Category Archives: Puritans

The Venerable Dead

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“The venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me and relieve me from the nonsense of surviving mortals.” -Samuel Davies

The Puritans have often been given a bad rap. To a nonbeliever “Puritan” is a pejorative word that simply means “killjoy” [a criticism that has been debunked by those who've actually read the Puritans]. Even in the church, though, Puritans sometimes get a bad reputation. Sometimes the criticisms are warranted, sometimes exaggerated, and other times they arise from ignorance or misunderstanding. As a point of preference, I love the Puritans! Now, I don’t want to make preference rule, as so many are apt to do, but I’d like to highlight five reasons I think the Puritans are worthy of a wide and lasting readership. In no particular order:

  1. They loved Jesus. Agree or disagree with them, their view of the person and work of Jesus was enormous and comprehensive. One of the greatest dangers in our living and dying is to have a narrow view of Jesus—an epidemic which is evident from many pulpits. Personally, I have found this to be one of the most contagious things about the Puritans. Rarely have I read them and not stepped away loving and worshiping Jesus more than when I sat down.

    “Preach Christ, let your end be to glorify him, to render him amiable and precious in the eyes of his people; to lead them to him as a sanctuary to protect, a propitiation to reconcile, a treasure to enrich, a physician to heal, an advocate to present, as righteousness to justify, as sanctification to renew, as redemption to save, as an inexhausted fountain of pardon, grace, comfort, victory, and glory” (Edward Reynolds, The Works, 1:105).

  2. They loved the Word. Having grown up in mainline evangelicalism, I have found in the Puritans a source of welcomed biblical depth in an otherwise vapid culture. Being fully persuaded that the Bible as the Word of God, the Puritans were careful, studied, and precise in their opening of it. They were, and in my mind continue to be, exegetes of the highest rank and file.

    “You all have by you a large treasure of divine knowledge, in that you have the Bible in your hands; therefore be not contented in possessing but little of this treasure. God hath spoken much to you in the Scripture; labor to understand as much of what he saith as you can” (Jonathan Edwards, The Works of President Edwards, 8:22).

  3. They hated sin. We live in an day when people, even inside the church, are more and more comfortable with sin. Rather than viewing it with horror and hatred, many have come to tolerate it. The Puritans have helped me to grasp the true wicked nature of sin as an infinite offense against an infinite God. We would do much better if our continual prayer was, “Teach me to hate the things you hate, and love the things you love.”

    “In short, sin is the dare of God’s justice, the rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, the contempt of his love” (Ralph Venning, The Sinfulness of Sin, 32).

  4. They encouraged precision in living. I know! Surprisingly this is one of the chief criticisms of many against the Puritans. Personally, I don’t think it’s a fair assessment, nor do I think that most in our own day struggle from too much precision—rather a serious lack of it! The inspired authors weren’t kidding when they said, “[We] take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5), or, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Psalm 139:23-24).

    “What! Is the devil a master good enough for a soul that has God for its maker? Is feeding swine—making ‘provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof,’—work good enough for a soul that is capable of glorifying and enjoying God? Are husks, the food of swine, proper provision for a soul that is capable of being feasted with angels’ food?” (Matthew Henry, Works, 1:159).

  5. They are timeless. Having worked in Christian publishing I’ve been disappointed with much of what is being printed today (am I allowed to admit this?). Our fast-paced culture lacks, as a whole, a timeless character. Where are the great poets, orators, authors, musicians, and artists who will make an indelible mark on history? Ours is a culture that moves from one thing to another with the speed of light! I wonder if the same can be said about many Christian books. They’re here today, and gone tomorrow. In such a fluid society, I find the Puritans to have a permanent character, and a lasting impression. Their writings are anything but irrelevant, and though dead, they still speak.

    Well, there’s at least five reasons. But like I said, it’s a personal preference, and I won’t make preference rule. And if you haven’t seen it yet, you should probably get Drs Joel Beeke and Mark Jones’s new book, A Puritan Theology.

A Puritan Theology: Law and Gospel

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Theodore Beza said a failure to properly distinguish between law and gospel “is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity.” We see, in our day, that this verdict still stands. It seems, at least to me, that there is a lot of confusion in the broader Reformed church concerning this distinction. Legalism, and a misunderstanding of justification by faith alone, prevails in some corners, and in reaction to this, a spirit of Antinomianism has arisen in others. That is why I was particularly excited about Joel Beeke and Mark Jones’s new volume, A Puritan Theology. This book helpfully, and succinctly, presents what our forefathers taught regarding law and gospel and is worthy of the widest possible readership.

While there was a great degree of unity between the Reformed and Lutheran on the doctrine of justification, the Reformed began to distinguish law and gospel in a different manner than the Lutherans. The authors of the book say the latter, “preferred to understand the law only as a message of condemnation for sin, and the gospel only as a message of consolation in Christ.” The Reformed, however, nuanced things differently and saw that the gospel includes precepts such as, “to believe, to embrace the benefits of Christ, and to commence new obedience.”

This became particularly important in the debates with the “antinomians” (literally, anti-law). Painting with broad strokes, Antinomians were characterized by those who didn’t see the moral law as a rule of life, thought of believers as free from indwelling sin, and denied the conditionality of the covenant of grace. It seems, at least to me, that some of these strains in greater or lesser degrees, continue in some Reformed teaching today. The authors say, “One area of contention [with the Antinomians] concerned…the question: Do imperatives belong to the gospel? The Antinomians did not go so far to argue that the gospel contained only indicatives and no imperatives, but their ‘imperatives’ lacked a certain robustness because of their aversion to the moral law.”
This was argued against by men like Samuel Rutherford, who contended that the gospel requires a strict and precise walk. Christ’s blood has the only value and power to merit salvation, but the gospel requires believers to do good works—without which no one can be saved. Likewise, John Owen argued that the gospel commands which require obedience don’t have a reference to justification, but are still the “preceptive part of the gospel.” Thomas Goodwin taught that the gospel, strictly defined, concerns only the redemptive work of Christ, the gospel broadly defined includes Christ’s work for us, and Christ’s work in us. Understood this way, the law-gospel distinction can’t be reduced only to its role in justification by faith alone.

This chapter, while well written, researched, and explained, can only offer a brief introduction to this immensely important topic. My hope is, with the publication of this book, more people will pick up and read the Puritans. Some dismiss them as irrelevant or overly pietistic—a characterization that seems to come from quarters who haven’t read them. But their exegetical insight, precision in doctrine and practice, is worthy of imitation in our own day. It will be interesting to see the critical responses to this chapter, and many others!

Who Says Eschatology Doesn’t Matter?

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es·cha·tol·o·gy: 1) any system of doctrines concerning last, or final, matters, as death, the Judgment, the future state, etc. 2) the branch of theology dealing with such matters.

Simply defined, eschatology is “the study of last things.” Having grown up in the heart of Dispensationalism most people associate eschatology with the rapture, or pre-, mid-, and post-tribulation arguments, or even Tim Lahaye’s Left Behind series (with an obsession over the book of Revelation). Broadly speaking, the hot topics in Reformed and Presbyterian circles are pre-, a-, and postmillennialism. With all the “isms’ eschatology can get confusing, and for some, all the theoretical speculation makes it an impractical area of study.

But must eschatology be impractical? No. On this we can learn a lot from our Puritan forefathers. Apocalyptic writings became immensely popular among the England and New England Puritans. In the midst of all the civil, social, and ecclesiastical unrest of their generation, they saw the providential hand of God working to bring human history to a close, and he was doing it, mediately, through them. They didn’t see themselves as observers in God’s eschatological plan that existed “out there,” but as key players in the unfolding cosmic drama. And of all the Christian virtues it seemed to be hope that dominated their eschatolgoical expectations (and no, this doesn’t mean that they were postmillennials as defined by 21st century terms, see Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 239; c.f. 27-28).

This hope was expressed in the every-day life of the New England Puritans:

1. First, their eschatological hope impacted the ministry of the church and namely the preaching of the Word. In their mind the church not only bore witness to the future age, but the ordinary means of grace were instituted, in part, to bring the future age into full realization. They didn’t have little thoughts about the preached Word, they had BIG thoughts (how shaming to our own day of weak pulpits and lethargic views of the church’s ministry!).

2. Secondly, their eschatological hope impacted their missionary endeavors. The Puritans expected the day when “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14), and believed God had a people from every tribe, language, and nation. Again, they saw their missionary endeavors to be ushering that reality in–some like William Gouge being passionate about the restoration of the Jews (a common theme in Puritan eschatology), and others, like Joseph Caryl, seeing the missions to the North American Indians as fulfilling biblical prophecy.

3. Thirdly, their eschatological hope impacted their view of the civil government and society. The religious upheavals of England left the Puritans with high expectations for their emigration–with many like William Perkins believing it to be the New Jerusalem. In his famous sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, John Winthrop preached concerning the New World: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill; the eyes of all the people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and by-word through the world; we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God.”

4. Fourthly, their eschatological hope impacted their personal piety. Given the days they lived in (days marked by wars and persecutions in England, danger and personal loss as they navigated unknown lands and foreign territories) one might think they would often feel defeated. But as the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, so they violently took it by force (Matthew 11:12). They were motivated in all spheres of life (society, church, and personal) by the overwhelming conviction that King Jesus had conquered and would conquer. It fueled their passions, ignited their ministries, and whatever their portion was in this life, they lived with one eye towards that future glory.

It’s impossible to summarize a Puritan eschatology in a few paragraphs. While many of their predictions fell short (they loved date guessing), and while current trends in Reformed theology stray from their eschatological optimism, we can learn a lot from their hope. America’s ecclesiastical state is one of profound weakness and ignorance. There are more churches on more street corners than ever before, yet our nation is experiencing a religious famine. The Puritans stand to remind us that one of the chief principles of the Christian life is hope. We trust that God has worked, is working, and hope in the work he has yet to do. Maranatha!