Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: Peter Sterry: Activist Puritan And Speculative Theologian
Author: Joel Zartman

Peter Sterry: Activist Puritan And Speculative Theologian

Joel Zartman

Peter Sterry was a Congregationalist preacher whose Puritan instincts and assumptions always shaped him, but he was a Puritan for whom metaphysics also exerted an unusual gravitational pull. Sterry’s fundamental Puritan orientation dated back at least to Emmanuel College. Having obtained a fellowship at Emmanuel College, however, Sterry soon left it to be a domestic chaplain instead. This move connected him with a network of politically active men and with opportunities to preach in London. With his growing reputation as a Congregationalist preacher, the thirty-year-old Sterry was appointed to the Westminster Assembly in 1643. The theological elites of the 1640s found Sterry’s pronouncements worrying, and he became a bystander in the rest of his years at the Assembly. Though Congregationalists were a dissenting minority at the Assembly, they had moments of ascendancy in Parliament. This Congregationalist advantage helped to boost Sterry’s preaching onto the national stage. He eventually brought disgrace upon himself by his outspoken loyalty to Cromwell. Sidelined by the course of events, his Platonism began to come into sharper focus in the Restoration. During this time, he labored more carefully to explain the Platonist assumptions that had shaped his theology, including a repeated effort to make his Platonist Christology more explicit, a clarification of his long-held position and not a development of his thought. The result was that his lifelong inclination toward godliness and reform was increasingly shaped by his Platonic commitments. These commitments ultimately redefined his Puritan theology, so that he found himself beyond the boundaries of Reformed confessionalism in his articulation of universalism.