4 - Justice in the Puritan covenantal tradition

Summary

Covenant theology, as it developed in England and America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, represented an attempt to restate the traditional Calvinist doctrines of divine sovereignty, grace and works, and religious and civil authority in light of the growth and spread of new ideas of human freedom, autonomy, and individual rights associated with the Renaissance and Enlightenment. These ideas were also associated with contractualist theories of the state which had arisen during the Renaissance and subsequently spread throughout Western Europe.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Although Puritan Covenantal thought drew both upon indigenous English notions of covenant and upon the rich heritage of medieval moral theology, its theological roots are found primarily in the Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation. John Calvin (1509–1564) provided the most systematic and influential statement of Reformed theology in his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion. Despite his influence upon Puritanism, however, Calvin was not a covenant theologian. His impact upon Puritanism was due, rather, to the force of his theology as a whole. His teaching was based upon the doctrine of divine sovereignty with a strong emphasis upon election and predestination. For him, covenant was an unconditional promise of salvation to the elect. Good works were, therefore, a sign of election, not a condition of it.

Calvin also influenced the course of Puritanism in England and Scotland through his doctrine of the duty of lesser magistrates to resist tyrants. The duty of resistance, he argued, is grounded in the obligation of rulers to protect the liberty of the people. Such resistance is a matter of conscience, undertaken in obedience to God.