How Did the Puritans Become Unitarians?

[JM]

A Papist point of view.

Shameless Popery: How Did the Puritans Become Unitarians?

As most Americans are at least vaguely aware, the Puritans were devout and even fierce Calvinists, who literally left England because it wasn't "pure" of Catholicism enough, were devoted to what they viewed as right doctrine. And they were anything but afraid to toss around a little fire and brimstone -- as Calvinists, they readily declared most of humanity was made by God just so He could send them to Hell, and it was a son of Puritanism, Jonathan Edwards, who famously preached the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon, about how God is furious with us. The Puritan communion was tightly closed, as was their Baptism. It goes almost without saying that they were Trinitarian.​

 

[Weston Stoler]

"He was careful to distinguish between how they became Universalists from how they became Unitarians. His view on how they became Universalists was fascinating: he essentially said that they took the Calvinist notion of God's sovereignty seriously, and responded to it. I think he's right. Calvinism teaches that God's election to salvation is unconditional. So you don't need faith to be saved. Instead, traditional Calvinists believe that you have faith, because you're already saved. It's an effect of salvation, not a cause. If that's true, then there's not really a coherent reason that God couldn't simply elect everyone to salvation."

Hogwash. Not to mention is their any proof that the puritans became Unitarian Universalists? I would assume that would mean to break with the creeds they love so much.

---------- Post added at 01:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 AM ----------

I read later that apparently the puritans did not follow any creeds..... Has he heard of the Westminster?

 

[Marrow Man]

Perhaps because of rationalism and contra-confessionalism.

 

[Don Kistler]

Harry Stout, head of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, has written an excellent book on this very subject called "The New England Soul." It was originally published by Oxford University Press. I highly recommend it to answer the question posed.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Perhaps because of rationalism and contra-confessionalism.

The system of doctrine in Reformed Thought does not leave the learner immune from trying to boil systematics down to an Aristotlean rationalism. We can get off the rails if we fail to recognize that what our knowledge of God is by way of condescending revelation and not ascending human reason. We can also get off the rails when we forget that God calls us out of the Kingdom of this Age into the Kingdom of the Age to come and this involves means of grace where we are built up by the Spirit through Word and Sacrament in a way that is beyond our comprehension. We finally get off the rails when we're not beggars for grace and recognize that we're commanded to be a Body of Christ knit together and striving with one another to press in.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

"He was careful to distinguish between how they became Universalists from how they became Unitarians. His view on how they became Universalists was fascinating: he essentially said that they took the Calvinist notion of God's sovereignty seriously, and responded to it. I think he's right. Calvinism teaches that God's election to salvation is unconditional. So you don't need faith to be saved. Instead, traditional Calvinists believe that you have faith, because you're already saved. It's an effect of salvation, not a cause. If that's true, then there's not really a coherent reason that God couldn't simply elect everyone to salvation."

That is certainly a shockingly ignorant statement from the blog post. I wonder if that's what Cardinal Francis George told him or if that's the conclusion he came to himself. I don't know how a person can even claim to write soberly about how Puritans became Unitarians with this glaring error as his first premise. I think he's just collecting a bunch of secondary and tertiary sources here.

 

[Wayne]

If I may, the Puritans did not become Unitarians. It was their children and perhaps more accurately their grandchildren who became Unitarians.
The crux of the problem was the failure to communicate the Gospel accurately and fully to succeeding generations. As one elderly PCA pastor is
fond of saying, "God has no grandchildren," -- meaning that the work of evangelism must be done afresh in every generation.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Don,

Puritanism is not an inherited trait.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[py3ak]

It's a flawed analysis, but it is fascinating to read Catholics who know who John Owen is, and in itself the historical question is very important. Ultimately the answer is found in Acts 20, but looking at what went wrong specifically may help us to avoid the same mistakes.

 

[Pergamum]

If I may, the Puritans did not become Unitarians. It was their children and perhaps more accurately their grandchildren who became Unitarians.
The crux of the problem was the failure to communicate the Gospel accurately and fully to succeeding generations. As one elderly PCA pastor is
fond of saying, "God has no grandchildren," -- meaning that the work of evangelism must be done afresh in every generation.

If I may, the Puritans did not become Unitarians. It was their children and perhaps more accurately their grandchildren who became Unitarians.

Wayne, you are into history.

Do you know of anything in that time period that covers any change in the catechizing of Puritan children, the education of the youth, etc., that would account for the faith not being passed on? The lack of persecution? The relaxing of standards? Influence of the French?

 

[Philip]

Unitarianism does not become codified as doctrine unless one has been unconsciously practicing it. One may confess all the right doctrines and still be a practicing unitarian.

 

[baron]

If I may, the Puritans did not become Unitarians. It was their children and perhaps more accurately their grandchildren who became Unitarians.

In New England did not the Half-Way Covenant add to this. That their children and grandchildren were baptized but unconverted. Also Solomon Stoddard even let unconverted people partake of the Lord's Supper, and Jonanthan Edwards was against all of this, even lost his church over these issues. So unconverted church members slid down the slippery slope to Unitarian Universalists.

 

[Wayne]

Our hearts so easily and naturally grow cold to the things of the Lord, we work hard and gain wealth, get comfortable and fall into a pattern of failing to sincerely thank the Lord for all that we have daily from His hand. I think the answer lies in having hearts full of thankfulness to God for all His works and in practicing an alertness to watch for His providence in our lives.

The aphorism, "God has no grandchildren", is simply a saying meant to tell a truth in generality. It's not to be pressed too far. Nor is it to focus on grandchildren, as if the point were to discuss the third generation. The aphorism becomes silly when it is refocused to the 2d generation: "God has no children." The point of the saying is, again, that the work of evangelism must be done afresh in every generation. Moreover, within any given generation, men can fall away from the Lord and prove themselves to have never truly been Christians.

But typically, the "first" generation will have a vibrant faith, will then raise their children in the church yet imperfectly. Over time, the faith becomes standardized and routine. Everything becomes comfortable, and by the time the third generation becomes adult, form has taken precedence over real faith. Unless at this point there is a fresh owning of the Gospel, unbiblical innovation will be introduced and error becomes heresy.

In a similar way, you see the same thing in the life of a congregation. The founding generation is full of prayer seeking the Lord's hand in their work. They look to Him to answer their prayers and they see His provision. The church grows. The building gets built. Things settle into a routine. Life goes on and the founding generation dies off. A generation rises up that knew not Joseph.

Catechesis is great for passing down the structure and content of Biblical doctrine, but even here, there has to be a guarding against form taking precedence over real faith. Robert Speer grew up in a home where he was carefully catechized and he and his siblings memorized the Westminster Larger Catechism. Speer grew up to become the head of the Board of Foreign Missions for the PCUSA. By all accounts, he was an evangelical, but he saw no problem with putting modernist unbelievers on the mission field.

 

[Peairtach]

The English Presbyterians went Unitarian between the 17th and 18th centuries.

I don't know the history of how this happened.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

What's ironic about the article is that it is the member of an idolatrous Church speculating how some grandchildren of Puritans became idolatrous.

Earth to Joe Heschmeyer: Your Church has an unbroken tradition of idolatry from the 16th Century to the present. The fact that your Magisterium has consistently entrenched the Church of Rome in its idolatry is to its judgment and not its credit.

 

[jwithnell]

This is a question I've pondered over the years as well, and it has had poignancy because I've been in the first generation of reformed thought in a geographical era. The pattern of the Puritans really isn't that different from the pattern of those addressed by the later prophets. I've wondered if these examples are designed to make us ever more diligent in the teaching of our children and passionate about equipping the next generation. This is not a particularly brilliant theological or academic analysis on my part, but it is certainly practical.

 

[caddy]

Excerpt from Mark Noll, "America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln":

"The new religious movements, especially those that attracted the most followers--Freewill Baptists, Universalists, and Shakers--made mincemeat of New England's traditional Calvinism. Instead of inherited teachings on divine sovereignty, innate human depravity, a substitutionary and limited atonement, and predestination, the sects taught, in Stephen Marinin's summary, "a benevolent God, human perfectibility, universal nonpenal atonement, and free grace for all believers.

When, however, the sources are sought for these distinctive new doctrines, a curious fact emerges. The leaders of the sects were, to an unusual degree, direct converts of George Whitefield or individuals who had been nurtured in a radical evangelical constituency traceable to Whitefield's influence. Thus Ann Lee ( Shaker ), Benjamin Randel ( Freewill Baptist ), and John Murray ( Universalist ) began their careers as populist religious leaders after direct contact with Whitefield. Joseph Meacham ( Shaker ), Caleb Rich ( Universalist ), Hosea Ballou ( Universalist ), Elhanan Winchester ( Universalist ), and Henery Alline ( "New Light" Christian ) were products of the radical evangelical constituencies that arose out of the work of Whitefield and similar revivalists." P. 152

"The sects promoted a religion in which revelation fairly shimmered--through dreams, apparitions, and hermetic, spiritual interpretations of Scripture.

"The Unitarianism that emerged as a self-conscious theological movement in turn - of - the century New England was an extension of the liberalizing religion of an earlier Enlightenment rationalism. As such, it represented a continuation of theological influence from 18th century refined English thought--trust in reason instead of the practice of enthusiasm, belief in salvation by moral amelioration instead of by a bloody sacrifice, hope for the universal salvation of all people instead of a craven fear of hell, God as benevolent creator instead of providential meddler, and ultimately, the rational clarity of a unified God instead of the recondite mysteries of the Trinity.

In Daniel Walker Howe's phrase, Unitarians promoted "Puritanism without Calvinism." P.284

William Ellery Channing, in works like "The Essence of Christianity," set forth what Unitarians believed: "We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that, whilst acknowledging in words, it subverts in effect, the unity of God."

Channing again: "It is not because his will is irresistible, but because because his will is the perfection of virtue, that we pay him allegiance. We cannot bow before a being, however great and powerful, who governs tyrannically....Calvinism represented only a partial victory over the Papal tyranny, because it is still needed to escape "those hierarchies, and other human institutions, by which the minds of individuals are oppressed under the weight of numbers, and a Papal dominion is perpetuated in the Protestant Church."

New England Calvinism for more than forty years was fixated upon the Unitarian peril. It was also the reason that Lyman Beecher left Connecticut in 1826 to take a church in Boston and challenge the enemy in its stronghold. "Because the Unitarians were also successful at maintaining themselves as the elite bearers of reason, good taste, benevolence, and refined sensibility in Boston, the center of New England's learned culture, they enjoyed an intellectual influence far out of proportion to their actual numbers." P. 287

 

[Don Kistler]

"In New England did not the Half-Way Covenant add to this. That their children and grandchildren were baptized but unconverted. Also Solomon Stoddard even let unconverted people partake of the Lord's Supper, and Jonanthan Edwards was against all of this, even lost his church over these issues. So unconverted church members slid down the slippery slope to Unitarian Universalists."


John, Stoddard allowed for allegedly unconverted church members to partake of the Lord's Supper, not unconverted people at large. His position was that if they had been accepted by the elders as converted people, were not living a scandalous life, then you couldn't withhold the table from them since they were members of the church. He held that if they were in sin, then church discipline was in order. But if they were not "scandalous," then how could the church withhold the sacrament?

For those who doubted their salvation, he told them to come, as does the Westminster Confession. I've studied Stoddard at great lengths and think he has been unfairly charged and quite misunderstood as to what he allowed and didn't allow. And he was very much AGAINST the half-way covenant.