The influence of Ragley-Hall heterodoxy (not to mention Kabbalah) upon Robert Barclay

"the understanding of [the pre-incarnate] Christ as a third essence, between God and man, which was suggested by [Anne] Conway and [Francis Mercury] van Helmont seems to have been echoed in Barclay’s understanding of the divine and human attributes of the Vehiculum Dei. Whilst Barclay does not introduce such an explicit typology, his account immediately makes more sense in light of Conway’s threefold categorization [of reality as 'divided essentially into three categories: the immutable God, mutable creatures, and [the pre-incarnate] Christ as mediator between the two']. As noted above, he drew on aspects both of humanity and divinity to describe the body of Christ, whilst denying that it was fully either, which certainly seems to suggest that his view was closer to Conway than t[o] orthodoxy. Furthermore, whilst Conway did think that Christ was also joined to humanity in the Incarnation, she seemed more concerned to emphasize the main differences between these categories than their exact relationship in Christ. Similar ambiguities in Barclay’s Christology and Trinitarian understanding certainly suggest that Barclay and Conway shared similar intellectual priorities."

     Madeleine Pennington, Quakers, Christ, and the Enlightenment (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2021), 154-155, 152.  If this is Pennington's idea of "the theological innovation needed adequately to meet such challenges while retaining the distinctive Quaker emphasis on the immanence of Christ" (134) lacking in the earliest periods of Quakerism ("the links between Robert Barclay, George Keith, Henry More, Anne Conway, and Francis Mercury van Helmont. . . . are a shining example of how nonconformists could be intellectually engaged and theologically innovative (as opposed to merely reactive)" (155-156)), then too bad.  "in Chapter 1 . . . it was noted that Quakers seemed to have changed their understanding of divine immanence, moving towards a sense of altered outlook on ordinary life, rather than a cosmic judgement on the fate of the universe emanating from the human soul. It was further posited in Chapter 2 that these changes might reflect a quest for theological reputation, and we are now in a position to identify the precise mechanism of such a change. Over time, the Quakers struggled to reconcile their understanding of the Light with an adequate account of the Incarnation, and this encouraged an increasingly positive understanding of the outward form over time. Barclay’s Apology was a seminal moment in this process, as it took seriously the need to affirm Christ’s body at the centre of belief in the Light within, and collapsed the previously strong distinction between inward and outward metaphysical forms. This decreased emphasis on a metaphysical 'inwardness', in favour of a more strongly moral distinction, reflected the increasing positivity shown towards the physical body over time. The pace of this change points to a slow and constant intellectual process, rather than a stark political defeat—and this slow process culminated in Barclay’s description of the Vehiculum Dei" (157-158, underscoring mine).  And yet this still wasn't, from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy, "an adequate account of the Incarnation"!
     Nor did it put the even greater heterodoxies of early Quakerism to rest:  "Barclay was clearly trying to address concerns over the Quakers’ orthodoxy, but he did not resolve the puzzles of Quaker Christology entirely. Partly, this was due to a lack of consensus within the movement. Thus, despite his approval of Barclay’s work, in 1677 Fox emphasized the heavenly nature of Christ (in contrast to the 'earthly man' whom he saves), and once again criticized the extra-biblical terminology of the 'Humane body' and 'humanity' of Christ" (158, underscoring mine).  Cf. 169, underscoring mine:  "The simultaneous use of several Christological models was not unusual within Quakerism. As noted above, Fox (who only died in 1691) endorsed Barclay’s publications enthusiastically, and yet even continued to express doubt over the humanity of Christ itself; the earliest Quakers’ metaphorical understanding of reality had not entirely disappeared."