Suchergebnisse

What really distinguished the Puritans in their day was that they were less interested in theology itself than in the application of theology to everyday life. They were less concerned with perfecting their formulation of the truth than with making their society in America embody this truth. Down to the middle of the 18th cent, there was hardly an important work of speculative theology or a major theologian produced by the New England Orthodoxy. In New England the critics, doubters & dissenters were expelled from the community. In England the Puritans had to find ways of living with them. It was in England, therefore, that a modern theory of toleration began to develop. The characteristic institution of Puritanism here was the sermon, a ritualistic application of theology to community-building. The problems which worried the Puritans in New England were 3: (a) how to select leaders & representatives, (b) what was the proper limit of pol'al power, & (c) what made a feasible federal org. All the circumstances of New England life - tradition, theology, & the problems of the New World - combined to nourish concern with such practical problems as these. US Puritans were hardly more distracted from their practical tasks by theology & metaphysics than we are today. J. A. Fishman.