Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England"Opening Scripture provides a thorough and original account of ministerial and lay strategies for interpreting Scripture in the Massachusetts Bay. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast literature and history of the period, Lisa Gordis moves deftly through discussions of major figures and events. This is a significant intervention in the study of Puritan New England."—Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame What role did the Bible really play in Puritan New England? Many have treated it as a blunt instrument used to cudgel dissenters into submission, but Lisa M. Gordis reveals instead that Puritan readings of the Bible showed great complexity and literary sophistication—so much complexity, in fact, that controversies over biblical interpretation threatened to tear Puritan society apart. Drawing on Puritan preaching manuals and sermons as well as the texts of early religious controversies, Gordis argues that Puritan ministers did not expect to impose their views on their congregations. Instead they believed that interpretive consensus would emerge from the process of reading the Bible, with the Holy Spirit assisting readers to understand God's will. Treating the conflict over Roger Williams, the Antinomian Controversy, and the reluctant compromises of the Halfway Covenant as symptoms of a crisis that was as much literary as it was social or spiritual, Opening Scripture explores the profound consequences of Puritan negotiations over biblical interpretation for New England's literature and history. |
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Contents
Opening the Text | 1 |
Chapter 1 Humane Skill and The Arte of Prophecying | 13 |
Reading Preaching and the Rhetoric of Inevitability | 37 |
Gods Word and Gods Words | 57 |
Thomas Hookers Affective Reading and Preaching | 73 |
Lay Responses to the Preached Text | 97 |
Roger Williams and the Problem of Interpretation | 113 |
Consensus Reading and Revelation in the Antinomian Controversy | 145 |
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Common terms and phrases
American Puritan Anne Hutchinson Antinomian Controversy Application of Redemption argued argument Arte of Prophecying asserted authority baptism believed Bible biblical language biblical text Book Boston church Cambridge chapter Chauncy Christ Christian cited claim collation colony congregants consensus Cotton Mather court Covenant David debate discussion dissent divine doctrine elders emphasized England English example exegesis exegetes exhorted faith Geneva Bible God's grace Halfway Covenant Harvard University Harvard University Press hath hear History Holy Spirit human interpreters Ibid insisted Jesus John Cotton John Endecott John Winthrop Journal laity learned London Lord Mary Quarterly 3d Massachusetts Bay Mather ministerial ministers Moreover New-England notes passage Perkins and Bernard Perkins's preaching prophet Puritan quotation reader reading revelations rhetoric Roger Williams scriptural sense sermons Seventeenth-Century Short Story sinner soteriology soul Sovles Preparation suggested synod tares theological things Thomas Hooker Thomas Shepard thou tion truth unto verse Wheelwright William Perkins Williams's word York