by Callid Keefe-Perry
While discussion of sin differs significantly throughout the various branches of the Religious Society of Friends today, there is no doubt that it was a significant point of discussion in the early years of the Quaker movement. The concept of “The Seed of Christ” is sometimes still heard today, but far less frequently do we discuss the idea that there are, in fact, two seeds we ought to pay attention to. George Fox, Margaret Fell, and William Penn all wrote about the inward reality of two seeds, but it is perhaps Robert Barclay who most thoroughly addressed the idea in his Apology:
All the descendants of Adam, that is, all of mankind, are in a fallen, demoralized, and deadened state. They are deprived of sensing or feeling the inward testimony or seed of God (Rom. 5:12; 15 ). They are subject instead to the seed of the serpent, sown in men’s hearts while they remain in this natural and corrupted state. Not only their words and deeds, but their thoughts are evil in the sight of God while they remain in this state. In this state man can know nothing correctly. Even his thoughts of God and spiritual matters are unprofitable to himself and others until he has been disjoined from this evil seed and has been united to the Divine Light. [Robert Barclay, Barclay’s Apology in Modern English, ed. Dean Freiday (Newberg, OR: Barclay Press, 1991), 66.]
As I understand it, the way early Friends understood the situation was that the Seed of Christ is an inherent and eternal part of what it means to be a human. It was available to every single person regardless of their beliefs, professed religion, or previous actions: the Seed of God was a permanent feature of being human. Conversely, the Seed of the Serpent was something that could be cast out and was not an inherent part of humanity’s nature. The tricky part is that though it was possible to cast out the Seed of the Serpent, it would eventually—sneakily!—return.
This theological move is a Quaker distinctive that has three parts: (1) rejecting the notion of “original sin,” while still (2) accepting the daily need to grapple with the ways evil gets into us on a daily basis, and (3) recognizing that while we have agency and can act to cast out the Seed of the Serpent, our salvation does not come from us, but from the Seed of Christ. That is, while we can’t save ourselves, we do have some responsibility to do things that will help us live into the inbreaking Reign of God that we have always already been invited into by God.
Though the theology of two seeds is rarely referenced directly these days, we do hear echoes of it in passages by John Woolman that are often quoted.
Wealth is attended with power, by which bargains and proceedings, contrary to universal righteousness, are supported; and hence oppression, carried on with worldly policy and order, clothes itself with the name of justice and becomes like a seed of discord in the soul. And as this spirit which wanders from the pure habitation prevails, so the seeds of war swell and sprout, and grow, and become strong, until much fruit is ripened. [John Woolman, A Plea for the Poor.]
Woolman’s advice for Friends was that we “look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and see whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in these our possessions.” [John Woolman, A Plea for the Poor.] That is, it was a daily kind of practice to search the inward landscape to see if the seeds of the serpent had taken root again.
I think of this searching for serpent seeds as what early Friends called “seeking the daily cross.” For me, this phrase, a reference to Jesus’ message to his disciples in Matt. 16:24, captures the sense of routine practice I’ve found I need to continue to grow and develop spiritually. I can know that I need to change but sometimes the knowledge is insufficient to actually have me actually do the things needed for change. When I reflect on the factory conditions and environmentally damaging practices that I know must be behind my new cellphone, I recognize the gap between what I know and what I do. I think often about Paul’s self-reflection in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” I understand that feeling.
I have to sink down into something more—to let the Light nourish the Seed of Christ—to find the means to deepen into new ways of being. Even then, it isn’t like I figure it out once and then never botch it again. There is a daily need to wrestle. As William Penn reminded us, people “are too apt to let their heads outrun their hearts, and their notions exceed their obedience, and their passions support their conceits, instead of a daily cross, a constant watch, and a holy practice.” [William Penn, A Key Opening a Way] The part I like about this is that this same sinking down into the Seed of Christ is the same kind of holy practice that helps to cast out the Seed of the Serpent anew.
Additional Related Things to Read if Interested
Mark Russ’s “Quakers and White Privilege: The Seed of the Serpent?” The Jolly Quaker, 6-15-2017.
Note: This blog post has been taken down, but it has been extensively rewritten and become the final chapter of a book by Russ called The Spirit of Freedom: Quaker-shaped Christian Theology, which can purchased from its publisher, Collective Ink Books.
John Connell’s “Let the Holy Seed of Life Reign” : Perfection, Pelagianism, and the Early Friends.” Quaker Theology, 24 (Winter/ Spring 2014).
John Whitehead’s The Enmitie Between the Two Seeds. Friends Collection and Earlham College Archives. 1655, Item 7.