English Puritanism and the Rise of Christian Zionism

 

September, 2025

 

Jack E. Brush

 

I. The Covenant Theology of the Protestant Reformation.

 

A. The Role of John Calvin (1509-1564).

 

Fundamental for an understanding of Calvin’s theology is the fact that he represented the second generation of reformers. It is true that he was strongly influenced by the theology of Martin Luther in Wittenberg, but it is equally true that he modified the thought of the Wittenberger in significant ways. To begin, Luther was an Augustine monk, educated in the late scholastic theology of Gabriel Biel; he had attained the degree of doctor in Christian theology and was professor of Old Testament in the newly established University of Wittenberg. Luther was gifted with the ability to penetrate the complex theological system of the scholastics, to locate the critical points that sustained the entire system, and to transform these points in such a way that they came into line with the theological insights of the Apostle Paul. For this reason, Luther is remembered as the founder of the Protestant Reformation, and the entire sixteenth century hardly saw his equal.

 

The French-speaking John Calvin possessed many outstanding qualities, both intellectual and organizational, but his theological acumen did not reach the level of Luther’s. Calvin was educated as a religious humanist, a distinction which he held in common with Erasmus of Rotterdam, and before his conversion to the Reformation, he had published a commentary on Seneca’s De clementia (1532). The details of Calvin’s development from a humanist to the reformer of the Geneva Church need not concern us here. There are, however, two theological points that require explanation since they became important elements in the religious thought of Colonial America.

 

1) Whereas Luther had formulated the phrase sola scriptura in order to emphasize that scripture is the ultimate rule of faith and practice, Calvin attempted to incorporate the entire biblical canon into his thought according to the principle tota scriptura. This procedure led to a more legalistic and literalistic interpretation of scripture, which foreshadowed the later evangelical movement in America. By approaching the 66 books of the Christian canon as a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces should fit together, Calvin levelled many of the theological distinctions that were characteristic of Luther’s thought. A prime example of this leveling was Calvin’s understanding of law and gospel. Following in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, Luther had interpreted law and gospel as antithetical concepts. The law demands obedience; the gospel offers forgiveness and liberty. In contrast, Calvin emphasized not the distinction of the law and gospel, but rather the continuity of the two in the long history of salvation. Properly understood, law and gospel belong together because of the covenant relationship between God and man. In substance, God made only one covenant with man, and this covenant is the underlying foundation of the Old and New Testaments, i.e. of the law as well as the gospel.

 

2) Although Luther emphasized the correlation of word and faith and taught that salvation came through faith alone (sola fide), Calvin developed the doctrine of double predestination, whereby some individuals were thought to be predetermined to eternal salvation, others to eternal damnation. Luther’s understanding of faith deviated significantly from the Catholic view. Instead of understanding faith as the intellectual assent to certain principles, i.e. to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, he understood faith as an existential event in which the individual experienced the certainty of salvation. Precisely this certainty of salvation proved to be problematic in the context of Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. How can the individual be assured of his or her eternal salvation when it depends on the predetermined will of God? The uncertainty surrounding the decision of God to save or condemn led to a concern for objective signs. Although Calvin struggled with this problem to some extent, the need for signs of salvation became even more acute during the Puritan period.

 

To summarize:

Calvin endeavored to place all canonical books of the Bible on the same plane and to consider all of them to be equally important. Every passage in both the Old Testament and the New Testament was considered to be divinely inspired and thus significant for understanding God’s plan. This procedure resulted in a leveling of differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament, thus allowing the interpretation of the New from the standpoint of the Old. Specifically, the covenant concept of the Old Testament came to provide a framework for understanding the New Testament.

Calvin’s doctrine of predestination tended to overshadow the experience of faith and to create an uncertainty about the salvation of the individual. So individuals felt the need to search for visible signs of the invisible (and inscrutable) decision of God – a decision that took place before the foundation of the world.

 

B. The Reformation in Zürich. Huldrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger.

 

Although John Calvin was very influential in spreading the covenant concept to England, he was not the only continental theologian who had an impact on this development. In fact, the concept of covenant as a hermeneutical and central theological idea originated not with Calvin, but rather with Huldrich Zwingli in Zürich. As early as 1525, we see Zwingli beginning to formulate a covenant theology, according to which there is a fundamental continuity in the history of salvation between the Old and the New Testaments. Significantly, this continuity does not simply involve the two sections of the written canon, but rather more fundamentally the way in which God deals with man. So according to Zwingli, the Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant of Jesus Christ are really the same covenant. After Zwingli’s untimely death in 1531, his successor Heinrich Bullinger adopted Zwingli’s covenant theology and developed it further.

 

It is perhaps helpful at this point to clarify the meaning of “covenant”. The history of the concept is rooted in the cultures of the ancient Near East. In the nomadic life of the ancient Semites, the covenant between individuals or between groups served to offer structure and security in a situation where relationships were inadequately regulated by law or custom. For this reason, we find numerous occurrences of the Hebrew בְּרִית (covenant) in the Old Testament in reference both to man-man relationships and to God-man relationships. The latter are well attested in the five books of Moses: Noachic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the Sinaitic covenant, the Shechem covenant, and the Davidic covenant. An excellent example of the former is the covenant between David and Jonathan. It should be apparent that the use of the covenant concept in a religious context introduces a legal-framework into the relationship between God and man. To be sure, this is always an aspect of the relationship to God, but if it dominates, it can eclipse the mystery of the divine presence. Thus covenant theology can easily become very legalistic. If one raises the question as to why Zwingli was attracted to the covenant idea, it should be noted that at no time in its history did Switzerland live under a monarchy. When the three original cantons declared their independence from the Habsburg empire in 1291, they formed an alliance among themselves. Even today, the international abbreviation for Switzerland reflects this history: confoederatio helvetica (CH). From this standpoint, we can easily understand why Zwingli found the covenant concept so appealing.

 

C. The Reformation in England.

 

The official account of the Reformation in England is inextricably linked to the turmoil surrounding the life of Henry VIII. Politically, Henry was faced with the problem of providing a male heir to the throne, and the only child out of his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon was Mary I. For years, Henry struggled with the Roman Catholic Church over the matter of divorce from Catherine so that he could marry Anne Boleyn, but when it became apparent that the pope would not yield, Henry prevailed upon the English Parliament in 1534 to abolish papal authority and to appoint him as the supreme authority over the Church of England. Not only did this act of Parliament allow Henry to divorce Catherine, but more fundamentally it began a long process of ecclesiastical reform that did not end until the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 under William and Mary.

 

However, the political decisions that led to the English Reformation were preceded by cultural shifts in English society that had provided the groundwork for reforming the church. Specifically, the religious movement that later became known as Puritanism had already emerged in the writings of William Tyndale (1494-1536). In works prior to 1534, Tyndale had asserted that the key to understanding the scriptures lies in the covenant concept. All of God’s promises constitute a covenant by which God promises certain blessings to men on the condition that they keep his laws. That is, God’s promises are always conditional. Since Tyndale mentioned the ideas of Zwingli in his writings, it is very likely that he was familiar with Zwingli’s concept of covenant.

 

On the political side, Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn did not produce the desired male heir; their only child was Elizabeth I. Still hoping for a male heir, Henry had Anne Boleyn executed in the Tower of London and then married Jane Seymour who gave birth to Edward VI. Following Henry’s death in 1547, the young Edward took the throne and reigned until his death in 1553. What transpired next was crucial for the further development of the English Reformation. Catherine’s Catholic daughter Mary I became Queen of English and proceeded to execute the protestants in an attempt to reestablish English Catholicism. Known as “Bloody Mary”, she effectively forced protestants into exile where many of them found refuge on the continent in cities such as Zürich where covenant theology had flourished. It was indeed an irony of history that the Marian Exile actually strengthened the protestant movement in England. By the time that Elizabeth I, the protestant daughter of Anne Boleyn, replaced Mary on the English throne (1558), the Marian exiles had been strengthened in their covenant ideas through their contact with cities of the Rhineland. Although Mary I had attempted to destroy the English Reformation, the Marian Exile was in many ways decisive for its success.

 

In 1642 Civil War broke out in England and it lasted until 1660. During this period of turmoil, the English Parliament attempted to provide a basis of agreement between the Church of Scotland, the Church of England, and the Continental Reformed Churches. To this end, an assembly of ministers was convened at Westminster Abbey in London in 1643, and in 1646, a statement of doctrine was passed that became known as the Westminster Confession. In Chapter 7 of this document, which is entitled “Of God’s Covenant with Man”, we find the basic ideas of covenant theology that have shaped protestant thought in the English speaking world down to the present. Fundamental is the idea that there is only one covenant between God and man from the earliest history of the Hebrews, through the time of Jesus of Nazareth, down to the present, and that the only difference between the Old Testament period and the New Testament period is the way in which the covenant was administered. Here we see again the continuity of covenant theology. The contrast between law and grace, which was fundamental in the theology of the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther, has been replaced by the continuity between Abraham and Jesus.

 

So in seventeenth century England, the Abrahamic covenant, whereby God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham as an inheritance for him and his posterity, moved into the center of protestant thought. By way of criticism, it is worth noting that the occurrence of the word “covenant” in the New Testament is quite limited, whereas it occurs frequently in the Old Testament. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (i.e. the Septuagint), the word “covenant” (διαθήκη for בְּרִית) occurs 270 times as compared with 33 occurrences in the New Testament, and of the 33 New Testament occurrences, seven are found in quotations from the Old Testament. Thus only 26 times do the writers of the New Testament employ the word, and in the message of Jesus, the word occurs only in connection with the Last Supper (“for this is the blood of the new covenant”). Therefore statistically, it seems very questionable to make the covenant concept the foundation of a Christian theology.

 

II. The Rise of Christian Zionism in England.

 

Since not everyone agrees on the meaning of Christian Zionism, I suggest adopting the definition of Donald M. Lewis, a well-known Christian Zionist who has written extensively on the subject. In his A Short History of Christian Zionism, 2021, Lewis writes: “I define Christian Zionism across time as a Christian movement which holds to the belief that the Jewish people have a biblically mandated claim to their ancient homeland in the Middle East” (p. 3). It is not our concern here to criticize the concept of Zionism, whether Jewish or Christian, but rather to show how Christian Zionism developed and to indicate the questionable foundation on which it is based.

 

The covenant with Abraham would not logically have led to the Christian Zionism of the seventeenth century. That is, Christian Zionism and covenant theology are not necessarily related. However, the political and social turmoil of the period gave rise to another movement that combined decisively with the covenant theology to produce Christian Zionism. This movement was the rise of interest among English protestants in the strange world of apocalyptic thought, and it was precisely apocalyptic thought that transformed the covenant theology into Christian Zionism.

 

Although the word “apocalyptic” means “revelation”, it is based on the Greek root meaning “hidden” or “concealed”. One could say that apocalyptic writings are intended to reveal that which is hidden, but the revealing is only possible to those who have special access to the meaning of the strange symbols and images in which the revelation is presented. In the “Revelation to John” (“Revelation” for short) in the New Testament, we find animal symbolism, angels and demons, the seven mysterious seals, the seven bowls of wrath poured out on mankind, the great serpent, number symbolism, the book of life, fire and brimstone falling from heaven, the binding of Satan, then the loosing of Satan and the final conflict, the final judgment, and the vision of the new Jerusalem. Needless to say, there is no historically reliable interpretation of this confused imagery. There are probably as many interpretations of these symbols as there are interpreters!

 

Most academic historians of the New Testament have interpreted the symbols by reference to events in the life of the author John and to his expectations concerning the near future. In contrast, the English protestants of the seventeenth century interpreted the symbols in connection with their own history, thus viewing Revelation as a secret code to be “cracked” in order to understand the events of their day. Such an approach to the apocalyptic writing of Revelation is based on several assumptions that are seldom addressed. For instance, it assumes that Revelation is really a history book written in secret code about our lives, present and future. Furthermore, it assumes without question that this “history book” is true. Thus we find the Christian Zionists supporting their claims by demonstrating the consistency of their interpretation with the symbols of Revelation. It is as if the symbols were the pieces of a puzzle, and if an interpretation is able to fit these pieces together into a coherent picture, then the interpretation must be true. We will return shortly to the puzzle-solving aspect of Christian Zionism, but first we must explain why seventeenth century England was so fascinated with apocalyptic writing.

 

The apocalyptic genre of religious literature originated in the ancient Persian religion Zoroastrianism and came into Judaism during the exilic and postexilic periods. From there, it found its way into early Christianity. Historically, apocalyptic literature has been associated with times of turmoil and persecution. Because of its strange symbolism, it protects the writer from persecution since non-believers do not understand it. On the other hand, it provides orientation to the believers who are confused by the turmoil and uncertainty of current events. Since the apocalyptic writings project a cosmic conflict between good and evil as well as the assurance that the forces of good will prevail, the individual can easily understand himself as a participant in this process. Thus his trials and misfortunes become more bearable in view of the grand cosmic process of which he is a part. Certainly, England of the seventeenth century was such a period of great turmoil. The ethics and metaphysics of Aristotelian philosophy, which had undergirded Roman Catholicism since the Middle Ages, were crumbling. Religious disorientation was rampant, and Puritans of all stripes (Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Independents, etc.) were vying for ecclesiastical authority. Civil War broke out in 1642. Parliament and the Crown were in constant conflict until the Parliament finally charged Charles I with treason and executed him by beheading in 1649. It was the only time in English history that a king was executed, leaving the throne vacant for over ten years.

 

We can trace the beginning of the apocalyptic rage in England to the work of Thomas Brightman (1562-1607) who in his posthumously published work A Revelation of the Revelation (1611) interpreted the symbols and images of Revelation in an attempt to explain the conflict of his age and to promote the imminent return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland. Central to Brightman’s interpretation is Revelation 16:12-16 where in verse 12 we read: “The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east”. According to Brightman, the drying up of the Euphrates is reminiscent of Israel’s crossing the Red Sea as well as the Jordan River, and the kings of the east are the Jews who are returning to Jerusalem. “What, shall they return to Jerusalem againe? There is nothing more certaine, the Prophets do every where directly confirme it ...” (Brightman, p. 544). Already the covenant with Abraham meant that the Jews must return to the land of Palestine and constitute a nation in accordance with God’s will. It will not be, however, a return to the ancient worship of Israel, but rather the returning Jews will be converted to Christianity (p. 544). Verse 13 continues: “And I saw, issuing from the mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of the beast and from the mouth of the false prophet, three foul spirits like frogs ...” Brightman interprets the beast and the false prophet as the Roman Catholic Church and the dragon as the Turks. So in returning to Jerusalem, the Jews will come into conflict with the Turks who must be destroyed. This will be the final battle in which the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil. Its place is called Armageddon, and all Christians will join together with the newly converted Jews to utterly destroy the Turks. So Revelation recounts the future establishment of the Kingdom of Christ “when there shall be one sheepfold made upon earth, of all the Elect both Jews and Gentiles under one shepheard Jesus Christ” (552). This kingdom will be eternal and will be ushered in after “the finall and Universall slaughter of all the enemies, and the full restoring of the Jewish Nation ...” (553). Other commentators such as Joseph Mede followed Brightman in focusing on Revelation, and most of them maintained some form of millennialism, whereby the righteous Jews and Christian Gentiles would reign on earth for a 1000 years.

 

To the turmoil and uncertainty of the period was added the change in thinking brought about by the rise of modern science. The focus on the quantification of nature stimulated an new interest in numbers, and the concentrated analysis of particular aspects of nature led to an attitude of problem solving. Since the time of Augustine, theologians had spoken about the Book of Nature alongside the Book of the Bible, but the work of scientists such as Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton drew new attention to the parallels between the two. Of special importance in the development of Christian Zionism was the work of Isaac Newton. It has long been known that Newton was intrigued with the books of Revelation and Daniel, but until the Newton Project was initiated at the University of Oxford in 1998, the extent of his interest in apocalyptic symbols had not come to light. Following earlier Christian Zionists such as Thomas Brightman and Joseph Mede, Newton added a new dimension of mathematical-like analysis. For he was convinced that Revelation had its own internal order and that decoding the symbols would yield an accurate understanding of history. According to Newton, the Abrahamic covenant regarding the possession of the land was everlasting, and in order for this covenant to be fulfilled it was imperative that the Jews return to Palestine. The earliest examples of Newton’s writing about the return of the Jews comes from the 1670s, and after that time we find him pursuing this interest until the end of his life. So the return of the Jews to Palestine and the total destruction of their enemies were constant themes in all accounts of the Christian Zionists. Furthermore, it was thought to be the obligation of Christians to assist the Jews in the fulfillment of the everlasting covenant of Abraham. This was the status of Christian Zionism in seventeenth century England, and when the Puritans travelled to Boston Bay in 1630, they brought many of these ideas with them.