I’m kinda late to the fray, but I trust that my attempt to make a case will be instructive to someone. My firm conviction is that the seeds in this parable definitely do not represent humans or any other sentients. First and foremost, we mustn’t fail to notice what Jesus says after he has finished the parable’s interpretation–"… He who has ears, let him hear." (Matthew 13:43) As far as I can tell, every time Jesus says that is after speaking in metaphors. “He who has ears, let him hear,” occurs for example in Matthew 13:9 after He has told the Parable of the Sower, in Matthew 11:15 after saying John the Baptist was the Elijah to come (which everyone except believers in reincarnation would agree needs a further interpretation) or in Luke 14:35 after talking about salt losing its saltiness (which if taken literally is nonsensical, I’ve never been good at chemistry though, so what do I know?) Taking this into account, I think it’s not a stretch to say that the exposition provided by Jesus is a parable in itself. Now, what could “sons of the Kingdom/evil one” be if not people? Others have correctly pointed out that Devil is called the father of lies in John 8:44, therefore his sons could be lies. But even God is said to have non-living children–“Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17, NASB)
If we want to hear a solid universalistic reading of Jesus’s interpretation in question, it might be wise to turn to the patron saint of Christian Universalism. In the Book X of Commentary on Matthew, Origen says, “… whatsoever good things are sown in the human soul, these are the offspring of the kingdom of God and have been sown by God the Word who ‘was in the beginning with God,’ (John 1:2) so that wholesome words about anything are children of the kingdom. But while men are asleep who do not act according to the command of Jesus, ‘Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation,’ (Matthew 26:41) the devil on the watch sows what are called tares— that is, evil opinions— over and among what are called by some natural conceptions, even the good seeds which are from the Word. And according to this the whole world might be called a field, and not the Church of God only, for in the whole world the Son of man sowed the good seed, but the wicked one tares—that is, evil words—which, springing from wickedness, are children of the evil one. And at the end of things, which is called the consummation of the age, there will of necessity be a harvest, in order that the angels of God who have been appointed for this work may gather up the bad opinions that have grown upon the soul, and overturning them may give them over to fire which is said to burn, that they may be consumed. And so the angels and servants of the Word will gather from all the kingdom of Christ all things that cause a stumbling-block to souls and reasonings that create iniquity, which they will scatter and cast into the burning furnace of fire. Then those who become conscious that they have received the seeds of the evil one in themselves, because of their having been asleep, shall wail and, as it were, be angry against themselves; for this is ‘the gnashing of teeth.’ (Matthew 13:42) Wherefore, also, in the Psalms it is said, ‘They gnashed upon me with their teeth.’ (Psalm 35:16) Then above all shall the righteous shine, no longer differently as at the first, but all ‘as one sun in the kingdom of their Father.’ (Matthew 13:43) … Daniel, knowing that the intelligent are the light of the world, and that the multitudes of the righteous differ in glory, seems to have said this, ‘And the intelligent shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and from among the multitudes of the righteous as the stars for ever and ever.’ (Daniel 12:3) And in the passage, ‘There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differs from another star in glory: so also is the resurrection of the dead,’ (1 Corinthians 15:41-42) the Apostle says the same thing as Daniel, taking this thought from his prophecy. Some one may inquire how some speak about the difference of light among the righteous, while the Saviour on the contrary says, ‘They shall shine as one sun.’ I think, then, that at the beginning of the blessedness enjoyed by those who are being saved (because those who are not such are not yet purified), the difference connected with the light of the saved takes place: but when, as we have indicated, he gathers from the whole kingdom of Christ all things that make men stumble, and the reasonings that work iniquity are cast into the furnace of fire, and the worse elements utterly consumed, and, when this takes place, those who received the words which are the children of the evil one come to self-consciousness, then shall the righteous having become one light of the sun shine in the kingdom of their Father. For whom will they shine? For those below them who will enjoy their light, after the analogy of the sun which now shines for those upon the earth? For, of course, they will not shine for themselves. But perhaps the saying, ‘Let your light shine before men,’ (Matthew 5:16) can be written upon the table of the heart, according to what is said by Solomon, in a threefold way; so that even now the light of the disciples of Jesus shines before the rest of men, and after death before the resurrection, and after the resurrection until ‘all shall attain unto a full-grown man,’ (Ephesians 4:13) and all become one sun. Then shall they shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Obviously, Origen is not fazed by this parable at all. On the contrary, he sees a proclamation of the eventual perfection of the whole humanity at the end of it! Speaking of the phrase “shine as the sun,” I can’t help but reference the song Embers by Owl City which includes it too. The author, Adam Young, is a Christian and also a universalist apparently since this beautiful song is basically a celebration of God’s fire.
In case anyone thought Origen was alone in taking “the sons” to be “the lies/truth”, here’s an excerpt from the Chapter X of On the Resurrection by Athenagoras (133–190)–"… the refutation of falsehood is less important than the establishment of truth; and second in order, for it employs its strength against those who hold false opinions, and false opinions are an aftergrowth from another sowing and from degeneration." He mentions “another sowing” only in passing, but what else could it refer to but the parable we’re discussing? Moreover, the context suggests he’s talking about the sowing of lies as its aftergrowth is false opinions. However, there is another allegorical interpretation in the early church. St. Gregory of Nyssa, a univeralist with a reputation for orthodoxy, or rather his sister St. Macrina the Younger according to Gregory’s On the Soul and the Resurrection stated–“Now we think that Scripture means by the good seed the corresponding impulses of the soul, each one of which, if only they are cultured for good, necessarily puts forth the fruit of virtue within us. But since there has been scattered amongst these the bad seed of the error of judgment as to the true Beauty which is alone in its intrinsic nature such, and since this last has been thrown into the shade by the growth of delusion which springs up along with it (for the active principle of desire does not germinate and increase in the direction of that natural Beauty which was the object of its being sown in us, but it has changed its growth so as to move towards a bestial and unthinking state, this very error as to Beauty carrying its impulse towards this result; and in the same way the seed of anger does not steel us to be brave, but only arms us to fight with our own people; and the power of loving deserts its intellectual objects and becomes completely mad for the immoderate enjoyment of pleasures of sense; and so in like manner our other affections put forth the worse instead of the better growths),—on account of this the wise Husbandman leaves this growth that has been introduced amongst his seed to remain there, so as to secure our not being altogether stripped of better hopes by desire having been rooted out along with that good-for-nothing growth. If our nature suffered such a mutilation, what will there be to lift us up to grasp the heavenly delights? If love is taken from us, how shall we be united to God? If anger is to be extinguished, what arms shall we possess against the adversary? Therefore the Husbandman leaves those bastard seeds within us, not for them always to overwhelm the more precious crop, but in order that the land itself (for so, in his allegory, he calls the heart) by its native inherent power, which is that of reasoning, may wither up the one growth and may render the other fruitful and abundant: but if that is not done, then he commissions the fire to mark the distinction in the crops.” I believe Macrina is essentially saying that the tares are misdirected passions removal of which would be destructive to us because they’re inseparable from the passions put to a good use.
