A Brief Investigation of Puritan Theology (Zac Bodine)
Within Puritan
theology, worshipers tried to define what it means to be truly and fully human,
which required a relationship with the Divine outside of the hierarchical,
sacramental, sacerdotal, system of cooperative salvation grounded in canon law,
known as the Catholic church. This search produced many great theological works
and subsequent movements but not without growing pains and the ugliness of
violence from the overflow of internal squabbles all on public display. To
understand the Puritan disposition and the ideology of their day – and
consequently the ideology of early American life – one must examine their works
without eisegesis, allowing the work to speak for itself.
The way to best understand
the Puritans is to encounter their expressions of devotion found within their
poetry and theology. The Puritans's theology is filtered through the Reformed or
Reformation theology, in particular Calvin’s Tulip – known as the five points
of Calvinism. “The five points represented by the word [tulip] are: Total
depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and
Perseverance of the Saints” (Grudem, 597).
These theological
points can be summarized to mean that man’s nature is bent on destruction and
selfishness which needs to be redeemed or redefined to become one who loves
both the Divine and humanity and is utterly selfless. God looks upon the evil
of the world and chooses men and women who will rise up and bring redemption to
it by the sharing of the liberation God has brought to humanity from evil. The
people God has recruited are in a sense drafted and therefore cannot ignore
God’s demands to be involved in the fight against evil. God will ultimately
provide help and hope to allow those he called to join the fight to stay true
to the message, endure and truly believe.
“For Reformed
theology the fundamental issue is, where does the initiative lie in the
divine-human encounter? And the answer given to this question… is that God
alone is the initiating party. Those who have been chosen, called, saved, and
commissioned then have the privilege and responsibility of responding to this
divine initiative in faithfulness and praise” (Maas and O’Donnell, 206-207).
The outward
expression of this theology can be found especially in “the writings of…theologians
[like] William Perkins, William Ames, and John Owen…particularly in…their
teaching on the extent of the death of Christ, the divine sovereignty in providence
and election…[and]…reached its zenith in the ministry and writings of Richard
Baxter.” (McGrath, 79). Among these theologians and pastors are Puritan poets
like Anne Bradstreet who best synthesized these complex and often confusing
ideas into simple verse. “My hungry Soul he fill’d with Good; / He in his
Bottle put my tears, / My smarting wounds washt in his blood, /And banisht
thence my Doubts and fears” (Bradstreet).
This one stanza
exemplified the Puritan ethic and understanding of the Divine which emphasized
that it is the individual’s responsibility to know God and to respond to him.
The church was then not the ends to which salvation was found, nurtured, and
sustained, but a means to which the congregants were able to grow and
experience God alone, but with others. This
notion radically changed how men and women experienced the Divine, engaged with
others within the faith, and practiced their beliefs within the social and
political spheres outside of their denominational lines.
As the Puritan
poet Edward Taylor would express, “My heart was made thy tinder box. / My
’ffections were thy tinder in’t: /Where fell thy sparks by drops. / Those holy
sparks of heavenly fire that came / Did ever catch and often out would flame”
(Taylor). The individual believer is the keeper of the Holy flame, not a
building, not an institution. God is the only one who can light the fire of
passion within the individual. The individual’s responsibility is to maintain
the relationship.
This rugged
individualism birthed by Reformation theology, nurtured by the Puritan movement,
and then eventually expanded by the Pietist movement made its way across the
waters of Europe to the land in which we live today, the United States of
America. “Puritanism may be described empirically as that point of view, that
code of values, carried to New England by the first settlers… the New
Englanders established Puritanism – for better or worse – as one of the
continuous factors in American life and thought.” (Miller, 1). The better we
understand the Puritan’s point of view, by the examination of their poetry and
comprehend this code of values by their theology, the better we understand the
oddities, complexities, and virtues of a culture far removed, but influential,
to our current ways of living.
Sources:
Bradstreet, Anne. “By Night When Others Soundly Slept by
Anne Bradstreet.” Poetry Foundation,
Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43698/by-night- when-others-soundly-slept.
Grudem, Wayne A. Systematic Theology: An Introduction
to Biblical Doctrine. Zondervan Pub. House,
2000.
Maas, Robin, and Gabriel O'Donnell. Spiritual
Traditions for the Contemporary Church. Abingdon,
1997.
McGrath, Alister E. Christian Theology: An
Introduction. Blackwell, 2000.
Miller, Perry, editor. The American Puritans, Their Prose
and Poetry. Anchor Books: Doubleday &
Co, Inc, 1956.
Taylor, Edward. “The Ebb and Flow by Edward Taylor.” Poetry
Foundation, Poetry
Foundation,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58102/the-ebb-and-flow.
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