Day 10. September 22, 2006
Movement 1. Dei Filius
Lecture 5. Father and Son: Jesus, the Puritans and Their Heirs (Part 2)
Puritan beliefs emphasized God the Father. Jesus modeled absolute obedience to an absolutely sovereign God. The only access to Jesus and thence to God was through the Word, interpreted by the church and its ministers. In the New World, Puritanism made itself the basis of civil society and the enforcer of moral order. But political dominion provoked reaction in various forms. Anne Hutchinson, claiming divine revelation, found in Jesus security in a belief system otherwise fraught with anxiety. She opened a mystical vein of pietistic Puritanism in which anyone could gain access to Jesus through the Bible. Signifying this access, Puritans generally found word-centered metaphors for Jesus (e.g., shepherd, bridegroom). Quakers - lower class in origin - universalized access, renouncing all social distinctions, religious ceremonies, and any hold of the state on conscience. Ignoring the Jesus of history almost entirely they held that God implanted the Risen Christ or Inner Light in each person directly.