Why Study the Puritans?

The word "puritanical" has very bad connotations. It is not flattering to call someone "puritanical." It suggests rigidness, inflexibility and harshness. Many of the the group from which this word is derived, the Puritans, may have been like that on an individual basis, but we can find those kinds of people everywhere. The heart of the Puritans is not like that. The riches of the legacy of the Puritans is there if we care to look for it.
J.I. Packer's book A Quest For Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life discusses these riches. Over the next number of weeks, I will share his observations from this book. The first chapter, "Why We Need the Puritans" gives a good introduction to the benefit of studying them. Packer outlines some reasons why we should study them.
- The integration of their daily lives. There was no disjunction between the sacred and secular; all was sacred.
- The quality of their spiritual experience.
- Their passion for effective action.
- The program for family stability.
- Their sense of human worth.
- The ideal of church renewal.
Packer summarizes it in this way:
Puritanism was essentially a movement for church reform, pastoral renewal and evangelism, and spiritual revival; and in addition - indeed, as a direct expression of its zeal for God's honour - it was a worldview, a total Christian philosophy, in intellectual terms a Protestantised and updated medievalism, and in terms of spirituality, a reformed monasticism outside the cloister and away from monkish vows.
Packer believes that the Puritan worldview should appal to three different kinds of Christians, the "restless experientialists," the "entrenched intellectuals," and "the disaffected deviationists." The Puritan approach to things will answer the weaknesess found in these three groups. Judging from what Packer said in this section, I suspect that Puritan thinking brings a balance between the intellect and the experience. The discussion Packer makes of these three groups was excellent; you need to read the book to see his conclusions.
One of the first things Packer says is that "Spiritual warfare made the Puritans what they were." I thought that was a good way to begin it. I wonder if the heritage they left would have been the same had they not been tested the way they were. Perhaps it is the seriousness of trial and suffering that shaped their attitudes and perhaps contributed to their reputation of being rather hard and stern.
I am looking forward to digging deeper into this great volume.
