The emphasis on personal enjoyment of and communion with Christ goes all the way back to the founding of Puritanism itself. William Perkins, the “father of Puritanism” and author of the first Puritan preaching manual, The Art of Prophesying (prophecy being the old Puritan word for preaching), used the analogy of the preachers as bakers, carefully slicing bread and feeding those in need of spiritual nourishment. What was the end of this feeding? It was not merely transactional, but deeply personal — to discover Christ himself.

One of the most well-known quotes about the Puritans comes from controversial journalist and critic H.L. Menken, who in 1925 claimed that the Puritans had “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”1 Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in the Puritans’ understanding of joy, with essays and even whole books dedicated to the topic.2 In the most recent and robust treatment on the subject, Nathaniel Warne rightly points out that the Puritans’ fear was not that someone might be happy, but rather that someone might live and “not experience the true and rich happiness that they were created to experience by God.”3 Indeed, the Puritans may have been more concerned about the happiness of humanity than any other group in the history of the world. They understood that true happiness is not a flippant circumstantial feeling, but a deep and abiding joy in God that draws its source from the fountain of joy: God himself.

While it is easy to pick on secular historians for missing the link between Puritanism and joy, my experience — as someone hailing from the confessional Reformed wing of the Protestant house — suggests something more surprising: whole churches and traditions with Presbyterian and Reformed heritages can sometimes miss the reality that joy in God is a central tenant celebrated in their own confessional standards. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (hereafter WSC) begins with a central question that uses superlative language: “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

By exploring the historical context behind the crafting of the Westminster Standards and specifically the WSC, this article will argue that the Puritans considered the pursuit of God’s glory and our joy in him to be central to the Christian life. It will also show how this joy-saturated theological tradition was inherited by and continued to spread through later figures, especially Jonathan Edwards. Finally, it will end by drawing out two practical lessons we can learn from the Puritans’ focus on joy in God.

Minutes of a Remarkable Assembly

On July 1, 1643, Parliament convened the first of 1,330 meetings that would take place over the next decade (1643–1652) at Westminster Abbey. This group, known as the Westminster Assembly, was a gathering of “Learned and Godlie divines . . . for the Settling of the Government and the Litturgie of the Church of England.” The publication of the Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly — containing, among other things, a multivolume transcription of the official minutes of the Assembly — has recently provided us the clearest window revealing what went into the crafting of the Westminster Confession and the Larger and Shorter catechisms.

For example, we know that the Assembly delegated the drafting of the WSC to a committee of at least eight members — which included Chairman Herbert Palmer, who had compiled his own catechism — and that the first debate on the Shorter Catechism took place on October 21, 1647, the same day as the last debate on the Larger Catechism.4 We also know that, following the completion of a draft of the WSC on November 8, 1647, they debated whether they would “follow the standard format of expounding the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed, or that those texts would be appended to the shorter catechism” and that the Assembly opted for the second option.5 We even know that the WSC was finally approved on November 16, 1647, and that, for final approval, Parliament instructed them on November 26, 1647, “to append Scripture proofs to both catechisms.”6

Still, despite shedding light on countless facets of the Assembly previously unknown, there are gaps in our understanding of precisely why they made some decisions. There are whole days in the record where the scribe of the minutes simply records, “Debate of the lesser catechism,” or “Proceeded in the debate of the catechism,” or even shorter “Deb. Catchisme [sic].”7 In many cases, then, we must infer — from the historical context and the emphases within the broader theological tradition of the Puritan movement — what motivated them in their various decisions on individual catechetical questions. As we explore the divines’ historical context and broader theological tradition, we get clarity on the importance of joy in God in the WSC and Puritan theology.

Orthodoxy’s Beating Heart

The calling of the Westminster Assembly to redefine and refine orthodoxy in England followed a tumultuous decade of reform under King Charles I and Archbishop William Laud. The king and archbishop persecuted members of the Puritan movement and sought to move the Church of England in a distinctly more Catholic direction. Against this backdrop, the Puritans gathered in 1643 to clarify what they believed were central theological truths of Christian doctrine and life.

Read More