Recommended reading: Yasuharu Nakano: Self and Other in the Theology of Robert Barclay
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| Robert Barclay. |
Nakano discusses Barclay's historical background from Augustine to the reformers, and the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism, as well as his later reception in Evangelical and Liberal Quakerism. He also relates aspects of Barclay's thought to contemporary debates on pacifism and ecclesiology, e.g. Yoder and Hauerwas.
Nakano reads Barclay through the, in academia at the moment popular, idea of 'the self' and 'otherness'. Hence he characterizes Barclay's basic theology as follows:
"Referring to the tradition of Christian mysticism to which, Barclay himself confesses, Quakerism partly belonged, it becomes clear that ‘passiveness’ in Barclay’s theology is the total renunciation of self to such an extent that even the human-will to have faith or to fulfill the will of God is forsaken. In such a way, when a human soul stops its own workings and is brought to nothingness (death on the Cross with Christ), the door of the heart, which otherwise is filled with voices of the self, would be open to the working of God. Then the inward light comes forth in the heart as the spiritual birth (revival with Christ). In this phase, humans can respond to the light, which leads to constitute their new 'self' for the first time in the dimension of responsibility to God[...]" (p. 300)(which made me think of Barth's "We know that God is the Personality which we are not, and that this lack of Personality is precisely what dissolves and establishes our personality", Epistle to the Romans)
Nakano convincingly argues that both Arminianism and Calvinism are disguised forms of "humanism and self-will". Both rely on the performance of the human will in choosing God. As such both end up placing the human self in the top of an ontological system, that excludes 'otherness' (God and other persons). The alternative posed by Barclay, self-denial or 'nothingness', means an openness to God as the wholly other.
"[...]passiveness or nothingness is the crucial element of the Quaker faith in Barclay’theology, which presents Quakerism as a counter-faith mainly against the two mainstream self-reductive religions in those days, Arminianism and orthodox Calvinism. Therefore, Barclay advises all people to wait silently upon God even by renouncing their self and even by forsaking their own will to faith." (pp. 300-301)While Evangelical Quakerism (19th century) held to Barclay's basic beliefs, unfortunately, in Liberal Quakerism, a different view of the self took over.
"Liberal Quakers [...] transformed Quakerism into a different type of religion based upon self-affirmation. Namely, their religion was under the deep influence of Neo-Hegelianism, which believed in God's self-expansion as the process of Truth, and the completion of the human self through auto-regression to the Self as the Origin." (p. 302)The debates on one of the most distinctive tenets of Quakerism, pacifism, should be understood on this basis. Nakano discusses Reinhold Niebuhr's criticism of the liberal pacifism of his day, Liberal Quakerism included. Such pacifism was based upon the idea that other selves could be included in a harmonius whole. But liberal pacifism does not acknowledge the radical reality of sin. So far, says Nakano, "Niebuhr's criticism against the Liberals was right to the point" (p. 304). The Liberal Quakers, argues Nakano, "make God's love, which is optimistically identified with their own desire, degrade into a reckonable and reasonable method of politics, while ignoring the tension between God and humans (or the dimension of eschatology)" (p. 304).
Moreover, the pacifism of Liberal Quakerism was based on an idea of effectiveness, that pacifism was actually the best means of attaining an ideal societal order. But says Nakano,
"[...]if pacifism is only measured in terms of present usefulness and effectiveness in this world, as it is in Liberal Quaker pacifism, it runs the risk of reducing others or otherness back into the realm of calculability or computability, looking upon them merely as objects of manipulation." (pp. 295-296)This, however, does not mean that Niebuhr's 'realism' is altogether right: "Niebuhr focused merely upon struggles for relative social orders and his stance tended to be absorbed in controllability or computability, as the Liberal did" (p. 305).
Again Barclay's thinking offers a third alternative. As both Arminianism and Calvinism relies on the performance of human will and self (whether free or predestined), liberalism and realism relies on a conception of other selves as something that must be controlled through the exercise of will. But true Christian pacifism must be the product, not of idealism, nor so-called realism, but self-denial:
"As Barclay argued, pacifism or nonviolence is totally the opposite of the human natural instinct of self-preservation, and if it is imposed even upon people unprepared (those who have not yet come to the Gospel), this imposition could easily turn into another sort of violence." (p. 290)This also means that Christian pacifism cannot simply be equated with political ideologies, or be made elements of the worldly social order (which are always of 'the self'):
"[...]there is a large gap between social institutions or secular kingdoms that are founded upon the legal system of reward and retribution, and the Kingdom of God upon selfless love."Nakano also offers an appealing interpretation of Barclay's moral perfectionism. This element of Quakerism can be somewhat 'scarry', since the idea that human beings can be made free from sin in this world is most often the view of self-righteous fanatics. But Nakano argues that such perfection can never be a self-contained moral property or possession:
"This kind of religious pacifism as testimony, as also seen in the Amish case, was intended to be devoted to following the example of Jesus Christ in the Bible; it did not matter whether it was socially effective or not. " (p. 295)
"[...]perfection in Barclay never refer to the static moral status that is generally equated with the ideas of the completion of the self or the collective Self, nor can it be compared to progressive volitional efforts towards a certain set moral goal. His perfectionist stance shows its distinctiveness in the double sided nature: the possible and the impossible. Namely, as Barclay argues, otherness always has its own way, escaping human calculation, as is theologically formulated in his terminology, vehiculum Dei (the impossibility)." (p. 232)Nakano argues that this makes Barclay's perfectionism "show some resemblance to the concepts found in Lutheranism and Wesleyanism" (p. 237).
One minor criticism would be that it is at times hard to distinguish between Barclay's own terminology and Nakato's interpretation of this. Barclay rarely talks of 'otherness'. Nakano's discussion of Barclay can hardly be used as an introduction (but it is not meant to be), but it goes well hand in hand with Barclay's apology, and places his thinking neatly in its historical context.
