Puritan ecclesiology

Somewhat counter-intuitively, David Hall suggests that Puritanism formally held to a more traditional Calvinist definition of ecclesiology – one in which visible holiness was not an essential mark of the church. The early Reformed tradition, wary of the perceived danger of Anabaptist separatism, resisted the inclination to seek “a church besmirched with no blemish.” Calvin enforced the point that the visible church would be “weighed down with the mixture of the wicked” until the end of the age. Hall argues that the “New England Way,” while notionally accepting this earlier theology, is nonetheless a “mixture of traditions – on the one hand, the Reformed system, on the other, the development of voluntarism.” In a key distinction, Puritan ecclesiology introduced the necessity for adult members to testify publically to their true experience of faith as a way to “differentiate ‘visible saints’ from counterfeits,” which eventually lead to the 1662 synodical terms of the half-way covenant.
The figure of Solomon Stoddard casts a complex shadow over the subsequent history of this ecclesial covenant. In several ways, Stoddard retrieved elements of the earlier tradition. Like Calvin, he was skeptical that the visible church was capable of accurately discerning the saints from the hypocrites. And like some of Presbyterian contemporaries, Stoddard approximated a more instrumentalist view of the eucharist as a “converting ordinance.” Consequently, he argued that the half-way covenant, by restricting access to the eucharist, had fomented a pastoral crisis that “hindered the progress of evangelism.”
While Stoddard’s argument recalls themes (largely sacramental) from earlier Reformed theology, Hall argues that it would be a mistake to view him exclusively as a defender of the classic tradition. Stoddard and his theological heirs were fervent evangelists, and were at least as supportive of the emerging evangelical “heart-religion” as was Edwards. Perhaps most striking is the way in which Stoddard recalls and intensifies the classic federal theology while simultaneously extinguishing the distinction between civil society and the congregation. On the former point, Stoddard is clear: Israel’s national covenant in the Old Testament has continuing validity in the Christian age and the New England commonwealth. (“The Nature of a church is the same under both Testaments: A Church is not one kind of thing in the Old Testament and another in the New: But it has the same essence and definition,” Solomon Stoddard, Instituted Churches [1700]. Interestingly, Stoddard sharply distinguished the continuing application of the national covenant from the defunct ceremonial Passover laws, since the his rivals appealed to the latter as legitimating the restriction of access to communion.) On the latter point, Stoddard collapses the distinction between the nation and the visible church, but crucially maintains that the invisible church of the elect cannot be extensively identified within either the citizenry or the congregation. With the invisible elect out of focus, the national covenant itself became determinative of the bounds of visible ecclesial identity (The characterization of Stoddard by his long-time antagonist, Increase Mather, helps to underscore the way in which his proposal was received in the voluntaristic American context; according to Mather, Stoddard wished to see “Enclosures about the Churches demolished, and whatever distinguishes them from the wide and wild World Extinguished.). Stoddard’s considerable influence carried the revision in parts of New England even as it encountered stiff resistance in Massachusetts from Edward Taylor (1642-1729) and both Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728). While both sides in the debate claimed formal adherence to the half-way covenant, and were each driven by pastoral concerns, it seems evident that the integration of society and church was becoming more difficult to preserve with each subsequent generation. As Jonathan Edwards’ response would demonstrate, a split was emerging between the increasingly rationalistic civic society and the pietistic resistance within the visible church itself.