Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England by Lisa M. Gordis (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.2, 2005 481 The three essays in Part 11investigate the relationship of Jonson's plays to those of a number of his seventeenth-century successors: Nathan Field and Richard Brome, 'The Play writing Sons of Ben' (p. 69), according to the title of Cave's essay, Aphra Behn, 'an honorary Son [sie] of Ben' (p. 93), in the words of Carolyn D. Williams; and a number ofother Restoration'Daughters of Ben' (p. 107)?Elizabeth Polwhele, Mar? garet Cavendish, Mary Pix, and Susanna Centlivre?as explored by Alison Findlay. Part iii 'explores the relationship of Jonson's theatre to twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury traditions of performance' (p. 6) by juxtaposing Jonson and a number of modern playwrights: John Arden, Joe Orton, Peter Barnes, Caryl Churchill, and Alan Ayckbourn. Some of the resulting 'collisions' (p. 8) are not devoid of interest (e.g. pp. 125-26), but on other occasions the parallels constructed between Jonson and whatever is treated as 'Jonsonian' in other playwrights seem too loose to be mean? ingful (e.g. pp. 145, 161, 181, 187, 189, 192, 199, 205-06). Finally, rather too many typographical errors have slipped into the text, and entire words are missing on pages 101 and 171. University of Geneva Lukas Erne Opening Seripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England. By Lisa M. Gordis. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 2003. xi +309 pp. $39. ISBN 0-226-30412-4. Of course the New England Puritans read the Bible and regarded it as authoritative. But how, exactly? And how did their preachers, lay people, and politicians mediate that authority? Lisa Gordis approaches these questions with subtlety and scholarship. A lot of this material is familiar and much discussed?John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, Thomas Hooker, and Roger Williams each get a chapter, along with a chapter on lay reading of the Bible, and a finalsection on the Antinomian controversy. The authority of Perry Miller's analysis is duly quoted, and everyone's guide to Puritan preaching, William Perkins's Art of Prophecying, is analysed once more. But if anything has happened since Miller, Bercovitch, and Ziff laid down the (grand) ideological and theological narrative of New England, it is a suspicion of such narratives, and a re? cognition that 'authority' is an elusive, widely distributed entity. What Gordis does in this book is not so much replace this narrative as complicate it. Rather than track the book chapter by chapter, I propose to pick out some of the main themes. The firstis transparency, the desire of Puritan preachers to allow the Scriptures to speak directly to people through their preaching; and the parallel belief that the Scriptures themselves are clear, so that the ordinary reader can understand the process of salvation by themselves. Now, modern theories of reading prettymuch dismiss the idea that any text can be transparent, and Gordis is aware of this; but she understands the desire, and the ambition, in preachers such as John Cotton and Thomas Hooker before exposing the tangles they get into. She is particularly acute on how they decided when to depart from a literal reading of a particular passage. The second theme, which this shades into, is dissent. If the text is clear, and the readers or preachers avowedly spiritual, how can disagreement be managed? The best chapters to explore this are those on Roger Williams and on the Antinomian contro? versy. The paradox ofWilliams is that he was, on the one hand, an advocate ofreligious toleration, but was a divisive and disruptive figurein the New England community. He did not readily seek consensus, on doctrine, church government, or the interpretation of Scripture. Gordis neatly undermines our tendency to paint him as a liberal, on the basis of The Bloudy Tenent: 'He had neither affectionnor even patience forthe wicked; he simply found the problem of their presence intractable' (p. 131). Gordis's approach 482 Reviews to the Antinomian controversy, much explored recently from the perspectives of gen? der and politics, refocuses attention on questions of reading and interpretation that lie at the heart ofthe dispute. It also allows her to develop a third theme thatdistinguishes her study, which is the difference between...