This past Monday I participated in Cyber-Monday by purchasing A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life by Joel Beeke and Mark Jones… for only $9.99. Yeah, huge savings there. I felt like a rock star. Anyway, I am excited to read through this because it’s allegedly the best survey of Puritan theology that has ever been written; so say the endorsers!
There are some people out there that almost always have something negative to say about Puritans. I find it kind of comical that so many intelligent people try to hold the Puritans to standards that simply were not even remotely close to being understood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries! So when people say, “they weren’t aware of the epistemological issues raised by Post-Modernism” I generally chuckle to myself. Of course they weren’t! Back then, no one was!
So why do I enjoy reading the Puritans? Well, beyond the fact that I share similar theological convictions byway of the Reformed Tradition, I agree with Beeke and Jones who write,
“… the late sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century movement of Puritanism was a kind of vigorous Calvinism. Experientially, it was warm and contagious; evangelistically, it was aggressive, yet tender; ecclesiastically, it sought to practice the headship of Christ over the faith, worship, and order of His body, the church; politically, it was active, balanced, and bound by conscience before God, in the relations of king, Parliament, and subjects.”
Experiential, evangelistic, ecclesiological, and politically engaging. Yep, I can get down with that. I don’t have to agree with everything the Puritans wrote, believed, or preached while appreciating them on a whole. After all, as J. I. Packer is quoted as saying,
“Puritanism was an evangelical holiness movement seeking to implement its vision of spiritual renewal, national and personal, in the church, the state, and the home; in education, evangelism, and economics; in individual discipleship and devotion, and in pastoral care and competence.”
Yep, love me some Puritans. Too bad you can’t get A Puritan Theology for only $9.99 now. It’s back to $29.99.
Luke is a pastor-theologian living in northern California, serving as a co-lead pastor with his life, Dawn, at the Red Bluff Vineyard. Father of five amazing kids, when Luke isn’t hanging with his family, reading or writing theology, he moonlights as a fly fishing guide for Confluence Outfitters. He blogs regularly at LukeGeraty.com and regularly contributes to his YouTube channel.
I just picked this up at ETS. It will be a good read indeed.
I was bummed that I couldn’t make ETS. Had some church stuff that came up… super bummed, but mostly because I didn’t get to hang with a decent amount of guys I was really looking forward to catching up with… not the least of which being you dude!
This book on the Puritans is pretty interesting. The section on paedobaptism wasn’t too convincing for me, of course.