My friend Tullian picks up on a post by Trevin Wax, “Beware the Puritan Paralysis” in which the latter cautions us about a tendency to introspection. He makes a very important point:
Too many times, we dress up our introspection with flowery terms like “accountability” and “mortification” and “gospel-centered change.” Even if all these terms and concepts are good and needed, if our gaze is constantly inward-focused, then we are as self-centered as the Christian who is consumed with seeking personal pleasure apart from God.
To this we should all say “Amen!” Where we should dissent, however,
is the broad brush with which British Reformed theology of the 16th and
17th centuries is painted.
The
first problem is terminological. It was one thing for British Reformed
writers to speak of themselves as “Puritans” and another for us to do
it. Consider how difficult it is for us to define the noun
“evangelical.” In Deconstructing Evangelicalism Darryl Hart
has argued that there isn’t any such thing as “evangelicalism,” that
there isn’t a sufficient number of commonalities to add up to a unified
thing “evangelicalism.” If one wants to start an argument at the
Evangelical Theological Society just give a paper reading popular
“evangelicals” out of “the evangelical movement.” It was controversial
to say that Clark Pinnock (who taught, among other things, that the
future is genuinely open to God) is not an “evangelical.” Continue at R. Scott Clark
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