The Rule of Christ: Themes in the Theology of James Nayler - Book Review (Anabaptism Today Journal)

 

Book review by Peter Baines, published in Anabaptism Today, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2022)

Stuart Masters, The Rule of Christ: Themes in the Theology of James Nayler, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021, 100 + vi pages, Amazon £64.38, Brill website €70.00/US$84.00 

I really enjoyed reading this slim volume by Stuart Masters from the Quaker Studies series. In these pages, Masters takes a fresh look at the thinking of James Nayler – one of the most notorious of the early Quaker leaders. 

Generally, all that is remembered about Nayler is his dramatic entry into Bristol in October 1656. In a symbolic action to warn of the imminent coming of the kingdom of God, Nayler rode into the city on a donkey, while women strewed palms before him. These actions were deemed blasphemous by the parliamentary powers, and disowned by George Fox – who would later be seen as the founder of the Society of Friends and its main speaker during the Restoration period. 

Found guilty of blasphemy after a trial before parliament, Nayler was cruelly punished (the letter B was branded on his forehead, a hole was bored in his tongue with a hot iron, and he was flogged through both London and Bristol, before being imprisoned for many years). Upon his release, Nayler returned to preaching, but was murdered in 1660 while walking to his home in Yorkshire. He was only forty-two or -three. 

Seeking to find an accommodation with both the parliament and Restoration powers, George Fox sought to write Nayler out of Quaker history, refusing to allow Nayler’s works to be published. As Christopher Hill put it in his book, The World Turned Upside Down, ‘In Fox’s Journal James Nayler plays a part only slightly greater than that of Trotsky in the official Soviet histories of the Russian Revolution. Yet in the 1650s many regarded Nayler as the “chief leader”, the “head Quaker in England”.’1 

In this volume, Masters looks beyond the well-known story of Nayler riding into Bristol. He gives a considered reading of Nayler’s published works (amounting to four volumes in the version edited by Kuenning2) and places him in the tradition of the radical Puritan movement that burgeoned within the New Model Army during the English Civil War – spawning not only Quaker and Baptist groups, but also Levellers, Diggers and Fifth Monarchy Men. 

In this work, Masters focuses on Nayler’s Christology: ‘A powerful Christological vision is at the heart of Nayler’s religious thought that engendered a practical theology with radical, political, economic and ecological implications’ (p. 1, Abstract). He places Nayler in the anti Calvinistic strand that was unhappy with the Commonwealth Settlement that had been negotiated by the Calvinistic grandees who were in charge in parliament. For Nayler, Christ came, not to pay a legal debt, but to change humanity from within: ‘In Reformed theology, Christ’s righteousness is only imputed to the believer. Nayler and other early Friends seem to suggest that the perfection of Christ is not merely imputed to those in the new birth, but is also imparted and infused into them as an inward and spiritual experience’ (p. 13f.). 

Against the Parliamentary desire to impose religious regulations, Nayler calls for Christians to be governed by the Spirit of Christ within them (what Masters calls ‘endonomianism’). Surrendered to the Spirit of Christ, true Christians will then fulfil the law of God – without the need for state imposition.

Submitting to the Spirit of Christ – even to the point of martyrdom – humanity that had received its first birth in Adam will be reborn into the life of Christ – the second Adam. In all of this, the cross is central to the work of Christ: ‘The cross represents a sacrificial surrendering of the human will to the divine will … Christ is the eternal reconciler and physician’ (p. 26). 

So renewed, humanity will be a part of the renewing of the world – restoring what was lost in the disobedience of the first Adam. This will have a marked effect on politics, economics and humanity’s relationship with the rest of creation. 

While at odds with the Calvinistic strain of the leaders of Parliament, Masters points out that Nayler’s ideas fitted into a wider tradition of Christian thinking that circulated within radical puritanism. Masters highlights three of these in particular. There are aspects of patristic thought of recapitulation and theosis; ideas that were first developed by Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130 to c.202 CE) and further expounded within Eastern Orthodoxy. Here, Christ is seen as the Second Adam, succeeding where the First Adam failed, and summed up by Irenaeus that: ‘the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself’.3 The emphasis on the life of the Spirit echoes the medieval mysticism of such as Meister Eckhart. Finally, the need for total surrender to the rule of the Spirit speaks of the Anabaptist tradition of gelassenheit. 

Of course, like many of the radical Puritans, there was a strong apocalyptic strand in the thinking of Nayler. This was clearly seen in his fateful entry into the city of Bristol – a warning to the people that Christ was coming, and was coming soon. While this has not been the case, there is much that can be gained from the wider thinking of James Nayler, as suggested by Masters in his closing remarks: ‘In view of the attention he gives to political, economic and ecological justice, is it possible to see him as a proto liberation theologian? (p. 91). 

If you have a chance to read this book, do so – it will more than repay the time spent on it. 

Peter Baines, Abergavenny 

Notes

1. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 231. 

2. Licia Kenning, ed., The Works of James Nayler (1618–1660) (4 vols; Farmington, ME: Quaker Heritage Press, 2003–9). 

3. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (Book V, Preface), in The Church Fathers: The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection (Catholic Way Publishing, Kindle Edition.), Location 17840.