The Puritans and Their Influence in America

The Puritans and Their Influence in America

A 2-day conference was recently held at Calvin College Seminary presenting aspects of Puritanism, the Puritan spiritual life, and its resonance, or not, for today's contemporary discussions. Here is the presentation in chronological order of speaker. - R.E. Slater 

Due to an error on the recording of Margaret Bendroth’s opening presentation, “Why the Puritans Still Matter and Why They Might Not: Thinking About Historical Legacies in the 21st Century,” this presentation has been lost and is not available for viewing. As substitute the following dialogue has been inserted by myself. - R.E. Slater

The Spiritual Practice of Remembering

by Margaret Bendroth

May 6, 2021

On Friday, December 11, we hosted author and historian of religion Margaret Bendroth to discuss the nature and importance of memory in the Christian life and tradition. In her luminous work "The Spiritual Practice of Remembering," Bendroth argues that “remembering is an act with spiritual meaning... the past tense is essential to our language of faith; without it our conversation is limited and thin  - and growing thinner all the time.” The very act of noticing and remembering reconnects us to the Great Story. We hope this conversations helps you to think about the importance of remembering to the life of our faith.

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Comment: In this lecture Dr. Richard Muller discusses the natural theology of the Puritans. As a process theologian I noticed immediately how Puritan ideation of God and nature departed from process natural theology. As example, at the end of the lecture the Calvinist idea of lapsarianism was discussed. In process thought there can be no discussion of this subject as the Hebraic legend of Creation and the Fall is not actual. This means that the problem of evil began contemporaneous with the issuance of God's command to create, wherein was birthed love giving agency to creation and with agency came the ability to depart from God, love, and fellowship with all. The nuance  then addresses theodicy without necessitation biblical literalism. - re slater

The H. Henry Meeter Center

John Preston on the Purpose and Place of the Natural Knowledge of God

by Dr. Richard Muller

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Richard Muller (Calvin Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021).  A brief summary follows below:

"John Preston’s sermons, most notably those in his Life Eternall, exemplify the early seventeenth-century development of an English Reformed homiletical theology in which hortatory elements were combined with fairly detailed theological argumentation, both positive and apologetic - intended for the edification of an educationally receptive laity. In the context of his sermons and in the process of formulation of a full homiletical body of divinity, Preston provided an analysis of the problems of faith and reason and of the use of natural knowledge of God illustrative of an approach that was neither fideistic nor rationalistic. His approach to formulation evidences the impact of the more technical scholastic development of Reformed thought at the same time that it adapts doctrine to its practical application—both following out the programs of William Perkins and William Ames and adumbrating the rise of homiletical theologies among the Puritans and exponents of the Dutch Nadere Reformatie."

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The H. Henry Meeter Center

"A publiq spirit for Sions sake": 

Puritan Activism in the Early Restoration

by Dr. Adrian Weimer

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Adrian Weimer (Providence College) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021).  A brief summary follows here:

"After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, New England colonists were faced with an imperial metropolis intent on consolidating its power. Drawing on resources from the Protestant Reformation and the English civil wars, colonial men and women mobilized around protecting their local institutions, forming a robust constitutional culture. This culture was marked by an ideal of public-spiritedness, a capacity among ordinary people to identify and critique arbitrary rule, and widespread mobilizing through petitions and fast days."

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The H. Henry Meeter Center

The Wars of the Lord: How the Puritans Conquered America's First People

by Dr. Matthew Tuininga

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Matthew Tuininga (Calvin Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here:

"The Puritans came to New England believing they were establishing the kingdom of Christ in a new world and that their Christianity would liberate its people from darkness. But their version of Christianity also played a major role in leading them to dominate the natives. A conquest they foresaw as spiritual, peaceable and benevolent devolved into a military conquest that was virtually genocidal. Puritan theology shaped how this unfolded and how it was justified, from beginning to end."

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The H. Henry Meeter Center

The Decline of Doctrine in Seventeenth-Century Cambridge

by Chad Van Dixhoorn

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Chad Van Dixhoorn (Westminster Theological Seminary) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here. This paper deploys John Arrowsmith’s newly translated "Plans for Holy War" as a lens through which to study the perceived decline of the importance of doctrine in mid-seventeenth century Cambridge University. In "Plans for Holy War," a work of astonishing scholarship written by a dying Cambridge don - contemporary events led Arrowsmith to argue that Christian warfare must be waged in the world of theology. Exploring the dangers seen by Arrowsmith entails the intricate work of reconstructing local and national politics and understanding criticisms of Oxbridge academic theology in his own day.

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The H. Henry Meeter Center

Remembering the Puritans

by Abram Van Engen

Sep 30, 2021

This presentation was given by Dr. Abram Van Engen (Washington University, St. Louis) at our conference on The Puritans and Their Impact (September 24-25, 2021). A brief summary follows here. Heroes and villains. The beginning of religious toleration and the extension of religious oppression. Refugees fleeing persecution for liberty and opportunity abroad; settler colonialists taking land in acts of war and genocide. The Pilgrims and Puritans have been remembered and remade in countless ways in American history, literature, and culture. This talk considers how, why, and when they came to national fame, looking in particular to the role they have played as an origin story for a nation they never conceived.

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The H. Henry Meeter Center

Puritans Conference Speakers Panel

Sep 30, 2021

Here is the concluding panel of our conference, featuring all six of our conference speakers: Margaret Bendroth, Richard Muller, Adrian Weimer, Matthew Tuininga, Chad Van Dixhoorn, and Abram Van Engen.

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SUGGESTED CONFERENCE READINGS

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Dave Roos | Lambert/Getty Images

What’s the Difference Between

Puritans and Pilgrims?

https://www.history.com/news/pilgrims-puritans-differences

July 31, 2019 | updated March 16, 2021

Both sought a different religious practice than what the Church of England dictated, but they were otherwise distinct groups of people.

Many Americans get the Pilgrims and the Puritans mixed up. Common thinking is: They were both groups of English religious reformers. They both landed in modern-day Massachusetts. And they were both stuffy sourpusses who wore black hats, squared collars and buckled shoes, right?

Well, maybe not the buckles.

To understand the biggest differences between the Pilgrims and the Puritans, one has to go back to the Protestant Reformation, which swept across Europe after Martin Luther (supposedly) nailed his “95 Theses” to the church door in 1517. 

Thanks to the printing press, non-clergy had access to the Bible in their native languages for the first time. They began to question why the Roman Catholic worship services were so different than those of the primitive Christian church.

The Reformation was slower to arrive to the British Isles, but England had its own split from the Roman Catholic church in 1534 when King Henry VIII wanted a divorce and the Pope wouldn’t grant it. The newly created Church of England was similar to Catholicism in every way, except instead of the Pope carrying divine authority, it was the British Crown.

Who Were the Pilgrims?

Every British citizen was expected to attend the Church of England, and those who didn’t were punished by the state. One group of farmers in Northern England, known disparagingly as the Separatists, began to worship in secret, knowing full well that it was treasonous.

“Once they decided that the only way they could be true to their conscience was to leave the established church and secretly worship, they were hunted and persecuted, and many of them faced the loss of their homes and the loss of their livelihood,” says Donna Curtin, executive director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “When it became impossible for them to continue in this way, they began to seek another place to live.”

Pilgrim leader William Bradford, later the Governor of Plymouth Colony, reads the Mayflower Compact on board the Mayflower off the coast of what became known as Massachusetts. | Pilgrim leader William Bradford aboard the Mayflower. Credit: MPI/Getty Images

Pilgrims Look to the New World

The Separatists first fled to the Netherlands, a wealthy maritime superpower that was far more religiously diverse and tolerant. But while life in Holland was peaceful, it wasn’t English, and the Separatists feared that their children were losing their native culture. They decided that the only way to live as true English Christians was to separate even further and establish their own colony in the New World.

Not all of the Separatists could make the cross-Atlantic journey, including their spiritual leader, Reverend John Robinson. Writing years later in Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford recounted the tearful farewell at the docks in Delftshaven, where a ship would take the Separatists to meet the Mayflower in London.

“So they left that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place near twelve years; but they knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”

Curtin points out that Bradford didn’t name his community “Pilgrims,” and wouldn’t have heard the term in his lifetime. The first usage of capital-P “Pilgrim” appeared around 1800, when a group of citizens in Plymouth proposed the creation of a Pilgrim Society to organize the annual celebration of the founding of the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Before 1800, the Separatists who landed at Plymouth Rock were known as the “first-comers” or “forefathers.”

The Pilgrims, led by Bradford, arrived in New England in December. Roughly half of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower died that first winter from starvation, exposure and disease. With the help of the native Wampanoag people, the Pilgrims learned to fish and farm their new lands, resulting in the famous feast of Thanksgiving attended by natives and new arrivals in 1621.

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Nawrocki/ClassicStock/Getty Images

The History of the Puritans

https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/puritanism

October 29, 2009 | Updated July 30, 2019

The Puritans were members of a religious reform movement known as Puritanism that arose within the Church of England in the late 16th century. They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible.

Puritans felt that they had a direct covenant with God to enact these reforms. Under siege from Church and crown, certain groups of Puritans migrated to Northern English colonies in the New World in the 1620s and 1630s, laying the foundation for the religious, intellectual and social order of New England. Aspects of Puritanism have reverberated throughout American life ever since.

Puritans: A Definition

The roots of Puritanism are to be found in the beginnings of the English Reformation. The name “Puritans” (they were sometimes called “precisionists”) was a term of contempt assigned to the movement by its enemies. Although the epithet first emerged in the 1560s, the movement began in the 1530s, when King Henry VIII repudiated papal authority and transformed the Church of Rome into a state Church of England. To Puritans, the Church of England retained too much of the liturgy and ritual of Roman Catholicism.

Did you know? In keeping with their focus on the home, Puritan migration to the New World usually consisted of entire families, rather than the young, single men who comprised many other early European settlements.

Well into the 16th century, many priests were barely literate and often very poor. Employment by more than one parish was common, so they moved often, preventing them from forming deep roots in their communities. Priests were immune to certain penalties of the civil law, further feeding anticlerical hostility and contributing to their isolation from the spiritual needs of the people.

The Church of England

Through the reigns of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547-1553), who introduced the first vernacular prayer book, and the Catholic (1553-1558), who sent some dissenting clergymen to their deaths and others into exile, the Puritan movement–whether tolerated or suppressed–continued to grow.

Some Puritans favored a presbyterian form of church organization; others, more radical, began to claim autonomy for individual congregations. Still others were content to remain within the structure of the national church, but set themselves against Catholic and episcopal authority.

As they gained strength, Puritans were portrayed by their enemies as hairsplitters who slavishly followed their Bibles as guides to daily life or hypocrites who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians.

Yet the Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. The movement found wide support among these new professional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing discontent with economic restraints.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, an uneasy peace prevailed within English religious life, but the struggle over the tone and purpose of the church continued. Many men and women were more and more forced to contend with the dislocations–emotional as well as physical–that accompanied the beginnings of a market economy.

Subsistence farmers were called upon to enter the world of production for profit. Under the rule of primogeniture, younger sons tended to enter the professions (especially the law) with increasing frequency and seek their livelihood in the burgeoning cities. The English countryside was plagued by scavengers, highwaymen and vagabonds–a newly visible class of the poor who strained the ancient charity laws and pressed upon the townsfolk new questions of social responsibility.

Puritans in New England

In the early decades of the 17th century, some groups of worshipers began to separate themselves from the main body of their local parish church where preaching was inadequate and to engage an energetic “lecturer,” typically a young man with a fresh Cambridge degree, who was a lively speaker and steeped in reform theology. Some congregations went further, declared themselves separated from the national church, and remade themselves into communities of “visible saints,” withdrawn from the English City of Man into a self-proclaimed City of God.

The Reformation

One such faction was a group of separatist believers in the Yorkshire village of Scrooby, who, fearing for their safety, moved to Holland in 1608 and then, in 1620, to the place they called Plymouth in New England. We know them now as the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock.

A decade later, a larger, better-financed group, mostly from East Anglia, migrated to Massachusetts Bay. There, they set up gathered churches on much the same model as the transplanted church at Plymouth (with deacons, preaching elders and, though not right away, a communion restricted to full church members, or “saints”).

Differences Between Pilgrims and Puritans

The main difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the Puritans did not consider themselves separatists. They called themselves “nonseparating congregationalists,” by which they meant that they had not repudiated the Church of England as a false church. But in practice they acted–from the point of view of Episcopalians and even Presbyterians at home–exactly as the separatists were acting.

By the 1640s, their enterprise at Massachusetts Bay had grown to about 10,000 people. They soon outgrew the bounds of the original settlement and spread into what would become Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine, and eventually beyond the limits of New England.

Who Were the Puritans?

The Puritan migration was overwhelmingly a migration of families (unlike other migrations to early America, which were composed largely of young unattached men). The literacy rate was high, and the intensity of devotional life, as recorded in the many surviving diaries, sermon notes, poems and letters, was seldom to be matched in American life.

The Puritans’ ecclesiastical order was as intolerant as the one they had fled. Yet, as a loosely confederated collection of gathered churches, Puritanism contained within itself the seed of its own fragmentation. Following hard upon the arrival in New England, dissident groups within the Puritan sect began to proliferate–Quakers, Antinomians, Baptists–fierce believers who carried the essential Puritan idea of the aloneness of each believer with an inscrutable God so far that even the ministry became an obstruction to faith.

Puritanism in American Life

Puritanism gave Americans a sense of history as a progressive drama under the direction of God, in which they played a role akin to, if not prophetically aligned with, that of the Old Testament Jews as a new chosen people.

Perhaps most important, as Max Weber profoundly understood, was the strength of Puritanism as a way of coping with the contradictory requirements of Christian ethics in a world on the verge of modernity. It supplied an ethics that somehow balanced charity and self-discipline. It counseled moderation within a psychology that saw worldly prosperity as a sign of divine favor. Such ethics were particularly urgent in a New World where opportunity was rich, but the source of moral authority obscure.

By the beginning of the 18th century, Puritanism had both declined and shown its tenacity. Though “the New England Way” evolved into a relatively minor system of organizing religious experience within the broader American scene, its central themes recur in the related religious communities of Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists and a whole range of evangelical Protestants.

More recently, the word “Puritan” has once again become a pejorative epithet, meaning prudish, constricted and cold–as in H. L. Mencken’s famous remark that a Puritan is one who suspects “somewhere someone is having a good time.”

Puritanism, however, had a more significant persistence in American life than as the religion of black-frocked caricatures. It survived, perhaps most conspicuously, in the secular form of self-reliance, moral rigor and political localism that became, by the Age of Enlightenment, virtually the definition of Americanism.

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Painting depicting the marriage ceremony of British colonist John Rolfe (1585 – 1622) to Native American Pocahontas (1595 – 1617), the daughter of Chief Powhatan of the Algonquian tribe, in 1614. After a painting by Henry Brueckner, circa 1855. (Kean Collection/Getty Images)

John Rolfe

John Rolfe (1585-1622) was an early settler of North America known for being the first person to cultivate tobacco in Virginia and for marrying Pocahontas. Rolfe arrived in Jamestown in 1610 with 150 other settlers as part of a new charter organized by the Virginia Company. He ...read more

John Locke

The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) laid much of the groundwork for the Enlightenment and made central contributions to the development of liberalism. Trained in medicine, he was a key advocate of the empirical approaches of the Scientific ...read more

Vintage portrait of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary whose "Common Sense" and other writings influenced the American Revolution, and helped pave the way for the Declaration of Independence.

How Thomas Paine's 'Common Sense' Helped Inspire the American Revolution

Even after armed hostilities broke out between the American colonists and British forces in 1775, many prominent colonists seemed reluctant to consider the idea of actually breaking away from Britain, and instead insisted that they were still its loyal subjects, even as they ...read more

Samuel Adams

Founding Father Samuel Adams was a thorn in the side of the British in the years before the American Revolution. As a political activist and state legislator, he spoke out against British efforts to tax the colonists, and pressured merchants to boycott British products. He also ...read more

Pocahontas

Pocahontas was a Native American woman born around 1595. She was the daughter of the powerful Chief Powhatan, the ruler of the Powhatan tribal nation, which at its strongest included around 30 Algonquian communities located in the Tidewater region of Virginia. As far as ...read more

english-history-illustration-pic-12th-february-1689-this-illustration-shows-william-and-mary-being-offered-the-crown-by-the-lords-and-commons-at-whitehall-the-monarchs-as-william-iii-and-mary-ii

English Bill of Rights

The English Bill of Rights was an act signed into law in 1689 by William III and Mary II, who became co-rulers in England after the overthrow of King James II. The bill outlined specific constitutional and civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy. Many ...read more

Christianity

Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the world, with more than 2 billion followers. The Christian faith centers on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. While it started with a small group of adherents, many historians regard ...read more

Battle of Saratoga

The Battle of Saratoga occurred in September and October, 1777, during the second year of the American Revolution. It included two crucial battles, fought eighteen days apart, and was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a crucial turning point in the Revolutionary ...read more

ask-were-witches-burned-at-the-stake-istock_000014643549large-2

Were witches burned at the stake during the Salem Witch Trials?

In January 1692, a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts became consumed by disturbing “fits” accompanied by seizures, violent contortions and bloodcurdling screams. A doctor diagnosed the children as being victims of black magic, and over the next several months, ...read more

Signing of the Mayflower Compact

How the Mayflower Compact Laid a Foundation for American Democracy

On the morning of November 11, 1620, when the Mayflower dropped its anchor off the coast of Cape Cod, the group of English Separatists later known as the Pilgrims fell to their knees and blessed God for bringing them safely across the “vast and furious ocean” to a new life in the ...read more

jamestown-gettyimages-50996537

What Was Life Like in Jamestown?

The first settlers at the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia hoped to forge new lives away from England―but life in the early 1600s at Jamestown consisted mainly of danger, hardship, disease and death. All of the early settlers in 1607 were men and boys, including ...read more

Battle of Yorktown

When British General Lord Charles Cornwallis and his army surrendered to General George Washington’s American force and its French allies at the Battle of Yorktown on October 19, 1781, it was more than just military win. The outcome in Yorktown, Virginia marked the conclusion of ...read more

Smallpox-Edward-Jenner-GettyImages-1056342166

How 5 of History’s Worst Pandemics Finally Ended

As human civilizations flourished, so did infectious disease. Large numbers of people living in close proximity to each other and to animals, often with poor sanitation and nutrition, provided fertile breeding grounds for disease. And new overseas trading routes

Diagramming "The Young, Restless, and Reformed"

On Naming the Calvinists, or whatever…

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2014/07/rethinking-hell-evangelical_14.html

Scot McKnight

Jul 14, 2014

Comments

Timothy Paul Jones has a very useful, informed article on his blog on naming the new Calvinism, and his graph of the elements at work is worth considering:

"How then should we refer to the recent resurgence of interest in Reformed soteriology?

"Before providing a tentative answer to this question, it may be worth pointing out that no one within this growing movement appears to be clamoring for a newer or narrower name. What I’ve witnessed among the so-called “young, restless, Reformed” is widespread contentment with historical designations and denominations. The discontent with existing epithets seems to spring from those that are critical of the Reformed resurgence, not from those within the movement.

"That said, it seems to me that the most accurate descriptor would be “Dortianism” or, if some prefix must be affixed to denote the distinct contours of the current movement, “neo-Dortianism” (see chart below for this taxonomy).

"Unfortunately, I don’t expect “Dortianism” to blossom into anyone’s preferred terminology anytime soon.* The events at [the Synod of] Dort are too obscure and the term itself sounds too distasteful to end up emblazoned on anyone’s book cover. (Do you really think that the "Young, Restless, Dortian" would have attracted anywhere near the number of readers that the Young, Restless, Reformed did?)

And so, of the options that are intelligible, beyond a handful of theologians and church historians, “neo-Reformed”—though not without its difficulties—probably remains the least problematic nomenclature in an ever-multiplying pool of possibilities.

And perhaps part of what the less-than-ideal “neo-” prefix could connote is the spread of Reformed soteriology not only within but also beyond the historic Presbyterian and Reformed churches."

Naming the New Calvinism, by Timothy Paul Jones

Voices of Dissent - Unfolding God's Love Within the Heart and Conscience of Humanity

We have oftentimes spoken to the issues of God's sovereignty as it relates to human free will and to the indeterminacy of nature. It is one of those privileges that God has given to us when intricately creating our world and ourselves. But whenever thinking of this subject we must also remember to speak to (i) the "weakness of such a God" who gave to us our free will. As well as to (ii) the immediate consequence of sin that human freewill presented when used apart from God's heart of love and justice; His plans, purposes, and prerogatives. Or to (iii) creation's indeterminacy that was immediately set in motion to act out its natural beat of randomness and chaos (giving to us quantum physics, evolution, and human birth). Nor should we neglect (iv) sin's corrupting influence upon God's indeterminate design at the very onset of His holy fies of freedom. Nor even (v) God's willful sovereign-partnership initiated between humanity and Himself presented in a non-coercive manner which leaves the future as open to us today as it is to God Himself in His timeful, incarnate eternity. Even as our dear Lord guides all His creation through time and space towards renewal and recreation (as previously discussed under the several theological categories of relational theism, process theism, and open theism, amongst other topics here discussed).

Now perhaps I haven't summarize these concepts as eloquently above as I've stated them in my past articles under the banners of postmodern, post-evangelic (or, emergent) Christianity, but in a nutshell when we speak of Calvinism's misuse of God's sovereignty we are saying that as a theology it has gone deeply astray from these many biblical ideas mentioned at the outset of this article. Certainly, we have more than adequately shown its  doctrinal abuses and misuses (sic, refer to the various sidebars under "Calvinism," "Love," "Love Wins," "Church," etc.) and have offset its verbiage with a more helpful understanding of "Arminianism" as its theological polar opposite.... Leaving us to sort through just what, if any, of Calvin's theology might be kept. However, in today's posting, Scot McKnight chooses to tamper down Calvinism's excesses without writing much more in the way of its pros and cons. His is a moderating position cautioning the reader to remember God's love is not austere, but in all ways perfect, fair, and equitable. And that it is we ourselves who are free to roam God's universe in determination of whether His love is exactly that or not.

And to those of us who doubt God. Who distrust God. Who don't understand why things work out in life as they do, be at peace.... God has made room for our disbelief, our  heated arguments, anger and questioning spirit. It's what God calls "free will." But in the end, one doesn't lose God's love for expressing the more honest human emotions and tempering attitudes of our questioning spirit, but rather we lose the love of the church for confronting its many false arguments and misperceptions that have been perpetrated in the name of God. Of one's Christian peers and teachers, family and friends, who proclaim the false non-sequiturs of God's holy love by unholy words and deeds. For the many misrepresentations of what a "biblical Christianity" supposedly "is" that has been willfully denied - and willfully reimaged - that is, "God's Good News of His Love" - into an assortment of austere, excluding, creedal confessions fraught amongst dithering Christian folklores and spurious religious ideologies purporting "goodness and light" where none can be found.

All of which has caused thinking postmodern, post-evangelic Christians to rightfully question how we, as free willed human beings, could be so gravely mistaken over such a simple concept as the love of God, choosing rather its unloving opposite of social exclusion and enculturated hate, as the church's more proper political platforms for the Gospel's outreach of Jesus. It isn't a recent phenomena. No it began long, long ago through the past expiring ages of the church until finally discovered lying amongst the many ruins of God's faithless people Israel. Even as God's person and being, His love and goodwill, was disseminated untruthfully amid the more ancient pagan worlds surrounding Israel by its own many essays and literatures, philosophies and assertions, of humanity's dithering freedoms, God's austerity and fickleness, and life's too-brief-beauties amid its present corruptions, lies and deceits.

As such, there must be made room for those of us who would rightfully question unjust, unloving church statements and ill-informed Christian perceptions, to play the role of the "apostate" in the eyes of some in order to help the church at large to better behave its voice and depictions of God's holy love. Without such voices of dissent and disruption we would remain within the unholy violence of our own sinful hearts as they play out our own misguided bigotries and vices, harms and injustices, upon the unempowered minorities of our cultural wars.

In the end, a true apostate is one who refuses God's love willingly, not its institutional portrayals as told to him or her by a well meaning priests or pastors. Even Jesus Himself was viewed as an apostate by the Jews of His own religion while ever being true to His knowledge of God's holy love. The cost He paid was at the expense of the hell held within our own apostate hearts that would reject God's love and nail it to a bloody tree beheld of spear and broken body. And the miracle - the mystery of it all - was that by Jesus' willing sacrifice He brought us nearer to God than any faith law or religious creed, rite or ritual, could ever have done. That is the miraculous strength of divine love. A faith that God has given to us that no ruling creed or dogma of man, by pulpit or by press, can ever remove.

For this is the depth of commitment that God's love gives to us in the re-discovery of His own love for the you-and-I over any church doctrine however meticulously laid out in the foolishness of mankind's heart. Misspending valuable energies attempting to distinguish who is "in" and who is "out" of God's kingdom (sic, predestination, election, hell, etc). Certainly God's love has made fools of us all. But to those truer theologians and wiser bible teachers who steadily work to apply God's love to all our doctrines of God and church, God bless you. May His Spirit give to you a wisdom and discernment little found in the vast majority of His sheepfolds yearning for great, and good, shepherds. Who would labor heart-and-soul in the vineyards of life's sufferings, pains, and injustices. For these good shepherds lie everywhere about us - and not simply within the folds of the church office, nor within the congregations of His grieving servants.

Nay, God has placed His faithful shepherds everywhere throughout the many societies we live within - from the overworked nurse at our local hospital, to the overwhelmed social worker serving on our city streets. From the black-robed justice behind the civil bench, to the listening governor behind his elective desk. From a patient business woman working steadily against male pride and hubris, to the policeman and fireman willing to protect and to serve, to care and defend. From a kindly neighbour or caring relative, to a weary school teacher and overspent friend. These are God's kingdom pieces whom He moves about the spiritual chessboard of His loving, all-gracious heart, who Himself is patient, kind, longsuffering and compassionate. Who is of immeasurable understanding and suffering heart. Who seeks to draw near to us even as we draw near to Him. Who is our reflection even as we look to be His. So then, may God's peace, wisdom, and love be ever yours, both now and always. Amen.

R.E. Slater
June 12, 2013

*as always, any comments made by myself to any following articles posted below, will be marked as mine own and highlighted as separate from the author's presented material, if only to help make that article's depictions of ourselves, God, and the church, clearer in content and character. Thank you.

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Scot McKnight vs. Those “Pesky Calvinists”:
What Does it Mean for God to be Sovereign?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2013/06/scot-mcknight-vs-those-pesky-calvinists-what-does-that-mean-for-god-to-be-sovereign/#

by Peter Enns
June 12, 2013
Comments 

Kindle Edition only - $3.47

Last week I read a brief e-book that just came out by my friend Scot McKnight, A Long Faithfulness: The Case for Christian Perseverance. His point is a simple one and he gets to it in the very first paragraph: McKnight doesn’t like how “the resurgent Calvinism” talks about God’s sovereignty.

These “pesky Calvinists,” as McKnight calls them, promote “meticulous (or exhaustive) sovereignty,” where all things that come to pass are determined by God (weather, disasters, murders, sexual abuse, etc).

Though applicable to many issues, McKnight focuses his comments on personal salvation, namely whether someone can “choose for God and then later choose against God.” In other words, whether someone truly saved can lose that salvation.

McKnight makes it clear he is not arguing for Arminianism, nor is he critiquing all of Calvinism. He is just going for the “meticulous sovereignty sort,” such as John Piper, D. A. Carson, Mark Driscoll, and David Wells, as well as the institutions that “prop up these voices.”

McKnight says one can lose his/her salvation–it’s called being apostate. Calvinist theology, by contrast, includes “double predestination,” that God determines who will be saved and who will be damned. Though acknowledging that Calvin himself did not teach this, and many Calvinists do not adhere to it, for McKnight the two are necessarily linked if you adhere to “meticulous sovereignty”–for God to choose sovereignly one group means he is also choosing sovereignly the other no matter which way you slice it.

McKnight takes direct aim at this view by turning to the “warning passages” in Hebrews (2:1-4; 3:7-4:13; 5:11-6:12; 10:19-39; 12:1-29).

Here is a quote from the introduction to set up the book’s argument:

My aim is to defeat this view of meticulous sovereignty among resurgent Calvinists by showing that the biblical view of sovereignty–a robust version if ever there was one–means God has chosen–because he loves those whom he has created and grants them freedom–to limit his sovereignty by giving humans that freedom. My argument is not philosophical; my argument is biblical. I affirm what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty, and biblical sovereignty entails human freedom both to choose God and un-choose God. If that view of sovereignty can be demonstrated from the Bible, then resurgent Calvinism’s view of sovereignty is unbiblical, pastorally disastrous, and harmful to the church.

After an opening chapter outlining his own journey through Calvinism and relaying the story of Dan Barker–who went from preacher to atheist – McKnight spends most of the book in Hebrews. He interprets each of the warning passages through the lens of four questions: Who is the audience? What is the danger? What are they to do instead of the sin? What will happen if they don’t respond properly?

McKnight’s conclusion: According to Hebrews, “God gave us the freedom to choose, but if we choose to walk away we will be damned.” [( ... and I will add that we will be damned by ourselves alone if refusing Jesus atonement for our sins... - res)]. Hence, meticulous sovereignty in salvation is wrong. In the concluding two chapters, McKnight looks at the profound practical implications of these warnings and briefly how all this relates to another biblical theme, God’s faithfulness to us and the “assurance of salvation.”

For me, I am not so sure what place in the pecking order the “rhetoric of warning” in Hebrews should have in New Testament theology, but that is a huge issue that McKnight only touches on in this brief book. At the very least, interested readers will find McKnight’s exposition of Hebrews thoughtful and compelling, and one that “resurgent Calvinism” will not be able to answer easily.

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About the Book

Amazon.com (Kindle Edition only) - "A Long Faithfulness," by Scot McKnight

Publication Date: May 2013

Can we choose and un-choose God? Or does he choose and un-choose us? In The Long Faithfulness: The Case for Christian Perseverance, theologian Scot McKnight examines what the Bible says about human salvation. Inspired in part by a resurgent Calvinist movement and its particular emphasis on God's meticulous sovereignty, McKnight invites us to a clear and captivating discussion about securing the way to eternal life--the role God plays, the role we play, and the key Bible passages that illuminate the mystery of salvation.

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A Long Faithfulness: Preface
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/05/20/a-long-faithfulness-preface/

by Scot McKnight
May 20, 2013
Comments

The following is from my new e-book, A Long Faithfulness: The Case for Christian Perseverance. The aim of this book is to present how the warning passages in Hebrews teach perseverance and the possibility of genuine apostasy of genuine believers, and this theme is applied to the notion so popular today called “meticulous sovereignty,” that God determines or brings about all things. If humans can resist God’s will, or undo their redemption, a case can be made that meticulous sovereignty overreaches the biblical evidence. As such, the e-book is not a direct challenge to Calvinism but to one kind of Calvinism, and neither is it a challenge to what I call the “architecture” of Calvinism. Now to the preface.

The aim of A Long Faithfulness is to cut the central nerve—the sovereignty of God—that informs a dominant theme in the resurgence of Calvinism in our time. Mind you, I affirm God’s sovereignty as the foundation of our faith, so my aim is to defeat one particular but pervasive conviction about God’s sovereignty in the resurgent Calvinism.

That particular but pervasive understanding of God’s sovereignty is what might be called “meticulous” (or “exhaustive”) sovereignty. In regards to this subject, there are only two real options: either God determines everything (meticulous sovereignty) or God does not determine everything. A well-known example of meticulous sovereignty can be found in various statements made by notable evangelical leaders in the wake of natural disasters, such as hurricanes from Katrina to Sandy. If one affirms meticulous sovereignty, then one must also believe God decided, desired, and carried out the weather conditions, the speed and direction of the winds, the deluges of water, and precisely which homes would be destroyed and which homes would escape.

If God determines everything (as in the meticulous sovereignty approach), then God not only permits but must determine that some young girls and boys will be abused while others will be spared, that some adults will suffer more in this life while others will suffer less.  For this essay’s purposes, it is not relevant how tragic situations are explained (e.g., that we are all sinners who deserve these tragedies and even worse; or that God wants to make an example of humans as depraved). What is relevant is that—in this understanding of divine sovereignty—God determines everything, that God can do otherwise but chooses to bring about awful conditions and events.

This essay takes direct aim at this belief.

But this essay is not about human tragedies, but about God’s sovereignty when it comes to personal salvation. My theme is whether or not humans can both choose for God and then later choose against God; whether or not saved humans can become unsaved humans; whether or not humans can choose to walk away from the grace they’ve experienced; and whether or not they would have entered into the eternal blessing of God had they remained fast in their faith.

For the meticulous sovereignty view, God determines—for whatever reasons—who gets saved, and that means—whether the resurgent Calvinist will admit it or not—who does not get saved. I’m aware that John Calvin himself did not always teach this theory—called double predestination—but that this was a development later in his theology.

I’m also aware that not all Calvinists—perhaps not even the majority—affirm double predestination. No wonder! It’s morally despicable for God to create humans only to send them to hell because he did not choose them, when they could do nothing about it, and that this somehow glorifies him.

It may be the case that many Calvinists do not believe in double predestination, but that will not for one moment undo the necessary logic of election as many Calvinists understand it. If God is the one who both awakens and creates faith in the human, and if the only ones who believe in Christ are the ones whom God has chosen, then anyone not chosen is un-chosen by not being chosen. Double predestination is not an option for those who believe in meticulous sovereignty because it is a necessary corollary—even if it is hidden in the corner or if alternative explanations are offered.

My aim is to defeat this view of meticulous sovereignty among resurgent Calvinists by showing that the biblical view of sovereignty—a robust version if ever there was one—means God has chosen—because he loves those whom he has created and grants them freedom—to limit his sovereignty by giving humans that freedom. My argument is not philosophical; my argument is biblical. I affirm what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty, and biblical sovereignty entails human freedom both to choose God and to un-choose God. If that view of sovereignty can be demonstrated from the Bible, then resurgent Calvinism’s view of sovereignty is unbiblical, pastorally disastrous, and harmful to the church.

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"The Church Doesn't Like the People to Grow Up."
- Bishop John Shelby Spong





Bellarive - "Love Has Found Us."