A Larger Hope 2

by Robin A Parry

  Lead also shared with Origen the moral concern that overtly preaching universal salvation might contribute to moral relaxation. This was certainly a common objection in her day against anyone who wanted to “water down” the traditional teaching on hell. She overcomes this problem with the same expedient used by Macrina and Gregory of Nyssa and by Gerrard Winstanley and some Cambridge Platonists, namely a special insistence on the length and severity of otherworldly suffering for sinners who have neglected caring for their own salvation while still on earth. She warns those tempted to treat God’s grace lightly that “Anguish and Terrour, of Soul, and Suffering, will be upon them here, and hereafter.”121 However, she also argued that preaching eternal torment was morally ineffective with most people; it “wrought little effect in frightening or terrifying ‘em from their evil Courses.” Rather, the message of divine love has its own transforming power: “if Love’s Center were rightly and duly open, and made manifest, it would have worked far more naturally and kindly, to gain the Will of those who are Perverse and Obstinate.”122 The kindness of God leads us to repentance.

  Lead allegorically identifies the final restoration with the Feast of Tabernacles, just as Gregory of Nyssa had done in his dialogue with Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection. Another allegory with patristic roots that was used often by Lead was that of the marital love between the soul (the bride) and Christ. Origen had especially deployed it in his Commentary on the Song of Songs. Also, Lead bases her announcement of the eventual universal salvation on 1 Corinthians 15:28, the biblical verse that was the favorite of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa in support of their own doctrine of apokatastasis. Lead expressly speaks of a general and universal restoration, when all rational creatures that had apostatized, after being purified to the extent needed, will enjoy again God’s friendship. The universal redemption operated by Christ will then be achieved and Christ’s mediating task as supreme high priest will cease. All that will be left for him to do is to hand the kingdom to God the Father; then, God will be “all in all.”

  In her vision, God says:

  I will make all things new, the End shall return to its Original-Primary-Being; let none grudge that the Grace of God of this Latitude is, as to make a complete Restoration; for as there was neither Sin, nor Center to it, so it must be again, when the Hour of God’s Judgment shall come, to pass a final Sentence thereupon, to cast all into That Lake, and Bottomless Pit, where all Sin, and Death, Sorrow, and Curse, shall become a Non-Entity: Then nothing of Diabolical Spirits, (any more God’s Offenders, and his Creature disturbers or Tormenters) shall be. . . . [All this is] a forerunner of This Blissful Jubilee, the Trumpet of the Everlasting Gospel, of Love, Peace, and Reconciliation to every creature capable thereof, in Flesh, and out of Flesh, that are not yet fully redeemed.123

  The Holy Trinity will thus be praised in perpetual joy and unity by all creatures. The motif that we see in the text quoted above of the restoration of the original unity of creation in the cosmic telos is clearly an Origenian and Evagrian heritage.

  In conclusion, we can see that, while Lead’s universalism is clearly grounded in her religious experiences and her reading of Scripture in that light, the many similarities with the Origenian tradition—which had experienced a mini-revival in the seventeenth century—suggest that it too was also a significant influence on the shape of her thought. She never directly references Origen so we cannot be certain that she had read him, but it is certainly possible that she had, and at very least his indirect influence on her work, mediated through the Origenian theology of others, seems highly likely.

  While the Philadelphians were a small group, the mystical theology of Jane Lead was to have a wide and long-lasting impact through some of the radical Pietists, as we shall see in the next chapter.

  Excursus: A Comparison with a Non-Origenian and Non-Patristic Notion of Universal Salvation

  The doctrine of universal salvation cherished by some Cambridge Platonists and Jane Lead and grounded in part in patristic philosophy is very different, in its theoretical presuppositions, from that of some contemporary preachers, who were much less steeped in the patristic tradition or even utterly ignorant of it. This is the case, for instance, with Thomas Moor, a barber from London, who was active in the 1690s. Moor claimed to be a prophet—Elijah, in fact. He was “a Man taught the Misteries of the Scriptures, by the same Spirit that indited them.”124 (Such claims for inspiration were not unusual among popular pneumatic preachers of the period.)

  Moor supported universal salvation in works such as Clavis Aurea (The Golden Key, London 1695).125 His claim was grounded mainly on the Bible, especially Romans 11:11–33, where Paul announces the restoration and salvation of all Israel and all the gentiles. Origen in his Commentary on Romans (4:2–3) also understood this passage as a proclamation of the final universal salvation. But Origen was at the same time one of the strongest supporters of the idea of libertarian human free will, mainly due to his anti-Valentinian polemic, whereas Moor definitely rejected it, being a committed predestinarian, who denied that humans were responsible for their sins. Moor believed that God had created humans with a flaw, an inclination to sin, to teach them the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. God is thus responsible for sin, which is aimed at the final good of creation. In this respect, his thought strongly differs not only from Origen’s, but also from that of Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius, and other fathers who supported universal salvation. His moral objection to eternal hell, however, was more in tune with Origen’s sentiments. He argued that those who take all the Bible in a literal sense end up making God the one who punishes us for our sins (which he caused us to commit) with eternal fire—“let them say worse of the Devil if they can.”126 This resonates with Origen’s pursuit of a theology befitting the deity.

  Unlike Origen, Macrina, Gregory of Nyssa, Jane Lead, and others, who denied the eternity of hell, but not its reality, Moor denied its very existence. He interpreted all the references to it in the New Testament as indications of suffering in this world (an idea to be reignited in the nineteenth century by Hosea Balou). What Jesus came to save us from was not hell, but annihilation. Indeed, Moor is one of the few supporters of the doctrine of universal restoration who denies any otherworldly punishment or purification. Unlike Origen, Macrina, and Gregory of Nyssa, Moor was not worried about the moral consequences of such a denial. In his view, love for God encourages good behavior much more than the fear of hell does. Origen was also convinced of this, but he thought that this was the case only with people who are spiritually advanced; in the most immature, on the contrary, the principle of fear prevails. This is why Origen and many subsequent universalists were wary of overtly preaching universal salvation to all people.

  There is no indication that Moor ever built up a group of followers, though it is likely his self-published works, which he sold from his house, had some admirers. They certainly generated a couple of published refutations. But Moor started no movement and left barely a ripple on the subsequent history of Christian universalism.

  91. Smith, “Note on Jane Lead,” 79–82; McDowell, Women of Grub Street; Hirst, Jane Leade; Hessayon, Jane Lead and Her Transnational Legacy. See also the chapter on Lead in Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa.

  92. Ariel Hessayon has recently challenged this conventional view, arguing that there are clues to indicate Lead was more radical in her earlier days than she lets on in her “Life of the Author.” See Hessayon, Jane Lead and Her Transnational Legacy, ch. 1.

  93. Lead, Laws of Paradise, sig. A2r. Jane had undergone an earlier religious experience, aged sixteen (1640), which created inner spiritual turmoil.

  94. Lady Wisdom appears in Proverbs 8 and in some Second Temple Jewish texts. By Lead’s time, Sophia as a hypostasis of God’s wisdom was a common motif in various strands of esotericism.

  95. Jakob Böhme was a sixteenth-century Teutonic mystic whose mystical philo
sophy exerted widespread influence across all levels of society in Europe and America from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. See the appendix of this book.

  96. Poradge was ejected from ministry in 1654, freeing him up to pursue his more esoteric interests. Jane had met Poradge first in 1663 and considered him an enlightened man “who understood the deepest of God’s secrets” (Lead, “Lebenslauff der Autorin,” 421). It may also be worth noting that William Everard, the co-leader of the Diggers with Gerrard Winstanley, was at one time a part of Poradge’s group (though see the appendix of this book).

  97. His key publication was Theologica Mystica, published posthumously in 1683.

  98. They thus contrast with many other so-called “spirituals,” who opposed outward rituals.

  99. Hirst, Jane Leade, 117.

  100. The “French Prophets” were a radical charismatic and millenarian group of Protestant believers from France, preparing the way for the end of the world.

  101. For instance, the Oxford-trained scholar Rev. Richard Roach (1662–1730), rector of St. Augustine’s, Hackney, and a universalist, was a key member of the group. He may have edited and written the preface to Jeremiah White’s universalist volume, as well as publishing his own universalist works. (The preface to the first edition of White’s book is, alas, anonymous, but it is clear that its author knew him.) The preface to the third edition was written by John Denis the Elder (ca. 1735–85), who published it in 1779. Roach was author of the significant Philadelphian publication The Imperial Standard of Messiah Triumphant (1728). Michael McClymond describes it as “a literary milestone in English Philadelphian universalism” which “presents a full-orbed Philadelphian universalist theology” (Devil’s Redemption, 506).

  102. Including on Johann Georg Gichtel, Johann and Johanna Petersen, John Kelpius, William Law, George Stonehouse, and Elhanan Winchester, who described his own London church as “Philadelphian.”

  103. The version of this text quoted here is found at http://www.passtheword.org/jane-lead/enocwalk.htm.

  104. Lead, Revelation, 15.

  105. Lead, Revelation, 15.

  106. Lead, Revelation, 27.

  107. See Walton, Notes and Materials, 213. Quoted by Hirst, Jane Leade, 116.

  108. Lead, Revelation, 25.

  109. Lead, along with many others in the seventeenth century, was a committed pre-millennialist, convinced that the last days were at hand.

  110. The first Italian translation of Lead’s old English edition (1694) is offered by Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa, Appendix 2, which also incorporates Lead’s marginal notes.

  111. The title refers to Genesis 5:24: “And Enoch walked with God, and was not [any longer], because God took him.” Enoch was believed to have been granted amazing revelations by God into the cosmos and its future; Lead is claiming that the access Enoch had is open to others who will follow the right path, which she lays out in the book, drawing on her own Enochian experiences.

  112. Lead, Enochian Walks, introduction.

  113. See Ramelli, “Origen’s Exegesis of Jeremiah,” 59–78.

  114. If not directly, then perhaps mediated through another source.

  115. Lead, Enochian Walks, introduction.

  116. For Origen see Comm. Rom. 4:11:73–75.

  117. Lead, Enochian Walks, introduction.

  118. Lead, Enochian Walks, introduction.

  119. Lead, Wonders of God’s Creation, 20–21. We shall find this notion of the “still eternity” picked up from Lead by Stonehouse in the eighteenth century.

  120. Lead, Enochian Walks, n.p.

  121. Lead, Enochian Walks, introduction.

  122. Lead, Revelation, 13.

  123. Lead, Enochian Walks, n.p.

  124. Moor, Second Addition, iii.

  125. See Burns, “London’s Barber-Elijah,” 277–90.

  126. Moor, Second Addition, 28.

  Part II

  The Eighteenth Century

  Toward a Universalist Movement

  5

  From Continental Europe to America

  Radical Pietists and Universalism

  On 14 September 1785, a small gathering of universalists met in Oxford, Massachusetts, at the invitation of Adams Streeter. Among them were Streeter himself, John Murray, Elhanan Winchester, Caleb Rich, and representatives from five of Rich’s churches. The meeting had been gathered in response to a situation in which members of Murray’s universalist society in Gloucester, Massachusetts, had their property confiscated by the local Congregational church for failure to pay tithes. Until this moment, the different strands of American universalism—Murray’s, Winchester’s, Streeter’s, and Rich’s—all functioned largely independently. Streeter argued that they would be stronger in the face of opposition to their Constitutional rights if they stood together. The gathering agreed a charter of compact and the temporary political alliance between the groups assisted in the legal victory Murray’s society won against the Congregationalists. But the association only lasted until the immediate crisis was over and failed to produce any lasting union.

  What is interesting for us is that the Oxford Association meeting represents the gathering together of streams of Christian universalism with very different roots that had converged in America and had now started to interact. In this section of the book, we will trace these streams from their sources to their intermingling and finally to their merging.

  We can begin our story with the rise of Pietism in Europe. Pietism was a renewal movement within and without German Lutheranism, an attempt to reform the Reformation. Pietists felt that the Lutheran churches in Germany had fallen from the pure Reformation vision and its leaders were lacking in both spiritual and moral fiber. In the late seventeenth century, a scholar-pastor named Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), the founding figure of Pietism, began to try to reform the German Lutheran Church. He started to gather small groups of people at his home for Bible reading and devotion in meetings he called collegia pietatis, from whence the name “Pietists” comes.

  Pietism was a diverse movement, drawing on eclectic influences. It embraced those, like Spener, who continued to seek reform within the Lutheran Church, as well as those pursuing a more radical vision, who believed that the Lutheran Church was beyond rescue and had to be abandoned by true believers.

  Pietists were characterized by an emphasis on the individual’s inner regeneration by the Spirit, a new birth from above. They also prized the authority and centrality of Scripture, over and above church traditions and dogmas, and the capacity of laypeople, led by the Spirit, to study and understand Scripture. There was a growing tendency among the Radical Pietists, fueled by the emphasis on inner inspiration by the Spirit, toward mystical interpretations of the Bible, especially in the realm of eschatology. Many of the Pietists felt that the Last Days were upon them. There was a growing emphasis among the radicals upon chiliasm/millennialism, the belief that Christ will return soon, reign over a golden age for a thousand years on earth with his saints, and then resurrect all the dead for final judgment. (The more conservative Pietists, like Spener, always rejected such ideas.) This chiliastic emphasis on the destruction of the established churches was politically subversive and caused concern to some of the authorities. Some sought to suppress the new movement, though several princes took the radicals under their protective wings.

  Another emphasis of many of the Radical Pietists was on what was known as Philadelphianism.127 The Philadelphians believed, as their name suggests, that “brotherly love” should be the defining characteristic and priority of true believers. Denominational differences were of no matter. What counted was inner spirituality, not outward forms and ceremonies. They drew inspir
ation from Jane Lead’s British Philadelphians, who we met in the last chapter, and became a well-organized movement in Germany, far larger than its tiny, short-lived British counterpart.128

  Radical Pietistic Philadelphianism, with its openness to charismatic insight from allegedly Spirit-inspired dreams and visions, was a wing of the movement that became open to universalism. Prophetic dreams of the salvation of all led some Radical Pietists to see the Scriptures in a fresh light, discovering there a teaching concerning universal restoration—a teaching to which they felt they had previously been blinded by church tradition, but which had in these last days been revealed afresh by the Spirit.129 This message was not well received by all Pietists, especially in Halle, but it did gather an audience.