Friday, April 24, 2009

Clarkson: Soul Idolatry

In Tim Keller's TGC address, The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry, he said:

If you want a far better version of the message your getting from me right now, you might want to look up an old worthy Puritan named David Clarkson whose three volume set of works was published by the Banner of Truth a long time ago. In the second volume Clarkson has an unbelievably thorough, typically-Puritan, sermon called “Soul Idolatry Excludes Men out of Heaven.” . . . He says, honestly, physical idolatry, bowing down with your body to a physical image, is not really all that different and a lot less prevalent than the real sin which is what he calls “soul idolatry”—bowing down to some thing that probably doesn’t have a physical image, in your heart. In other words you can make anything into an idol—anything at all. Doesn’t have to be a statue. It almost never is.

Tony Reinke has a link and a summary for Clarkson's 37-page sermon on 13 "soul idols," originally published in 1864.