Often prof­fered as the pri­ma­ry belief among mod­ern Friends, the phrase has been stretched and pulled to the point of obtuse­ness in recent years. In the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry Rufus Jones resus­ci­tat­ed it from pas­toral let­ters of Quak­er co-founder George Fox. But in 1970, Lewis Ben­son penned a scathing take­down of both Jones and “that of God” as a formulation.

Davi­son is return­ing to the debate:

“That of God” yearns for God, Fox implies in the quote we always use for this phrase. In that epis­tle, once we have done the inner work of our own trans­for­ma­tion in the light of Christ our­selves, then we can answer that of God in oth­ers. That of God with­in us is call­ing out in the dark­ness, and the Light answers with the Word.

“That of God” — Again 

For decades, I have com­plained about Friends claim­ing that “that of God in every­one” is our cen­tral tenet…

Through the Flam­ing Sword