A Hot Pepper Corn: Richard Baxter's Doctrine of Justification in Its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy

by Hans Boersma

This study takes the reader to the intriguing debates on justification in seventeenth-century English Puritan thought. Richard Baxter (1615-91), the well-known Kidderminster pastor and theologian, insisted that the Calvinists of his day, with their unyielding emphasis on the sola fide of the Reformation, ran the danger of ignoring the conditions that came with God's gift of the covenant of grace. Justification, Baxter insisted, required at least some degree of faith and works as the human response to the love of God. As one of his antagonists, John Crandon, put it: "If we magnifie one grain of our own pepper to that height that we make it a part of that righteousness by which to stand at Gods tribunall this one grain will sink us down to hell, so hot a poison is Mr. Brs pepper-corn." The mix of theological differences and unbending personality traits resulted in years of acrimonious and unyielding debate. Building on previous studies of Baxter's soteriology, this study maintains that Baxter is best understood as an eclectic scholastic covenantal theologian for whom the distinction between God's conditional covenant and his absolute will is key to the entire theological enterprise.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

I serve in the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Chair in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House in Wisconsin—a community of formation marked by the fullness of Anglican faith and practice, Benedictine spirituality, and classical Christian thought and teaching. (If you’re interested in studying at Nashotah House, contact me: hboersma@nashotah.edu). I am a Priest in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Before coming to Nashotah House in 2019, I taught for fourteen years at Regent College in Vancouver, BC and for six years at Trinity Western University in Langley, BC. I also served several years as a pastor in a Reformed church. I grew up in the Netherlands and have been in Canada since 1983.

My interests range across a variety of areas: patristic theology, twentieth-century Catholic thought, and spiritual interpretation of Scripture. In each of these areas, I am driven by a desire to retrieve the ‘sacramental ontology’ of the pre-modern tradition. So, much of my work looks to the past in hopes of recovering a sacramental mindset. I suppose this makes me a ressourcement (retrieval) theologian of sorts. Retrieval of the Great Tradition’s sacramental ontology has been at the heart of almost all my publications over the past twenty years or so.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult yet rewarding read about the unique views of Richard Baxter regarding justification. Baxter's controversies with John Owen are set within their appropriate historical context, and due diligence is paid to Baxter's well-meaning intent in rejecting the High Calvinist doctrine of eternal justification. Boersma gets to the heart of the matter when he suggests that Baxter's two-fold view of the will of God is at the essence of his alternate understanding. The author comprehensively traces Baxter's two-fold understanding as derived from Twisse, as developed in regards to God's will (will of favor, will of law), Christ's two-fold acquisition (new law of ownership, new law of command), and the believer's two-fold justification (personal and universal righteousness).

[Tim Wilder]

Maybe the best book on Richard Baxter.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boersma is unapologetically writing historical theology in this work. One could basically see this as a species of intellectual history except for the strong differentiation between theology (irrelevant) and philosophy made by Cambridge School of Skinner, Tully, and Tuck. Of course, the return to religion in contemporary early modern studies has made intellectual history more fashionable, but it's a chastened intellectual history sensitive to conditions. Boersma attends to the context of controversy and polemics, but not to the social and political conditions (except for a brief section on his experience as a chaplain to the army on 31-3), but for purposes of my dissertation, the kind of detail provided by Boersma - 'the relation between the conditional and the absolute covenant, God's legislative will and his will de rerum eventu (regarding the actual outcome of events)' (23) for instance - is a breath of fresh air. For of course the more explanatory space you give to politics, the less attention you give to system. Boersma surveys all of Baxter's writings from Aphorismes of Justification in 1649 to The End of Doctrinal Controversies in 1691, and is more detailed than Packer's 1954 dissertation. A must read for anyone interested in the multiplication of Calvinisms - Antinomians, Saumurians, Baxterians, Neonomians, and so on - in the mid to late 17th century.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mammoth read on Baxter's soteriology. It you like the 17th century period and puritans this is for you.

The issues were complex and subtle, and there was rarely a single view in the details. Which is worth remembering when wecgetbinho gusty cuffs today.