“The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ”
The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians
by Robert Fogarty
For graduate students of my generation there was no more monumental figure than Perry Miller of Harvard. His two-volume intellectual history of Puritanism, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, was erudite, sophisticated, and challenging as he explored the various covenants that vied for authority, both civil and ecclesiastical. The covenants of grace and work were explored within traditions that traced their roots back to the Reformation and Continental philosophy. It was rumored that only Miller and a handful of his colleagues really understood the struggles between the Arminians and the Antinomians even though Miller’s seminar was famous for both its intellectual rigor and the ways that graduate students botched Miller’s work. Anecdotally it was said that after one seminar he buried his head in his hands and uttered a scatological expletive. Continue reading