Creasey argues that that ‘the Quaker doctrine of the inner light is a Christological rather than an anthropological doctrine’: that is, while it is ‘generally recognised that the central and distinctive doctrine of the Society of Friends is its doctrine of the ‘Inner Light’’, Creasey contends that ‘the features of this doctrine which can truly be said to be distinctive of Quakerism are those which result from the Quaker attempt to express, in terms of a doctrine of inner light, an interpretation of the Person and work of Christ.’ The historical revelation of God in Christ is central to a correct understanding of the ever-present inner light; indeed that light is a kind of personal presence.
Despite the Quaker suspicion of doctrine, 17th c Quakerism ‘possessed a remarkably full doctrine of the Person and work of Christ’. This doctrine sought to correct aspects of contemporary Christology, and even anticipated certain subsequent developments of Protestant Christology. Expression in terms of the inner light tended to make contemporaries suspicious that all Quakers meant was the natural light of reason or conscience, and the exposition of the doctrine of inner light by Quakers of a philosophical bent tended to vitiate the original personal, Christological insights. In reaction to these things, a tendency arose to under-emphasise ‘those distinctive and important New Testament insights which the early Quaker leaders had sought to express in the language of inner light’. In turn, the reaction to this was expression in more conventional Protestant doctrinal formulations.
Creasey defines his position against that of Rufus Jones. Jones saw the essential message of the first Quakers as ‘a simple rediscovery of the truth of the divine immanence in man’ (Creasey), placing them in the succession of some medieval mystics and the German Spiritual Reformers. Fox knew no ‘school metaphysics’ but called people to ‘that of God in themselves’, freed from the ‘encasing bonds of man-made doctrines’ (Jones). Barclay ‘lock[ed] up this new idea in [the] old system’ of Protestant dogmatics. Jones’s account is implicitly ambiguous about any distinction between the inner light and the ‘natural light’, and undermines the specifically Christian doctrinal content of Quakerism. Consonant with these things he has an optimistic view of human nature, in contrast to Barclay’s ‘Augustinian’ and even ‘Calvinist’ view. As we have seen, Creasey argues for a definite distinction between nature and the divine presence in the soul, and for the Christian character of Quakerism; he also holds that ‘Fox was as little inclined as Barclay to take a favourable view of the nature of man’. In fact the understanding of Quakerism deriving from Jones is precisely what Creasey has in his sights: early Quakerism ‘was a fresh and vivid recovery of certain New Testament insights concerning the Person and work of Jesus Christ’, and the interpretations of Quakerism that emphasise either a ‘speculative and rationalistic’ account of the inner light (reduction to the natural light), or a generic spirituality, belong in the same stable. Creasey thinks they both owe a lot to Jones and less to Fox and the early ‘Publishers of Truth’…
