Puritans and the Promise

Abstract

Puritan religion was the product of theological ideas and spiritual experience. Although it seems alien to many of us today, there is no reason to shy away from puritan theology. Theology connects an objective account of how God operates with the Christian’s own subjective experience of God’s dealing with them. Theology is created in an engagement between divine revelation, principally the bible, and the human mind; its terms are usually, but not always, formulated by highly trained clerical experts; but, like any other language, it constantly changes and develops as it is used. The users of theology are not simply the theologians who debate the more technical points, but also, and far more importantly, the ordinary believers, whose worship, piety and spiritual aspirations are expressed in and by theology and theological categories. These lay users can mould theology by their response. As they question what they are taught or go off the orthodox rails, they prompt the theologians to further explanation and refinement. In seventeenth-century England this process of challenge and response was all the more pronounced because the laity constantly had the raw material, the bible, in their minds and mouths.