I've been taking a class on Puritan Theology. Unfortunately "Puritan" is a derogatory term in our day and age, truth be told it wasn't too popular a term in their day and age. But these men and women had alot of good things to say. John Flavel, pictured above, in his work The Mystery of Providence gives thoughtful answers to questions like, "What are we to do when we find it difficult to discern God's will?"Answer: 1. Get a true fear, aka reverence, of God on your heart. 2. Study God's word more and the world less. 3. Reduce what you know into practice. 4. Pray for illumination. 5. Follow providence as far as it agrees with scripture and no further.
I know this may seem weird to some of my readers but instead of rejecting these guys out of hand you might want to read some of their treatises my guess is you could find some of them online. Men like Flavel, George Swinnok, John Owen, Thomas Manton, etc... or maybe a book about the puritans like J.I. Packer's A Quest for Godliness or Leland Ryken's Worldly Saints might be a good place to start. Whether you're a church person or not you might find that "Puritan" isn't such a bad name after all.
"The way we speak and think of the Puritans seems to me a serviceable model for important aspects of the phenomenon we call Puritanism. Very simply, it is a great example of our collective eagerness to disparage without knowledge or information about the thing disparaged, when the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved. And it demonstrates how effectively such consensus can close off a subject from inquiry."
No comments:
Post a Comment