Timothy Ashworth is Biblical Studies Tutor at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham.  He is author of Paul’s Necessary Sin: the Experience of Liberation, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) from which the central argument of this article is taken.

I come to the writing of this article having just led a course on Galatians for a group of Quakers.  The Quaker tradition rejects law as its organising principle; instead it has a set of structures for discerning the present guidance of the Spirit for the individual and community.  In the 1660s, the time of religious upheaval in which they emerged, Quakers had to distinguish themselves as a group from Ranters, whose rejection of law led to gross indulgence.  So, from then on, throughout Quaker history there has been an emphasis on faithful and tested responsiveness to guidance by the Spirit.  Direction and discipline there has been but always with a concern not to allow these to become an external imposition.  Paul had a similar problem in presenting his gospel: how do I affirm continuing moral discipline alongside the radical nature of freedom in the Spirit?

Attachments:

July10 Article 3.pdf

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