It’s good to republish these brethren of a bygone era.  Let the republishing continue; let the attempted reincarnations cease! We’re not from that era so we don’t fully, instinctively and intuitively understand their ministerial context nor therefore can we truly replicate the style and content of the Puritan’s ministry within and to their culture.  The best we can do ends up looking like a zombie version of the past, a half-life that retains some of the form, but too little of the mind, and that will seem strange if not downright scary to those who cross its path. 

I’m not sure we’ve sufficiently reckoned with just how post-Christian our post-Christian culture is.  Autonomous ideologies comprise the philosophical air we breathe; they soak into our bones and our souls give them warm welcome because we’ve had autonomy inscribed upon our spiritual DNA since the Garden.  We’ve now got the tech and the politics to self-define nearly to our heart’s content, the desire for which is fueled by the deeper conviction that we are not merely the curators of truth and reality; we are their creators.  We say about ourselves what Jesus says about himself, “I am the truth…” and “I AM that I AM.” We’ve transitioned from the effort to resist Jesus to the effort to replace him. We are profoundly post-Christian.

So what happens when (if) precious souls steeped in pop culture dogma step into our churches and hear a message steeped in a book claiming to be absolute truth composed by God who claims all rights to all of life’s designs and definitions?  What happens then? If we don’t redress certain preaching tendencies stereotypically common in Reformed circles, the answer will continue to be: nothing.

In times of cultural upheaval, it’s common and to pine for the past.  Our anachronistic instincts tell us that “those were the days,” the days of gospel purity, simplicity and sincerity.  Church historians chuckle at this naive nostalgia. A close read of Paul’s letters, 1 Corinthians and Galatians especially, should cure us of the delusion that the early New Testament church was a time of moral clarity and selfless, unbridled gospel zeal.  Indeed, some of the community peace we do see reflected in Paul’s epistles might have been the calm before the storm that would hit when Paul’s commands came home to roost in local families and economies. Imagine the look on husbands’ and fathers’ faces when Paul told them how to behave toward their wives and children (Ephesians 5 and 6.)  I wonder if the women and children were more happy, or more panicked, by what they heard when Ephesians was read aloud. This is going to get awkward at home! Same goes with slaveholders.  Paul put them in their place, and scandalously, it was right beside slaves in ontological worth and the honor they deserved as image-bearers and new creations in Christ (Ephesians 2 and 6 as they connect with Galatians 3:28 and Philemon).

Neither was the Patristic era golden.  The Medieval era doesn’t deserve the title “Dark Ages” but nor was it radiant through and through. There were glories in the Reformation era, but also preventable tragedies.

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