Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me Dr. Joel Beeke. He’s the Chancellor and Professor of Homiletics and Systematic Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. He’s a pastor of the Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
He’s the editor of Puritan Reformed Journal and Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth. He’s a board chairman of Reformation Heritage Books and a frequent speaker at Reformed Conferences around the world. He has authored, co-authored, and edited 250 books and has contributed thousands of articles to reform books, journals, periodicals, and encyclopedias.
I’m so delighted and grateful to have Dr. Beeke on the podcast with me today. Looking forward to his time with us in October at our annual conference, which I’ll speak more about at the end of our time together.
Dr. Beeke, welcome to the podcast. We’re so delighted to be with you today and to hear a good word of encouragement about the Puritans and the wisdom that you have to offer about them. Welcome to the podcast.
Joel Beeke: Thank you, Dale. Great to be with you.
Dale Johnson: Now, as I mentioned, Puritans for today. Some people think about the Puritans and they think, man, their words are so lofty and I’m not sure that I can obtain those things, but what value they have. They’re in a unique time in history as it relates to us in the counseling world. They’re before modern psychology and before modern medicine. And it’s a very interesting time period as we think about the Puritans and how they thought deeply about the soul, the interactions of man.
And I’m really looking forward to this today that we can learn about the practicality of the Puritans. So just talk for a minute about the things that we can learn from the Puritans today so that people don’t set the Puritans aside thinking they’re great to think about theologically but are not sure how practical they are. What can we learn from the Puritans?
Joel Beeke: Okay. First, in case there’s people that don’t know much about the Puritans, I’ll just say a word about them.
This is a movement from the last half of the 16th century, you might call it a third generation Reformation movement, where people were getting concerned that the children of the original Reformers were taking the Reformed truth for granted and they wanted to bring back more godliness and they wanted to apply Reformation truth to their lives, to their marriages, to their families, and so on. Also in terms of counseling. The Puritans are a group of people, especially in England, but also New England, and then there’s a brand of them in the Netherlands called the Dutch for the Reformation, there’s Scottish Covenanters, and ultimately German Pietists. So it’s quite a widespread movement, which they really take Reformation truth and apply it to every area of life. The good news is that Reformation Heritage Books today is doing 200 short Puritan books edited in such a way that a 13-year-old can read them.
So gone are the days when people say, I can’t read the Puritans. All right, so 16 of those books are done right now. Some are evangelistic, some are very counseling oriented, like Triumphing Over Sinful Fear [1] by John Flavel, just a fantastic book. What can we learn from these Puritan books today? And if you can read the original language, which is great, I mean, then of course you have a wider spread to read.
We can learn a lot of lessons actually, and let me just mention a few of them. First of all, the value of shaping our entire lives by the Bible. Puritans love the Bible. They lived the Bible. They sang the Bible. They memorized the Bible. They preached the Bible. When they educated their children, they started with a grammar book that from A to Z was all biblical stuff, right? They taught the letter Z this way, Zacchaeus, he went up the tree to see Christ, that type of thing. They taught A in Adam’s fall, we sin and all. So, they’re just thoroughly biblical.
Secondly, the Puritans have a way of teaching us today how to integrate the Bible and its doctrines into our life experience and into the problems we face in daily life. In other words, they’re always asking, what am I to do with this truth? How can this truth help me? How can it solve my problems? So, they were physicians of souls, as they were called. And consequently, they made great, great counselors because they’re always integrating these truths into their personal lives.
Thirdly, they were big on bringing gospel truths and ministry into the home through family worship, through catechisms. We can learn a lot from them, how they catechize their children, how they did family worship. How they talk to their children between family worship sessions about the Lord. How they just made God the center of their home.
Fourth, I can still learn from the Puritans, all my life I’ve been reading them since I was 14 years old, but how much they love the Lord Jesus. It just oozes out of them. And so that’s one reason why I keep always one Puritan book going with others is I just love the way they love Christ. They’re contagious. They make you love Christ more.
Fifth, I love the way they balance truth. In other words, some people think they’re legalists, but they’re really not. They’re just jealous over their own heart that they don’t sin. They hate sin because they love God so much.
So, they’re trying to avoid legalism on the one hand and antinomianism on the other hand, where, yeah, I can live the way I want because I’m saved. They really present a model of balance in this area and many areas of doctrine in which they really believe, and their writings show it, I want to live wholly for the Lord. And then how do I do that?
And they have all these uses (every sermon, every book). They call it uses. How do you use this text and how do you use this sermon to be more godly? So they really stress godliness, but it’s not out of a legalistic motive. And then they teach us also the value of Trinitarian theology. They’re really, more than any group before them, I mean, Calvin was a good model just before them, but they are really the masters of Trinitarian theology.
From the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit, always giving the triune God all the glory. And then they also are really godly. They believe in a strong biblical spirituality that you use the spiritual disciplines to promote a lifestyle in which you’re centered upon God. And we can also learn from them how to hate sin. Oh, they hated sin, the sinfulness of sin.
Jeremiah Burroughs said, “one smallest sin is greater than the greatest affliction.” So they just wanted to keep a clean conscience before God, washed in the blood of Christ, of course. They hated pride, they hated unbelief, they just beat themselves up in terms of zero tolerance for sin.
They just wanted to live wholly for God, and we need to learn from them. Another way we need to learn from them that is hugely important is how to endure afflictions and divine chastening, and to turn it for good, to see that all things really work together for good. Thomas Watson has a book called All Things for Good [2]. It is so helpful for afflicted people.
And finally, the Puritans teach us how to pray. They were wrestlers with God, and in their prayers you hear this beautiful combination that they’re really living in two worlds. They’re living for this world, I want to be a better husband, Lord help me, help me as a mother, help me as a pastor, help me in whatever work I do.
But they also are living for eternity, and that comes out in their prayers. They’re longing for Christ to come on the clouds. So that combination, prayerful for two worlds, one eye on eternity, one eye on time. So those are some of the main lessons.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, among many more, and I love the way that you highlight this.
One of the things that I see, Dr. Beeke, is they teach me patience, and when I’m in the counseling room and I’m working with someone and I’m talking to them about some of the truths that were very evident and practiced among Puritans, and applying these passages to life, is learning to be at the mercy of God in the way in which He works in people.
You talked about affliction, right? So one of the things that we learn from them, which is very appropriate today as we talk about issues of trauma and whatnot, I mean, having a theology of suffering and dealing with affliction is so critical, and one of the things that they teach us is learn to be at the mercy of God, and to be patient, and to wait. That when God works and He does it, it will be good, and He will get the praise for that. It’s one of the lessons I’m learning even now in 2 Corinthians 1:8-11, where Paul is talking about his great affliction in Asia, and he answers the question, well, why did this happen?
He says, because God did not want us to rest in ourselves. What a great truth, where we learn to be patient so that God can work out in us not to trust in ourselves, but to trust in Him, and that’s among some of the lessons that I’m certainly learning. As we think about the Reformers, you said something at the very beginning that sort of caught my eye and intrigued me, and you said that they’re downstream from the Reformers, certainly within the heritage, but they’re not identical to the Reformers. So talk a little bit about how the Puritans may be a little bit different than the Reformers. Any thoughts on that?
Joel Beeke: Yeah, essentially, I think they’re one in biblical, Reformed, experiential Christianity, but the Puritans just go a bit deeper into the experience of the soul in order to trace out the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul to give all glory to God, not to be navel-gazing or excessively introspective.
There were a few Puritans that leaned a bit in that direction, maybe, but they really want to give God all the glory. But don’t forget, the Reformers living before them had to spell out all these biblical doctrines like justification by faith alone and how to worship God. So the Puritans had the advantage of sitting on their shoulders and saying, yeah, all these truths are great, but so what? Now, how does it impact my life as a husband, as a wife, as a worker, as a deacon in the church?
So, I mean, the Reformers wrote—Martin Luther wrote five sermons on a tiny little book on marriage. What other Reformer wrote a book on marriage? No one that I know of. Puritans wrote 29 books on marriage, but they could afford to do it because they didn’t have to reinvent justification by faith. So there’s a definite time gap there.
But I think overall, the Puritans were just—they weren’t innovative in the doctrine of sanctification and holiness, but just more stress on it, and want to live to the glory of God. So let me just give you this. This will be insightful, I think. Reformers were against theater and drama because it often broke the Ten Commandments, right?
Puritans probably were more against it because they were so jealous of their own soul that they went and desensitized their conscience. So a tenderheartedness, you mentioned a patience, a contentment, seeing God—letting God be God is really big in Puritan thinking, and that leads to a holy contentment and a jealousy like Daniel. In Daniel 1:8, he wouldn’t partake of the king’s wine or drink because he was just jealous over the welfare of his own soul. He didn’t want to be that proverbial frog that would get heated up too much and drown because he’s coming too close to sin. So, their position was, let’s stay as far away from sin as possible.
Dale Johnson: A vigilance is what you’re describing.
Joel Beeke: Yeah, watchfulness, they call it.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, a watchfulness, yeah. And that vigilance, I think, is really critical. One of the things, listeners, I want you to pick up on as Dr. Beeke is describing this is what the Puritans were doing was taking the good theology that had been recovered and now practicing it.
When I think about the Scriptures and God’s kindness in revealing Himself, it was intended to be responded to by humanity. And the beauty of what the Puritans were doing is saying that it’s not a small corridor of which God’s Word applies to, it applies to all of life. And they were busy putting that into practice in a way that I think could be very helpful to us today.
Dr. Beeke, I want to turn the corner a little bit, and you mentioned at the very beginning a set where you guys at Reformation Heritage Books, you’re bringing the Puritans in a more common vernacular, if you will. You’re helping people who have maybe been afraid of the Puritans to read them.
They’re too lofty. I can’t understand them using the old English. And you’re helping people in a way to bring those books down to where we can understand the concepts from a biblical perspective. And I’ve benefited so much. You mentioned that the series, The Puritan Treasures for Today.
I’ve just recently read Vanity of Thoughts [3] by Thomas Goodwin, and I can recommend it. It’s unbelievable. You know, you also mentioned Flavel’s Triumphing Over Sinful Fear [4]. What a helpful distinction of healthy, good fear in relation to God versus that which is sinful or what he calls natural fear versus sinful fear. These things are so helpful.
And I’m like you, I keep right now in my backpack that’s sitting here right next to me is, I always keep a Puritan everywhere I travel and I see them as, you know, I have some really good friends who are alive, but I see them as some close friends who are now with the Lord. And they’re such an encouragement to me personally. And I want you to talk about how to access the Puritans. You mentioned this series. You guys are doing a lot of work at Reformation Heritage.
But people out there are like, man, I want to be encouraged like that. I want to see theology put into practice the way Dr. Beeke is describing this. And people are like, I see all these books. I don’t know where to start. Help people to understand where do they begin?
How do they step into the world of being introduced to the Puritans, understanding the Puritans a little bit. Help them to know where to begin reading the Puritans.
Joel Beeke: Okay. Yeah. Gladly. This is my wheelhouse.
You know, I think that the best way to get into the Puritans, especially for people who have not been brought up on King James Version, not used to reading the old language, thou wouldst and thou couldst, is to read the Puritan Treasures for Today. And we are hoping to do 200 of those in the next 10 years. 16 of them are done right now. And I would suggest to people, just 16 are a wonderful variety that summarize Christianity.
Just buy them. I think they’re like $6 apiece, $5 apiece with our nonprofit from www.heritagebooks.org [5]. And you won’t be on page 10 before you’ll say, “oh man, these books are so good and so easy to understand. So good for my soul.” But then once you’ve read some of those, you’re going to want to get into the originals.
And I would suggest going to Thomas Watson first. There’s a very lightly edited book that I did that I think is fantastic for people. It’s called Heaven Taken by Storm [6] by Thomas Watson. And it looks at how to use all the different spiritual disciplines in your life.
How do you listen to a sermon? How do you meditate? How do you fellowship with God’s people? How do you pray? One chapter for each of these. And just to really beef up your spiritual life with substance. I think that’s a great book. But Watson himself, anything by Watson, is short sentences and quite easy to understand.
From Watson, I would probably move to John Bunyan, that’s three complete volumes of works that are maybe 60 titles all total, some shorter, some longer. And then maybe John Flavel or Thomas Brooks. And then work your way up over a period of a few years. If those become easily digestible, work your way up to Thomas Goodwin and John Owen. I think that’s the way to go there.
You can also approach it from a subject answer, right? You say, what is my greatest fallback right now in my spiritual life? Maybe you’ll say, you know what, I think I’m losing my tenderness to sin, the enormity of what sin is. Well go to that subject then.
The Puritans wrote The Sinfulness of Sin [7], Ralph Venning. They wrote The Mischief of Sin [8] by Thomas Watson. They wrote The Evil of Evil [9]s by Jeremiah Burroughs. All three of those books will just stop you in your tracks and show you the horrendousness of sin.
Jeremiah Burroughs, by the way, is also an easy read. He almost reads like a contemporary guy for some reason I’ve never been able to understand, but he’s really easy to read. So he’d be on my list of first ones as well.
Or maybe you say, you know what, Christ was so precious to me and it just seems like he’s more distant now. I need to read some good books on Christ.
Christ All in All [10] by Ralph Robinson. Or Christ All in All, same title but a different subject, it’s on the names of Christ by Philip Henry. Wonderful, wonderful books. And we just did a book by Alexander Gross, which hasn’t been reprinted for 300 and some years, called How to Make a Speedy Use of Christ in Every Situation [11]. What a great title.
And this is what I want. I want to know Christ. I want to be able to go to him quicker and with everything and love him more, know him better in his offices, his states, his natures. So read a book on Christ.
Maybe you say, I just feel Satan is really getting a hold of me. It’s so tricky and I just need some help fighting against Satan. The classic of all classics is Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices. [12] What a book that is.
So, you can do it that way too. You can say, what’s my greatest need? And then look for a Puritan book on that subject. And that would be a helpful way of approaching things.
Dale Johnson: Yeah, very helpful. I will say at this point, one of the ways that you’ve been, your labors have been very helpful to me personally. Your book, Meet the Puritans, you’ve introduced me to friends of mine now that I would have never known.
And that was a good place for me to learn about those subjects. Who writes on what and what are subjects that I can read about that I need to learn more about that would be helpful. And just being introduced to, you know, beyond sort of your common Puritans that most people hear about or the primary works that most people speak of that I found very helpful. Your Puritan theology book has been very helpful in bringing together, the Puritans weren’t monolithic in how they thought about everything. And so you help to wrestle with how they describe different aspects of theology and always keeping very close to the practical nature of it.
And so those works have been very helpful to me as well, sort of as references to get me then into some of the original sources that I think have been helpful. And so thank you for your labor for that. And just as a way of recommendation, those can be helpful as well into helping you launch into, you know, Puritans that may be helpful on different subjects and whatnot. Brother, this has been really helpful where you’re bringing the theology of old doesn’t mean that it’s ancient and out of date. It means that it demonstrates that the word is true and applicable in every time, space and culture and as true as it was then, it is true now dealing with the complexities of our experiences.
And these brothers faithfully proclaimed it, and I think it’s helpful to us today. Thank you for bringing these things back to life for people and making these things accessible now and may the Lord bless the work that you guys are doing at Reformation Heritage as you try to produce, you know, these 200 books and that the Lord would be good in helping see those to fruition. So, thanks for your time today, helping us to think about the Puritans and their value for us today.
Joel Beeke: Thank you very much.