Apocalypse of the Word: The Life and Message of George Fox (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews127 The biographer has been meticulous in discussing details of Henry Cadbury's life, passing from each one to something else in quick succession. In the earlier chapters we are given a grasp of his thought and activity, but little insight into his actual personality, perhaps because the author didn't known him then. But in the latter part of the book his boyish wit and attention to the funny side of a question came through. Pictures add a great deal, showing us a little of him at various stages of his life. George Williams, who taught with Henry Cadbury at the Harvard Divinity School, said of him, "His faith as a Friend allowed him to get through the white waters in his sturdy canoe . . . and to arrive at his destination with the calm with which he started out." And Moses Bailey, a contemporary Friend, wrote, "No Friend in his generation so fully bound together Quakers and our history, the Bible and our relation to it, and intelligent hope as we plant the future, as Henry Cadbury." Lincoln, MassachusettsDaisy Newman Apocalypse of the Word: The Life and Message of George Fox. By Douglas Gwyn. Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1986. 241 pp. $14.95. Douglas Gwyn's remarkable study of the message and witness of George Fox deserves a place alongside William C. Braithwaite and Rufus Jones' Rowntree Series on Quakerism, as well as beside Hugh Barbour's, Quakers in Puritan England and Lewis Benson's, Catholic Quakerism. As the first scholar since Lewis Benson to make full use of Lewis Benson's Notes on George Fox with alphabetical subject index to quotations on all major topics in the thought of George Fox, Gwyn supports his claims with a breadth of quotations from all parts of Fox's writings which is amazing. The author's focal point summary quotation of Fox's message is "Jesus Christ is come to teach his people himself." Many of us, with Lewis Benson as a goad, have come to see this phrase and not "There is that of God in everyone" as the essential summary statement of Quaker faith. Gwyn's book does a magnificent job of making this case. Also remarkable is Gwyn's use of Scripture and the experience of the New Testament Christian community as source and testing ground both for George Fox's message of the prophetic presence of Jesus Christ, God's living Word in our midst, and of its relevance and truth for us and all people. Many modern Friends have rejected the call of Lewis Benson and the New Foundation Fellowship as a call to return to "Fox-ism" or "Early Quaker Primitivism," relevant perhaps in the seventeenth century but certainly not to our own. Because of Gwyn's profoud use of Scriptural, early Christian and contemporary theological sources he clearly demonstrates the relevance of Fox's message of universal saving Light to this and any other age. The author's use of the term, "Apocalypse," may be difficult for modern secular people, or present day "Second Coming" Christians to grasp. As here presented, "Apocalypse" simply means "revelation," the revelation of God's presence and power here and now. For Fox, expectation of a climactic end to history is well and good, but what really counts is the immediate return of Christ in the power of the Spirit here and now. The second element of "Apocalypse" which needs comment is its "cosmic dimension." For Fox "apocalyptic" is not concerned exclusively with events at the end of history. It also deals with the cosmic significance of all God's 128Quaker History mighty acts in every age, especially in our own time. In Fox's view eternity breaks into time apocalyptically at every instant in which the inward light and voice of Jesus Christ is seen, heard and obeyed. No one who has read and studied most of George Fox's collected writings, as I have, can escape being struck by Fox's overwhelming faith in Jesus Christ in his offices as priest, ruler, prophet, servant, peacemaker and living Word of God. Perusal of this book convinces us that the Quaker message is inescapably Christ-centered in a...