Madeleine Pennington's work takes a deep dive into Quaker Christology, seeking to show the ways that Quaker Christology incrementally came to conform more closely to English Protestant norms in the period up to 1700, roughly half of a century after the initial formation of Quakerism. The standards of Chalcedonian orthodoxy are challenging for theologians of any denomination to meet, but the emphasis among Quakers on the Light of Christ being found in every person makes for a special challenge for Quaker writers to reconcile Christ's Light with the living witness of a specific man who lived more than one thousand six hundred years previous. Pennington shows that, in the half century period in question, increasingly more strenuous efforts were made toward making Quakers be seen as reputable. Pennington opens the volume with a thorough account of why Quakers’ desire for a good reputation, more than their loathing of persecution, motivated their increasing conformity on theological issues and drove the evolution of their theology, at least in the area of Christology.

Pennington then proceeds to investigate Quaker Christology proper. The Quakers of the 1650s strongly emphasized the eternal Christ, denoted as the Light of Christ, over the incarnate Christ, although they never denied the latter. Ironically, she shows that one of the most moderate Quakers on Christology at the time, one who stated in 1655 that one must believe “what Christ suffered at Jerusalem” (73) to be saved, was the controversial James Nayler, who, during the following year, entered Bristol in a manner reminiscent of Christ's Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem and was found guilty by the English Parliament of blasphemy for having done so. Quaker emphasis on the unified, spiritual nature of God tended to leave them ambivalent toward Trinitarian theology. As they sought to bolster their reputation for Christian orthodoxy over the succeeding decades, Pennington charts diverse Quaker strategies for seeking recognition for moderate Christological bona fides. George Whitehead, William Penn, and Robert Barclay were each key figures in this effort. By the mid-1670s, the Quakers’ desires and actions on behalf of an enhanced theological reputation were beginning to bear fruit. For example, Anglican theologian Henry More, a dialogue partner with Penn and Barclay, rejoiced that “Quakers have emerged above the low Beginning of an heartless and hopeless Familism” (133).

The variety of Christologies that had emerged among Quakers by the 1670s is fascinating. Pennington points to the “increasingly moralistic face of seventeenth-century Quakerism,” as exemplified by Penn's classic treatise, No Cross, No Crown, and discerns there an enduringly influential trend which tended to make the Light of Christ “derivative.” Conversations between Penn, Barclay, More, Lady Anne Conway, and others at Conway's residence, Ragley Hall, often focused on Christology, specifically, working out ways that, in the Quaker's understanding, there could be a substantial relationship between Christ's body and spirit. Barclay's work may well have echoed Conway's view that Christ constituted a “third essence between God and man” (154). Pennington finds it notable that “such an important contribution toward the Quakers’ understanding of Christ's body was produced out of conversations regarding the most pressing philosophical issues of the day” (158).

By the end of the seventeenth century, Quakers had established “broad intellectual alliances” (173) across sectarian lines, sometimes with Enlightenment advocates such as John Locke. In a dispute over the nature of the Light of Christ between Anglican John Norris and Quaker Richard Vickris, Anglican priest Edmund Elys in 1697 supported Vickris, and thus one ascertains that the Anglican Elys harbored a sympathy for Quakers and their theology that “would have been almost unthinkable” earlier in the century (171). Pennington asserts that what emerges is “a messy picture of Quaker intellectual history” (180), with Quaker theology on the way to becoming “an orthodoxy in its own right” (181), as demonstrated by the extraordinarily copious literature generated by a bitter controversy in the 1690s between George Keith, a formerly influential Quaker theologian who left the Quakers to become an Anglican priest, and Whitehead, Penn, and the main body of Quakers.

This will become an indispensable volume for those who wish to understand seventeenth-century Quaker theology. With its thorough and innovative exploration of Quaker Christology, it fills a significant gap in the literature. The depth of Pennington's research is notable, as is her analytical acuity and clarity of exposition. Pennington deftly portrays early Quaker interactions and dialogue with members of other Protestant traditions in a manner that fully demonstrates the profound challenges that each posed to the others, and consequently her work is exceptionally rich and rewarding reading.