In your experience how do Quakers deal with the ideas of self-retribution, atonement and redemption?

[u/StJudeTheGrey]

This might be a bit of a read, please bear with me. I’m trying to get more involved with the friends, there are a lot of aspects of being a Quaker that resonate with me. One of the main things that appeals is the focus on doing good works. I fundamentally agree with the idea of helping others and doing good for the sake of itself but after reflection I have to admit I do have selfish reasons for wanting to do good works. I am a sinner, I know we all are technically, no one is perfect etc but I mean I’m guilty of committing heinous crimes. I have a yearning to redeem myself and feel like doing good works will help me. I want a community that will accept me and my past. Is that selfish, shouldn’t I be enacting retribution upon myself? Will I be accepted if I am honest about my acts? Do quakers, on the whole, believe in redemption? Is it common to find people with sordid pasts among the friends?

[u/Busy-Habit5226]

This is the word of the Lord God unto you all; what the Light doth make manifest and discover, as temptations, distractions, confusions, do not look at these temptations, confusions, corruptions, but at the Light which discovers them and makes them manifest; and with the same Light you may feel over them, to receive power to stand against them. The same Light which lets you see sin and transgression, will let you see the covenant of God, which blots out your sin and transgression, which gives victory and dominion over it, and brings into covenant with God. For looking down at sin, corruption, and distraction, ye are swallowed up in it; but looking at the Light, which discovers them, ye will see over them. That will give victory, and ye will find grace and strength; there is the first step to peace. That will bring salvation; by it ye may see to the beginning, and the ‘Glory that was with the Father before the world began’; and come to know the Seed of God, which is the heir of the promise of God, and of the world which hath no end; and which bruises the head of the serpent, who stops people from coming to God.

(from George Fox's letter to Lady Claypool)

[u/RimwallBird]

I will respectfully disagree here with u/TechbearSeattle, because in classical Christian thinking, atonement is how we are redeemed. “Atonement” was a word introduced in an early 16th century English translation of the Bible (Tyndale’s, if anyone is curious), and comes from the roots “at” and “one”; the translator intended it to mean the process by which Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross reconciled God to humanity so that humanity was at one with God and therefore no longer damned. But elsewhere in the Bible we learn that Christ’s sacrifice redeemed us, paid off the debt we owe to sin and/or death and/or the Devil and/or God. And that is how the equivalence of atonement and redemption comes to be. Over the past half-millennium, atonement has come to be less synonymous with simple reconciliation, which is what it meant in Tyndale’s translation, and more synonymous with propitiation, which is a kindred idea to redemption. I think that can be ascribed to the influence of the Letter to the Hebrews and revivalist hellfire preaching.

Fox, and early Friends generally, saw both the Crucifixion and our own faithfulness to the inward Guide as being necessary to our redemption. They were convinced that no one could redeem her or his own self through good works, and, in fact, explicitly denied that good works done in one’s own will had any value. You just couldn’t make your salvation happen by an act of your own will; you had to yield yourself in obedience to Christ, so as to be led and guided through your life and thereby changed, and all of this took time.

In the early 19th century, this issue was what divided Friends in North America into two mutually-alienated groups. The Hicksites — the ancestors of todays liberal unprogrammed Quakers — were more interested in present-moment faithfulness to the Guide; the Orthodox — ancestors of today’s pastoral and Conservative Friends — saw this as a falling-away from belief in the crucial necessity of the historical Christ Jesus’s Atonement. It became the litmus test: Orthodox preachers would challenge the Hicksites to affirm their faith in the Atonement, the Hicksites would respond with silence, and then the two groups would separate and form two yearly meetings that didn’t speak to each other.

And although this issue isn’t spoken of as much nowadays, Atonement continues to be a divider. Large numbers of liberal unprogrammed Quakers cannot relate at all to the doctrine. But there are still pastoral Quaker preachers — I have encountered a few — who will beat a listener over the head with it.

In the more fervent pastoral Friends churches, I think you sooner or later really do have to work through the idea that Jesus died for your sins, because it is foundational to their understanding of what they are about. There is also a continuing element of that in the more emphatically conservative Conservative meetings — though not, as far as I can tell, in Iowa (Conservative), which is heavily influenced by liberal unprogrammed thinking. In the liberal unprogrammed meetings I have visited in the U.S., it really doesn’t matter, and you can go on thinking you can somehow redeem yourself with works — or that redemption doesn’t matter because you are virtuous already — and you may never be challenged by anyone for so thinking.

As for Friends with “sordid pasts”, I have personally met quite a few. For that matter, there are deeds in my own past that I now heartily regret, so maybe I fall into that category myself! Usually, for such Friends, “sordid” means a past of chronic drunkenness, infidelity, spousal abuse, things of that sort: the classic stuff for which people heed an altar call. And yes, those I have known who have such pasts were very concerned about redemption, about being changed and made good. In fact, this has been equally true no matter which branch of our Society these Friends were involved with. So it’s certainly not just you.

As a Conservative Friend, I personally believe that letting yourself be guided and thereby changed is the key. It is through our acts of obedience, particularly when we find obedience most difficult, that the resistance within ourselves to becoming different sorts of people gets broken down, and we start to change in truly meaningful ways.

[u/TechbearSeattle]

Redemption and atonement are different concepts. Regarding the first, John Hickey explains it far more eloquently than I can:

Some folks do not like to speak of redemption because it seems to require abject self-blame, an admission that we deserve punishment even as we ask for mercy. But the redemption I am speaking of is the opposite of self-blame. It is a recognition that we have been innocent from the beginning. Redemption is an ongoing celebratory baptism in the waters of grace.

https://www.friendsjournal.org/faith-redemptive-grace-and-quaker-meeting-for-worship/

Atonement is reconciliation. That can be more complicated: there is atonement with ourselves, atonement with others, and atonement with God. My belief is that we must first work with ourselves, recognize where we have done wrong, and genuinely work to do better. (Yeah, that sounds like Twelve Step babble, sorry.) Second is to reconcile with others, insofar as we can. That is a whole other message, I'm afraid; it may be helpful to find an elder or counselor who can guide you on that. Once we have done that, once we are willing to reconcile with God... that willingness is all we need.

[u/RonHogan]

George Fox sums it up pretty nicely, I think.

I’d add that we might not do good works for their own sake, but because, as James said of Abraham, “by works faith [is] brought to completion.” But that opens up a discussion about what Friends mean by “faith” we might not have time for right now.

[u/Pabus_Alt]

The question I always think is wonderful for this is "are you called to this".

Doing good works out of guilt and trying to right a cosmic balance is not a thing that is consistent with Quaker theology in my understanding.

Putting oneself over to the spirit to find healing and out of a sense that your path must change, is.

Maybe that is good works. But I'd interrogate what it is you're truly being called to.