John Woolman’s Christological Model of Discernment

Kershner, Jon R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21653-5_7

Jon R. Kershner⁴

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism ((INTERMYST))

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Abstract

In “John Woolman’s Christological Model of Discernment” Kershner argues that Woolman’s ascetic and devotional spirituality was informed by the goal of Christ being formed in the individual in a similar way to the ideal put forward by Thomas à Kempis’ The Christian Pattern, or the Imitation of Jesus Christ. Woolman used the language of the spiritual senses to contemporize Jesus Christ’s historical experiences in a way that guided Woolman in the ethical decisions he faced in the eighteenth-century world. Those prepared in “resignation” to receive Christ’s presence could “dwell” in Christ. Woolman’s eschatological focus takes the act of imitation further than Thomas did in that it heightened his expectations for social transformation as Christ’s life was re-enacted in his life.

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Notes

1.
John Woolman, “Journal,” in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1971), 93.
2.
Woolman, “Journal,” 92.
3.
Woolman, “Journal,” 93.
4.
Woolman, “Journal,” 93.
5.
Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 17.
6.
Maurice Jackson, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 55.
7.
J. William Frost shows that Woolman did not usually use Enlightenment language positively. J. William Frost, “John Woolman and the Enlightenment,” in The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman, Ed. Mike Heller (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill Publications, 2003), 183.
8.
John Woolman, “Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It Is to Be Maintained,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 447.
9.
Walter Altman, “John Woolman’s Reading of the Mystics,” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 48 (1959): 107, 111.
10.
Stephen Angell. “Universalising and Spiritualising Christ’s Gospel: How Early Quakers Interpreted the Epistle to the Colossians,” Quaker Studies 11:1 (2006): 35.
11.
Walter Altman, “John Woolman’s Reading” (Florida State University, 1957), i.
12.
Jon R. Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ: A Colonial Quaker’s Vision for the British Atlantic World (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 87; Woolman, “Journal,” 120–2, 148–9, 160, 185–7.
13.
John Woolman, “Concerning the Ministry,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 314.
14.
Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 57–8.
15.
Woolman, “Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It Is to Be Maintained,” 449.
16.
Bernard McGinn, “Mysticism,” in The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, ed. Philip Sheldrake (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 19.
17.
Woolman, “Journal,” 47.
18.
Woolman, “Journal,” 149.
19.
Woolman, “Journal,” 38.
20.
Woolman, “Journal,” 36.
21.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
22.
Woolman, “Journal,” 58.
23.
For more on the use of auditory language in religious insights, see: Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 42–3.
24.
Jon R. Kershner, “‘Diminish Not a Word’: The Prophetic Voice of John Woolman,” in Quakers and Literature, ed. James W. Hood, vol. 3, Quakers and the Disciplines (Philadelphia, PA: Friends Association for Higher Education, 2016), 15–17.
25.
Woolman, “Journal,” 25.
26.
John Woolman, “Considerations on Keeping Negroes; Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination; Part Second,” in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1971), 236.
27.
Woolman, “Considerations on Keeping Negroes; Part Second,” 236–7.
28.
Woolman, “Journal,” 107.
29.
Altman, “Woolman’s Reading of the Mystics,” 104.
30.
Bernard McGinn, “Mystical Consciousness: A Modest Proposal,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 8, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 45.
31.
Michael Birkel agrees with Bernard McGinn that this language is helpful for describing mystical forms of spirituality. Michael L. Birkel, Quakers Reading Mystics (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 2.
32.
John Woolman, “On a Sailor’s Life,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 508.
33.
Woolman, “On a Sailor’s Life,” 508.
34.
Woolman, “Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It Is to Be Maintained,” 448.
35.
Woolman, “Journal,” 60.
36.
Woolman, “Journal,” 60–1.
37.
John Woolman, “An Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 477.
38.
Woolman, “Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It Is to Be Maintained,” 449.
39.
Patricia A. Ward, Experimental Theology in America: Madame Guyon, Fénelon, and Their Readers (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 74.
40.
Ward, Experimental Theology, 74.
41.
Ward, Experimental Theology, 74.
42.
Ward, Experimental Theology, 74.
43.
John Woolman, “Conversations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It May Be Promoted,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 473.
44.
Woolman, “An Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends,” 477.
45.
Woolman, “Journal,” 185.
46.
Woolman, “Journal,” 185.
47.
Woolman, “Journal,” 185.
48.
Woolman, “Journal,” 185–6.
49.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
50.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
51.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
52.
John J. Collins, “Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” ed. John J. Collins, Semeia 14 (1979): 7.
53.
Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 110.
54.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
55.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
56.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186.
57.
John Woolman, “An Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan company, 1922), 477; Galatians 2:20.
58.
Woolman, “Journal,” 186. Galatians 2:20.
59.
John Woolman, “Conversations on the True Harmony of Mankind and How It May Be Promoted,” in The Journal and Essays of John Woolman, ed. Amelia M. Gummere (New York: Macmillan Company, 1922), 473. Colossians 3:3.
60.
Woolman, “An Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends,” 479.
61.
Woolman, “Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings,” 479.
62.
Woolman, “Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings,” 479.
63.
Woolman, “Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings,” 479–80.
64.
Woolman, “Epistle to the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings,” 480. Colossians 1:24.
65.
Angell, “Universalising and Spiritualising Christ’s Gospel,” 42–3.
66.
Woolman, “Journal,” 151.
67.
Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 142–3; Altman, “John Woolman’s Reading of the Mystics,” 98–100; Woolman, “Journal,” 75. The edition of The Christian Pattern that Woolman owned was probably Christopher Sower’s Germantown edition: Thomas à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, or the Imitation of Jesus Christ, Being an Abridgement of the Works of Thomas a’ Kempis. By a Female Hand. (Germantown, PA: Christopher Sowr [Sower], 1749).
68.
Schmidt, Hearing Things, 40; Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 142–3; Altman, “John Woolman’s Reading,” 98–102.
69.
Rufus Matthew Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (London: Macmillan and Co., 1909), 327.
70.
Steven Katz, “The ‘Conservative’ Character of Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Religious Traditions, ed. Steven Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 46, 49. Emphasis in original.
71.
à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, 164.
72.
à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, 1.
73.
Katz, “The ‘Conservative’ Character of Mysticism,” 50.
74.
à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, 117.
75.
à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, 116.
76.
Schmidt, Hearing Things, 52–53.
77.
Jon R. Kershner, “‘Come out of Babylon, My People’: John Woolman’s (1720–72) Anti-Slavery Theology and the Transatlantic Economy,” in Quakers and Their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause, 1754–1808, ed. Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel, Perspectives On Early America (New York: Routledge, 2015), 91; Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 123–7.
78.
à Kempis, The Christian Pattern, 166.
79.
Kershner, John Woolman and the Government of Christ, 147.
80.
Woolman, “Journal,” 177; 2 Cor. 5:17–18.
81.
John Woolman, “Manuscript of John Woolman’s Sea Journal,” 1772, 71, Luke Howard Manuscripts, Friends House Library; See also: John Woolman, “A Plea for the Poor, or A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich,” in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1971), 263.
82.
Bruce Chilton, Visions of the Apocalypse: Receptions of John’s Revelation in Western Imagination (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2013), 104.
83.
Laura Rediehs, “A Distinctive Quaker Theory of Knowledge: An Expanded Experiential Empiricism,” Quaker Studies 21, no. 1 (2016): 73.
84.
Woolman, “Journal,” 58.
85.
Woolman, “Journal,” 160, 160 fn. 6.
86.
Jeffrey Dudiak and Laura Rediehs, “Quakers, Philosophy, and Truth,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, ed. Pink Dandelion and Stephen Angell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 514.
87.
Dudiak and Rediehs, “Quakers, Philosophy, and Truth,” 514.
88.
Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Inner Experience in Christian Mysticism,” Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 167.
89.
For statements about Woolman’s “singularity” and “unacceptence” see Henry Cadbury, John Woolman in England: a Documentary Supplement ([London]: Friends Historical Society, 1971), 52, 135; William Hunt, “Letter from William Hunt to Uriah Woolman. Colchester, 6th Month 21st, 1772,” in Friends Miscellany: Being a Collection of Essays and Fragments, Biographical, Religious, Epistolary, Narrative, and Historical ..., ed. John Comly and Isaac Comly, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Printed for the editors by J. Richards, 1834), 399–400; Esther Tuke, “Esther Tuke to ‘Friend,’” 10mo 1772, Swarthmore College, Friends Historical Library.
90.
Cadbury, John Woolman in England: a Documentary Supplement, 18.

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Kershner, J.R. (2019). John Woolman’s Christological Model of Discernment. In: Kershner, J. (eds) Quakers and Mysticism. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mysticism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21653-5_7

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21653-5_7
Published: 30 August 2019
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