Born of Incorruptible Seed
The letter Born Again says the new birth is a sowing, that the seed is named three ways, and that what is given can be fanned or quenched. This page is where the commentators argue those three things in their own words, with the Greek, so the letter can stay short. We summarise; they speak.
Every quotation is verbatim and attributed, public domain, checked against the site's database. The boxes marked "Where we land" are ours, and they are summaries, not new rules.
1. The seed: what the word is
1 Peter 1:23 · KJVBeing born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
Greek: ἀναγεγεννημένοι οὐκ ἐκ σπορᾶς φθαρτῆς ἀλλὰ ἀφθάρτου, διὰ ζῶντος καὶ μένοντος λόγου Θεοῦ. Three things to notice. The verb is perfect passive, "having been begotten again": done, and done to you. The noun is spora, not sperma. And there are two prepositions, born of seed, through the word.
“The word used here ( σπορά ) means, properly, ‘sowing;’ but, like σπόρος ( Luke 8:11 ), it stands also for the seed; and here the epithets ‘corruptible’ and ‘incorruptible’ seem to necessitate this second meaning. In the passage quoted from St. Luke, the seed ( σπόρος ) is identified with the Word. ‘The seed is the Word of God.’ Here there seems to be a distinction. God's elect are begotten again of incorruptible seed through the Word. The use of different prepositions, ἐκ and διά apparently implies a difference between the seed and the Word.”
The Pulpit Commentary, on 1 Peter 1:23“incorruptible; referring not to seed cast into the earth, which first corrupts and dies, and then is quickened, and rises, and brings forth fruit; but to human seed”
John Gill, Exposition of 1 Peter 1:23 · 1748Gill is right that Peter's contrast is with human begetting, and wrong to bar the sower: the noun Peter chose is the sowing word, the same family as Luke 8:11. So the sprout picture in the letter stands on Peter's own vocabulary and on Luke 8, not on Gill.
2. The seed: what it is
Three readings, each with voices. None of the commentators in the site's database says the seed is Christ Himself in this verse; that reading is reachable only through John 1's Logos and John 12:24's corn of wheat, and we hold it as a permitted inference, not a commentator's finding.
“The ‘seed’ of God, i.e. the word of God: whence the apostle saith, ‘I have begotten you through the Gospel.’”
St. Augustine, Homily V on 1 John · c. 407“Then the incorruptible seed is the Holy Spirit of God, the Source of all spiritual life; it is the Spirit that ‘beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God;’”
The Pulpit Commentary, on 1 Peter 1:23“The word is not the beggeting principle itself, but only that by which it works: the vehicle of the mysterious germinating power [ALFORD]. which liveth and abideth for ever--It is because the Spirit of God accompanies it that the word carries in it the germ of life.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, on 1 Peter 1:23 · 1871Word (Augustine, and Jesus in Luke 8:11) or Spirit (Pulpit, Alford). We do not pick. Scripture names all three Persons for the one birth: of the Spirit (John 3:6), through the Word (1 Peter 1:23), kept by the Son (next section). A note on the grammar: "living and abiding" can modify God as easily as word; Peter's own v. 25, quoting Isaiah 40:8, "the word of the Lord endureth for ever," is what settles it for word.
3. Kept by the Begotten
1 John 5:18 · KJVWe know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.
Greek: πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος (perfect participle) ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ οὐχ ἁμαρτάνει, ἀλλ' ὁ γεννηθεὶς (aorist participle) ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ τηρεῖ αὐτόν. The KJV reads "himself" (ἑαυτόν); the oldest manuscripts and the Vulgate read "him" (αὐτόν). And the second participle is a different tense from the first.
“We must have ‘begotten’ in both clauses, as in the Revised Version, not ‘born’ in one and ‘begotten’ in the other, as in the Authorized Version. In the Greek there is a change of tense ὁ γεγεννημένος and ὁ γεννηθείς , but no change of verb.… For the perfect participle, comp. 1 John 3:9 ; 1 John 5:1, 4 ; 1 John 3:6, 8 : it expresses him who has come to be, and still continues to be, a son of God. The aorist participle occurs nowhere else in St. John: it expresses him who, without relation to time past or present, is the Son of God. The reading αὐτόν is preferable to ἑαυτόν . The Vulgate has conservat eum , not conserver seipsum , which Calvin adopts. The eternal Son of the Father preserves the frail children of the Father from the common foe, so that the evil one toucheth them not.”
The Pulpit Commentary, on 1 John 5:18“keepeth himself--The Vulgate translates, ‘The having been begotten of God keepeth HIM’ (so one of the oldest manuscripts reads): so ALFORD. Literally, ‘He having been begotten of God (nominative pendent), it (the divine generation implied in the nominative) keepeth him.’ So Jo1 3:9, ‘His seed remaineth in him.’”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, on 1 John 5:18 · 1871Three readings sit in one verse: the Begotten One keeps him (Pulpit, the oldest text), the begetting keeps him (Alford, Augustine's "his being born of God preserveth him"), he keeps himself (Calvin, KJV). The first is the oldest attested and has the strongest Greek case; John uses that aorist of no believer anywhere else. Whichever is read, the keeping is not the believer's own work first. This is the sentence that lets the letter say: born of the Spirit, through the Word, kept by the Son.
4. Can what is given be quenched?
1 Thessalonians 5:19; 2 Timothy 1:6 · KJVQuench not the Spirit. … Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.
Greek: μὴ σβέννυτε τὸ Πνεῦμα, present imperative, "do not keep extinguishing"; ἀναζωπυρεῖν, "to fan into flame," a fire that has gone low. Both addressed to people who have the Spirit. The commentators divide not on whether the verbs are real but on what they act upon: the Person, or the fire.
“For this grace it is in our power to kindle or to extinguish; wherefore he elsewhere says, ‘Quench not the Spirit.’… For by sloth and carelessness it is quenched, and by watchfulness and diligence it is kept alive.”
St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on 2 Timothy · c. 395“‘Quench not the Spirit;’ not that He can be quenched, but that those who so act as if they wished to have Him quenched are deservedly spoken of as quenchers of the Spirit.”
St. Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence · c. 419“and though these cannot be totally extinguished, and utterly put out and lost, yet they may be greatly damped; the light of faith may become dim; and the flame of love be abated, and that wax cold; the heat of zeal may pass into lukewarmness, and an indifference of spirit”
John Gill, Exposition of 1 Thessalonians 5:19 · 1748“it was not lost by him, nor taken from him, as gifts may be, when they are not used; and yet it seems as if there was some decline, some backwardness and indifference as to the exercise of it”
John Gill, Exposition of 2 Timothy 1:6 · 1748“the excellence of gifts produces carelessness, which is also accompanied by sloth; and Satan continually labors to extinguish all that is”
John Calvin, Commentary on 2 Timothy 1:6 · 1548“by the consciousness of his having merited the loss of all the gifts of the Spirit, and of his having actually, in a great measure, lost them.”
John Calvin, Commentary on Psalm 51:11 · 1557“For the divine seed of loving faith abideth in him; and, so long as it doth, he cannot sin, because he is born of God”
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on 1 John 3:9 · 1755Every voice, on every side, lets the verb be a real act of the believer. The line they all draw is between the Person, whom Augustine and Gill say cannot be put out, and the fire, the gifts, the graces, which Chrysostom, Calvin, and even Gill on 2 Timothy say can be damped, lost, or extinguished by sloth. We hold that line as they drew it. And the "upon" is not an Old Testament word only: Acts 1:8 says the Spirit came upon the disciples for the work, and Ephesians 2:10 gives every believer works prepared to walk in. In for dwelling, upon for the job, and the job is why the fire must not go out.
Commentary from public-domain editions held in the site's database (Augustine and Chrysostom in NPNF; Gill, Calvin, Wesley, JFB, and the Pulpit Commentary in their standard editions). Scripture in the King James Version, Greek from the Berean interlinear. The "Where we land" boxes are our summary and nothing more; the commentators are never the final say. Back to Born Again, or the companion dive Born of Water and the Spirit.