An Exploration of the Theology of Quietism: Its Historiography, Representation and Significance in the Christian Mystical and Quaker Traditions

Pryce, Rosemary Elaine (2014). An Exploration of the Theology of Quietism: Its Historiography, Representation and Significance in the Christian Mystical and Quaker Traditions. University of Birmingham. M.Phil.

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Abstract

This study comprises an investigation into the origins, historical representations and theological significance of quietism in the Christian mystical and Quaker traditions.

The study first surveys Quietism, its history and theological controversies in the seventeenth-century, involving Francois Fenelon, Jeanne Guyon and Miguel de Molinos, focusing especially on the issues affecting Guyon as female lay mystic. The study also surveys links between these figures and British seventeenth-century Quakers.

The study further explicates the origins, meanings and theology of quietism in the Christian mystical tradition, identifying its mystical elements and providing and rationalising a definition, therefore exemplifying it as a recognisable mystical theology. It further interrogates and reassesses historical writings and representations of quietism by nineteenth-century Quaker authors, in particular the Quaker historian, Rufus Jones. Chapter five proposes, and presents evidence for quietism as intrinsic to the theological and spiritual structures of the Quaker movement from its inception to the present. It achieves this through identifying the mystical elements of quietism in the Epistles of George Fox, in Robert Barclay’s Apology, and in examples of quietism in Quaker spiritual writings until the present-day.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Masters by Research > M.Phil.)

Award Type:

Masters by Research > M.Phil.

Supervisor(s):