Christian Devotional Classics: A Testament of Devotion

Christian Devotional Classics: A Testament of Devotion - Emerging Scholars Blog

CHRISTIAN DEVOTIONAL CLASSICS: A TESTAMENT OF DEVOTION

OCTOBER 13, 2013 BY TOM GROSH IV

Thomas Raymond Kelly (1893 – 1941) author of A Testament of Devotion (1941). 

Source: livres-mystiques.com/partieTEXTES/Kelly/bio.html

“To read or not to read?” Ever have a book which has caught your attention a number of times over a period of years, but you have made the intentional decision not to read only to find it assigned for class? 

Thomas Raymond Kelly’s (1893 – 1941) A Testament of Devotion (1941) fits this category for me.

Kelly was a cradle to grave Quaker, i.e., Religious Society of Friends. Although born in America, he had a passion for international education, service, pacifism, and spirituality. Although he studied chemistry as an undergraduate, he pursued further education with a mystical bend in religion and philosophy through a number of avenues including self study and a Ph.D. at Hartford. Kelly’s memory loss during his oral defense for a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard crushed him (1937). But with the publication of Explanation and Reality in the Philosophy of Emile Meyerson (1937) . . .

No one knows exactly what happened, but a strained period in his life was over. He moved toward adequacy. A fissure in him seemed to close, cliffs caved in and filled up a chasm, and what was divided grew together within him. Science, scholarship, method remained good, but in a new setting. Now he could say with Isaac Pennington, ‘Reason is not sin, but a deviation from that from which reason came is a sin.

He went to to the Germantown Friends’ Meeting at Coulter Street to deliver three lectures in January 1938. He told me the lectures wrote themselves. At Germantown, people were deeply moved and said, “This is authentic.” His writing writings and spoken messages began to be marked by a note of experimental authority.” — Douglas V. Steere, “A Biographical Memoir.” In Thomas Raymond Kelly. A Testament of Devotion. Harper & Brothers, 1941, 118.

In Searching for an Adequate Life: The Devotional Theology of Thomas R. Kelly by Jerry R. Flora (Spirituality Today. Spring 1990, Vol.42 No. 1), we read another quote from Steere regarding the transformation:

out of it seemed to come a whole new life orientation. What took place no one will ever know; but old walls caved in, the fierce academic ambition receded, and a new abandoned kind of fulfillment made its appearance.

AND a dramatic description of the last day of his life:

ON the morning of January 17, 1941, a college professor in eastern Pennsylvania exclaimed to his wife, “Today will be the greatest day of my life.”(1) He had just written to the religion editor at Harper and Brothers, accepting an invitation to speak with him in New York about a small book, on devotional practice. The firm of Harper was definitely interested in the kind of fresh material this writer could produce. That evening, while drying the dinner dishes, he slumped to the floor with a massive coronary arrest and died almost instantly.

At Kelly’s passing, his friend and colleague Douglas V. Steere pulled together five of his essays and wrote a brief inspirational “biographical memoir” to accompany them in A Testament of Devotion (1941). 

Kelly’s academic life experience and insights go hand in hand, particularly relevant to Emerging Scholars — complementing some of what the Urban Resident shared with us in Writing a Christian Personal Statement (10/11/2013). Furthermore, reading Kelly’s material raises to me the question of how to interact with an inspirational “Christian” figure with whom one finds deep resonance, while at the same time strongly disagreeing with on several key theological points.

A timeline to provide a context for Kelly’s work

Thomas Raymond Kelly was born on June 4, 1893 on a farm near Chillicothe, OH. His parents were dedicated Quakers who reopened a long closed old meeting room to renew Quaker worship in their area. But his father died when he was four, forcing his mom to move to provide for the family (including his sister Mary). She chose Wilmington, OH, for educational purposes, i.e., to earn the money and enroll in good schools including Wilmington College.

1909 – 1912: Kelly studied Chemistry at Wilmington College (OH) but finished at Haverford College (PA), exposing him to a wider perspective. At the time, studying one’s final year at Haverford was a common way to polish off one’s Quaker “college education.”Question: If you are familiar with Wilmington and/or Haverford, I am very interested in how close to their Quaker roots these colleges continue to be in the 21st Century. Furthermore, as to whether this tradition of finishing studies at Haverford has been maintained in any manner.

1914 – 1918: World War I. America declared war on Germany in 1917.

1914 – 1916: Kelly taught at Pickering College, a Quaker preparatory school in Canada. During his time in Canada, the Quaker mission to Japan and the evangelization of the Far East became an even greater passion for Kelly than science education.

1915: Thomas Merton born in France (Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales), but his family quickly departed to live with his mother’s family in New York due to World War I.

1917 – 1918: As a pacifist (which is part of the Quaker tradition), Kelly served German Prisoners of War (POWs). This gave him not only only a strong connection with the German people, but also deepened his strong Quaker pacifism which would play an important role in his relationship to World War II.

1919: Kelly graduated Hartford Theological Seminary (CT), married Lael Macy, and received a position to teach Bible at Wilmington (1919-21) setting him up for the “Roaring 20’s.” But he appeared to be largely unaffected by this era or the Great Depression except in caring for those in need in Germany. His relationship with Germans led to his concern regarding Hitler’s rise to power. Kelly visited in 1938 to encourage Quaker friends touched by his 1924 – 1925 mission.

1924: Kelly received a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Hartford Seminary. Thomas and Lael reinvigorated the labors of Quakers in Germany (1924 – 1925).

1925: Kelly taught Philosophy at Earlham College, Richmond, IN.
1928: Daughter Lois was born.

1931 – 1932: Kelly pastored Fall River Congregational Church, attended Harvard for a second Ph.D., and taught at Wellesley College.

1932 – 1935: Kelly returned to Earlham to teach

1935: While holding a staff position at Pendle Hill, a Quaker Center for study and Contemplation in Wallingford, PA, Kelly was exposed to Zen meditation. Kelly moved to —Hawaii to teach Philosophy. He not only encountered Japanese and Chinese Professors, but also studied Buddhism.

1936: Son Richard was born in Hawaii. Kelly became sick and returned to teach Greek and Oriental Philosophy at Haverford.

1937 “Failed Oral Exam at Harvard” led to a re-examination.

—In January 1938 Germantown Friends Meeting, Kelly gives three lectures on “God can be found.”
—In April 1938, Kelly wrote to Rufus Jones, “The Reality of the presence has been very great at times recently. One knows at firsthand what the old inquiry meant, ‘Has truth been advancing among you?’”
—Spiritual experience: Shared with his mother, “He was swept away by the presence . . . melted down by the love of God.”
—Over the course of the next 3 years, he received a series of messages and went from an academic to” a seeker of the experience within.”

—January 17, 1941: Received a call to publish works and within hours of that call he died of a heart attack. 

—Douglas V. Steere gathered Kelly’s material in order for A Testament of Devotion (1941) to be published.American involvement in World War II (1940-1945) was followed by the Cold War (1947 to 1991)

1941: InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA was incorporated. For more of the ministry’s history click here.

What does A Testament of Devotion (1941) have to say to us today?

A Testament of Devotion by Thomas Raymond Kelly (1893 – 1941).

Daily Reflections for the course of the next several days from which you pick up this post. The material is drawn from drafts I posted on the Emerging Scholars Network Facebook Wall as part of a class on Christian Devotional Classics at Evangelical Seminary. Please email me know if you use the second section to stimulate campus discussion (e.g., brown bag lunch discussion group). I am particularly interested in suggestions on revisions for use in that context.

1. “By inner persuasions He draws us to a few definite tasks, our tasks, God’s burdened heart particularizing his burdens in us. And He gives us the royal blindness of faith, and the seeing eye of the sensitized soul, and the grace of unflinching obedience. Then we see that nothing matters and that everything matters and that this my task matters for me and for my fellow men and women for eternity. . . . Obedient as a shadow, sensitive as a shadow, selfless as a shadow . . . Holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child. . . . . which lies beyond complexity, naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity which comes after the awkward age of religious busyness for the Kingdom of God . . .” — Thomas Raymond Kelly. A Testament of Devotion. Harper & Brothers, 1941, 43ff.

For Deeper Reflection: Thank-you to my friend Nelson. As part of an excellent presentation on Kelly and A Testament of Devotion, he shared the above quote with this conversation starter well worth our consideration: “Kelly spent most of his life chasing the truth through academic means and went through a period of spiritual awakening / renewal and comes to the above conclusion: Simplicity and Humble obedience. How do we balance our time of study and our time of serving? Have we made it overly complicated? What if we ‘loved in humble service?’ Does scripture call us to both? . . .”

2. Thomas Raymond Kelly begins A Testament of Devotion with these words, “Meister Eckhart wrote, ‘As thou art in church or cell, that same frame of mind carry out into the world; into its turmoil and fitfulness.’ Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warming us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. Yielding to these persuasions, gladly committing ourselves in body and soul, utterly and completely, to the Light Within, is the beginning of true life. It is a dynamic center, a creative Life that presses to birth within us. It is a Light Within which illumines the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the face of men. It is a seed stirring to life if we do not choke it. It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst. Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And he is within us all.”

For Deeper Reflection: As you have already discerned, I have great respect for Thomas Raymond Kelly’s wrestling with the relationship of faith and vocation as a Quaker. We have much to receive from his journey and his coming to an appreciation of living in the reality of ‘adequacy’ instead of trying to continually prove oneself in what I term ‘the academic chain of being.’ None-the-less it is hard for me to get past the first page, where I find myself in strong disagreement with his perspective on the Inner Light/Christ to be tapped inside of each human being.

Yes, we are all created in the image of God. But is there a Christ within each of us, accessible to “clothe in earthly form and action”? No, the seed of the Gospel is cast into broken/dark lives. Some receive and some even embrace the Gospel by the grace of God, but Christ is not already inside waiting to come out of a slumber. A subject to be unpacked further . . .

As an Emerging Scholar, how do you prayerfully consider and interact with material which you disagree with in your discipline, in particular when you have assignments ‘forcing’ you to engage the material? How do you prayerfully listen, ask good questions, enter dialogue, even sharpen your own position/understanding?

3. “T.S. Eliot . . . ‘I cannot conceive of anybody agreeing with all of her [Simone Weil’s] views, or of not disagreeing violently with some of them. But agreement and rejection are secondary: what matters is to make contact with a great soul.’ — Scott McLemee. “Review of Julia Haslett, ‘An Encounter with Simone Weil.'” Inside Higher Ed. 8/14/2013.

For Deeper Reflection: Eliot’s quote is pertinent to my reading of Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion. Even though I disagree with his perspective on ‘The Inner Light,’ he has a great soul and much to teach.

4. I am surprised by the growing influence of “Evangelical” Quakers in Spiritual Formation, in particular Richard Foster of Renovare, Mary Kate Morse of George Fox Evangelical Seminary, and Dallas Willard of USC. 

Note: Willard was active member of Quaker Meeting House in which Foster served the 1970’s. For ESN Blog posts exploring the life, work, and legacy of Dallas Willard, click here. 

Have you read material by any of these authors? If so, how would you compare their material with what I have shared from Kelly’s work?

——-

Note: Due the press of completing the final project and the complexity of the questions I found myself raising, I left further consideration of interacting with Kelly’s theology for a future date. Several months later I find myself still mulling over a proper response. I am looking for a time away to wrestle with several topics fall posts have raised and/or someone with whom to dialogue. If you have insights to share, please comment and/or drop me a line. Consider this post “opening a can of worms”*, one to which I/we will return  Stay tuned . . .

*As I shared above, “reading Kelly’s material raises to me the question of how to interact with an inspirational “Christian” figure with whom one finds deep resonance, while at the same time strongly disagreeing with on several key theological points.”


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:



Tom Grosh IV
Website | Posts


Tom enjoys daily conversations regarding living out the Biblical Story with his wife Theresa and their four girls, around the block, at Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ Church (where he teaches adult electives and co-leads a small group), among healthcare professionals as the Northeast Regional Director for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), and in higher ed as a volunteer with the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN). 

For a number of years, the Christian Medical Society / CMDA at Penn State College of Medicine was the hub of his ministry with CMDA. 

Note: Tom served with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA for 20+ years, including 6+ years as the Associate Director of ESN. 

He has written for the ESN blog from its launch in August 2008. 

He has studied Biology (B.S.), Higher Education (M.A.), Spiritual Direction (Certificate), Spiritual Formation (M.A.R.), Ministry to Emerging Generations (D.Min.). 

To God be the glory!

A Quaker Portrait Helen B. Corson

A Quaker Portrait


A Quaker Portrait:

_____________________ Helen B. Corson
by Maryann McNaughton Swinehart

IN MY deepest heart I know that some of us have to face our comfortable, self- oriented lives all over again. The times are too tragic, God's sorrow is too great, man's night is too dark, the Cross is too glorious for us to live as we have lived, in anything short of holy obedience." Thus wrote Thomas Kelly in A Testament of Devotion as he talked about suffering, simplicity, and recreative change within the Society of Friends.


Creative simplicity and change among friends and Friends have been the strengths behind the story of Helen Corson's life. Her work for social change and for a world without war is a continuing story of the holy obedience of one woman, within and outside of the Society of Friends.

Perhaps at first you wouldn't notice Helen in a crowd. A tiny, slightly stooped little lady nearing the age of ninety-one, she wears her white hair bound in a braid at the back of her head, with little curls escaping all around her face. She wears bright print dresses, simple shoes and beaded necklaces, but one gets the feeling that the outward picture of the woman is to her just a practical affair not of major importance. It is the inner spiritual strength that demands attention in Helen's sharp eyes, and in her incisively simple words which cut to the centers of problems.

Even after a near century of life Helen never seems to droop with depressed lethargy, as so many of us tend to do at times in both our inner and outer lives. Small white head held high and expressive hands held quietly, hers is a strength and a serenity wholly attentive to the lives around her. And hers is a faith which has a great deal to teach.

Near the turn of the century, Helen Corson's family came to Chester County, PA, from Minnesota. For some years Helen stayed home to help her ailing mother on their small farm near Avondale. And she was active in a nearby women's suffrage group. "Even today women are oppressed," she says, ''but one of the worst aspects of that oppression is that often people don't realize it exists, although it does, especially in the unfairness of assumed women's roles, and in hiring and child care." She stressed, however, that men in her own farm family did not feel that ' childcare or housework was demeaning, ' and that in some ways roles then were less rigid than they are today. And Helen said she never felt the intense I societal pressure still felt now by so ' many young women, to get married and ' bear children as the major role of women.

In 1914 came the first world war, and I with it a new purpose in Helen's life. ' "Before 1914 we tended to take peace ' for granted," she says, "but between ' then and now there has never been a ' time when we have lived without war or preparation for war." Speaking recently from the small room where she lives now at the Friends Home in Kennett Square, PA, Helen's voice trembled with some pain as she described the military economy for which all too many of us continue to pay.

After the war Helen became a staunch religious pacifist and she has been so ever since, refusing to swallow the absurd idealism of a war to end all wars. And, formerly "a drifting Episcopalian," she joined London Grove Friends Meeting in 1926, where she continues now to be a strong and beloved influence. Her ministries are always gentle words of faith, full of deep Biblical study, and nearly always in them there is a key to action for change. And that, I think, is the deepest secret of the spiritual inner vitality of Helen Corson and people like her, whatever their race or religion or age. Faith for them is never an empty affair of Sunday morning verbiage. It is a vibrant force which determines the works of their lives. And, listening to Helen Corson talk, almost watching her mind move with strength and conviction, one gets the idea that age ninety-one is a pretty productive and creative age to be.

After becoming a Friend, Helen worked for some years in Philadelphia, serving Friends and other agencies including the NAACP, long before there was any explosive nationwide concern about the problems of race relations and poverty. Then during the depression years she worked with an AFSC emergency relief program among starving miners in the hidden hollers of Kentucky and West Virginia. And for two decades thereafter she was engaged in relief work of differing kinds in the South and at home, for religious and government agencies. "We weren't making much money," she recalled in a mastery of understatement, "but we had enough to live on, which is about all anybody ought to want anyway."

But in 1952, after several years of work on a county assistance project, Helen Corson lost her job and was threatened with loss of pension because "I could not in conscience sign the newly instituted Loyalty Oath, which I felt was the illegal result of a communist scare which has lasted till today and has done terrible harm," she said. She felt and still feels the oath was "an insult to free thought, speech and action at a time when even advocacy of better child labor Jaws or more conscientious religious practices was considered communist leaning." Hearing her talk now, I must ask myself whether times have really changed, when incidents like the Mayaguez are still so popular.

But if Helen Corson lost her job in 1952, she found more time for other concerns. At age seventy-three she began a much publicized fast in Washington, DC, in protest against the dangers of atmospheric nuclear testing. And as the Korean War progressed, she took part in many walks and vigils for peace, with women's and religious pacifist groups. At seventy-five she was a major participant in the nationally known Vigil at Fort Detrich in Frederick, MD, where for seventeen years the U.S. had been illegally producing germs for germ warfare.

And finally in 1962 Helen found herself in jail in Washington, DC. The reason? "For standing in silent prayer with a few other white haired people in front of the White House." The small group prayed for an end to hydrogen bomb testing. From that time until today Helen has stayed active in Washington, Philadelphia and locally, organizing and participating in radical nonviolent work against war and rac- ism. She has been active on all levels of Meeting concern, and she insists, "If people really want to change their lives they can do so, spiritually, morally, and physically as well."

Concerning her work against racism, for which she was awarded this year an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lincoln University (a largely black liberal arts college near Philadelphia), Helen says, "Action against racism in this society takes the willingness to offend with truth, because one aspect of racism is that people often don't recognize it in themselves." Presenting the degree to Helen this spring was Dr. William T. M. Johnson, who said, "There are many liberal minded and well intentioned people who speak well and say they support equality for Blacks, but who stop short of strong action. But Helen has been willing to take unequivocal stands on issues as they are in such matters as housing, jobs and education, and her sharp analyses of situations continue to be useful."




Will one woman's lifetime of action be a help to the future? "It is only for us to say whether an action is right or wrong; we must trust the consequences to God," said Helen, adding, "We need many approaches to change, but silent meditation alone is surely not enough."

The tiny, serene looking lady sits in her little room, which is filled with books and papers and work to do. There are few frills and no luxuries, and the room is a picture of a working simplicity which reminds me of Thomas Kelly's words on holy obedience. Helen seems neither thrilled nor depressed about the prospects for the future of humanity. In true humility rarely found even among Friends, she feels no alienation from the young, but does feel distant though no less loving toward those who "give up on human dignity and are too timid to state their convictions because of fear of the opinions of others." Those who are not so timid are, she feels, the seeds for the future.

Maryann McNaughton Swinehart and her husband live in Chester County, PA, where she is a news feature writer. Formerly an employee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and A Quaker Action Group, she was a crew member of the ship "Phoenix" which took medical supplies to north and south Vietnam during the late sixties. She is a member of London Grove Friends Meeting.

October 1, 1975 FRIENDS JOURNALThis article is reprinted with permission from Friends Journal.

` The Message and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly

LftC_Portrait5

LIFE FROM THE CENTER ` The Message and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly The Message Edited by Kathleen B. Wilson The Life Story By Kathleen B. Wilson LIFE FROM THE CENTER, The Message and Life of Quaker Thomas Kelly. Copyright © 2015 by Kathleen B. Wilson. quakerthomaskelly.org.

Say yes or no on Thomas Kelly

Say yes or no





Thomas Kelly

1] 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia:

Thomas Raymond Kelly (1893-1941) was an American Quaker educator. He taught and wrote on the subject of mysticism. His books are widely read, especially by people interested in spirituality.

Kelly was born in 1893 in Ohio to a Quaker family. The branch of Quakerism in which he was raised (Wilmington Yearly Meeting) had been influenced by the 19th century revivalists and worship services were similar to other low-church Protestant groups.

He graduated in 1913 from Wilmington College as a chemistry major. Then he went to Haverford College just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he came under the mentoring of Rufus Jones, a prominent Friend. It was at this time that he came into contact with the more traditional mystical vein of the Religious Society of Friends.

Kelly taught for two years (1919–1921) at his alma mater, Wilmington College. Then he went back to Hartford Seminary where he earned a doctorate in philosophy and an induction to Phi Beta Kappa. He and his wife then went to Berlin and worked with the American Friends' Service Committee in the child feeding program, where they were instrumental in founding the Quaker community in Germany.

When he returned he was appointed head of the Philosophy Department of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. He was unhappy there and came to realize that he did not agree with much of his evangelical background anymore.

In 1930 Kelly began working on a second Ph.D. at Harvard. While working on this degree he taught at Wellesley College (1931–1932) and again at Earlham (1932–1935). In 1935, he went to teach at the University of Hawaii and began advanced research in Eastern philosophies.

In 1936, Kelly became a professor at Haverford College. He published the dissertation for his second doctorate in 1937, but he failed in the oral defense due to a memory lapse. This failure put Kelly into a period of grief, during which time he apparently had a spiritual awakening.

In 1938, Kelly went to Germany to encourage Friends living under Hitler's regime.

Kelly received word on January 17, 1941 that Harper and Brothers was willing to meet with him to discuss the publication of a devotional book. He died of a heart attack later that same day. Three months later Kelly's colleague, Douglas V. Steere, submitted five of Kelly's devotional essays to the publisher along with a biographical sketch of Kelly. The book was published under the title A Testament of Devotion (1941). Some of his other essays have been collected in a book entitled The Eternal Promise (1966). A formal biography, Thomas Kelly: A Biography, was written by his son, Richard Kelly in 1966.


2] 

Excerpts from http://www.spiritualitytoday.org/spir2day/904214flora.html:

Jerry R. Flora: Searching for an Adequate Life: The Devotional Theology of Thomas R. Kelly

JUDGMENT AND DOCTRINE

The worth of Thomas Kelly's legacy has been noted by such authors as D. Elton Trueblood (The New Man for Our Time, p. 63. Trueblood includes Kelly's work in a list of classics for the nurture of Christian spirituality.) and Richard J. Foster (Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, rev. ed. , pp. 27, 45, 72, 80, 128, 164; Freedom of Simplicity, pp. 5, 78, 86, 87, 103). ...The Eternal Promise p. 90: ... God Himself is active, is dynamic, is here, is brooding over us all, is prompting and instructing us within, in amazing immediacy. This is not something to believe, it is something to experience, in the solemn, sacred depths of our beings.
A Testament of Devotion, p. 29: Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return .... It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst .... And He is within us all.

ASSESSMENT

Kelly's ecclesiology describes the Church as the company of those so committed, the blessed community in which we are at home in the interconnectedness of those who are loved and who love in return. In this fellowship the usual symbols of Christian faith (e.g., language, creeds, sacraments) may give way to such "recreated symbols" as lived-out behaviors and filled silence. Here the practice of the presence of God is ongoing daily business. Scripture and devotional literature become staples for the journey which takes the form of dual vertical and horizontal dimensions. The most difficult aspects come in maintaining holy obedience to the God who asks all, and in entering suffering for the sake of God's world.

At the end lies death and the experience of a life where work and worship coalesce in a single reality. As for the world, Kelly does not intimate whether it may continue forever or end with bang or whimper. What matters -- and, for him, all that matters -- is the ongoing encounter with the God who addresses us through the living Christ within our truest selves.

DISCIPLESHIP AND WORSHIPA Testament of Devotion, p. 82: We re-read the poets and the saints, and... the Scriptures, with no thought of pious exercise, but in order to find more friends for the soul .... Particularly does devotional literature become illuminated, for the Imitation of Christ, and Augustine's Confessions, and Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God speak the language of the souls who live at the Center.

A Testament of Devotion, p. 77: "When we are drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God, we find ourselves in a new and particular relation to a few of our fellows. The relation is so surprising and so rich that we despair of finding a word glorious enough and weighty enough to name it. The word Fellowship is discovered, but the word is pale and thin in comparison with... the experience which it would designate. For a new kind of life-sharing and of love has arisen of which we had had only dim hints before.

The Eternal Promise p. 25-26: the experience of divine Presence contains within it not only a sense of being energized from a heavenly Beyond; it contains also a sense of being energized toward an earthly world.
A Testament of Devotion, p. 47: We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world -- amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.

A Testament of Devotion, p. 99: One might almost say we become cosmic mothers, tenderly caring for all.

A Testament of Devotion, p. 107: There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in our quivering souls the sins and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering, and die in their death.

A Testament of Devotion, p. 71: The Cross as dogma is painless speculation; the Cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory. I dare not urge you to your Cross. But He, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs. By inner persuasions He draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing His burdens in us.

A Testament of Devotion, p. 123-124: When we say Yes or No to calls for service on the basis of heady decisions, we have to give reasons, to ourselves and to others. But when we say Yes or No to calls, on the basis of inner guidance... we have no reason to give, except one -- the will of God as we discern it. Then we have begun to live in guidance. And I find He never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic Patience becomes, in part, our patience, for after all God is at work in the world. It is not we alone who are at work in the world, frantically finishing a work to be offered to God (.).

CONCLUSION: THE DIVINE INVASION

God is referred to as the Presence, the Center, the Silence, the Abyss, the Seed.

Kelly's use of Scripture is more indirect than direct. Ever the Quaker, he relies on a principle enunciated by George Fox: "The Lord has come to teach His people Himself." Revelation therefore is a present experience, and Scripture is to be understood from within the life of God. Kelly's bent to rigorous scholarship does not eliminate matters of grammatical-historical exegesis but, the inner witness of the Spirit takes precedence.

Jesus of Nazareth occupies little place in Kelly's thought, for he seldom refers to the events of Bethlehem, Galilee, Calvary, or Pentecost. Incarnation and atonement are scarcely mentioned. This is not because Kelly was oblivious to them or uncaring of them, but because he had adopted from study and personal experience the view of the living and written Word already described.A Testament of Devotion, p. 3: Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, i Divine Center, a speaking voice, to which we may continually return. Eternity is at our hearts, pressing upon our time-torn lives, warning us with intimations of an astounding destiny, calling us home unto Itself. ... It is a light which illuminates the face of God and casts new shadows and new glories upon the human face. ... Here is the slumbering Christ, stirring to be awakened, to become the soul we clothe in earthly form and action. And He is within us all.
A Testament of Devotion, p. 8: The Inner Light, the Inward Christ, is no mere doctrine, belonging peculiarly to a small religious fellowship, to be accepted or rejected as a mere belief. It is the living Center of Reference for all Christian groups - yes, and of non-Christian groups as well who seriously mean to dwell in the secret place of the Most High.


Pages directing here:Jon Dybdahl
Richard Foster
Brother Lawrence

Thomas Kelly - Friends Journal

Thomas Kelly - Friends Journal

Thomas Kelly

February 1, 2006

By Brian Drayton

Thomas Kelly is the first of four activist Friends that I intend to write about in this column over the next several months—Friends whose spiritual experience and their testimony for us are shaped in a fundamental way by purposeful engagement with the world. I say "purposeful" because everyone’s spiritual life is shaped by the manifold experiences of work, human relationships, and the sheer business of organismal being, but it is useful sometimes to try to trace in someone’s spiritual expression the impact of their intentionally hurling themselves into specific actions.

Now, it may come as a surprise to find Thomas Kelly grouped with such energetic bodies as John Bellers and Lucretia Mott. This view of Kelly dawned on me only recently, as I revisited his writings and biography after a long period in which I thought of him hardly at all. In his devotional pieces, I heard accents that come from fierce joy, commitments maintained under testing, and many kinds of longing. The three sorts of world-engagement that seem most important in Kelly’s life were his concern for souls, his direct service in Germany and other places with AFSC, and his almost lifelong ambition to make a significant academic mark, especially in philosophy. All of these seem to have in common a longing to be something special, which is epitomized vividly in the famous incident, in which as a Haverford student he comes to visit Rufus Jones, and in the course of the conversation says, "I just want my life to be a miracle!" While Rufus’ personality and style might well have played midwife to expansive statements from many admiring students, the heat and intensity of that ambition are Kelly’s.

Concern for souls

Kelly was born to an active, devout, evangelical Quaker family in Ohio. From an early age he was surrounded by rhythms of worship, persons of magnetic spirituality, Bible and preaching, hymns, and community life. Like other future ministers, he "played preacher," and exhibited early a commanding yet winning personality, as well as an acute mind. After college, he went to Hartford Theological Seminary, and received both theological and philosophical training; his original goal was to enter missions. He worked as a supply pastor in a variety of local Protestant and Quaker churches. While he swerved from the path to pastoral ministry for which he seemed (to others) well suited, his sense of the urgent value of each human soul and his fascination with the vagaries of inward and outward life remained strong. As he grew spiritually, his "authentic" voice more and more reached towards soul-health, high aspiration, the need for abandonment to God, and the realization that joy was part of the promise. Whether he was writing or speaking about political events, relief work, or problems of daily life, he had from youth an acute awareness of the soul life in all, and God’s beckoning and workman-like love.

Direct service

During World War I, Kelly sought alternative service with the YMCA in England, and then worked with German prisoners of war. He took an active part in AFSC work between the World Wars, going twice to Germany, once for an extended period of time as part of the relief effort there. He was articulate about the need to work in practical ways to relieve physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering; and as his writings reveal, he understood clearly how these are interrelated.

Ambition and failure

After his alternative service, and a teaching position at Wilmington College, Kelly returned to Hartford for a doctorate in philosophy. There followed several years of teaching at Earlham, in Hawaii, at Wellesley College, and finally at Haverford. During this period, deciding that his main goal was to become an accomplished and productive academic philosopher, he determined to take a second doctorate in Philosophy at Harvard. In the face of a policy not to grant a doctorate to someone who already had a PhD, Kelly wrote an agonizingly revealing letter in which he insisted that in order for him to really do first rate work in philosophy, he must both be trained at Harvard (the premier school in the country, in his opinion), and take a degree. This was reluctantly allowed, and Kelly wrote a thesis that was published to good notices. When he came to defend his thesis, however, he blanked out and was unstrung. The Harvard faculty both failed him, and barred him from ever trying again. Kelly fell into a major psychological crisis (though Haverford was happy with him on the faculty in any case).

The outcome of his failure, and his encounter with ultimate questions of his values and commitments, was a relatively sudden and dramatic integration of his personality, and a sense of liberation. His intense religious life seems to have gained an added mystical depth, and his writings from this period to his death are full of light, conviction, joy, and the sweetness that comes of walking in the Light, but knowing firsthand the ocean of darkness and death.

In Reality of the Spiritual World he writes:

"When our souls are utterly swept through and overturned by God’s invading love . . . we find ourselves enmeshed with some people in amazing bonds of love and nearness and togetherness of soul, such as we never knew before. . . . Into this fellowship of souls at the center we simply emerge. No one is chosen to the fellowship. When we discover God we discover the fellowship. When we find ourselves in Christ we find we are also amazingly united with those others who are also in Christ.

. . . Theological differences are forgotten, and liberals and conservatives eagerly exchange experiences concerning the wonders of the life of devotion. [Yet] the last depths of conversation in the fellowship go beyond spoken words. People who know one another in God do not need to talk much. They know one another already. In the last depths of understanding, words cease and we sit in silence together, yet in perfect touch with one another, more bound into the common life by the silence than we ever were by words."

For further reading

The most famous of Kelly’s writings is A Testament of Devotion, which was pulled together by Douglas Steere and a few others within months of Kelly’s death. It has a good, brief biographical sketch, as well, though this leaves out some important elements, and bears the marks of haste and grief. Recently I have found The Eternal Now and Social Concern of particular value. However, I strongly urge you to read Reality of the Spiritual World, if you have not done so recently. There is a great breadth of vision in this pamphlet, which embraces contemplation and action, prayer and service. Thomas Merton’s famous quip that Quakers have produced no great mystics finds one of its best refutations in this piece. In the 1960s, Thomas’ son, Richard Kelly, compiled a further collection of essays and short pieces under the title The Eternal Promise. For biography, the best source is still Richard Kelly’s Thomas Kelly: A Biography, which, among other virtues, quotes extensively from Thomas’ correspondence. In addition, though, the reader will enjoy T. Canby Jones’ Pendle Hill pamphlet, Thomas Kelly as I Remember Him. T. Canby Jones was part of the "gang" of inspired young people who gathered with Thomas Kelly at Haverford in his last years for study and prayer, and to feel their way into lives of service and witness. The pamphlet is warm in its recollection of Kelly’s personality, but it is especially valuable for its interpretation of his teaching on prayer and spiritual experience.

• History
• Personalities
• Spiritual Growth

Features

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Brian Drayton

Brian Drayton is a member of Weare (N.H.) Meeting.

[[Jerry R. Flora: Searching for an Adequate Life

Jerry R. Flora: Searching for an Adequate Life

SPIRITUALITY TODAY
Spring 1990, Vol.42 No. 1, pp.

Jerry R. Flora:
     Searching for an Adequate Life:
                       The Devotional Theology of Thomas R. Kelly

The mystical teaching of Quaker theologian Thomas Kelly continues to enrich and inspire a new generation of readers searching for a meaningful life in a world veering towards chaos.

Jerry R. Flora earned the doctorate in theology from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and since 1972 has been Professor of New Testament Theology at Ashland (Ohio) Theological Seminary. Prior to that he was a parish minister in Ohio, Indiana, and Washington, D.C.

ON the morning of January 17, 1941, a college professor in eastern Pennsylvania exclaimed to his wife, "Today will be the greatest day of my life."(1) He had just written to the religion editor at Harper and Brothers, accepting an invitation to speak with him in New York about a small book ,on devotional practice. The firm of Harper was definitely interested in the kind of fresh material this writer could produce. That evening, while drying the dinner dishes, he slumped to the floor with a massive coronary arrest and died almost instantly.

The writer was Thomas Raymond Kelly, professor of philosophy at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia, considered to be the elite among Quaker colleges of America. Kelly had taught there for nearly five years, succeeding D. Elton Trueblood when the latter became chaplain at Stanford University. Forty seven years old at the time of his unexpected death, Kelly was a seminary graduate and a philosopher of unusually broad preparation. He was also coming to be known as a devotional writer of considerable freshness and power.

Three months after Kelly's death, Douglas Steere, his colleague in the philosophy department, submitted to Harper and Brothers five of his friend's devotional essays prefaced by a biographical memoir. That slender volume, A Testament of Devotion, has remained in print since 1941 and has been acclaimed by thoughtful readers of varying theological persuasions.

Thomas Kelly belonged to a succession of American Quakers who were philosophers by profession. Rufus M. Jones (1863-1948) mentored Kelly throughout the years of his pilgrimage and outlived his protege. Elton Trueblood (b. 1900) edited one of the Friends' magazines which introduced Kelly's writings to the public. Twenty-five years later Trueblood commented, "The sense of excitement, when Thomas Kelly:s essays began to come to the editorial desk, is still vivid." (2) Douglas Steere (b. 1901), Rhodes scholar and faculty colleague, compiled the volume which became known as A Testament of Devotion. The purpose of this article is to recount the outlines of Kelly's life, describe the contents of his devotional theology, and offer a summary analysis of it.

A QUAKER YOUTH

Thomas Raymond Kelly was born in 1893, a child of the Quaker faith as it was found at that time in south-central Ohio. This rnidwestern variety of the Society of Friends had come under the influence of the evangelical revivals that characterized the nineteenth century in the American middle West. Even now, Friends in Ohio are often nearly indistinguishable from other low-church or free-church Protestants. Kelly, born into that environment, lost his father at the age of four, after which his mother moved the family to Wilmington, Ohio. Her intention was that by living there her children could have the advantage of higher education at Wilmington College, a small Quaker school in that town.

Young Kelly grew up with both a perfectionistic streak and a sense of the joy of living. He was remembered for his impishness, his practical jokes, his daredevil motorcycle riding, later his skills as carpenter and sheet-metal worker, and finally his warm, open laughter. One friend wrote of him, "He laughed with the rich hearty abandon of wind and sun upon the open prairie. I have never heard richer, heartier laughter than his" (TD 7)(3)At the same time his life was marked by what has been termed "a passionate and determined quest for adequacy" (TD 1) in both scholarship and Christian devotion.

SCHOLAR AND TEACHER

Always interested in science, Kelly graduated from Wilmington College in 1913 with a chemistry major. He went the next year to Haverford College for additional study, there falling under the spell of Rufus M. Jones, the distinguished professor of philosophy. With Jones came also exposure to the more mystical side of the Friends movement, preserved better on the eastern seaboard than in Ohio. 

That change of focus was accompanied by a never-ending interest in the Far East, which led him to Hartford Theological Seminary to prepare for missionary service. 

World War I erupted in Europe, and, in true Quaker fashion, Kelly volunteered for civilian service overseas. He spent a year in England, working first with the YMCA, then with German prisoners of war because of his knowledge of their language.

Returning to the States, he finished seminary and married Lael Macy, daughter of a New England Congregational manse. Their twenty-one years of marriage were marked by frequent moves for him to study or teach, nagging financial problems which followed on this, and numerous physical ailments, some of which were undoubtedly stress-related.(4)

After their marriage he returned to Wilmington College, where he taught for two years (1919-21), 

went back to Hartford, completing a doctorate in philosophy (1924), and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. 

Dr. and Mrs. Kelly then spent a year in Berlin, working with the American Friends Service Committee in the reconstruction following Germany's war defeat.

Upon their return to the United States, Kelly was unable to find a position on the east coast and was forced to become a professor at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana. By this time he had come to dislike the Midwest, feeling that it did not have the intellectual stimulus of the East, and he went through a period of rebellion against the thinking and spirituality of his evangelical Ohio origins. 

In 1930 Kelly returned to New England to begin a second doctorate in philosophy, this time at Harvard University. Through the early and mid-thirties he labored at that while teaching first at Wellesley College (1931-32) and then again at Earlham (1932-35). 

This was the middle of the Great Depression, and Kelly's decision to return to Earlham was painful because it meant once more the Midwest that he had come to despise. Yet there were no other positions open to him until 1935 when he was able to move to the University of Hawaii to teach and to pursue advanced research in Eastern philosophies.

His long-awaited opportunity called in 1936, when Haverford College invited him to follow D. Elton Trueblood in a chair of philosophy. He brought to this new work not only his massive academic preparation, including the near-completed second doctorate at Harvard, but also his love for the eastern seaboard and all that it represented for him both intellectually and spiritually. 

In 1937 his dissertation was published, receiving very favorable reviews. Like the thesis for his first doctorate, it studied the thought of a scientist who turned philosopher -- a pilgrimage quite similar to that of Kelly himself. But the Harvard Ph.D. was not yet his, needing only the oral defense of the now-published dissertation.

BREAKDOWN AND BREAKTHROUGH

So in the autumn of 1937 Thomas Kelly traveled north to Cambridge to sit for his orals, and there he lived out the nightmare of every Ph.D. candidate: he lost his memory. Since his mid-twenties, Kelly, always an intense individual, had experienced occasional "woozy spells." as he called them. This sometimes occurred under great stress, as in 1924 at the defense of his first dissertation. The committee at Hartford had patiently worked with him, his confidence and recall returned, and he gave a brilliant defense of his research. But the Harvard faculty was not sympathetic when Kelly went blank in 1937 trying to defend the dissertation he had written for them. They not only failed him on the defense, they also informed him that he would never be allowed a second chance.

In the days that followed, friends offered what help they could but nothing seemed to avail. His son continues the story: 

"There is no exact record of what happened in the following weeks, but it is certain that sometime during the months of November or December, 1937, a change was wrought within the very foundation of his soul. He described it as being'shaken by the experience of Presence -- something that I did not seek, but that sought me ....' Stripped of his defenses and human self justification, he found, for the first time, a readiness to accept the outright gift of God's Love, and he responded with unlimited commitment to that leading.(5) His teaching colleague Douglas Steere, who spent uncounted hours walking Kelly through his grief, later wrote of his healing:

"He moved toward adequacy. A fissure in him seemed to close, cliffs caved in and filled up a chasm, and what was divided grew together within him. Science, scholarship, method remained good, but in a new setting" (TD 18). "...out of it seemed to come a whole new life orientation. What took place no one will ever know; but old walls caved in, the fierce academic ambition receded, and a new abandoned kind of fulfillment made its appearance."(6)

This life-changing experience showed through in two public lectures that Kelly prepared shortly afterward, lectures which he said wrote themselves. He then sailed for Germany in the summer of 1938, culminating three years of planning, in order to minister as he was able to the Friends in that country before Hitler closed it off from the rest of Europe. He came home, the last person off the ship, shaken by the suffering he had witnessed in Germany but buttressed by new experiences of divine love able to meet that agony. His friends recalled that for weeks afterward he said over and over, "I have been literally melted down by the love of God!" (TD 21).

Such first-hand acquaintance with reality, both human and divine, continued to be the trademark of his speaking and writing in the little more than two years which remained. Seventeen addresses and lectures appeared in the period following Kelly's failure until his sudden death in January, 1941. As people heard him speak and studied his writings, they detected a note of authenticity that was attractive and powerful. It was that note which led the religious books editor of Harper and Brothers to invite him to submit a manuscript for publication. Twenty-five years after A Testament of Devotion was posthumously published, his son Richard released Thomas Kelly: A Biography and The Eternal Promise, which contains the remainder of the essays and addresses.

JUDGMENT AND DOCTRINE

The worth of Thomas Kelly's legacy has been noted by such authors as D. Elton Trueblood (7) and Richard J. Foster. (8) Church historian E. Glenn Hinson of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has, for many years, offered classes in devotional literature on his campus. In his opinion, "Thomas Kelly's A Testament of Devotion... is a contemporary classic... a wonderfully edifying collection of essays which, not surprisingly, my students in courses on devotional classics have repeatedly selected as their favorite."(9)

We move now to consider the devotional theology of Thomas R. Kelly.

Searching for an adequate life was the long-range goal of his short earthly existence. He began with the assumption of God's real being and activity, and moved ahead to assert that our great need is to experience God as active in the world at large and within human hearts particularly. God is more than nature, more than compassionate service, more than Scripture, and the claims of God must be upheld against all forms of mediocrity. This requires careful scholarship without rationalism and immediate experience without quietism.

The call to immediacy sounds again and again through his writings, no matter the period of his life in which they were composed. God is the Life, the Light, the Center of all things, and is to be sought within and experienced within. As Kelly described it, "...God Himself is active, is dynamic, is here, is brooding over us all, is prompting and instructing us within, in amazing immediacy. This is not something to believe, it is something to experience, in the solemn, sacred depths of our beings" (EP 90).

This historic Quaker note is heard in the words Kelly mailed off on the morning of his last day: 

"Deep within us all there is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, a holy place, a Divine Center, a speaking Voice, to which we may continuously return .... It is the Shekinah of the soul, the Presence in the midst .... And He is within us all" (TD 29).

Kelly has less to say about humanity and sin than about God and divine reality. As he sees it, the West has been mistaken in thinking that our problems are basically external and environmental. The real roots of human problems lie buried within, whence they manifest themselves in behavior that is distracted, fragmented, and therefore destructive. As individuals, "We are trying to be several selves at once, without all our selves being organized by a single, mastering Life within us" (TD 114). According to him, we might be diagnosed as spiritually schizophrenic. Each person possesses by nature a demonic element and also an unformed Christ within. The Church has been too quick to identify the demonic as true human nature while rejecting or forgetting the Christ within (EP 40f.).

Kelly holds that there are many seekers after truth and life in our day, at least as many as in the days of George Fox. And how is the search for God to be carried on? Kelly is clear in positing that the initiative in human salvation comes from God -- "God the initiator;" as he put it, "God the aggressor, God the seeker, God the stirrer into life, God the ground of our obedience, God the giver of the power to become children of God" (TD 52). This theme he reiterates several times in his essays (TD 29, 41, 51f., 97,124). It is important to note that, in keeping with the Quaker emphasis, he believes God does not initiate the application of salvation from outside human experience. Rather, the true Light that enlightens every one in the world is already within by virtue of their creation (cf. John 1:9):

Did you start the search for Him? He started you on the search for Him, and lovingly, anxiously, tenderly guides you to Himself. You knock on heaven's gate, because He has already been standing at the door and knocking within you, disquieting you and calling you to arise and seek your Father's house. It is as St. Augustine says: He was within, and we mistakenly sought Him without. It isn't a matter of believing in the Inner Light, it is a matter of yielding your lives to Him (EP 105; cf. 19f., 22, 59, 101, 115).

The claims of this initiating God are totalitarian, and the human response to them can be nothing less than "true decidedness of life orientation... thoroughly, wholly, in every department and without reserve" (EP 16). "He asks all, but He gives all" (TD 50). It is important for Kelly that Christian faith-commitment not be misunderstood as an emotional high or an ecstatic experience. For him the obedience of the will is central and crucial. "Let us be quite clear," he writes,

that mystical exaltation is not essential to religious dedication and to every occurrence of religious worship. Many a [person] professes to be without a shred of mystical elevation, yet is fundamentally a heaven-dedicated soul .... The crux of religious living lies in the will, not in transient and variable states. Where the will to will God's will is present, there is a child of God (EP 87f., quoted also in TD 24f.).

Like Saint Augustine one asks not for greater certainty of God but only for more steadfastness in Him (TD 57).

DISCIPLESHIP AND WORSHIP

The total life-dedication which issues in holy obedience will have the purity of God as its mastering passion. 

"I would plead for holy lives, such as arise out of fellowship with Him, lives not secular and boisterously worldly in backslapping camaraderie, in the effort to make religion appealing to the [person] who wants a little religion, but not too much. But lives that are like those of the disciples, of whom it was said, 'They took notice of them, that they had been with Jesus."' (EP 113f.). 

On this basis Kelly criticized the Society of Friends of his day for a cooling down, a shrinking back, a delicacy not found either in Scripture or in their founders. It was, he said, an invasion of secularity into the church (EP 112f., 116f.). 

"Even the Quaker preaching upon the immediacy of Divine Presence, for which there is no substitute in religious learnedness or endeavor, even this preaching has been a thing for many Quakers to believe in, not a gateway into the experience of God Himself" (EP 111).

One shape that this life takes is that of worship and prayer, whether public or private:

An invariable element in the experience of Now is that of unspeakable and exquisite joy, peace, serene release. A new song is put into our mouths .... But the main point is not that a new song is put into our mouths; the point is that a new song is put into our mouths. We sing, yet not we, but the Eternal sings in us ...(TD 97f.).

We re-read the poets and the saints, and... the Scriptures, with no thought of pious exercise, but in order to find more friends for the soul .... Particularly does devotional literature become illuminated, for the Imitation of Christ, and Augustine's Confessions, and Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God speak the language of the souls who live at the Center (TD 82).

The topics of Church and world drew out of Kelly some of his most eloquent writing. "When we are drowned in the overwhelming seas of the love of God," he wrote,

we find ourselves in a new and particular relation to a few of our fellows. The relation is so surprising and so rich that we despair of finding a word glorious enough and weighty enough to name it. The word Fellowship is discovered, but the word is pale and thin in comparison with... the experience which it would designate. For a new kind of life-sharing and of love has arisen of which we had had only dim hints before (TD 77).

Kelly took very seriously the biblical concept of koinonia:

The disclosure of God normally brings the disclosure of the Fellowship. We don't create it deliberately; we find it and we find ourselves increasingly within it as we find ourselves increasingly within Him. It is the holy matrix of 'the communion of the saints; the body of Christ which is His church .... Yet can one be surprised at being at home? (TD 80f.).

For Kelly it is important that this "new and particular relation" does not result in escape from the world or in retreat from its suffering. Instead, "the experience of divine Presence contains within it not only a sense of being energized from a heavenly Beyond; it contains also a sense of being energized toward an earthly world" (EP 25f.).

We are torn loose from earthly attachments and ambitions contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for the world -- amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love (TD 47).

This note of compassion, of tenderness, sounds repeatedly through Kelly's scattered essays. Reflecting on his experiences in Hitler's Germany, he writes,

For a few agonized moments we may seem to be given to stand within the heart of the World-Father and feel the infinite sufferings of love toward all the Father's children. And pain inflicted on them becomes pain inflicted on ourselves. Were the experience not also an experience suffused with radiant peace and power and victory, as well as tragedy, it would be unbearable (EP 29).

One might almost say we become cosmic mothers, tenderly caring for all .... Would that we could relove the whole world! (TD 990.

There is a sense in which, in this terrible tenderness, we become one with God and bear in our quivering souls the sins and burdens, the benightedness and the tragedy of the creatures of the whole world, and suffer in their suffering, and die in their death (TD 107).

Kelly acknowledged quite frankly that there is a suffering in the world so awesome, so vast, that it can only be termed unremovable. "I must confess," he wrote, "that, on human judgment, the world tasks we face are appalling -- well-nigh hopeless." (TD 64). "An awful solemnity is upon the earth, for the last vestige of earthly security is gone. It has always been gone, and religion has always said so, but we haven't believed it. There is an inexorable amount of suffering in all life, blind, aching, unremovable, not new but only terribly intensified in these days" (TD 68ff.).

"But there is also removable suffering;" as Kelly put it:

The Cross as dogma is painless speculation; the Cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory. I dare not urge you to your Cross. But He, more powerfully, speaks within you and me, to our truest selves, in our truest moments, and disquiets us with the world's needs. By inner persuasions He draws us to a few very definite tasks, our tasks, God's burdened heart particularizing His burdens in us (TD 710 .

...He, working within us, portions out His vast concern into bundles, and lays on each of us our portion. These become our tasks (TD 123).

It was important to Kelly that Christians become responsible to and for the specific concerns God places within them. Good intentions do not substitute for concrete action that addresses specifics -- action prompted by immediate spiritual guidance.

When we say Yes or No to calls for service on the basis of heady decisions, we have to give reasons, to ourselves and to others. But when we say Yes or No to calls, on the basis of inner guidance... we have no reason to give, except one -- the will of God as we discern it. Then we have begun to live in guidance. And I find He never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness. The Cosmic Patience becomes, in part, our patience, for after all God is at work in the world. It is not we alone who are at work in the world, frantically finishing a work to be offered to God (TD 123f.).

Kelly says little about the future except to comment on time and eternity.

Were earthly life to end in this moment, all would be well. For this Here, this Now, is not a mathematical point in the stream of Time; it is swollen with Eternity, it is the dwelling place of God Himself. We ask no more; we are at home. Thou who hast made us for Thyself dost in each moment give us our rest in Thee. Each moment has a Before and After; but still deeper, it has Eternity, and we have tasted it and are satisfied (EP 21f.).

Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well (TD 124).

ASSESSMENT

We may now attempt a summary analysis of the devotional theology of Thomas Kelly. In assaying the contents of Kelly's writings, it is imperative that we not seek for a fully-orbed theological statement. Although he was seminary trained as well as philosophically disciplined, Kelly's writings are occasional pieces, always assuming familiarity with Quaker thought and life. At the same time, he displayed the gifts of being able to transcend the limits of denominationalism (EP 45) and to communicate that broader vision through the spoken and written word (EP 7).

In the area of theology proper, Kelly adopts a traditional Quaker stance, emphasizing the inner light, the living Christ, the prevenient Spirit resident within every person. According to this doctrine, we search vainly in the world or in others for God. Instead, we need a turning inward to the depths of our being and a cultivation of the God who is already active there. The imperative of personal experience of this God is strong and consistent in all that Kelly wrote.(10)

In anthropology, he "employs always a positive psychology, founded upon the Quaker high estimate of human nature and potential." (11) Simultaneously, he believes humanity has been marred by sin, and the result is that we do not seek God rightly or we try to flee from the hound of heaven. We are -- to use Kelly's terms -- fragmented, shallow, and disorganized, needing to become settled, coordinated, and unselfed. The crux of the matter is the human will which can, if it chooses, discern and obey the will of God. Taken alone, such a concept sounds Pelagian, but the initiative for Kelly is always divine, so that we are in truth responders and followers and disciples.

No clear line of transition in soteriology is prescribed by Kelly, no outward repentance is called for. Instead there may be, in his view, an awkward turning toward the light and a rather groping start at walking in it. Eventually there should come a kind of living in which we function adequately on two levels at once: the upper, outer order of life which is visible to others, and the deep, inner level where true reality dwells. The goal is continuously refreshed immediacy, and this immediacy will express itself in both worship and service, in work as well as prayer.

Kelly's ecclesiology describes the Church as the company of those so committed, the blessed community in which we are at home in the interconnectedness of those who are loved and who love in return. In this fellowship the usual symbols of Christian faith (e.g., language, creeds, sacraments) may give way to such "recreated symbols" as lived-out behaviors and filled silence. Here the practice of the presence of God is ongoing daily business. Scripture and devotional literature become staples for the journey which takes the form of dual vertical and horizontal dimensions. The most difficult aspects come in maintaining holy obedience to the God who asks all, and in entering suffering for the sake of God's world.

At the end lies death and the experience of a life where work and worship coalesce in a single reality. As for the world, Kelly does not intimate whether it may continue forever or end with bang or whimper. What matters -- and, for him, all that matters -- is the ongoing encounter with the God who addresses us through the living Christ within our truest selves.

CONCLUSION: THE DIVINE INVASION

Several closing comments about the work of Kelly may be in order. Like all substantial devotional writing, it needs to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and repeatedly. At first glance some of his language may sound dissonant. God for example, is referred to as the Presence, the Center, the Silence, the Abyss, the Seed. Those already acquainted with Quaker devotion or the mystical authors of the Church should have no difficulty with the language. Readers may, in fact, be pleased that Kelly uses almost none of the technical vocabulary normally found in philosophers and theologians.

A second and related comment concerns Kelly's use of Scripture, which is more indirect than direct. Ever the Quaker, he relies on a principle enunciated by George Fox: "The Lord has come to teach His people Himself." Revelation therefore is a present experience, and Scripture is to be understood from within the life of God. Kelly's bent to rigorous scholarship does not eliminate matters of grammatical-historical exegesis but, to use Reformation terminology, the inner witness of the Spirit takes precedence.

Finally, upon first reading, one may conclude that Jesus of Nazareth occupies little place in Kelly's thought, for he seldom refers to the events of Bethlehem, Galilee, Calvary, or Pentecost. Incarnation and atonement are scarcely mentioned. This is not because Kelly was oblivious to them or uncaring of them, but because he had adopted from study and personal experience the view of the living and written Word already described. In one striking passage, however, he does speak of the significance of Jesus:

In the dawning experience of the living Christ, the life, the teaching, and particularly the Cross and the triumph of Jesus of Nazareth become indescribably vivid and significant. For in Him the Divine Invasion... has taken place as never before, nor since, complete .... And although we understand Him in part, through the Living Christ, yet we do not understand all. For the communion of Love and Suffering... and victory on the Cross contains the secret which leads back into the very nature of God Himself (EP 31f.).In so saying, Thomas Kelly had come home. His search for an adequate life was fulfilled and, a half-century later, his description remains true and relevant.

NOTES

1. Richard M. Kelly, Thomas Kelly: A Biography (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 122.

2. D. Elton Trueblood, The People Called Quakers (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 222.

3. Almost all of Thomas Kelly's published works are to be found in two volumes, 1] A Testament of Devotion (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), hereafter abbreviated TD, and 2] The Eternal Promise (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), hereafter abbreviated EP. Cf. the one item by Kelly not included in TD or EP: 3] "The Reality of the Spiritual World" in The Pendle Hill Reader, ed. Herrymon Maurer, Essay Index Reprint Series (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, n.d.), pp. 1-40. It was a lecture first published in Great Britain in 1944.

4. Kelly suffered from hay fever so severe that it usually left him bedfast, a sinus infection which required surgery, kidney stones at the age of forty, and, at almost forty-two, a nervous breakdown (see TD 15; Richard Kelly op. cit., p. 69).

5. Ibid., pp. 91f.

6. Douglas V. Steere, A Testament of Devotion, Living Selections from the Great Devotional Classics (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1955), p. 5.

7. Elton Trueblood, The New Man for Our Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 63. Trueblood includes Kelly's work in a list of classics for the nurture of Christian spirituality. The other authors in Trueblood's list are Augustine, Thomas à Kempis, Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, Blaise Pascal, John Woolman, and William Law.

8. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 27, 45, 72, 80, 128, 164; Freedom of Simplicity (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 5, 78, 86, 87, 103.

9. E. Glenn Hinson (ed.), The Doubleday Devotional Classics, Volume III (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978), p. 165. Hinson's introduction to Kelly's life and work (pp. 165-81) is an outstanding condensation of the known data about him together with Hinson's discerning interpretation.

10. "Like Rufus Jones, Thomas Kelly interpreted Quakerism as fundamentally empirical. It is not enough, he insisted, to believe; we must actually experience the love of God .... His words came out of what can only be called a baptism by fire. He was enkindled and he burned with a fast flame" (Elton Trueblood in Herrymon Maurer, op. cit., p. xi).

11. Hinson, op. cit., p. 161.