by Stuart Masters
Paraphrased in modern English usage with commentary by Stuart Masters. First published in Friends Quarterly, Issue 1 (2020)
Introduction
In response to an intensifying environmental crisis that threatens life on earth as we know it, there is a growing concern to deepen our understanding of the spiritual and practical dimensions of this situation. Drawing on a range of perspectives and disciplines, we seek to diagnose what it is about the human condition that has led us into such a destructive relationship with the rest of the natural world, and to consider what a long-term solution to this problem might look like. If, at root, this a spiritual crisis, what wisdom, insights and resources can we glean from our Quaker heritage? Do our founding mothers and fathers have anything useful to teach us?
In this article I will explore the position of the early Quaker leader, James Nayler (1618-1660). He was, perhaps, the most gifted theologian and writer of the first Quaker generation, and so his spiritual legacy is an important one to consider. Can we find any traces of an eco-theology within Nayler’s writings? What does he have to say about the natural world and the place of people within it? Does he regard humanity as a dysfunctional presence within creation, and if so, what solutions does he propose? This analysis will draw on all four volumes of his written works, published between 1653 and 1660. [James Nayler and Licia Kuenning (editor), The Works of James Nayler—Volumes 1-4, (Glenside PA: Quaker Heritage Press), 2003-2009. All quotations from these works are referenced using the following abbreviation system: Works of James Nayler = WJN, volume = 1 to 4: page number.]
The original goodness of the Creation
Nayler affirmed the essential goodness of the creation as it was established and ordered in the beginning by the Word of God. He held a high view of the divinely ordained role of humanity in creation. People were created to reveal God’s wisdom and love within the natural world, and because they were ruled by the Word of God, they enjoyed a divinely inspired understand of the creation: how it was ordered and how it should be used:
“In the beginning God made all things good, so did he man, whom then he made in his own image, and placed in him his own wisdom and power, whereby he was completely furnished with dominion, power and authority over the works of God’s hands, knowing the nature and use of each creature, by what God had placed in him of himself, who in that state was the son of God, whose seed was in himself.” (WJN 3:50)
While people were willing to be ruled by the Word of God, they maintained a harmonious and fruitful relationship with the rest of the natural world. Their relationship with God determined their relationship with creation. Hence the well-being of the whole creation was dependent on a right relationship between God and humanity:
…and these were good for man in their place, while man stood in his place, guided by that which placed him in the good, and forewarned him of the knowledge, and gave him power against it, while he stood in that will which had set all these things in their place, which will was free for God, and from sin, and the will of God and the will of man was one, and so at unity with all the creation. (WJN 3:50)
The Fall of humanity: the loss of right relationship
At some point, people turned away from the rule of God within them, and began to focus instead on their own ideas, which were contrary to the will of God. As a result, they lost their divine guidance and so could no longer reveal God’s wisdom and love within the natural world. Nayler called this fallen state the “first birth from below”: [See A Discovery of the First Wisdom from Below and the Second Wisdom from Above (1653) in Nayler, The Works of James Nayler: 41-71.]
But when man looked out into the other…he fell, and into the self-inventions which he had chosen in the contrary will, and so entering into the forbidden thing became accursed, lost the measure of God, his honour and likeness, in which he stood above the creation, and so became brutish in his understanding, and as to the things of God… (WJN 3:50-51)
Instead of being ruled by God, people came to be dominated by created things instead, and this led them to an insatiable desire to own and control the rest of creation. Hence, a changed relationship with God led to a changed relationship with the rest of creation. In their fallen state, people began to use the creation against God’s wisdom and will:
[In the Fall, man] is brought to serve the creature, over which he was ruler. Hence it is that men become servants and are captivated, some with covetousness, some with pride, some with lust and many other several things, which are become lords in the heart of man…being wholly fallen from that which is unchangeable… (WJN 3:51)
Thus hath God lost the creature out of his call and service, and he is become one with the god of this world, to serve and obey him in ways that despite the Spirit of grace, and now use the creation against the creator. (WJN 4:1-2)
Life in the first birth: devourers of the Creation
People in the first birth became greedy, and so exploited other people and the natural world in order to satisfy their desire for wealth and power. This led to unjust social and economic relations between people, and a dysfunctional and destructive relationship with the rest of creation:
The first man…lusts after the earth, covets, contends and sues for it; for his treasure is in the earth and his heart is with it…and his thoughts, words and wisdom are all employed about it, plotting and forecasting how to compass it and fetch it out of the hands of others, to heap up; but is never satisfied…it is his god, and he worships it, and would have all to worship him because of the abundance of it that he has got together. (WJN 1:46-47)
People began to spend their time and energies trying to exploit the creation in order to gain wealth and power, and this provoked violent conflict and encouraged greed and idleness. The rich and the powerful became abusive and oppressive in their conduct, and humanity became devourers of the creation:
[in the first birth people are] perverse one to another, fighting and brawling and devouring one another, sporting and living in wantonness, fullness, gluttony, and abundance of idleness, devourers of the just and the creation… (WJN 1:156-157)
…so much of the creation as is in their hands, is used at his will. And hence is all lasciviousness, wantonness, strife, fighting, suits, and violence, sports, and vanities, too many here to mention, all which the creation is spent upon (given not to that end)… (WJN 3:111)
In addition, people living in the first birth also began to treat other animals with hard-heartedness and cruelty. During a visit to Chesterfield in 1655, Nayler witnessed a mob of people engaged in bullbaiting and felt led to “declare against their ungodly practice”. He wrote the following to the parish priest:
To thee who calls thyself a minister of Jesus Christ and pretends to be called to this town of Chesterfield this people to teach, but this day is the fruits of thy ministry manifest, in the open streets, a multitude gathered to sport themselves in setting one of the creatures of God against another to torment. (WJN 2:2)
The work of Christ—transforming people and renewing the Creation
Nayler argued that, since it was the Word of God that created and ordered all things in divine love and goodness, in response to the fall, this Word became flesh in Jesus Christ in order to re-establish right relationship between God and humanity, and so enable the renewal of creation.
This is that which was in the beginning with God, the Word, by which all things were made and seen…[it] is given to keep in order all the creation. (WJN 3:54)
[The Lamb] wars against that which hath had them, and now has the rest of the creation in bondage, that he may restore all things in their former liberty. (WJN 4:3)
The Word of God fulfilled this work within people by revealing all that stood in the way of a right relationship with God and creation. When people willingly submitted themselves to the Spirit of Christ, the sin of the first birth was disclosed and destroyed. This is how early Friends understood the transformation process they called convincement:
So that this love of God consists of reproofs, judgment and condemnation against all that defiles the creation, and against the creature who yields to that pollution; and this is pure love to the soul, that deals faithfully therewith in declaring its condition… (WJN 3:75)
One consequence of this process was that people gained a new awareness of the creation and what had corrupted and damaged it:
And as the light ariseth the creation is seen, and how the enmity hath spread over, and how the lust hath defiled it, and how that which was planted as a vineyard is become as a wilderness… (WJN 3:56)
Nayler therefore encouraged people to surrender themselves to the Word of God and attend to the guidance of the Spirit. This would liberate them from the corruptions of the first birth from below and enable them to experience the second birth from above. God, in Christ, had graciously provided the means by which the creation could be renewed, and all things made new:
Wherefore give all diligence to the Spirit’s motion and leadings, what it moves against, and what it leads to; for now will God make all things new: a new creation, new heavens, and new earth, and new heart and mind, and a new law, a new man to walk therein with his Maker with cheerfulness…(WJN 4:160)
Since the Fall of the first Adam had such a devastating impact on the well-being of creation, Nayler argued that the transformation of people through their participation in the life of Christ, the second Adam, would bring them into right relationship with God, and result in the renewal of the whole creation.
Life in the new birth: goodness and right relationship restored
If the first birth in Adam was associated with pride and greed, leading to violence, oppression and the corruption of the creation, for Nayler, the second birth in Christ was associated with humility and unconditional love, leading to peace, justice and a renewed creation. As people came to experience regeneration, understood as the death of the first Adam and new birth in Christ, the evil of pride and greed would be weakened, and the way of humility and love lifted up. A world of hatred, violence and injustice would be overcome by God’s kingdom of love, peace and justice. In the new birth, people would become partakers of the divine nature and reflect the way of Christ in the world. They would again become a visible expression of God’s love and wisdom:
[We] are made partakers of the divine nature; which nature is righteous, merciful and just, meek and patient, faithful and diligent to the obedience of the cross… (WJN 2:218)
…faith that stands in the light and life is the living faith and never without works, which works are love, meekness, patience, mortification, sanctification, justification, etc.—the works of God in Christ Jesus, in which God’s workmanship is seen in the new creation, received in the faith and in the obedience to which the soul is purified, and victory witnessed over the world, sin and death. (WJN 3:72)
Human rebellion would be ended, and people would again be ruled by the Word of God, which is the only true government. This restoration and reconciliation with God would have profound implications. Crucially, when people came to live in the new birth in Christ, not only would they reveal God’s love and wisdom in their lives, but they would again become vessels through which this love and wisdom was poured out upon the rest of creation. What had been a dysfunctional and destructive presence in creation would be transformed into an agent of right ordering and right relationship:
…when [Christ] is come, he takes the ordering and government of the creature himself upon his shoulders, and so ever keeps them out of the lust in all they do. And so is the creation restored and reconciled to God in Christ Jesus at his appearing… (WJN 3:109)
…and none hath the love of God but who hath that Spirit from which it springs…And this being known and seen in the light, from thence is the spring of love, which runs out to the whole creation of God… (WJN 3:75)
Conclusion
Nayler’s eco-theology fits well within a long-standing tradition of radical religion in Northern Europe, rooted in the late medieval mystical piety of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and the Theologia Germanica. [David Blamires, The Book of the Perfect Life: Theologia Deustch: Theologia Germanica, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 2010.] It is reflected in the writings of social and religious reformers such as the revolutionary, Thomas Müntzer (1489-1525), the South German-Austrian Anabaptist, Hans Hut (1490-1527), and fellow radical Puritan and Digger leader, Gerrard Winstanley (1609-1676). For these thinkers, the “creaturely” (a focus on created things) was regarded as the opposite of the “spiritual” (a focus on God). Transformation could only be realised when people overcame their dependence on the creatures. This involved a significant inward struggle, in which a reliance on created things was replaced by a dependence on God. [Walter Klaassen, Hut and Muntzer, Baptist Quarterly (19/5), 1962: 214.] People in their carnal state had given their allegiance to the creatures rather than to the Creator. They had chosen to rely on what they could see and touch rather than on the invisible source and ordering principle of all things. Therefore, reconciliation with God involved being weaned off this reliance on the creatures, leading to dependence on God instead. People had to be freed from their addiction to the created things that ruled their lives. [Klaassen, Hut and Muntzer, 223.]
Like Nayler, Gerrard Winstanley understood that the corruption of human nature in the fall led to an obsession with created things and a covetous desire to grasp the resources of the earth in order to amass wealth and power. This way of life was a rebellion against God’s will and a disruption of the goodness of creation:
[The first man] is said to be of the earth, earthly; for he is a son that feeds, lives and delights himself altogether in and upon the objects of the earth; endeavouring to make himself a Lord over his fellow creatures; in unrighteousness seeking to advance himself, though it be to others ruin; and this man hath lifted up his heal against his Maker, and knows him not. [Gerrard Winstanley, Truth Lifting Its Head Above Scandals (1648) in George A. Sabine, The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 1941: 117.]
Hans Hut shared Nayler’s belief that God’s transformative work within people involved an inward purging of covetousness, which he associated with a reliance on the creatures. This purging made it possible for people to regain a dependency on God, and led to a life of justice, righteousness and the right use of created things:
If God has any use for us or will have benefit of us, we must first be justified and made pure by Him, both inwardly and outwardly; inwardly from greed and lust, outwardly from injustice in our way of living and misuse of the creatures. [Hans Hut, On the Mystery of Baptism (1526), quoted in Daniel Liechty, Early Anabaptist Spirituality: Selected Writings (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press), 1994: 70.]
Both Winstanley and Nayler located the solution to the fallen human condition in the work of the Spirit of Christ within all people. This Spirit had the power to destroy the corruptions of the first birth from below and bring people into the righteousness and joy of right relationship with God and the creation. Such transformation enabled the whole creation to become what God had always intended it to be:
But when they come to see the spiritual Light that is in every creature, and in that power and light do walk righteously towards other creatures, as well as beasts as mankind, that the creation as much as in them lies one by one, may be upheld and preserved in its glory… [Gerrard Winstanley, The New Law of Righteousness (1649) in Sabine, The Works of Gerrard Winstanley: 157.]
In the four hundred and twenty years since James Nayler’s death, human dependency on physical things seems to have significantly increased, particularly in the Western world. Our lives are shaped by a global economic system that is predicated upon perpetual growth in the production and consumption of material goods. Huge sums of money are spent on advertising which seeks to encourage us to consume more things. We are told that our very identity and worth are determined by what we buy and what we own. It is becoming increasingly clear that, rather than being a source of joy and liberation, this is a crippling form of bondage which is leading us to destruction. In this context, James Nayler’s vision is both deeply disturbing and potentially liberating.
Although transformation needs to take place in each person’s heart, this has to be a collective experience. Such a change is urgently needed, especially by those of us who enjoy an affluent and comfortable life. It is not merely a matter of individual choice. It is a challenge that cuts to the very marrow of human cultures, ideologies and institutions. Faced with this, Quaker spirituality can seem somewhat perverse as it teaches that we achieve the most when we do nothing, when we stop trying to assert ourselves in our own will and power. It is interesting to note the apparent affinity between Quaker insights and the Twelve Steps Programme which seeks to support those with addictive and compulsive behaviours. Anne de Gruchy made this connection during her Eva Koch Scholarship:
Friends’ experience of the Twelve Steps illustrates the power of letting go of our own attempts to control our lives and handing this to God… [Anne de Gruchy, Simplicity: The Twelve Steps, The Friend (28 October), 2016.]
In many ways, we are seeking a cure for a destructive and life-threatening addiction. However, any solution also implies a more fundamental transformation of consciousness in which we come to recognise other animals and the rest of the natural world, not just as our brothers and sisters but, perhaps, as part of our very skin and bone. Whether humanity will come to its senses and experience such a transformation, remains to be seen. A hope and expectation that the Light will reveal our darkness and bring us to new life is at the very heart of Quaker faith and practice. The realisation of this new life may determine the survival, not just of our species, but of many others too.
About the Author
Stuart Masters is a member of Britain Yearly Meeting and worships at Selly Oak Local Meeting in Birmingham. For fifteen years, he worked for Woodbrooke, and following his retirement, continues to offer service as an Associate Tutor. He is the author of Tangled Roots: Navigating the Complex Legacy of Early Quakers (Woodbrooke, the 2026 Swarthmore Lecture) and The Quaker Faith: Friends of Love in Truth, (T&T Clark, 2025). Stuart is a Regional Representative for the UK Anabaptist Mennonite Network, and a member of the Advisory Council for the journal, Quaker Religious Thought. To learn more, visit: StuartKMasters.com.
Note: The original Works of James Nayler (in four volumes) are available online at Quaker Heritage Press.