Institutional Individualism: Conversion, Exile and Nostalgia in Puritan
By Michael W.
Kaufmann
Introduction
Scholarship generally
accepts a narrative according to which the Puritans rebelled against oppressive
institutions in
This book aims to reopen
for examination concepts that have long been accepted, often uncritically, as
historical “givens”.
One widely accepted model
assumes a pre-existing ideal of individuality based on absolute autonomy or
pure unfettered subjectivity. This refuses
any contextual claims on the individual.
It makes us bobble between extreme institutionalism or extreme
individualism (freedom) in any given moment.
But Anne Hutchinson (AH)
was a strong Puritan enthusiast. If
dissenters are always marginalized, why was Roger Williams (RW) made the
governor of his own colony?
P. 3 He uses the term
institutional individualism in this book.
Individualism is anachronistic here, but used because he wants us
to remember it comes from the Latin “in-dividere” or “not divisible.” Around the middle of the seventeenth century
it became something that could be outside of community. Individuals still could not be divided within
themselves, but could be divided from the community.
Institutional means the individual must always be defined and
qualified by means of relation to some form of institution (administrative or
even linguistic or the institution of marriage). It further notes that for Puritans to be
separated from a community was not desirable.
Rather, it was a sign of being abandoned to ones degenerate self. Excommunication was a punishment, not a sign
of liberation from oppression.
Their individualism came
from affiliation with institutions.
Folks have looked at the
genesis of individualism in Revolutionary times, he wishes to do so for the
neglected area of Puritan times.
Laurence Stone’s magisterial
The Family, Sex and Marriage in
Jay Fliegelman of the
emergence of individualism during Revolutionary times places emphasis on the
freedom of children when they have become rational. If an young adult can break free from
parents, then colonists can break from their mother country.
For Puritans submission
created an increase in power. For R. W.
Emerson’s vision, a decrease. This is due to one age being religious and the
other quasi secular.
In Sacvan Bercovitch’s
famous The Puritan Origins of the American Self, it is asserted that pious
self-denial is, in the end, political self-assertion in disguise. This argument is powerful, yet circular. If denial is assertion. It also presupposes some individual self
hidden behind the evidence. It sort of
says the Puritans were made by individualism and it made them.
He is also concerned that
work on Puritans is always seen to be political. This perverts the way we look at them. It looks from the Puritans to the present
(projection) or from the present back (retrojection) or a combination. Projection makes us look for us in them
(sexism, racism, capitalism, liberalism).
It means that they knew better than us, or we know better than
them.
P. 7 It also, especially
with religion, comes off as if we know them better than they did. Religion was a cover for genocide, prejudice,
materialism, capitalism. Weber’s
capitalism argument can be seen in this light.
P. 8 He does not want to
fit this work into a narrative about the “rise of individualism” but allow them
to have their own strangeness.
As a literary person he
has to hold that analogies are not merely rhetorical decoration for an argument,
but arguments themselves. To compare a
converted soul to a melted stone, instead of a weather vane reveals differences
concerning the logic of salvation and personal agency and the permanence of
conversion. This approach is aided by
the fact that Puritans themselves were so careful about language.
Perry Miller treats all
Puritans as the same. The same quotes
could come from any number of Puritans.
This obscures differences and subtleties. So do all views of “the Puritan mind.” Even John Cotton changes a lot over his
prolific career.
John Cotton hit
RW has gotten a better
reputation. He founded
Our knowledge of AH comes
from those who banished her. They have
accepted the court verdict of her as a dangerous renegade subverter. But she followed Cotton to
P. 14 Chapter One will
look at the most common analogy evoked to compare the relationship of the
family to the individual – the family.
Chapter Two will look at
how the relationship to language mediates the individual / institution
relationship. This will be done by
looking at John Cotton’s (JC) belief that language itself must undergo a
conversionbefore any change will be realized in institutions and
individuals.
Chapter Four will look at
RW’s vision of an individual as oppressed by but still defined by a relation to
institutions.
Chapter five looks at
emotion and the sense of being lost from the pure ideal. Conversion is looking at what one could
become, but also at we have lost nostalgically.
Chapter One – Puritanism and the Family Analogy
-------------------- 1. Affiliation and Individualism
----------------------------------------
P. 15 In 1636 the
This followed Ramist logic
that all appeared in complementary and self-reinforcing pairs. Husband and wife, minister and congregation,
and God and follower are such pairs. All
of these relations require voluntary consent and are contractual and thus imply
duties. And if you are in no
relationships, you are nobody.
Filiations are
relationships within the family.
Affiliations are the other forms of social relationships. You move from one to the other. You are born in filiative relationships, but
move to affiliative ones.
These terms show how they
could at once be patriarchal and deny the patriarchal structure of
Catholicism. Submission and domination
can be voluntary and free of coercion.
Dissent can be to strengthen the institutions to which one binds
themselves. Puritans are said to have
wanted uncontaminated authority, not personal freedom. They didn’t like weak leaders.
P. 17 Whereas
individualism meant before, incapable of being divided (implying a necessary
connection says Raymond Williams in Keywords),
we now, ironically, define it by its division.
The older sense emphasizes
resemblances over differences. The newer
emphasizes our differences. We always
find out identities in a combination, so the difference is just in
emphasis. Do we get our identity from
what we share or do not share with others?
Puritans emphasized resemblances.
Conversion is becoming like God, imitation Christi, walking in a Godly
way. Man’s fall was turning away from
God, it is falling into what we call the positive attributes of individuals –
uniqueness, difference, self-reliance.
------------------------------------
2. The Family Covenant ---------------------------
Filiation often serves as
a model for affiliation; that is, relationships within families provide a basis
for describing relationships to other institutions. It can determine the emotional components of
such relationships. These relationships,
not individualism, were your source of emotion and identity.
P. 20 Family was not seen
as a private retreat from society, but as an extension of it. That idea of privacy is a late 17th
century invention. The earlier view made
submission to the king seem natural.
Later it comes to be seen as legalistic like a marriage contract
voluntarily joined rather than a divinely or naturally sanction
arrangement. The Puritans did civil, not
religious, marriage ceremonies.
Robert Filmer in
Patriarcha bolstered the idea of King as father. Locke wrote directly against Filmer to break
the link between family and state. Locke
notes that children must submit involuntarily, but when they get older the
filial thing is voluntary. After Locke
the family becomes more of what we think of it as today: a collection of free
individuals that serve as a private escape from public institutions.
The Puritans are between
Filmer and Locke. They say you choose,
for example, marriage. But after it is
chosen, strict religious guidelines, not a quest for individual autonomy, guide
you.
P. 23 Husbands were
legally liable for their wife’s transgressions. He failed to properly instruct and care for
her. A number of scholars have said this
contractual model underlies their rationality.
What were natural, divine or emotional become “merely” legal. Logical and psychological reformations do now
always coincide, and affections do not evaporate at the tweak of an
analogy. Love and allegiance
continues. Rebellion and regicide do not
necessarily put an end to a desire for or dependence on strong patriarchal
authority. Puritan disdain for the Pope’s
aesthetic does not mean that they do not have their own.
------------------------- 3. Covenants and conversions
------------------------------
We may be individual
sinners, but Grace, God and community will replace our natural origins. Puritan
ministers address this in the language of family constantly God the father is evoked a lot, but paternity
is not ever certain. Some children do
not resemble their fathers. Do you
resemble Christ or merely feign it in order to claim your inheritance?
P. 25 You must also show
your filial relationship to your new fathers in the church to change your
origins from filiation to affiliation.
It does not matter if you come from poor stock as we can obtain a better
birth. So we go from filiation, to
affiliation to re-filiation (with God) and a re-filiation with our church and
state fathers. The first step is to cast
away your original filiation. Then you
must quest for new filiation and affiliation.
This conversion sparks a
desire to resemble a timeless ideal (imitation Christi) whereas church reform
hinges on a related desire to recover historical ideals. The desire to recover the past often rests on
a sense of loss and nostalgia.
You cannot so easily
renounce your maternity. Mom knows who
the dad is and you definitely come from her.
So Cotton refers to the
The religious aesthetic is
therefore to be male. No overwhelming
smells and sights. Cotton wants these
things, but resists. Like a female
whore. The Catholic Church is visible
like a beast and seduction. It is like
an out of control beast. All this
requires a masculine control.
Cotton allows female
imagery, but it is in the sense of in a marriage where there are limits and
boundaries. Ironically, the conversion
is described more as overwhelming. Only
Grace and god should overwhelm you, not earthly things.
God does motherly chores
(ie washing away your sins) but is ultimately chosen, like a father.
------------------- 4. Orphans and Other Lost Souls
--------------------------------
The convert has confusion
in deciding to replace the known milk of the mother with the unknown gift of
the blood of Christ. The believer
notices the disappearance of the father only as an afterthought. This confusion and wavering almost robs you
of your ability to choose. Ultimately
the choice to take the blood of the lamb over the milk of the mother is God’s,
not yours. But there is a nostalgia that
something better, the milk of mom, has been taken away.
Conversion means losing
all that is safe for the promise of a better self. The fear that the old self will come back is
real. Another threat is that you emerge
reborn with nothing to substantiate yourself again, you become unhinged, lost,
cast away and undone. You lose all sense
of relatedness. A husband without a wife
is not a husband. God is all and you
are nothing.
It is like leaving the new
world and finding nothing. To be an
orphan. One without a sense of God is
such an orphan. So one must be lost into
something. Here into the institutions of
the church structures. A claim is made
that Presbyterians convert you to nothing.
Cotton does accept that
you do greatly resemble your real father.
Were he to have really taken this to heart it would have undermined the
logic of conversion. There would be no
change and nothing better. It is this
bleak prospect that Cotton most wants to change,
Chapter Two – John Cotton and the Conversion of Rhetoric
For JC the most important
mission of the church was institutional conversion. This involved a move from differences to
resemblances. This is beyond words, but
in their fallen state, humans need words to mediate these exchanges between God
and soul, between institutions and individualism between one individual and
another.
Whereas God remains the
first cause of salvation, language nevertheless operates as both cause and
effect of conversion. Hearing sermons
and reading scripture will change the soul, and a changed soul will hear, read,
speak , and understand in a new way, with a new language.
Unfortunately language
itself exhibits the traits it wants to reform.
Metaphor is based both on resemblance and difference. It can never get complete
identification. The way God reads and we
do is different. There is also, most
troubling, a difference between what one thinks and what one says and what one
does. Both Cotton and Williams became
preoccupied with hypocrites who speak the language of conversion, but aren’t
converted.
For these reasons,
language itself must be converted before it can convert. To this end he says before institutions come
individuals, before individuals comes language.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. Conversion and Language ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Whereas god knows reality
and us without mediation, we only see through “glass darkly” ie through language. We can only know what things are like. This was key to discussions of knowledge and
language during the renaissance.
P. 39 In the renaissance,
this understanding justified poetry.
Cotton does not lament the unregenerate state of language. It makes us human. Angels cannot alter their mind or
repent. We can.
For Cotton the slowness of
language can ultimately be a virtue. It
gives us time to grow and change.
Language can turn us around. We
need a new tongue. Like wine, it causes
spiritual intoxication. Words sparkleth
upwards. The desire for grace cannot be
mediated or expressed by any normal language.
A need for a new language comes out of this limitation. Maturity, like a father (no longer a child)
fills the gap perpetually. True converts
are able to see things they never saw before.
Hearing sermons leads to conversion which changes your way of communicating
and ultimately your relationship to other people.
This creates institutional
problems. How does one know that this
new speaking in tongues isn’t just being drunk?
He want an language of puritan conversion that can be authenticated and
distinguished from Presbyterian conversion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 2. Desire, Conversion, and Institutions ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If language is the agent
of conversion, then desire is the object of conversion. Desire is converted from being aimed at bad
objects to good.
Pg. 43-44 The senses are
not necessarily corrupt. Listening to
sermons can be sensual. The minister can
replace art as the new icons of worship.
In his taxonomy of the senses tongue outranks the ear, eye, nose, and
skin. What we see may not be our own,
but what we taste and say are our own. Taste
is a sense where the object enters your body.
We feed on Christ. Like food, it
is converted into a part of our molecular structure. This is a hungering and thirsting that can
never be satiated. The process of
getting through the dark glass is continual and addictive. This makes you dependent on the lord, the
church, the bible and the ministry.
Desire always exists, but
a good institution directs them towards the good end of common goals and common
identity.
‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘‘3. Resemblances
and Differences``````````````````````````
Resemblance doesn’t mean
difference. Metaphors hit many
similarities, but there will be differences at the edges. Just because a stick looks different in and
out of water does not mean it is not a stick.
Cotton spoke of this in
preparing to meet objections to his trying to use conversion narratives. Converts were to tell and elders were to
authenticate the conversion and decide whether or to accept the converted to
membership. Folks said that puts him in the place of God. Only God can see for real. But we can see though imperfectly to some
degree of accuracy.
He blames language. But true integrity is when what one says and
is are the same. You are one with Christ
and one with yourself. If you say you
are converted and yet do not keep the commandments, there is a problem.
Here is a hint of a
distinction between the private and public self that wasn’t totally in place at
this time and is a crux of our sense of individualism. Bacon says we should be allowed to feign
because it gives us a retreat. Bacon’s
self is Cotton’s sin. For Cotton the
true self should exist in affiliation with, not contradistinction to,
institutions.
Performance is, as Cotton
notes, though an art. Speech making is
performing a role. The Greek word for
delivery (as in deliver a speech) is hypocrisis. To be effective a conversion story must have
an affective hypocrasis. You must tell
the story well.
P. 47 More than Williams,
Cotton was willing to admit hypocrites to his church. Better let in hypocrites by accident than to
exclude one true convert by stringency.
Especially later Cotton
will admit that it is hard to tell the true convert from the faker. It is even hard to tell whether you yourself
are being true or a faker. He needs to
heal the wound that comes from the gap between word and spirit. The doubting of whether your conversion is
true or not can, unfortunately, undermine your confidence in and determination
to grow.
``````````````````````` 4. Different Differences
`````````````````````````````````````````
P. 49 Differences are important here. There must be a difference between you now
and later to have conversion and growth be real. Language does double duty. On the one hand it gets us closer to God and
on the other hand, it mediates our relationship with God. We could never really see him or we’d be
overwhelmed. Thus we balance
resemblances and differences in which we are undone without becoming
unraveled. Difference gives us a desire
for completion and never allows it.
Difference also allows for
hypocrites and two different selves. Like
the Greek idea that character is destiny, Cotton says that time will sort out
the authentic from the fakers. There is
an immediate and a long term conversion.
Pure honest talk should be
okay. It is for the immediate
conversion, but we are fallen readers and need a library of sermons to keep our
long term desires on the straight and narrow (Perhaps the term “straight and
focused” would serve our purposes better) and aware of things that should be
obvious.
This makes ministers
necessary. It also argues for letting
the un-saved into the churches.
``````````````````````` 5. Solomon and Universal Fatherly Care
``````````````````````
P. 52 Solomon was Cotton’s
ideal leader. Both Solomon and Cotton
were strong and led astray by women.
His authority comes under fire during the AH trials. He studies Solomon’s mix of mercy and rigor
for guidance. At times in his career he
found it hard to believe that one person could be both. How to be fatherly?
For Cotton, Solomon
achieved this balance via an aesthetic. He,
again, is attracted to the luxuries of the Catholic church but afraid of their lack
of boundaries. Solomon finds the boundaries via paternal tradition.
Solomon represents the
wise leader and the divinely inspired poet, a successful combination of the
pleasure of aesthetics and the rigor of authority.
Chapter Three – Roger Williams and the Conversion of Persecution
````````````````````` 1. Critique of Conversion and the Ministry
```````````````````````
Roger Williams (RW)
attacked Quaker founder George Fox saying outward appearances don’t show you
are converted. His talk also hinted
against Cotton’s conversion speech plan.
People often pretend out of a desire for self-preservation.
P. 56 He says all are
ready to turn back against their conversion like a weathercock. It moves but is not alive. Points in whatever direction the wind blows.
For Cotton, spiritual
change serves as the foundation for political reform. For RW shifting political alliances serve as
the shaky basis for false spiritual change.
Politicians always act to get people to pretend they are converted.
RW says no pretenders
allowed in his church. Bacon describes
the private self as a respite. RW notes
the public nature of the charade.
In the renaissance a
comparison of sexual and spiritual was common.
We receive passively as Christ does us.
We are female and Christ is male.
He is to take us by force and save us from our untrue love for another
(sin).
RW sees this seduction and
rape by God, unlike Cotton, as corruption.
Williams doesn’t trust conversion or what folks say about it. So ministers cannot judge conversion. You
must pluck out your own eyes when reading.
The ministers reading for you promote blindness.
In some churches the
minister gives you an interpretation and you accept it to show you are right
with him. The confirmation makes the
minister think he is doing gods work. It
is a mirror dance of deception.
RW says if converted the
congregation needs no preaching and if not converted, they shouldn’t be in the
church. We should let those who are unconvertible
alone. We have no power over them.
````````````````````````` 2. Infallible Witness in Exile ‘’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
How can RW judge other’s
inability to judge? He said that truth
and salvation could not be institutionalized.
RW says that churches are at their best when they criticize and rail
against falseness.
Ironically he was very
well placed in the hierarchy of religion.
Yet he was never comfortable with authority. He had been rehearsing for banishment his
whole life.
Furthermore he does not
condemn all authority outright. He says
the Quakers care no more for scripture than the Papists. The Pope speaks for all and the Quakers do
radical individualism. He tries to
locate a space between these two. He
tries to find a space in which he can criticize both.
`````````````````````` 3. Persecution as Conversion
`````````````````````````````````````
He is against religious
persecution but for civil dissent in the name of keeping civic order. He excludes verbal attacks from the sort of
persecution that is allowed.
So he can dismiss Jews, Catholics,
Quakers, and Turks as having “false religions”
He still allows Quakers to live in
He still retains the right
to persecute. He is like god who
tolerates his errant children. He is a tolerater,
yet an infallible witness. He says
others are going to hell. His is a
persecution deferred.
P. 67 In fact, RW
acknowledges that people shine brightest when persecuted. This is sort of why he never stops
representing himself as persecuted. He
likes to surround himself with persecuted folks. He tells the Bay Colony that though they
kicked him out he continues to serve them.
He constantly emphasizes the trial of his 14 week trek into exile even
though he was never out of power.
Conversion is persecution and ongoing.
If all were converted,
Cotton would be nothing. Similarly, if
he accepted a cushy position in the Bay Colony, RW would be nothing.
RW does not persecute
because he wants to see himself as persecuted.
Both conversion and
persecution depend on differences.
Cotton first emphasizes similarity in imitation Christi but becomes
increasingly aware of differences.
Williams not only objects to the attempt to reduce differences, but
wants to enorce them. Saint and sinner
are different.
He cannot be tolerant
unless he is in the presence of someone who requires forbearance. To this end, he must strongly point out the
differences between himself and those who he tolerates.
Cotton sees truth as a
positive presence. Williams sees truth
as an unobtainable absence. That is how
you know it, by its absence. Williams
does not declare his principles and if they are attacked he sees himself as
persecuted.
```````````````````` 4. Separation of Church and State Reconsidered````````````````````````````
His advocacy of church and
state separation derives from his conviction that institutions cannot know the
truth. His person speaking truth is
outside of politics. The state keeps
changing its mind on religion.
He should not be seen as
wanting to diminish the power of the church.
He wants to preserve the power of both.
The state should not have church powers and vice versa. It is ineffectual for them to try to do each
other’s roles.
Ministers should not comment
on political matters. His fallacy is,
perhaps, that these powers can be easily separated. There is a difference between your political
self and your real self. Religion has
little to do with political effects. He
distrusts all we say as hypocritical. The
self is only true when alone and needs this space to be free to criticize.
For Cotton joining is a
form of critique, it shows values. It
rejects other choices.
Chapter Four - The Case of Anne Hutchinson
In the trial
But there is a
discontinuity between a church father and a real father so the guidance is not
coherent and the analogy fails.
Does the first commandment
trump the fifth? Honor God above
Father?
P. 76 Winthrop clarifies
that he and his fellows of the court are the fathers she must obey.
````````````````````````````````````` 1. Be a Man ``````````````````````````````````````````````
The Church leaders were
never consistent. They thought she
failed in her role as a woman and she thought they failed as church
fathers.
John Cotton admits that
her faulty ideas are his fault. He s a
bad father. He and the other men failed to take control. They must be men as the women must be women.
A renaissance pamphlet
decried men dressing as women on and off the stage. Without difference there shall be no
reverence, it notes. Each will fail in
their roles. Men get soft.
On manifestation of this
worry in
At that time, the term “familist”
was used to describe AH and her followers as much as “antinomians”. Familist implied that they had a communal
marriage going on and thus violated the family analogy.
Cotton says he thinks AH
will be adulterous. TO her husband, the
community, him. All men must be like
Christ and thus the same in resemblance.
The resemblance is busted if someone violates the form.
````````````` 2. Passive Activity: Antinomianism and the Question of Agency
~~~~~~~~~~
All Puritans can be seen
as passive (doing God’s will and dependent on his grace) and yet active (trying
to lead like AH).
Donne, much earlier, says
that our temptation by the active devil comes from a passive soul. We, in fact, cannot resist the devil without
the action of God on our behalf. P. 81-82 The desire for God and to
be saved by God comes from God. Ultimately
our thoughts and actions are not enough for salvation. That too comes from God.
Good works are when God
works through you because you are saved, it does NOT force god’s hand. We cannot even tell if we are truly converted
and saved.
Arminianism is the false
belief that our acts can have an affect.
You cannot act on God, god acts on you (this is the correct grammar of
conversion).
A turning point, for the
worst, is when AH seems to claim interpretive authority for herself. But she more likely meant that the idea came
to her from God without interpretation. Her
faith in her understanding undermines the elder’s tentative faith in
theirs. Also people were aware that when
people think god is talking directly to them violence is likely to follow (as
in
Her first question to the
elders was “What law have I broken?” The
pronoun may point to her passivity in the face of God. It might then imply a lack of active prowess
on behalf of the elders. Deep in their
hearts they may mistakenly believe they have agency in their salvation.
P. 85 If AH saw herself as
different from the rest, she may have felt she had agency and thus could be
held culpable for her actions. This
would hint at the elders not being among God’s elect.
Ironically, AH always
professed extreme dependence on the elders.
She was not responsible for her desire for God, nor the form it took,
nor its insatiability.
`````````````````````````````````` 3. The
Trials```````````````````````````````
AH is searching, in her
own words, for the anti-Christ and God allowed her to see who it is; those who
do not testify of the New Testament. The
ministers were sort of failing to do so and so she took it upon herself. She could then discover the voice of the bible
from her own voice.
The passage shows that the
ministers did not lead her. They had
abandoned their posts. She did not want
to abandon the ministers. Her break from
false ministers would be debilitating, not liberating.
She learns to hear what
God says/wants/believes and speaks with that voice. Her only agency is to choose God as a
minister (speaking in the terms of the covenant). She followed Cotton to
During the trial they
exhume the miscarried babies she had and say they are the same in number as deformed
opinions she has. The opinions are thus
in and of her womb.
But the woman was said to
be a passive receptacle in birth and males the cause and God the final
cause. The fault for the half-child must
be shared by the males involved.
Monstrous births represent
the inversion of conversion. Instead of
a new father, the female replaces the male with something unacceptable and
illegitimate, effeminate and boundless.
The monstrous birth represents a radical difference.
Chapter Five – Institutions and Nostalgia
Perry Miller’s story says
that the stable congregation disintegrated due conflict, dissent and secularization. Another version calls the period of stability
“hegemony” and says it was subverted by radical AH and RW. But the institutions were just being made as
the AH and RW trials were happening.
They could not subvert what did not yet exist. The institutions were created to counter any
future outbreaks of radical individualism.
P. 93 The institutions do
not so much end with declension as begin with it. From the first they seek to re-establish what
had never been there, the lost perfect father, perfect church. It is a nostalgic stance.
The anti-Papist,
anti-authority stance is in part responsible for the Puritan’s own
hegemony. The conversion and leaving
fathers is also to blame. Turning away
from fathers to fathers that aren’t there creates desire and nostalgia.
Williams wanted so to be
back with the perfect pure original church with God at the helm. Much of the apocalyptic talk is a panic at
losing the original purity.
```````````````````````````` 1. The Absence of Christ ``````````````````````````````````
The intense conversion is
when Christ is present and tells us what we should be like. When he is thought to be absent, the rhetoric
switches to a desire for Christ to return.
Conversion becomes more and more faith based in order that we might act
as if Christ were present. Faith for
them was a compensation for absence rather than a celebration of presence.
The conversion from Christ
present to absent can be seen in the change of writing in Cotton’s own
career.
Cotton became convinced
that Christ had left
Faith is only absolutely
necessary when God is absent. Christ’s
being there and ready to give salvation is more of a sure thing. Faith is not salvation.
Twenty years later Cotton
is saying that Christ is absent to make his presence more desirable and
tantalizing. We go from “Seeing” Christ to
“enjoying” Christ. He goes to thirst and
desire as evidence of Christ’s existence.
A reversal of his previous stance.
It is hard to imitate Christ
when no one can see him. This under
girds the lack of direction AH complains of.
The rhetoric of conversion also declines. When Christ is gone, declarations of what
happened to you can go awry. Times
become perilous.
He laments that the days
are gone when folks could follow subtle arguments.
After AH it is unsafe to
use the word revelation. Certainty is
going. Earlier, in
`````````````````````````````` 2. Institutional Structures
```````````````````````````````
Both Cotton and Williams’
plan for church reform are founded on loss and nostalgia. Cotton wishes to retain the intensity of
desire and RW to recover the purity and perfection of the 1sst institution of Christ.
All their questions come down to asking what
the proper relationship is between individuals and institutions. Is a group of sound believers enough to
constitute a sound church? Does a
institution have a general existence beyond a particular constitution?
For Williams the proper
alignment is not causal but coincidental.
The purity of the church and the individuals are distinct. He says pure folks must find a pure
church. Cotton says a few good men can
cause a big institutional change and these can reform the less-than-perfect. Cotton remains more confident about the possibility
of change.
For Williams the Church
must protect the purity of Christ and the apostles. It must be, therefore, perfect. Perfect from the start, these here churches
do not change. But he doesn’t believe in perfect anything and will not join
anything. We cannot know why the
preacher preaches or the church meddles in state affairs or why we do what we
do. Only God knows.
P. 102 Cotton is impatient
with Williams’ over fastidious perfectionism.
The demand that all churches be perfect before forming means they will
never exist. The churches must strive
and help folks change. The church holds
the ideal, but will never be perfect.
Of course contact with the
unconverted or hypocrites could also threaten the integrity of the church. He loses faith in conversion, but still
thinks the institution better than the individuals alone. Thus grace sort of exists in the church
itself.
He is not, however, a
papist. But he has more faith in them
than RW. Cotton is willing, ironically,
to tolerate differences and imperfection in the church. Some part will be healthy. RW has no hope for recovering even a semblance
of the purity lost.
```````````````````````` 3. History and Conversion
``````````````````````````````
How did the puritans know
the past was better? How do they know
anything? They always allowed for
themselves to be seeing through unregenerate eyes. Cotton explores the tendency to see the past
as always having been better. He says
that this might be illusion. But that as
we get older, we get better at discerning what is good and what is bad. Things seemed simple when we were younger
because we were simpler.
Reading history we should
be leery of it being presented as more exciting than now, but it should
ultimately serve as a means to conversion.
But we must do so with converted eyes.
Cotton felt that sins
against knowledge were the worst sins one could commit. Consciously doing what you know is wrong is
worse than doing it out of ignorance. That
is a sin against knowledge.
He notes that he never received
consistency in his career as a minister between his knowledge and his
actions. His career shows many
ideological shifts. He sees each of
these changes as a case of seeing the light and throwing off delusions. He was willing to recant because always
growing. He spends much of his writing
defending himself against charges of inconsistency.
The individual he
ultimately presents may not enjoy perfect union with others as it may never
accomplish perfect unity within the self.
Conversion can never turn all differences into resemblances; at best it
provides insight into one’s own imperfection.
Nostalgia becomes a longing for the self we will never be.