Chris Ross: Puritan Spirituality and the Counter Reformation

I moved here with my wife Kimberly and one son two years ago (we now have two sons, Benjamin and Christopher), and after completing the MTh (Theology in History) here I began my PhD in ecclesiastical history. I am originally from Bryan, Texas, a medium-sized city not far from Houston. My theological background is dispensational, but I have held an interest in the Puritans ever since I learned about them during my college years.

Imagine if a popular Protestant author with outspoken anti-Catholic views were to write a bestseller on spiritual growth (something like this) -- a bestseller that turned out to be copied, almost verbatim, from the work of a Roman Catholic! Unthinkable, you say? I agree. But that is exactly what happened in the case of Edmund Bunny, a godly English clergyman who translated and published the work of Robert Persons, an exiled English Jesuit, in 1584 -- a work called The First Book of the Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution. Bunny made a few slight changes to Persons's text, rendering it less 'Catholic' and more palatable to a Protestant audience, and the work was a hit throughout the late 16th and 17th centuries. Among others, Richard Baxter later wrote that Bunny's book was instrumental in his own spiritual conversion.

Bunny is one of four (or five) figures who will play starring roles in my dissertation. I plan on highlighting the variety of interesting and often surprising ways early Puritans responded to the formidably prolific spiritual literature of early modern Catholics like Persons. Ultimately I think my work will help to demonstrate that Puritan spirituality was more than an outgrowth of high Calvinist theology or an early Reformed hermeneutic. It was also constructed as a response to unique historical circumstances. And this, I believe, is true of all Christian 'spiritualities': they form where creed and context collide.

(The painting depicts the founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, whose followers produced devotional writings that were read in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. From http://www.daily-word-of-life.com/retreats_new_page.htm)