Anointing

November 2, 2018

Mike Far­ley, of Silent Assem­blies, writes of an ear­ly Quak­er inter­pre­ta­tion of anoiting:

I have been struck by the word “anoint­ing”. Eliz­a­beth Bathurst (as quot­ed by David John­son) wrote: “But I brought them the scrip­tures, and told them there was an anoint­ing with­in man to teach him, and the Lord would teach them him­self.” We are not very used, I think, to the term among Friends today. Among charis­mat­ic Chris­tians it is much more com­mon, and seems to be used in both the sense of being giv­en spir­i­tu­al gifts… But I think Eliz­a­beth Bathurst, fol­low­ing the apos­tle John, as she says, is using the word in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent sense to either of these, and it is a sense we as Quak­ers should recognise. 

Anoint­ing