Hartford Puritanism : Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and their terrifying God

497 Pages·2015·3.162 MB·English

by  Tipson, Baird

Hartford Puritanism
OXFORD STUDIES IN HISTORICAL THEOLOGY
Series Editor
David C. Steinmetz, Duke University
Editorial Board
Irena Backus, Université de Genève
Robert C. Gregg, Stanford University
George M. Marsden, University of Notre Dame
Wayne A. Meeks, Yale University
Gerhard Sauter, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
Susan E. Schreiner, University of Chicago
John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame
Geoffrey Wainwright, Duke University
Robert L. Wilken, University of Virginia
THE PASSIONS OF CHRIST IN READING AUGUSTINE IN THE REFORMATION
HIGH-MEDIEVAL THOUGHT The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe,
An Essay on Christological Development 1500–1620
Kevin Madigan Arnoud S. Q. Visser
GOD’S IRISHMEN SHAPERS OF ENGLISH CALVINISM, 1660–1714
Theological Debates in Cromwellian Ireland Variety, Persistence, and Transformation
Crawford Gribben Dewey D. Wallace, Jr.
REFORMING SAINTS THE BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION OF WILLIAM
Saint’s Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470-1530 OF ALTON
David J. Collins Timothy Bellamah, OP
GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS ON THE TRINITY MIRACLES AND THE PROTESTANT
AND THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IMAGINATION
In Your Light We Shall See Light The Evangelical Wonder Book in
Christopher A. Beeley Reformation Germany
Philip M. Soergel
THE JUDAIZING CALVIN
Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms THE REFORMATION OF SUFFERING
G. Sujin Pak Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Germany
THE DEATH OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RISE OF Ronald K. Rittgers
BIBLICAL STUDIES
Michael C. Legaspi CHRIST MEETS ME EVERYWHERE
Augustine’s Early Figurative Exegesis
THE FILIOQUE
Michael Cameron
History of a Doctrinal Controversy
A. Edward Siecienski MYSTERY UNVEILED
The Crisis of the Trinity in Early Modern England
ARE YOU ALONE WISE?
Paul C. H. Lim
Debates about Certainty in the Early Modern Church
Susan E. Schreiner GOING DUTCH IN THE MODERN AGE
Abraham Kuyper’s Struggle for a Free
EMPIRE OF SOULS
Church in the Netherlands
Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth
John Halsey Wood, Jr.
Stefania Tutino
MARTIN BUCER’S DOCTRINE OF CALVIN’S COMPANY OF PASTORS
JUSTIFICATION Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church,
Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicism 1536–1609
Brian Lugioyo Scott M. Manetsch
CHRISTIAN GRACE AND PAGAN VIRTUE THE SOTERIOLOGY OF JAMES USSHER
The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics The Act and Object of Saving Faith
J. Warren Smith Richard Snoddy
KARLSTADT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE HARTFORD PURITANISM
EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying
A Study in the Circulation of Ideas God
Amy Nelson Burnett Baird Tipson
HARTFORD
PURITANISM
Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone,
and Their Terrifying God
z
BAIRD TIPSON
1
3
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To Sarah, David, and Elizabeth.

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xv
1. Creating the Thomas Hooker Brand 1
2. Hooker and Stone in England, Holland, and New England 25
3. The “Reformation of Manners” in Chelmsford 54
4. Why People Want What They Want: St. Augustine of Hippo
and His God 90
5. The Search for Alternatives to Extreme Augustinianism 115
6. The Terrifying God of William Perkins, Thomas Hooker,
and Samuel Stone 146
7. Richardsonian Ramism 195
8. Preaching the Gospel in Chelmsford and Hartford 218
9. Learning How to Imagine Conversion 267
10. Hooker and Stone Preach Conversion 305
11. Gaining Assurance of Salvation 345
12. Identifying the Saints 369
13. Concluding Reflections 398
Appendix: Hooker’s Metaphors of Conversion 411
Abbreviations and Bibliography 417
Index 465

Preface
This book underTakes to investigate in considerable detail the preaching
and writing of the two founding ministers of the First Church in Hartford,
Connecticut: Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone. Both men had developed
distinctive theological positions before they immigrated to New England in
1633, first during their tenure at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and then as
part of an extensive network of “godly” clergy and laity. The reader will dis-
cover the English origins of those positions and come to understand their New
England expressions largely as the natural outcome of what the ministers had
learned before coming to the New World.
The argument proceeds through twelve discrete chapters, each of which
contributes to the overall argument of the book. Not every chapter will be of
equal interest to every reader. Those familiar with the history of Christian
thought may decide to move rapidly through the extensive discussion of
extreme Augustinianism in c hapter 4 as well as through the overview in
chapter 5 of attempts over the next thousand years to evade or reinforce that
Augustinianism. Since Augustinianism is the theological stream in which
Hooker and Stone swam, these chapters help familiarize the reader with the
major currents of that stream. (A reluctance to recognize the importance of
that stream accounts, in my judgment, for much of the misrepresentation of
Hooker in recent historiography.) Those who wish to skip over those chapters
and jump directly from c hapters 3 to 6 will not lose track of the book’s overall
argument, but they may find themselves having to take subsequent assertions
about the nature of extreme Augustinianism on faith.
Readers may also wonder why Martin Luther appears so frequently in a book
about early seventeenth-century England and New England. Luther enters the
argument for two reasons. First, I present him as the archetypical Protestant,
the standard by which any individual’s commitment to “Protestantism” can
be judged. In using Luther as a standard, I do not mean to make his theology
somehow normative. I want simply to drive a stake somewhere in the ground