Why I Struggle with the Puritans

I’m supposed to like the Puritans.

But I really struggle with them.

It’s not because I don’t I love the theology of the Reformation and the movements that followed in its wake. I do! I’m a Baptist who traces my convictional heritage back to the Puritans. Many of my Christian heroes love the Puritans and recommend large doses of reading these theological “redwoods.”

But still, I really struggle to read and appreciate the Puritans. And I think I can narrow it down to two reasons.

First, I’ve found the Puritans to often be unreliable in their use of Scripture. Richard Sibbes’ “The Bruised Reed” is one example of this. Taking up Isaiah 42:3—”a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench”—he goes on for chapters and chapters, splicing and analyzing every nuance of these words in a way that is painfully out of touch with how Hebrew poetry and metaphor actually work. “Here’s the kind of person that a bruised reed represents, here’s exactly how it got bruised, here’s how to know if you’ve been bruised in this way, here’s what the smoke of the wick signifies, here’s what Jesus plans to do with the wick…” This is all stuff that would get a bad mark on a first-year Bible college paper. While some of what Sibbes says is good, he spends a lot of time going way beyond anything Isaiah 42:3 is actually intending (or able) to communicate.

This might not be such a problem if it was obvious that what we’re reading is a theological meditation inspired by Scripture. The problem is that the whole thing is put forward as exposition of Scripture, and modern day Puritan-promoters go on about the Puritan’s incredible ability to see all kinds of deep things in Scripture that nobody else can see. Maybe that’s because, at least sometimes, they’re seeing things that aren’t actually there in the first place. Maybe “a bruised reed he will not break” is a beautiful but straightforward metaphor that communicates a simple truth about the Messiah, but which is not designed (nor able) to carry the freight that Sibbes expects it to. Maybe preaching seventy-five sermons on half of a verse of Scripture is a cause for concern, not celebration.

My second struggle with the Puritans is their approach to sin. The Puritans really embraced the idea of total depravity, but often applied it in such a way that made it sound like born-again Christians can’t do anything but sin. From the moment we open our eyes in the morning, we are soaked in heinous rebellion. The best prayers we’ve ever prayed contain enough sin to send the whole world to hell, as John Bunyan is famous for saying.

If you read through the Valley of Vision, see this idea all over the place: even as Christians, we’re filthy, awful, disgustingly sinful people who need to start each day begging God for mercy as if we were just coming to Him in faith for the first time.

All of this sounds convicting, and appeals to those of a particular temperament and sensitive conscience. The problem is that this view of sin and the Christian life is not in sync with the New Testament. “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life… For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:4, 14).

Jesus saved us from sin, and the writers of the New Testament expect that Christians will walk in freedom from it. Yes, they describe sin as an ongoing struggle, but they did not think we’d be on the losing side of that struggle all the time. As we read passages like Colossians 3 or 1 Peter 1, we see how the apostles defined sin, told us to kill it, and assumed we’d be victorious with some measure of consistency. “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin” (1 John 2:1a). Killing sin is both possible and achievable.

Yes, that is not the whole story. The apostles are also realistic: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1b). We should not be surprised to get to the end of a day and find we have sins to repent of. But we should also not be surprised to get to the end of a day and not be able to think of any sins we need to repent of. The Puritans would probably consider this evidence of great spiritual blindness; I suggest it’s something closer to the normal Christian life. “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (1 John 3:21; see also Paul’s repeated references to a “good” or “clear” conscience).

Any Christian can over-analyze themselves and come up with all kinds of reasons for why they must repent for each muscle twitch not performed for the glory of God, and the Puritans seemed to have a propensity for introspection of the highest order, but this morbid approach to holiness is wildly different from what we see in the pages of Scripture. This connects us back to the first point on interpreting the Bible properly: sweeping statements like “you therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48) or “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31) are found in contexts that define what is being asked of us, which much of the time has to do with down-to-earth realities like loving our enemies or eating lunch with idol-worshippers. If someone defines sin in such a way that we can’t blink our eyes without bringing down damnation on ourselves, they’re not paying attention to how the Bible actually describes these realities.

So, there you have it. These are two reasons why I struggle with the Puritans. I know that I’m in danger of over-generalizing here, so should clarify that the Puritans were a varied group and some of their writings are much better than others. I know there’s examples that avoid the pitfalls expressed here. I also don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so I should add that we owe a lot to the Puritans, as do I, personally. For example, I’ve benefitted a lot from John Owen’s “Communion With God” (except for his frequent cringe-inducing use of the Song of Songs). I’ve been enjoying “A Heart Aflame for God,” a recent book by Matthew Bingham that explores spiritual formation from a Puritan perspective. The Puritans shaped many of the men who shaped me, which isn’t saying nothing. I know I still have a lot to learn and gain from them.

So yes, there is a large and healthy baby amidst some murky bathwater. Pointing out that such a distinction exists is all that I really hoped to accomplish by writing this short (and decidedly non-Puritanical) article.