FOREWORD
FOREWORD
W. Robert Godfrey
Puritanism has been controversial from its beginning. The principles and passions of the Puritans, along with the powerful attraction of their movement in the seventeenth century, made them profoundly influential in church and society. Their convictions and impact also made them very unpopular with many in their own day and ever since. The Puritans have had severe critics from the beginning. William Shakespeare, for example, disparaged them in Twelfth Night:
MARIA: Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan.
SIR ANDREW: O, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog.
A popular song of the early seventeenth century accused them of hypocrisy:
Pure in show, an upright holy man,
Corrupt within—and called a Puritan.
Lord Macaulay, in a famous statement, caricatured them as killjoys: “The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
Yet even Macaulay had grudgingly to recognize the fortitude and commitment of the Puritan: “The Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of the king.”
Scholarship in recent decades has recognized the vitality and power of the Puritan movement for its lasting impact not only in religion, but also in politics, education, economics, and science. The great increase in knowledge about the Puritans and the recognition of their influence has done little, however, to change the widespread perception of the Puritans as busybodies who sought to eliminate pleasure from life, by force if necessary, in the service of their arbitrary and unattractive God.
In the light of these attitudes it is truly remarkable that about fifty years ago two young scholars conceived the idea of holding a conference on Puritanism as a practical help for pastors and Christians generally. Surely a modern conference largely devoted to the study of Puritan thought as a vital resource for the contemporary church would not commend itself to many. But O. Raymond Johnston and James I. Packer had an advantage over many: they had actually read the Puritans. They had so profited spiritually from their own study of the Puritans that they wanted others to share in the rich spiritual blessing that had been theirs. In the late 1940s they consulted with D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, minister at Westminster Chapel, London, who enthusiastically embraced the idea and offered the chapel as a meeting place for what became known as “The Puritan Conference.”
The first conference took place in December 1950. Six papers, each about an hour in length, were read over the course of two days, one in the morning and two in the afternoon. After each paper a discussion followed of about one hour, often a very vigorous exchange of ideas. The basic form of the conference has remained the same over the years. For nearly thirty years Dr. Lloyd-Jones chaired the sessions of the conference and from 1959 contributed an annual paper and led the discussions. His commitment to the conference reflected his conviction: “As I see things, it is of supreme importance for the future of the Christian faith in this country that we should experience a revival of interest in the literature of the great Puritans of the seventeenth century.”1
James I. Packer organized the conference for many years and contributed regularly for the first twenty years. His keen study and analysis helped set a very high standard for the papers. His presentations, along with those of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, ensure that the volumes of the conference papers from those years are of great value.
No conference was held in 1970. Dr. Lloyd-Jones objected strongly to some of the ecumenical positions taken by Dr. Packer. Dr. Lloyd-Jones was approached by several men who asked him to chair a reconvened conference of the same character as the earlier ones. He agreed to do this, and so the Westminster Conference was held in 1971 and has continued to operate under that name.
The basic purpose of the conference has remained the same for the fifty years of its existence. As Dr. Packer wrote in a foreword to the 1958 conference papers,
[the conference] exists because its organisers believe that historic Reformed theology in general, and the teaching of the great Puritans in particular, does justice to certain neglected Biblical truths and emphases which the church today urgently needs to re-learn. This is not, of course, to imply that Puritan expositions of Scripture are infallible and final, or that the Puritans always succeeded in balancing truth in exactly the right proportions; nor is it suggested (forsooth!) that the way to solve problems which face Christians of the twentieth century is to teach them to walk and talk as if they were living in the seventeenth. What is meant is simply that the Puritans were strongest just where Protestants today are weakest, and their writings can give us more real help than those of any other body of Christian teachers, past or present, since the days of the apostles.
The pursuit of that “real help” from the Puritans was very much the purpose of the conference. Again, Dr. Packer: “The interests of the Conference, therefore, are practical and constructive, not merely academic. . . . the aim of the Conference is to make a constructive application of what is learned to our own situation.”
The conference played a vital role in reinvigorating evangelicalism with a strong Reformed influence in Great Britain and beyond. The decision to publish the conference papers annually in 1956 further extended its influence. God used this conference—along with the work of great preachers and scholars, the Evangelical Library, the Banner of Truth Trust, and other agencies—to renew British evangelicalism.
The historical importance of the Puritan Conference and its papers is clear. For that reason alone the decision of the den Dulk Christian Foundation to reprint these papers is sound and proper. But these papers are much more than historical documents, and the foundation—dedicated primarily to the publication and dissemination of Reformed literature—has seen that. The republication of these studies will continue their original purpose: to furnish Christians today with insight into the rich heritage of Puritan thought. In the shallowness, pragmatism, and confusion of much current evangelicalism, the depth, conviction, and steadiness of the Puritans can again help renew the churches.