The philosophy and psychology of early Quakerism as derived from the Gospel of John. (Fourth in a series that includes, #156, #161, and #173.)

Any pamphlet written by Howard Brinton is worth reading. ( )

This clear and very interesting pamphlet explains the relationship of early Quakers' Christianity with the Gospel of John, especially the nature of the Light. Brinton explains that early Quakers took much of their Christianity from John's Gospel. They held that all people everywhere possess a sufficient measure of Light for their salvation, and that there are people everywhere of every religion who find their way by this Light to God. Brinton maintains that the Gospel of John provides a Christian theology that, along with the ethics of the synoptic Gospels and the Hebrew prophets, is the great Christian theology. It is that God is Love and Christ is the Light of human beings, as opposed to the "blood sacrifice to appease an angry God" theology of the later and degenerated Christianity and of modern fundamentalist Christianity. It shares the theme of the incarnation of the eternal in the temporal, the divine in a human individual and to some extent in every human being, with the great classics of Hinduism and Buddhism.
This is one of Brinton's four PH pamphlets that he regarded as a series on the classic Quaker theology of early Friends: #156, 161, 173, and 179. ( )

PHP #179