FOX'S CHRISTOLOGY

FOX’S  CHRISTOLOGY

The Old Testament, the New Testament and his experience are Fox’s authority for understanding Christ. 

     He begins with the primitive church and the apostles for they are the last people – until himself –  who really understood Christ. 

     He pretty well ignores the sixteen hundred years that intervened.  In this way he doesn’t have to deal with the history of Christianity, the crusades, the inquisition, and Christian participation in wars.

     Always orthodox himself, Fox felt compelled to defend the orthodoxy of Friends in the letter written to the Governor of Barbados. 

     Because of the “many scandalous lies and slanders that have been cast upon Friends, saying that we deny Christ Jesus which all of our books and declarations clearly testify to the contrary.”  

     When Friends talk about this letter today, they say that it is the “closest thing that Quakers have to a creed” or that it is “sort of a creed.”  But the letter is the Nicene and Apostle’s creed in Fox’s own language. The language is scriptural but the creeds influenced what he says in this letter:

     We own and believe in Jesus the beloved and begotten Son of God, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and  born of the Virgin Mary, and who is the express image of the invisible God by whom all things were created.

     He, who knew no sin, was crucified for us in the flesh, buried, rose again the third day by the power of His Father. 

     He ascended up into heaven and now sits  on the right hand of God.

     He is our wisdom and righteousness, our prophet.

     He is the Quickening Spirit, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.

     He brings the oaths of God, the new covenant of light, life, grace and peace. 

     He alone is our Redeemer and Savior.

Fox believes that 

Christ is God’s Son, 

the way to God, 

the Second Adam, who never fell, and is eternal life. 

He is the Light who has enlightened every man and woman who has come into the world.  

He is the Life, the Word, who brings the glad tidings of salvation; the Life that was with the Father before the world began. He is all virtue.

Christ bore the sins and iniquities of all mankind, and was an offering for the sins of the whole world so that we may have Life through Him. He did not die as he was God, but as he was man. Fox’s phrase, “as he was man,” is entirely orthodox. The human nature of Christ, not the divine nature, was crucified and rose. For Christ, the man, said as he hung on the cross,”My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There is no suggestion that Christ is God at some times, but not at others.

MANGER, STAR, MOTHER, CHILDHOOD

Fox doesn’t retell the Christmas story in the pastoral letters. (In letter 216, 1662, he does mention the manger. Although the crooked and perverse generation professed Christ, “He has not had so much place of entertainment as in their manger.”)  

First, because Friends did not keep Christmas, didn’t follow the liturgical calendar of the Anglican church. He does use the star as a symbol for Christ: the bright morning star and the Day star rising in our hearts.  He seldom  mentions Christ’s mother; he doesn’t write about Christ’s childhood; he writes about the human Christ rarely. 

DIVINE CHRIST

He writes beautifully, poetically, passionately about the Divine Christ who is the Heavenly and spiritual man by whom the world was made. He is the heavenly Overseer, heavenly Priest who breaks the peace of all the earthly priests. The Heavenly Light, Counselor, Teacher, Instructor. He oversees us with His heavenly eye.