I've been blogging through some of Richard Sibbes works for a couple of months now, and there's a lot more to come. Helpful to catch the trajectory of this puritan hero, as shown in David Larsen's The Company of Preachers:"Sibbesians set their clocks not on preparatory disciplines but on (1) the direct experience of the Spirit's indwelling,Larsen also notes the 'Calvinism' of Sibbes but describes it 'as of a freer spirit, with a balanced view of experience and feeling' with a puritan biblicism and very high view of preaching. An early reformed charismatic then...
(2) the joys of Christian fellowship
and (3) the divine attribute of overflowing love.... "
(charismatic in the experiential sense rather than continuation of gifts)
Er... No, on account of his cessationism. I'm not sure you can annexe everything to do with experience/emotions to the charismatic cause - after all, the great authors on these things (Sibbes himself, and of course Edwards) were very firmly cessationist, and although there is a strand of non-charismatic evangelicalism which has been very anti-experience and anti-emotion, that certainly hasn't been the historical mainstream...
ReplyDeleteFair enough Dan! I guess charismatic is a broad category, and we've had that conversation here before!
ReplyDeleteHe's definietly in the experiential side of things but I'll grant that's not exclusive to the charismatic movement, and i guess we're talking more contrast to the anti-experience/emotional evangelicalism...