maybe John's language in influenced by Mark, rather than John has made a dramatic transformation of Mark's 2:1-12 story;
- then, the biggest change John makes to the narratives at the end of Jesus' life, is to detail his death occurring on the day of preparation for the Passover (Jesus is crucified as the lambs for Passover meals are slain, John 19:31) rather than on the day of Passover itself (so, the Synoptics).
2. We should note the ancient assessment of John's Gospel in relation to the Synoptic Gospels:
"Last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irristibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual gospel" (Eusebius, History, 6:14, citing Clement of Alexandria [c. 150AD to c 215AD].)
On the one hand, this is testimony to the view of Christian scholars through most of Christian history, that John knew the contents of the other gospels.
On the other hand, this is testimony to a reasonable way to understand the different character of John's Gospel in relation to the Synoptic gospels: it is a "spiritual gospel" in comparison to the Synoptics giving us "physical facts." Today we (if we might assume Clement's role for a moment or two) would likely say,
"Last of all, aware that the historical facts had been recorded in the Synoptic gospels, encouraged by his disciples (those belonging to his school of theological teaching about Jesus) and irristibly moved by the Spirit (who, according to John 16:13 "will guide you into all the truth"), John wrote a theological gospel (where "theological" means that John told the history of Jesus in such a manner that he took his students then, and his readers now, deeper into the truth of Jesus Christ in relation to the God of Israel and of the universe, summed up in John's conveying the idea that God the Father and Jesus the Son were one)."
3. We should allow that John has other sources of information than he has read in the Synoptic gospels. Some of this additional information may be due to his strong links with Jerusalem and Jewish leaders based in that city. But John's greatest source may be Jesus himself, if he (the beloved disciple) had intimate conversations with Jesus (perhaps including Jesus reporting to him special conversations between Jesus and others such as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well). Nevertheless, it is far from explicable to suppose that every difference between John and the Synoptics is due to John's own sources.
4. We should allow that John may have changed what he read in the Synoptics because he lived in a different cultural context to our own and in that context saw no moral difficulty in writing what he wrote in comparison to the Synoptics. Today we would call such changes "spin doctoring" or "fictionalizing the facts." But our day is not John's day. In his day "biographies" and "histories" were different to our day. There is a wealth of scholarship devoted to those differences and I am not knowledgeable enough of that particular field of study to give a summary of findings. Suffice to say that we should not presume to conclude that John was doing anything other than writing the truth about Jesus Christ, with special reference to understanding the role of the Holy Spirit/Spirit of Jesus in guiding him to write what he wrote. The heart of that truth not being "historical facts" (if by that we mean "Jesus did this, then he did that, and afterwards he had a meal with these people, during which this particular dispute arose") but a profession of faith, that Jesus Christ was the Word of God become human flesh, that he was the ever existent Son of God in union with God the Father, and so forth. John writes not to recite for a fourth time (following Mark, Matthew and Luke) the historical facts of Jesus' life and times, but to lead us to belief in Jesus - the Jesus who is "the Messiah, the Son of God" so that through belief we might "have life in his name" (John 20:31).
5. We should allow that there are unexplainable (or yet to be explained) mysteries here. This is, I suggest, the critical question we do not have an answer to:
Why does John set out his understanding of Jesus Christ in relation to God and in relation to ourselves in the form of a gospel, structured similarly to the Synoptics (baptism, ministry, last supper, betrayal, arrest, trial, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension) rather than, say, in the form of an exposition such as Paul gives (e.g. Ephesians 1, Philippians 2-3 and Colossians 1) or as an extended sermon such as the writer of Hebrews gives?
There is much more to be said and perhaps I will come back to this topic later in 2026.
21 comments:
Thanks Peter. So the short of it is:
1. "John" had knowledge of the synoptics (somehow) but deliberately changed/re-shaped aspects of them (in Goodacre's view),
2. so to more accurately, emphatically, convey certain spiritual/theological truths
3. that may have been communicated to "John" through conversations with Jesus himself, or inspired the Spirit itself?
Is that the guts of it?
(Goodacre believes the author of the Gospel of John is the apostle John himself? That's not a widespread academic view anymore, I don't think).
And then you quite rightly ask: why would John set out his understanding of Jesus in the form of "history", in the form of a biographical narrative (Gospel), and not, say, convey his theological ideas through an epistle instead?
And: ifJohn had knowledge of the synoptics, why would he write a Gospel that deliberately contradicts them in places? Wouldn't that be seen as undermining the veracity of the Christian case overall?
Given all this, doesn't it make more sense to believe (say, as Bart Ehrmann argues) that John was written a long time later, on the basis of various oral traditions, some of which may include synoptic material, and the differences between John and the others is best accounted for by the changes to memory recall of events that we see in other oral cultures and traditions. That is, John is much later and contains more shifts of memory recall, as we'd expect when narratives are retold and retold and retold.
*And*, being later, John had more time to reflect on these world shaking events - and more time and space to discern their meaning under the guidance of the Spirit (a distinctiveemphasis in John) - and therefore produced a different, more mature, 'spiritual' Gospel?
Thanks, Peter. I think! So three of my favourite books (all by Bauckham) are all for the dumpster?! The positive is - there's more room on my shelves...
Blessings
Bosco
Dear Mark and Bosco
Do nothing hastily (such as throw out valuable Bauckham books!).
It is early days to work out what the significance of Goodacre's case is, and I would love to see a Bauckham review of his book, not least I would be looking for what Bauckham sees as complementarity between each of their Johannine scholarship.
Mark's 1, 2 and 3 above are broadly agreeable, though Goodacre himself says little about the "mechanics" of divine communication to John re Mark's 3 [and, to be fair to all approaches to John's gospel's composition, some explanation for how John arrives at his views is required on any of those approaches, and the evidence for any proposed explanation is essentially within the text itself, very little external evidence being available].
On authorship Goodacre's position is nuanced: on the one hand, he argues that the clues within the gospel point to John son of Zebedee being the author, this is especially so if we assume that early readers of the Synoptics then read John's Gospel because the clues make sense in the light of the Synoptics, and that means that the tradition within church history that that John was the author has been reasonably arrived at; on the other hand, he offers no particular argument as to whom the author in reality was.
No, I don't think a "John wrote much later, mostly influenced by oral memories, including memories influenced by knowledge of the Synoptics" is a whole explanation for the text of John's Gospel. Goodacre (in my view) nails the case for John having direct knowledge of the Synoptics (whatever other material from oral sources influenced his thinking, and whatever distance of time enabled his particular reflections and insights, as expressed within the Gospel and the First Letter bearing the name of John).
So why did he write such a different - in some parts - Gospel to the Synoptics? Did he think they got some key events wrong? Or....?
Well, if you are going to slaughter a herd of sacred cows, why not add another? Why not agree with Augustine and Thomas Aquinas that there were two temple "cleansings" - one at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, probably in AD 27 (John 2.20) and a second three years later, as the Synoptics recount? A comparison of John and the Synoptics shows numerous differences in detail (whip of cords, interactions with the people there, dialogues etc) to suggest two different events; while the accusation at Jesus's trial ('he said he would destroy this temple and raise it in three days') refers to nothing recorded in the Synoptics but could be a garbled, misrembered version of something Jesus had said three years previously. A reflex of modern scholarship absolutely hates "harmonisation", but this is something we accept all the time in normal life, when multiple testimonies are heard. (And maybe it's worth recalling that Josephus recounts the story of a certain Jesus who prophesied for years against the temple in the 60s before he was brutally punished.)
As for Bauckham, in 1998 he wrote in "The Gospel for All Christians" that John's Gospel clearly implies knowledge of Mark's Gospel to make sense of what it says about John the Baptist. First century Christians didn't live in bubbles, even if some modern scholars do.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Second, remember that John's Gospel is a highly stylised, artistic creation that recounts seven "signs" or miracles, has seven 'I am' sayings and other 'sevens' (see Bauckham's 'Gospel of Glory' for the details), even while John admits 'there were many other signs that Jesus performed" (ch. 20) - in other words, it is consciously selective, while using seven as the model of divine perfection. There is no reason to think a Johannine miracle is an "invention" based on the Synoptics (as Bultmann claimed sbout ch. 21), but rather that similar healings occurred in Jesus's ministry, both in Jerusalem and Galilee, even if John was influenced to some extent by the Synoptics in the way he wrote about these miracles. The Synoptics, of course, mention no adult visits by Jesus to Jerusalem - but then has Jesus say "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often (pollakis) I would have gathered you', a lament that makes no sense if he hadn't often been in the city in the past. So the Synoptics are obviously only telling part of the story and mustn't be treated as the benchmark for judging John - ad most critical scholatship has assumed.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Well +Peter, I'm happy to take your word for it given I don't have the smarts to even *start* making my own assessment! It was here at ADU I first heard about "Q" (and that sounds strange, like a close relative of the QAnon thing) so for me this other perspective is more than welcome! :)
I am not acquainted with any books regarding the origins of New Testament texts, lets just say after studying the document theory regarding the Old Testament I was thoroughly discouraged in the way it turned a living text into a dull human intention to rule out the divine - proposing prophecies were written after the event etc etc.
I have encountered the differences regarding the day of Jesus’s death and the two temple cleansing and in looking into both found points where both had logical/common sense explanations - just don’t ask me to remember them completely but I think with Jesus’s death it was what hours were considered a ‘day’ in that period of time.
Regarding the language John wrote and the additional information, perhaps this is too simplistic, however, if given John was John the son of Zebedee - he was young and at first a disciple of John the Baptist, so there at Jesus Baptism and later became a disciple of Jesus… He also lived by all accounts to an old age. In this sense would he not have had a wider grasp theologically than the writers of the other Gospels by his understanding of prophecies coming into reality initially, being one of the first disciples a close bond to Jesus, and then years more than the other writers to grasp lived out understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit and the wide-view vision of Jesus both human and divine? In speculation adding accounts not mention in the other Gospels could simple be events of significance he recalled and knew had not been recorded elsewhere?
Hi Jean
Any account of the composition of John's Gospel must allow for a "fullness" of wisdom and insight (e.g. such as would come with a long-lived author who himself had direct contact with Jesus in his youth), as well as for recall of events and conversations that did not make their way into the Synoptics. Nevertheless there are challenges to negotiate, especially if we understand the author to have been one of the disciples, such as, per your mention, different days for the crucifixion. Any which way, John's Gospel represents an acute insight into the significance of Jesus as the love of God incarnate in the world.
Maybe reading John shows us there are more important things than literal historical truth.
That’s very true, Mark, but it is grounded in literal historical fact in Jesus. Ours is a faith of God’s outworking in history from before creation, now and on into the future.
Not so fast, Mark. For the purposes of reading the Gospels (and especially John's Gospel, which lays overwhelming stress on eye and ear witness testimony - look up all the references to this), human beings are not really quantum wave functions: we are too big and too slow for that. When we read in the Gospels that "person A did action B in place C at time D" in one section and in another an account that conflicts with it, we have to ask: are the differences formal (how the statements are written, including style, summary, order and paraphrase) or actual, containing substantial contradictions about embodied human beings in history. Further, we have to ask: did the Gospel writer understand his writing to be historical; or imaginative fiction; or "timeless" religious affirmations cast in the form of fictional events (like the legends of Siddhartha); or some mixture of all three? And if so, how could you separate the strands? When does faith become credulity - or superstition?
Formal differences about the same asserted historical reality are not really a problem because different testimonies can all be true, even if some small details are not fully accounted for. This is what harmonisation is about, and explains why, for example ,St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas thought there were two temple cleansings. An awareness of how ancient authors used summaries and direct speech is also important - which is why it is important to have some familiarity with first century histories and bioi (biographies),
But if you are dealing with an Incarnational faith, it doesn't really make sense to say "there are more important things than literal historical truth". The reported word and events of Jesus's life, death and resurrection are the very basis upon which we believe what we do about the nature of the Trinity and our individual human destinies (as well the destiny of the world). You cannot cut off the branch you are sitting on and still sit merrily in the air. Think of that anti-theologian "Sir" Lloyd Gearloose or that Anglican Archbishop Richard Hollow Way.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
I don't think Christian faith is primarily founded on certain things literally happening in history or not. That makes faith into an outward, retrospective, obsessive pursuit with dubious chance of success. Isn't faith, primarily, an encounter with the living God, the Spirit, the Lifegiver, the creator and sustainer of the universe, right here and now?
Of course the "historical" claims of faith are important. The personal and spiritual experiences of the first Christians. God acting in human lives. But the phrase "God acting in history" is a ridiculous one. Where else would God act? All religions involve inspired men and women, avatars, prophets, incarnations "acting in history" - even the so-called non-historical religions such as we find in India. And those religions, as surely as us, have developed understandings of how divinity is involved in human time, time sequences, and our lives.
And, not just history, surely God acts in other social studies as well - "geography", for example.
Nevertheless, I do think the "historical" claims of religions don't fit into modern forensic approaches to "historical fact". We sometimes unconsciously approach the Christian past as if it were an archaeological dig or courtroom reconstruction of "facts" - or, rather, that those endeavours will solve spiritual questions and longings.
To say that history, literal historical truth, is of *primary* importance to Christian faith, gets us off on the wrong foot to begin with. Funnily enough, it's an avoidance of the spiritual. The primary thing is our encounter with the Divine Presence (yes, in "history", but where else do human beings encounter God?). That's what primarily drives the Gospel writers, surely, too. To say that something is an historical fact brings us no nearer to God than saying the All Blacks lost terribly to the Irish in Chicago, of all places.
Yes, the Gospel writers were talking of their experience of the Divine Presence but in a man, not just an inspired person but the Divine Presence itself! That’s in history… That’s why 1 John is so insistent in saying we saw, heard and touched that Presence in the Word, Jesus Christ.
That’s why the actual Jesus is central to the Christian faith in his life, death and resurrection and now known through his Holy Spirit. God has entered history!
Mark: why are "you" putting "history" in "scare quotes"? Do "you" mean something else by "this"? But seriously .... the claim that the phrase "God acting in history" is "ridiculous" or - as I think you probably mean - "otiose" - actually attacks the central claims of Christianity, especially the Incarnation. First, there have been and continue to be humanistic revisions of Christianity that make it into something non-miraculous, non-incarnationist, atonement-free and basically moralistic. Kant's "Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone", and Schleiermacher's "Gefűhlsreligion" are two examples of this that have been very prominent in Protestantism, and the evolution of liberal Protestantism into atheism (as St John Newman foresaw in his famous 'Biglietto' speech - predicting the trajectory that Geering and Holloway would take).
Second, what you call 'modern forensic approaches' may be nothing other than mechanical anti-miraculous reductionism (ruling out the Incarnation and Resurrection in advance and reducing Christianity into moralism), and Modern day Quakerism doesn't get a free pass just by invoking "the Spirit" all the time - because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the incarnate and resurrected Christ. Scripture tells us to "test the spirits to see if they are of God", which means there must be some objective standard of truth which is rooted in the Bible and the Church's tradition and wisdom. Otherwise you will have deception and spiritual abuse on the one hand - and on the other, the secular dismissal of religious claims as mere psychological processes (the product of an over-active imagination or worse). Claims to visions, auditions, prophecies and the like have no value in themselves, although they have often been persuasive to the gullible or those seeking deep experiences. The modern Charismatic movement had to go through an educational process of not being carried away by strong personalities declaring "God told me X" (that you should leave your husband/give to this "ministry" etc etc) and in every age people need to learn these basic lessons.
Third, and maybe of the most practical importance, not everyone is a mystic and few if any of us can expect to experience in this life even a fraction of the kind of things St Paul describes of himself in 2 Corinthians 12. Instead, for most of us, our subjective experience of God is often not particularly strong or direct, and that is why the real centre of our faith is NOT our subjective religious experiences, but the objective *historical* truth of the Incarnate Lord who walked this earth, performed miracles, taught divine truths and accomplished salvation on the Cross. And this is EXACTLY what St John teaches, not just in his Gospel, but especially in his First Epistle, where he outlines the three "tests of life" (true doctrine, true obedience, and true love of the brethren). We must be wary of trying to be more "spiritual" than the Apostles themselves.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Dear William,
If we can't experience the presence of God here and now, nothing else matters. Everything else - scripture, tradition, ritual etc - is preparing us for this. It's not extraordinary. It's what we are built for - it's what we are. We are made in the image of God, to use the orthodox Biblical phrasing. Or there is 'that of God inside everyone', to use Fox's paraphrase. We can't keep rehearsing for this all our life or putting it off until the hereafter. Eternal life is given now. We can't fob it off by saying - that's for mystics, for special people. It takes no special skill because it is God's work and gift. Jesus's language for this in John is he has sent the Spirit to make us one with him just as he is one with the Father. The human part is to surrender, open, receive - to get disentangled from all the distractions and avoidances that create an illusory sense of our separateness from God, our 'sin'. That's not a mystical task, it's a human task. It requires patience and commitment and lots of love and support from each other as we bump and bumble along rather than extraordinary special talent. To believe you have, or need, extraordinary special talent is another distraction and barrier. It is part of the human condition to be alienated from our true selves. There is no special objective truth in the Bible (or theology or the magisterium etc) that we can turn to instead, that we can substitute for our own responsibility and longing and committed action and surrender of heart. But there is testimony, a testament, of other people who have opened to God and been nudged towards oneness with Christ, with Love. Ordinary, bumbling people.
Side note: Quakers are Quakers and not "Ranters". That is, just saying you are inspired by the Spirit means nothing. We need to test it out in living and loving and in personal and communal discernment, which involves reason but is much bigger and deeper than that too. That involves a space for and opening to Spirit in the presence and wisdom and accountability of my brothers and sisters who are opening and discerning the Spirit too. But all true Christians do that anyway, or can. That's not an exclusively Quaker thing. Let's hope not, because we are just a speck.
Or perhaps you - Mark & William both have it right?
Aka, John 4:23 “ Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
In my mind the two go together (spirit and truth/Jesus God incarnate living and dying and being raised again on earth)… so not an either or, but a both and.
William actually I believe spiritual experiences are a vital part of the body of the church and not uncommon; 1 Cor 12 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each of you is a member of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, and those with gifts of healing, helping, administration, and various tongues.
Mark, I believe the historical truth of Jesus life, death and resurrection is important for it pivotal to our belief of salvation, 1 Cor 15 “3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, …”
Good to see that Moya has also, independently of me, drawn attention to the teaching of 1 John on the significance of the historical incarnation of the Son of God and the actual eye/ear/hand witness of the apostles. This is contemporary empirical testimony and is not to be confused with private subjective experiences or with the Indo-Aryan legends that lie somewhere in the genesis of Hindu beliefs - if it is possible to generalise about something as sprawling as 'Hinduism'.
I should also add that the derivative of Hinduism, Buddhism (in its classical philosophical form, not the syncretistic folk versions that predominate in South-East Asia) isn't really a religion either because God or gods don't really feature in its belief system: it is functionally an atheistic thought system about the nature of reality and how to navigate it. Which is another way of saying: even if Siddhartha had never existed, the truth or otherwise of Buddhism would be unaffected by that because Siddhartha is only one who 'points the way' (which anyone could discover) and not 'the way' himself.
Kant, and the English Deists before him, tried to change Christianity into moralism (how to be a good person). But Christianity is first of all about atonement through a sacrificial death before it is about acquiring personal virtue and righteousness. Clever people like Kant often get things backwards.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Mark, spiritual experiences are not a "special talent", they are a sovereign gift of the Spirit. The majority of spiritual experiences are certainly available to most Christians in an everyday way; I mean: hearing the Scriptures with faith as the Word of God addressing us; praying in faith with the conviction that God is really hearing us; receiving the eucharist in faith with the assurance that Christ is meeting us. And the encounter of another person whom we are called to love and welcome as Christ Himself. Even paying for your groceries at a supermarket checkout can be a spiritual encounter for the Christian who is paying attention and praying to radiate the love of Christ. Such experiences come to most of us, most of the time, without visions, auditions or feelings of rapture. By contrast, the New Testament speaks also of miraculous visions, auditions and raptures such as we read of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, or of Peter, Stephen, Philip and Paul in the Acts of the Apostles. I see no reason to think these should be everyday experiences of most Christians, although some Pentecostalists may think otherwise. I have heard some Pentecostalists speak as if the charism of prophecy could be learned in a "school of prophecy"! That is nonsense. Gifts cannot be learned, The Beatific Vision is not promised for this life, but sometimes monentary glimpses are given.
The obvious (but sometimes forgotten) point to note is that subjective experiences must never contradict or trump the objective teaching of Scripture and the Church's assured consentient tradition. When someone invokes "the Spirit" as above the Scriptures, we can be sure deception is waiting in the wings. Just think how many spiritual abusers have done harm to others when the simple admonition of Scripture would have rebuked and silenced their falsehoods. This is what the Bible means by "testing the spirits".
I don't know much about the history of Quakerism, but it seems to me that sometimes it has tacked more closely to conventional evangelicalism (as in the 19th century), albeit with a pacifist edge, at other times (nowadays?) it has seemed to sit quite loose to the Bible, with progressive politics setting the real agenda. But that's how Anglicanism often looks to me as well. As I often reflect, the future belongs to those who show up for it.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
Hi William,
Thanks for your reply. I agree with much of it. I guess I'm mostly concerned with remembering and turning to the Presence constantly, throughout the day, especially in those moments where I am inclined, through personal vulnerability or the intensity of the moment, to drop out of awareness of being in God, being in Christ. Such as when my daughter raids the pantry and eats all the sugar. Or someone attacks me at church and I'm tempted to....
I'm also concerned that everyone knows they can have an experience of God right here and now, and that it can make all the difference to living, such as modern living is so beset by a terrible sense of aloneness at times. Despite whatever we say, so much modern Christianity - in whatever denomination or theological stripe - seems to spend it's energy talking-about God rather than actually experiencing and listening to God.
It’s as if someone we’ve always longed to meet is finally at our table, gazing at us directly, patiently waiting. What’s more, they’re strangely familiar, yet we can’t bring ourselves to look at them. Perhaps we believe, as Jacob once did, that such meetings aren’t wise or humanly possible. We’re so nervous, disbelieving, numb, or overwhelmed, that we turn away to something banal instead, or turn to our thoughts about. It's true that the mystical Christians traditions offer us a way back from this primary avoidance, though all of them would claim that turning and returning to God isn't anything special. Ornate visions can be useful at times, but the constance sense of simply being in the Divine Presence is much more lasting and wholesome.
In principle, I agree that there needs to be a standard which is above, so to speak, all our experiences; some true criterion or living source of goodness and truth with which we can dialogue with and check our experiences in light of. Quakers have always held that criterion to be the Word. Unlike other Protestants, Quakers have always held that the Word is Christ, not the Bible. The Bible includes a record of Christ, the Word, but Christ is so much more (as indeed John makes plain - the Spirit of Truth will teach you directly).
Side note: Quakers are a speck and liberal Quakers even more of a speck. The largest Quaker group are evangelical Quakers, who are still just a speck compared to total Christian and indeed world population numbers.
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