Puritanism and Republicanism

[CharlieJ]

I'm reading America's God by Mark Noll, and I was intrigued by a section in which he discusses the cooperation between the Puritans and the Commonwealthmen (advocates of republican principles). Noll states that although they often made common cause against a mutual enemy, the two groups inhabited different moral universes and had different end goals. Then he writes this:

Mark Goldie has spelled out the conditions under which republican and Puritan views could move beyond simple cooperation against a common foe. The key, according to Goldie, was the softening of Puritan theological orthodoxy: when Puritans remained committed to traditional Christian ideas of human depravity, the sovereignty of divine grace, and the need for a revelation from God, they also remained antagonist to republican ideals. But, in Goldie’s account, “Wherever puritan thought leaned towards acceptance of the possibility of universal salvation and hence of universal priesthood, or to the Socinian idea that Christ was God-in-humanity, then Puritanism became as intensely secular and naturalistic as it was Biblical and Apocalyptic.” Most observers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would have agreed. It was only when Christian orthodoxy gave way that republicanism could flourish. (60)

 

[Willem van Oranje]

I'm reading America's God by Mark Noll, and I was intrigued by a section in which he discusses the cooperation between the Puritans and the Commonwealthmen (advocates of republican principles). Noll states that although they often made common cause against a mutual enemy, the two groups inhabited different moral universes and had different end goals. Then he writes this:

Mark Goldie has spelled out the conditions under which republican and Puritan views could move beyond simple cooperation against a common foe. The key, according to Goldie, was the softening of Puritan theological orthodoxy: when Puritans remained committed to traditional Christian ideas of human depravity, the sovereignty of divine grace, and the need for a revelation from God, they also remained antagonist to republican ideals. But, in Goldie’s account, “Wherever puritan thought leaned towards acceptance of the possibility of universal salvation and hence of universal priesthood, or to the Socinian idea that Christ was God-in-humanity, then Puritanism became as intensely secular and naturalistic as it was Biblical and Apocalyptic.” Most observers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would have agreed. It was only when Christian orthodoxy gave way that republicanism could flourish. (60)

I think we need to make a distinction here between a republican form of government and the "Republican" ideals aka. the Enlightenment ideals of Locke, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Thomas Jefferson.

The former is most certainly compatible with Reformationism, as evidenced by the Swiss republics of Geneva, Basel, Bern, Zürich, the New England commonwealths, and the Dutch Republic.

The latter is based on secular humanistic thinking, and is not compatible with biblical Reformationism. It is based on a false optimism about the human spirit and egalitarianism.

Today, in America, the Enlightenment mentality passes for "conservatism" and "Republicanism." "Make the world safe for democracy", Bush said. Strangely enough, most evangelical Christians in American have bought into this Enlightenment philosophy, especially when it comes to political science.