The Chief Ends of Man? How Westminster Weds Glory and Pleasure

One of the vital well-known quotes concerning the Puritans comes from controversial journalist and critic H.L. Menken, who in 1925 claimed that the Puritans had “the haunting worry that somebody, someplace, could also be glad.”¹ Just lately, there was a resurgence of curiosity within the Puritans’ understanding of pleasure, with essays and even entire books devoted to the subject.² In the newest and strong therapy on the topic, Nathaniel Warne rightly factors out that the Puritans’ worry was not that somebody could be glad, however quite that somebody would possibly dwell and “not expertise the true and wealthy happiness that they have been created to expertise by God.”³ Certainly, the Puritans might have been extra involved concerning the happiness of humanity than another group within the historical past of the world. They understood that true happiness just isn’t a flippant circumstantial feeling, however a deep and abiding pleasure in God that pulls its supply from the fountain of pleasure: God himself.

Whereas it’s simple to choose on secular historians for lacking the hyperlink between Puritanism and pleasure, my expertise — as somebody hailing from the confessional Reformed wing of the Protestant home — suggests one thing extra stunning: entire church buildings and traditions with Presbyterian and Reformed heritages can typically miss the truth that pleasure in God is a central tenant celebrated in their very own confessional requirements. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (hereafter WSC) begins with a central query that makes use of superlative language: “What’s the chief finish of man?” Reply: “The chief finish of man is to glorify God and revel in him ceaselessly.”

By exploring the historic context behind the crafting of the Westminster Requirements and particularly the WSC, this text will argue that the Puritans thought-about the pursuit of God’s glory and our pleasure in him to be central to the Christian life. It would additionally present how this joy-saturated theological custom was inherited by and continued to unfold by way of later figures, particularly Jonathan Edwards. Lastly, it is going to finish by drawing out two sensible classes we will be taught from the Puritans’ give attention to pleasure in God.

On July 1, 1643, Parliament convened the primary of 1,330 conferences that might happen over the following decade (1643–1652) at Westminster Abbey. This group, often known as the Westminster Meeting, was a gathering of “Discovered and Godlie divines . . . for the Settling of the Authorities and the Litturgie of the Church of England.” The publication of the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Meeting — containing, amongst different issues, a multivolume transcription of the official minutes of the Meeting — has just lately supplied us the clearest window revealing what went into the crafting of the Westminster Confession and the Bigger and Shorter catechisms.

For instance, we all know that the Meeting delegated the drafting of the WSC to a committee of no less than eight members — which included Chairman Herbert Palmer, who had compiled his personal catechism — and that the primary debate on the Shorter Catechism passed off on October 21, 1647, the identical day because the final debate on the Bigger Catechism.⁴ We additionally know that, following the completion of a draft of the WSC on November 8, 1647, they debated whether or not they would “comply with the usual format of expounding the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, or that these texts can be appended to the shorter catechism” and that the Meeting opted for the second choice.⁵ We even know that the WSC was lastly accredited on November 16, 1647, and that, for ultimate approval, Parliament instructed them on November 26, 1647, “to append Scripture proofs to each catechisms.”⁶

Nonetheless, regardless of shedding gentle on numerous sides of the Meeting beforehand unknown, there are gaps in our understanding of exactly why they made some choices. There are entire days within the report the place the scribe of the minutes merely information, “Debate of the lesser catechism,” or “Proceeded within the debate of the catechism,” and even shorter “Deb. Catchisme [sic].”⁷ In lots of instances, then, we should infer — from the historic context and the emphases inside the broader theological custom of the Puritan motion — what motivated them of their varied choices on particular person catechetical questions. As we discover the divines’ historic context and broader theological custom, we get readability on the significance of pleasure in God within the WSC and Puritan theology.

Orthodoxy’s Beating Coronary heart

The calling of the Westminster Meeting to redefine and refine orthodoxy in England adopted a tumultuous decade of reform beneath King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud. The king and archbishop persecuted members of the Puritan motion and sought to maneuver the Church of England in a distinctly extra Catholic path. In opposition to this backdrop, the Puritans gathered in 1643 to make clear what they believed have been central theological truths of Christian doctrine and life. Amongst their issues was to emphasise that Reformed orthodoxy was not merely doctrinal or behavioral, however experiential or affectional; that’s, true, important Christianity embraces love for God and pleasure in God.

The Puritans had witnessed firsthand a conformist Christianity that was devoid of an important experiential emphasis. Within the 1630s, the conformist clergy within the Church of England had promoted a Christianity that was performative, emphasizing liturgy, ritual, and ceremony. This was most clearly seen in how conformist clergy redefined the central duties of pastoral ministry. In stark distinction to the Puritans, these ministers claimed that on Sundays pastors have been mainly referred to as by God to guide in liturgy, learn Scripture, and administer the sacraments.

The Puritans responded by arguing that pastors are “physicians of souls” and due to this fact should transfer past a surface-level studying of Scripture and recitation of phrases. In brief, they need to pierce the hearts of their hearers with the Scriptures. What have been the ministers’ instruments, their proverbial scalpel and surgical devices? God had geared up them and referred to as them to shepherd God’s individuals by way of deep experiential preaching to the guts. By way of their highly effective preaching, the Spirit would take the phrase, apply it to males’s consciences, rework their hearers’ affections, and provides them a brand new pleasure in God himself.

“Don’t deprive God of his glory by refusing to exult in him when you worship. It’s the purpose you have been created.”

The truth that query 1 of the WSC begins by linking the glory of God and our pleasure is not any accident. Nice thought and care got not solely to the content material however to the order of those Requirements. The order highlights that they believed pleasure and the pursuit of God’s glory have been main. And the truth that these two key matters have been handled in the identical catechetical query alerts that the Puritans believed the glory of God and the enjoyment of the believer have been linked. Within the minds of the Puritans, the primary responsibility of believers is to take pleasure in God and to glorify God. And these two duties will not be separate callings however one wonderful alternative — believers glorify God by way of their very enjoyment of him.

On this method, the primary query displays the Puritans’ pastoral issues inside their historic context. It additionally exhibits that pleasure in God was a central tenant of their total theological system. For the Puritans, the believer’s pleasure was not a cherry on prime of the ice-cream sundae of the Christian life, however the very cream that permeates the whole dessert. Certainly, the best way believers glorify God is by exhibiting that communion with him is each essentially the most satisfying factor in all of the universe and the very purpose they have been created.

Pleasure Earlier than Westminster and Past

The emphasis on private enjoyment of and communion with Christ goes all the best way again to the founding of Puritanism itself. William Perkins, the “father of Puritanism” and writer of the primary Puritan preaching handbook, The Artwork of Prophesying (prophecy being the outdated Puritan phrase for preaching), used the analogy of the preachers as bakers, fastidiously slicing bread and feeding these in want of religious nourishment. What was the top of this feeding? It was not merely transactional, however deeply private — to find Christ himself.⁸ Perkins was not alone. Thomas Watson, in his Physique of Sensible Divinity, says, the “finish of Scripture” is to acquire “a transparent discovery of Christ” and to “quicken our Affections” to him.⁹ Likewise, John Owen wrote {that a} believer reads Scripture in order that he “would possibly discover all that’s mandatory unto his happiness.”¹⁰

This conviction explains why the Puritans usually referred to communion with Christ as enjoyment of “religious marriage.”¹¹ Significantly within the sermons and writings on the Tune of Solomon, they used the language of “ravishment” to explain the love of Christ for them.¹² Tom Schwanda factors out that their studying of the Tune of Solomon led them to talk “freely of the intimacy and joys of religious marriage with Jesus, because the divine Bridegroom,” as they expressed their “delight and delight of God.”¹³

This theme of pleasure’s centrality to the Christian life continued in figures like Matthew Henry and his The Pleasantness of a Non secular Life (1714). It finds its fullest expression, nonetheless, within the writings of America’s best theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Towards the top of his life, Edwards wrote a e book that was printed seven years after he died. In Edwards’s Dissertation In regards to the Finish for Which God Created the World (1765), he argues {that a} believer’s pleasure is discovered supremely in making a lot of God. The very essence of “pleasure,” in line with Edwards, is “the exulting of the guts in God’s glory.”¹⁴ Edwards argues that three seemingly impartial realities — God’s in search of of his glory, his in search of of our pleasure, and our in search of of our pleasure by in search of God’s glory — are literally intrinsically related in God’s ordering of the universe. By in search of his glory and inspiring these he created to do the identical, God seeks the eternal and ever-increasing pleasure of his creatures.¹⁵

Two Classes for Right this moment

What can Christians be taught from this research of the centrality of pleasure in Puritanism? The primary lesson is for Christians residing in an more and more post-Christian society. The Puritans’ emphasis on discovering our pleasure in God is totally countercultural to our society’s understanding of pleasure. The message from the tradition is that pleasure comes from being made a lot of and establishing one’s personal self-made id utilizing the instruments of the age (together with, in the beginning, social media). The Puritans clear this cultural fog with the sunbeams of the gospel: true pleasure comes after we make a lot of God and revel in our new id in Christ. They problem us to see that the pursuit of God’s glory is certainly satisfying; the best pleasure one can have in life is to make a lot of him.

The second lesson is for Christians residing and ministering in church buildings which have experientially (no less than partly) drifted from their very own theological traditions. The Puritans’ emphasis on pleasure in God contrasts with what some Christians (certainly, some Reformed Christians) consider because the level of worship — specifically, to shrug off motivations of self-interest. I’ve heard many well-meaning Christians say on Sunday mornings, “We’re right here not for ourselves, however to offer worship to God.” Whereas there may be certainly a sinful selfishness, the Puritans level us to a holy, God-designed self-interest: Christians are by God’s very design to hunt their very own good in glorifying God.

Allow us to always remember this: we stroll into worship on Sunday mornings to glorify God by discovering our pleasure in him. As songs are sung, Scripture is learn, prayers are prayed, liturgy is carried out, the phrase is preached, and the sacraments are acquired, make it your intention to go vertical with God — to be happy by God and revel in him. As Edwards argues, since God’s “happiness consists in having fun with and rejoicing in himself . . . so does additionally the creature’s happiness . . . [consist] in rejoicing in God; by which additionally God is magnified and exalted.”¹⁶ Don’t deprive God of his glory by refusing to exult in him when you worship. It’s the purpose you have been created. Certainly, the rationale we take pleasure in making a lot of God is as a result of God designed us this fashion in his picture. Simply as he takes nice enjoyment of making a lot of himself, so we comply with him and glorify his title.