Last month we examined the Puritan pulpit and we noted that the essence of Puritanism is preaching. We looked at the method, style and delivery of Puritan sermons. It now remains for us to examine some of the theological presuppositions on which these sermons were based. Among the leading characteristics of Puritan sermons are the following:

1. they had a covenantal perspective

2. they emphasized divine sovereignty and human responsibility

3. they stressed the function of the law as convincer of sin

4. they aimed at conversion of sinners and sanctification of saints

5. they extolled Christ as an able and willing Saviour

6. they sought to help believers in coming to assurance

7. they gave guidance in ethical living (cases of conscience).

At this time we will look at only three of these distinctives: the Puritan view of the covenant, predestination and assurance.

The Covenant⤒🔗

Puritanism cannot be understood apart from its view of the doctrine of the covenant of grace. Puritans believed that all God's dealings with men take the form of a covenant. They were not original in this, of course. Covenant theology had already been developed in Germany and Switzerland by such men as Bucer, Calvin and Zwingli who had discovered it in Scripture. It was the Puritans, however, who worked out the implications of the covenant idea further, applying it to all areas of life.

For our purposes we will concentrate on the role the covenant played in the Puritan understanding of God's method of salvation. Puritan theologians used this doctrine as a means of drawing together two other doctrines, namely divine sovereignty and human responsibility. These doctrines appear to contradict each other, but by means of the covenant idea the Puritans believed they could harmonize them and prove that there was no real conflict between them.

The Puritan concept of the covenant is often referred to as federal theology. It is a theology based on the idea that God's relationships with men take the form of covenants. Basically, the Puritans held that there are two covenants: the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

The former was an arrangement between God and Adam as the representative of the human race. This "covenant" included a demand of perfect obedience and a promise of immortality as a reward.

The covenant of grace was the agreement of the triune God to save the elect by providing the means of salvation for them. For most Puritans this covenant involves mutuality. It is a kind of compact which involves two parties and requires not only divine promises but also a human response. God's promises of redemption and renewal are given to those who will receive them in faith and respond to them in obedience. "Let us embrace Christ," says Thomas Sutton, "that he may embrace us; let us welcome Christ into our hearts, that he may welcome us into his Father's kingdom." Here is the covenant of grace in its conditional form, and much was made of it in Puritan theology.

Of course, this emphasis on man's responsibility to meet the conditions of faith and repentance left the Puritans open to the charge of Arminianism. The charge was false because the Puritans, while stressing man's duty to believe, also taught that this and other conditions of the covenant could only be met by God's grace. Actually, this divine grace is promised in the covenant. When God offers us salvation, He promises at the same time to give us the grace to receive it. Robert Bacon says: "Faith is infinitely too hard for man and is therefore itself a gift of the New Covenant. We are not required to bring faith to God but the covenant is to give us faith to bring us to God."

For the Puritans the covenant of grace was both conditional and absolute and ultimately depend­ent upon the sovereignty of God's action. Needless to say, this concept of a conditional yet absolute covenant created tensions. It is characterized by a conscious ambivalence in dealing on the one hand with God's omnipotence and on the other hand with human freedom. Yet they valued the covenant-concept with its built-in paradoxes, because it helped preachers to do full justice to divine sovereignty while at the same time honouring man's responsibility as a rational, moral creature.

Predestination←⤒🔗

For all their emphasis on man's responsibility, however, the Puritans never wavered when it came to the doctrine of election. Also here they stood firmly in the continental Reformed tradition. They studied early Reformers like Zwingli, Bullinger, Bucer and especially Calvin, and agreed with most of what these men had taught about God's sovereign control of human life and history, including man's ultimate destiny.

The Puritans believed, as Calvin did, in double predestination. Their position on this doctrine is stated in the Westminster Confession, chapter 3, where we read:

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established ... By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

The Westminster Standards represent Reformed theology in its most mature form. Everything is well-thought out and carefully stated in a very balanced way. One is left with the impression that nothing is left unsaid. There are no loose ends. Here is systematic theology at its best. While this is true, one may legitimately ask whether this Confession has not gone beyond Scripture and the earlier Reformed confessions in some of its statements, for instance on the subject of double predestination.

It is true that Calvin believed in double predestination. In other words, he taught that some men are predestined to salvation while others are foreordained to damnation. Other Reformers, however, were not so sure. Bullinger, for example, held to a "single predestination" position. That is, he believed in divine election to salvation but not in a similar activity on God's part regarding the rest. Those who perish do so on account of their own sins, not because God foreordains them to perdition.

Calvin, however, and especially his successor, Beza, went further and enunciated a doctrine of "double predestination" wherein God's predestining act is identified as the ultimate cause of both election and reprobation. It is this view that became dominant in sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformed theology as represented by the Canons of Dort and the Westminster Standards.

What does all this have to do with Puritan preaching, one may ask? Very much, because in preaching it makes a great deal of difference what a preacher does with the doctrine of election, whether he mentions it at all, or, if he does, where he speaks of it, in what context and connection, and so on.

The Puritans did not hesitate to speak of God's sovereignty in salvation. They spoke freely of the eternal decrees and divine predestination. In doing so, they were merely following Calvin and other Reformed theologians. But as time went on and the Puritan movement developed its own characteristics, they gradually moved away, not only from Bullinger and other moderate predestinarians, but even from Calvin's more explicit teachings on this doctrine.

It all had to do with the place assigned to predestination within the larger context of Reformed theology. It is here where a significant difference appears between Calvin and the Puritans.

Although Calvin, as we saw, affirmed a doctrine of double predestination, he was nevertheless reluctant to develop a theological system based on the divine decrees. Very significant here is that Calvin discusses predestination not in Book I of his Institutes, but later in Book III, where he discusses justification by faith and the resulting union of believers with Christ. In other words, Calvin did not put it at the beginning of theological study where it can so easily become speculative, but he placed it in the context of God's gift of salvation which is where Scripture puts it. It is only after we have heard the Gospel and embrace the Christ offered in it that we should think of election, Calvin says. Only then we may draw the conclusion that we are God's chosen.

In contrast to Calvin's approach, the Westminster Confession mentions predestination very early, and although the writers probably never intended it, they opened up the way and the possibility for this doctrine to be elevated by lesser minds to a position and function which it did not have in Calvin's thought and which he, in fact, warned against. Before he deals with this doctrine in the Institutes, he cautions his readers that they should not approach this doctrine with a speculative mind.

For Calvin, the doctrine of election should only be discussed in the context of faith in Christ and as part of the Church's doxology, praising God for choosing us to salvation, not because of any worthiness in us but only because of the merits of His Son. Election does not dominate Calvin's theology in the sense that all other doctrines must be seen as flowing from it and understood in light of it. It must be considered at the appro­priate point within the total structure of the Christian faith.

The Puritans did not always follow Calvin's approach to this doctrine nor did they always heed his warning against speculation. The reason for this is that Puritan divines did not only study Calvin, but also men like Zanchius and Beza who developed a more scholastic, speculative system of theology in which predestination became the dominant doctrine in light of which all other doctrines had to be interpreted.

Puritan theology gradually adopted a supra-lapsarian view of the divine decrees. According to this view, God chose some to salvation and others to damnation, not in consequence of man's sinfulness, but prior to man's creation and fall. Calvin's view was the infra-lapsarian one which portrays God as choosing His own out of the fallen race. Incidentally, this is the view laid down confessionally in the Canons of Dort.

The result of the theological reflection of Zanchius, Beza and others was however, that double predestination became the centrepiece and organizing principle of sixteenth and seventeenth century Reformed theology. In England it was especially William Perkins (1558-1602) who introduced the Beza type of predestinarian teaching in Puritan circles. In his Golden Chain he introduces double predestination this way: "God's decree, in as much as it concerns man, is called predestination; which is the decree of God, by the which He has ordained all men to a certain and everlasting estate: That is, either to salvation or condemnation, for His own glory." After this somewhat harsh introduction, Perkins tries to remove the misgivings and fears the doctrine of predestination might awaken in his readers. As a good pastor he addresses their concerns by devoting the rest of his book to helping sinners find Christ and showing how believers may grow in assurance of their salvation.

Assurance←⤒🔗

In his zeal to bring people to assurance of their eternal election, Perkins and others so stressed marks of grace that people were often thrown back upon themselves as they poured over their hearts trying to find evidences of faith and other good works there. Perkins' pastoral approach centred around making clear distinctions between temporary and historical faith on the one hand and saving faith on the other. To know one's election, therefore, one needs to make absolutely sure that one possesses the latter.

Of course, the notion of temporary faith was not an innovation of Perkins. Calvin had elucidated this doctrine in his Institutes and commentaries. But Perkins developed this doctrine in a way that inevitably produced anxiety in serious-minded Christians. Reprobates, he warned, are often endowed with gifts and graces that result in a kind of Christian life which externally bears fruit and can easily be mistaken for saving faith. If that is so, how can one ever be sure one possesses the real thing?

It is not difficult to see how this kind of teaching could lead to much anxiety on the part of earnest seekers. In fairness to Perkins, he laboured hard to remove such fears from those whom he coun­selled by stressing that even a weak faith is accepted by God as a true faith. But then the question still remains, do I even have a weak faith?

To help doubting souls come to clarity as to their spiritual state Perkins recommended the use of the so-called practical syllogism. Here is an example of such a syllogism: Whoever believes in Christ is chosen to life everlasting ... I believe in Christ, ... therefore I am a child of God.

The problem with this syllogism is, however, that while the major premise and the conclusion are clear enough, the minor premise is not so easy to ascertain. I can say that I believe in Christ, but how do I know I don't have temporary faith? And so the person has to examine himself again and try to find evidence of a true faith by its marks. As Perkins said, we must descend into our own hearts to see whether we are sanctified or not.

This approach cannot but create a dilemma in sensitive and tender souls, and Perkins was keenly aware of that. Although he earnestly and tenderly sought to encourage people and displayed a charitable spirit, he did not always succeed in helping people overcome their doubts and fears. The reason for this was, of course, that he failed to provide an objective remedy whereby to make our calling and election sure. Perkins would say, indeed, that we must go out of ourselves and focus our eyes upon Christ as the object of faith, but such counsel was smothered by his repeated exhortations to descend into our own hearts and look whether Christ has given us His Spirit.

All this represents a departure from Calvin and other early Reformers. Calvin strongly urged faith in Christ as the only way of ascertaining our eternal election. Based on such passages as Ephesians 1:4, he taught that Christ is the mirror of election in which believers may read their adoption by the Father, for he who believes on the Son is beloved of the Father. Calvin repeatedly comes back to this as the only sure way of coming to assurance.

The question has often been asked whether Calvin allowed for any other evidences of election besides faith in Christ. For instance, did he make use of a kind of practical syllogism such as Perkins and Puritans generally employed? The answer is no. To be sure, there are a few statements to the effect that good works help us in determining whether we are Christians or not, but these must be seen as concessions to Rome which accused Protestants of teaching that good works are of no value. In that connection Calvin says that they serve this purpose, but even then he insists that good works may confirm us in the state of grace only after we have come to faith in Christ.

For Calvin faith is and remains the way to assurance. Good works may be indications that we are Christians, but they do not possess the same weight as the Word of promise. They can be added, but only after the Word has already fulfilled its task. Our works, he says, are not the real foundation of our salvation, nor are they the ground of our recognition of it; for it is not the tokens of God's grace (including good works) which assure us of our salvation, but the only ground is the work of Christ and that alone.

For the Reformer of Geneva, the practical syllogism has a very limited function; at best it is an additional aid to assurance. In all his writings the focus is on Christ to whom alone we must look in faith. Also, very interestingly, he fre­quently urges struggling believers to regularly partake of the Lord's Supper because of the great comfort that sacrament is intended to bring. In that service, Calvin says, our faith receives the promise confirmed by visible signs that we truly participate in the Body and Blood of Jesus, in His death, His life, His Spirit, and all the benefits which he has procured for us.