Anne Conway and George Keith on the ‘Christ Within’

This paper explores the influence of early Quaker theology on the philosophy of Anne Conway, as presented in her The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690). We begin by exploring Conway’s rejection of the remnants of Cartesianism in the Neoplatonic philosophy of her mentor, Henry More, leading her to posit a monistic ontology of spirit. Following this, I argue that Conway’s Christology and religious epistemology can be understood as inspired by George Keith’s account of the ‘Christ Within’ and the manner in which the historical Christ is construed as a manifestation of a metaphysical principle, ‘Christ’. We can understand Conway’s notion of ‘adoption’ by Christ as becoming qualitatively identical with Him as part of the process towards moral perfection, in which we come to embody the ‘Christ Within’.