Among God's Giants - Puritan Wisdom in an Age of Superficiality

When my father retired in 2002 and moved to Glasgow, his library had to squeeze into a very small third bedroom.  Many of his books had to go.  Some went to a grateful son while others found a welcome home in many other places.  After his death in April 2020 and with my mothers recent move to Edinburgh, I had to sort through my fathers library.  Much of it went to the Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Newcastle but I was keen to hold on to at least some of his books.  When my father retired, he couldn't part with the books that were in many ways the three elements of his ministry: 1. Free Church (and particularly Highland) piety - the best of the Free Church fathers - John Kennedy, Moody Stuart, Rabbi Duncan, Prof John Murray and of course Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray McCheyne. 2. The Covenanters.  My father kept a vast range of the best of covenanting history.  He loved the stories of bravery in the midst of persecution and often spoke at conventicles. 3.The Puritans.  My father kept a wide range of Puritan works.  Many were 1-200 years old and were the fruit of his early days in the Banner of Truth in the 1960's.  These books are freely available now thanks to the Banner and many other reformed publishers.  He also had many books about Puritanism and I have been enjoying reading these over the last few months.

One of these books is J.I.Packer 'Among God's Giants'.  This is now published as 'A Quest for Godliness' by Crossway.  I read this many years ago (it first came out in 1991) but I was encouraged to pick it up again after reading 'J.I. Packer: An Evangelical Life' by Leland Ryken.  It is impossible to read a life of Packer without catching something of his passion for the Puritans.  Packer's biography coincided with a very welcome Christmas present of the new set of Puritan Paperbacks from the Banner of Truth which, if you are not familiar with the Puritans, is a great place to start.  I personally think Thomas Watson's 'All things for Good' and 'The Godly Man's Picture' are worth their weight in gold.  It is hard to believe these books can be anything but encouraging and helpful to any Christian that picks them up with a prayerful spirit.  There is more depth and profundity in a page of Watson than whole books of many modern authors.  

The Puritans have been rehabilitated over the last 60 years and J.I. Packer needs to take the credit for much of this work.  Rather than being seen as peevish, censorious, conceited, hypocritical and loveless the Puritans give us a coherent and God centred vision of the Christian life.  As Packer says:

There was for them no disjunction between sacred and secular; all creation, so far as they were concerned, was sacred, and all activities, of whatever kind, must be sanctified, that is done to the glory of God. So, in their heavenly-minded ardour, the Puritans became men and women of order, matter-of- fact and down-to-earth, prayerful, purposeful, practical.  Seeing life whole, they integrated contemplation with action. worship with work, labour with rest, love of God with love of neighbour and of self, personal with social identity, and the wide spectrum of relational responsibilities with each other, in a thoroughly conscientious and thought out way.  In this thoroughness they were extreme, that is to say far more thorough than we are, but in their blending of the whole wide range of Christian duties set forth in Scripture they are eminently balanced.

This quote struck me as we seem to live in a world that is increasingly unbalanced.  Nowhere is this more apparent than social media.  The recent storming of the Congress in America was certainly inspired by a narcissistic and unstable president, but it was in many ways the natural development of the echo chamber of social media that whips people up to a frenzy and perpetuates conspiracy theories that never need to meet with truth or reality.  If there was ever a time for wise and balanced theology it is now and we have so much we can learn from the Puritans.

In his first chapter in Among God's Giants, Packer outlines three groups of evangelicals who would be helped by the example of the Puritans and I think these groups have come in to sharp focus during lockdown:

1. The Restless Experimentalists.  Packer defines these Christians as shallow and rootless.  He says: 'their outlook is one of casual haphazardness and fretful impatience, or grasping after novelties, entertainments and 'highs', and of valuing strong feelings over deep thoughts.'  He continues: 'they conceive the Christian life as one of exciting extraordinary experiences rather that of resolute rational righteousness.' These Christians, argues Packer, have turned the Christian life into a 'thrill seeking ego-trip.'  

Like a skilful surgeon Packer brings the scalpel of Biblically infused Puritan wisdom to the restless experimentalists.  He suggests that they would do well to learn from the Puritans through their:

• God centeredness - this is central to the discipline of self denial.  As Lloyd Jones used to say 'we are on too good terms with ourselves.'  If the modern church was God centred we would be more humble and more prayerfully dependent on the Lord.
• The primacy of the mind - it is impossible to obey biblical truth unless we understand it.  Experience has replaced theological understanding with so many Christians.
• The demand for humility, patience and steadfastness at all times - the Holy Spirits ministry is not to give us thrills but to make us more like Christ.
• Not relying on our feelings - our feelings go up and down and God frequently tests us by taking us 'through the wastes of emotional flatness.'
• Worship as life's primary activity.
• Regular self examination
• The Puritans believed that 'sanctified suffering bulks large in God's plan for his children's growth in grace.'  The Puritans had a well developed theology of suffering largely lacking in the modern church.

Many relentless experimentalists have struggled through lockdown as they have been forced to find God through setbacks and disappointments. Time will tell if this will lead to a refocussing of Christianity in a largely experience-led western church.

The Puritans believed that 'sanctified suffering bulks large in God's plan for his children's growth in grace.'  The Puritans had a well developed theology of suffering largely lacking in the modern church.

2. The Entrenched Intellectuals.  Packer diagnosis this group well: 'Constantly they present themselves as rigid, argumentative, critical Christians, champions of God's truth for whom Orthodoxy is all...There is little warmth about them; relationally they are remote; experiences do not mean much to them; winning the battle for mental correctness is their one great purpose.  They understand the priority of the intellect well; the trouble is that intellectualism, expressing itself in endless campaigns for their own brand of right thinking, is almost if not quite all that they can offer, for it is almost if not quite all that they have.'  We see the entrenched intellectuals on social media.  These keyboard warriors love exposing inferior Christians.  They lob grenade after grenade from their bunkers and accuse other Christians of cowardice, worldliness and compromise.  

The entrenched intellectuals is often how the Puritans are characterised but Packer helpfully show us that the Puritans lived and taught in a way that completely counters arid intellectualism in a variety of ways:

• True Christianity claims the affections as well as the mind
• Theological truth is for practice - William Perkins described theology as 'the science of living blessedly for ever.'  Some of us have attended churches where the preaching is solid and the people know and love the Lord but their brand of Christianity is not portable to the day and age we live in.  Children who grow up in these environments drift away to find a warmer and kinder Christianity or turn their back on the faith all together.
• Conceptual knowledge kills if one does not move on to the realities of which they refer.
• The gospel calls for faith and repentance issuing from a life of love and holiness, in other words gratitude expressed in goodwill and good works.
• The Spirit is given to lead us in to close companionship with others in Christ.  The Puritans fought for church reform and were eventually ejected from the Church of England.  The frosty separatism which is a badge of honour for so many entrenched evangelicals todays was alien to most of the Puritans. 
• The discipline of discursive meditation is meant to keep us in ardent and adoring in our love affair with God.
• It is ungodly and scandalous to become a firebrand and cause division in the church, and it is ordinarily nothing more reputable than spiritual pride in its intellectual form that leads men to create parties and splits. 

I'm afraid I have to confess that I can identify myself with many of the traits of the arid intellectuals.  I have gone through periods in my Christian life where I have relished reading theology rather than the Bible and my social media engagement has been more active than my prayer life.  My love for debate and controversy was greater than my love for other believers - 'winning the battle for mental correctness' as Packer says.  In his seminal book 'Knowing God' Packer teaches that while one church may have much of the truth, another church with less truth can make much better use of it and please God with their zeal for the gospel and love for Christ.  The Puritans contended for a confessionally faithful church and for Scriptural church order but this was never in isolation from spiritual renewal and revival.  Only the Holy Spirit fanning the flames of ardent love for Jesus can keep us from entrenched evangelicalism.

The Puritans contended for a concessionally faithful church and for Scriptural church order but this was never in isolation from spiritual renewal and revival.  Only the Holy Spirit fanning the flames of ardent love for Jesus can keep us from what Packer called 'entrenched evangelicalism'.

3.  The Disaffected Deviationists - I know many people in this group and I like the way that Packer deals with them in 'Among God's Giants'.  He doesn't pretend that evangelicalism doesn't have some culpability in many people turning their back on evangelical orthodoxy.  As he says: 'Modern evangelicalism has much to answer for in the number of casualties of this sort it has caused in recent years by its naivety of mind and unrealism of expectation.'  

So who are the disaffected deviationists?  Packer explains: 'They are people once saw themselves as evangelicals, either from being evangelically nurtured or from coming to profess conversion within the evangelical sphere of influence, but who have become disillusioned about the evangelical point of view and have turned their back on it, feeling that it let them down.'  Many leave for intellectual reasons, others feel betrayed having been promised a prosperity gospel that lets them down.  Packer continues: 'Hurt and angry, feeling themselves victims of a confidence trick, they now accuse the evangelicalism they knew of having failed and fooled them, and resentfully give it up; it is a mercy if they do not therewith similarly accuse and abandon God himself.'  

Again Packer points us back to an older, profounder, wiser evangelicalism of the Puritan era to help with the 'casualties of modern evangelical goofiness':

• The mystery of God - the modern evangelical God is too small.  The God of the Bible is transcendent and inscrutable.  We can never understand God's ways.  Bafflement and disappointment must be accepted as recurring themes in the life of a believer.
• The love of God - a love that redeems, converts, sanctifies and ultimately glorifies sinners.  God's love was unambiguously and gloriously displayed at the cross and nothing will ever be able to separate us from God's love.  While this comforts God's children, no situation in this world 'will ever be free from the fly in the ointment and the thorns in the bed.'
• The salvation of God - the Puritans have much to teach us how Christ has put away our sins and is now leading us through this world to a glory that is even now being prepared for us.  Christ is instilling within us a desire for and capacity to enjoy eternity.  I love Packer language here: '...holiness here, in the form of consecrated service and loving obedience through thick and thin, is the high road to happiness hereafter.'
• The reality of spiritual conflict - the life is a battle against the world, the flesh and the devil and anyone who promises a life of health, wealth and happiness is a charlatan.  
• The Puritans emphasised the protection of God - they believed that God could overrule and sanctify our sufferings. 
• The glory of God - it becomes our privilege as Christ's disciples to further his glory by celebrating his grace, by our proving of his power under perplexity and pressure, by totally resigning ourselves to his good pleasure, and by making him our joy and delight and all times.

The Puritans show us that the 17th century had its fair share of  spiritual casualties.  Then, as now, there are Christians who think simplistically and 'hoped unrealistically' and they became disappointed, disaffected, despondent and despairing.  The Puritans ministry was to seek to raise up and encourage these wounded spirits rather than driving them further away.  The way to win these disaffected prodigals is to return to the Biblical Christianity of the Puritan era with all its depth and richness.  The goofiness of modern evangelicalism may look and sound slicker but if we want to build God's kingdom we need to build it on the right foundations.  Skin tight jeans and stylised worship will only hold people until the next 'brand' comes along.  

Why do we need the Puritans?  In an age of superficiality and gimmicks the Puritans give us a an example of mature holiness and seasoned fortitude  As Packer says they 'shine before us as a kind of beacon light, overtopping the stature of Christians in most era's and certainly so in this age of crushing urban collectivism, when Western Christians sometimes feel and often look like ants in an anthill and puppets on a sting.'  Surely lockdown is a wake up call to the church that the over stylised, gimmick driven Christianity does not meet the deepest needs of our hearts and is far from the God centred, Christ exalting  Biblical gospel.  The Puritans, with all their faults and failings have much to say to us today.  They have things to say through their writings that we badly need to hear.  The 17th century Puritans was a movement for church reform and spiritual revival.  If there was ever a time when we needed a similar movement it was today.