Kranendonk, David Hugh
(2021)
Paul Bayns's pastoral teaching of predestination.
Doctoral thesis.
| Item Type: |
Thesis
(Doctoral thesis)
|
| Titel: |
Paul Bayns's pastoral teaching of predestination |
| Samenvatting (EN): |
This dissertation contributes to scholarship on the post-Reformation and especially puritan formulation
and pastoral use of the doctrine of predestination. Examining the pastoral treatment of predestination in
one theologian’s entire written corpus reduces the danger of culling quotations selectively and out of
context, while providing conclusions concerning one theologian which clarify or correct current
perceptions of the broader dynamics in early seventeenth-century puritanism. This study argues that Paul
Baynes’s treatment of divine predestination evidences a pastoral approach which used orthodox scholastic
precision to serve spiritual purposes so as to lead people neither to ignore nor to become obsessed with
predestination, but glory in the triune God of sovereign grace.
As the first monograph on this important theologian, this study explores Paul Baynes’s life within
its academic, ecclesiastical, and theological context, to show he was deeply rooted in the puritan tradition
of Reformed orthodoxy, committed to the very Church of England that silenced him as a preacher, and
concerned to serve the spiritual welfare of those around him in whatever capacity he could. His practice is
undergirded by his teaching concerning pastoral ministry as the exercise of those whom God calls and
equips to bring especially the fundamental truths of his Word home to the hearts and lives of their flocks
as God’s means to regenerate, feed, assure, and sanctify his people. This understanding of ministry sheds
light on the amount, placement, and content of Baynes’s treatment of predestination. Baynes’s corpus is
neither obsessed by nor afraid of predestination. He engages in precise theological discussion within the
polemical genre, expounds predestination where the text speaks of it, and generally neither imports it
where the text does not mention it nor expounds it within basic instructional guides. His pastoral desire to edify his hearers is also shown in the variety of uses he draws from the doctrine of predestination, thereby
confirming that the infrequency of his treatments of predestination was not due to a fear of its pastoral
consequences. His uses show that even a Cambridge theologian with strong supralapsarian convictions
could use predestination primarily as a graciously motivating, comforting, and doxological doctrine. |
| Number of Pages: |
492 |
| Theologische Universiteit: |
Theologische Universiteit Apeldoorn |
| Trefwoorden (EN): |
Baynes, Paul, ca 1573-1617 ; Puritans, England ; 17th century ; Puritans Doctrines History |
| Date Deposited: |
20 Apr 2021 13:11 |
| Last Modified: |
20 Apr 2021 13:52 |
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