John Owen

Scripture alone, and Owen makes the point twice over: it is the only place the Christian religion is to be learned, and its authority does not rest on the church's. He is equally clear about how it is known to be God's word — by the Spirit's inward testimony rather than by the church's verdict — while listing external arguments (antiquity, preservation, prophecy, the holiness of the doctrine, miracles, the testimony of the church of all ages, the blood of the martyrs) as real but secondary motives.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe marginal notes are Owen's own, printed alongside the answers in the Goold edition, not an editor's gloss. Owen's fuller argument is in The Divine Original of the Scripture (1659), which was not read for this entry.

Q. Whence is it to be learned? A. From the holy Scripture only.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 1, Q. 2 with marginal notes 3, 4 and 6 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

The works of God in creation are sufficient to convict, and the failure is culpable rather than evidential. Owen holds that the moral law was "implanted in his nature and written in his heart by creation" and binds all men still on that ground rather than because it was given at Horeb — but he is equally firm that this knowledge saves no one, since the whole of the catechism's answer to the state of corrupted nature is that no man can escape wrath by anything of his own.

WORTH CORRECTINGTwo limits on this cell. It is a marginal note rather than a question and answer — Owen's own, but a one-line aside, not a worked argument; the body of the catechism makes the point only indirectly, through the law "written in his heart by creation" (ch. 5, Q. 5). And the moral-suppression half of the stance is inferred from "if they serve him not" rather than stated: Owen says the evidence suffices and men do not serve, he does not here say in so many words that they hold the truth down.

The very outward works of God are sufficient to convince men of his eternal power and Godhead, and to leave them inexcusable, if they serve him not.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 5, marginal note 27 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Assigned at established tier and not directly verified. Nothing in the works read this run states a position on the deuterocanonical books in Owen's own voice. The nearest thing is his sermon against the church's testimony as the ground of faith in Scripture, where the Roman objection he quotes lists "Ecclesiasticus, Tobit, Susanna, the books of Maccabees" among books the church later received — and his whole reply is that a book is canonical because it bears "the stamp of God upon" it, which the church recognises rather than confers. That undercuts the argument by which the Apocrypha was received, without naming the Apocrypha as excluded.

WORTH CORRECTINGOwen's actual argument for the canon is in The Divine Original of the Scripture (1659) and in the Exercitations prefixed to the Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, neither of which is on CCEL and neither of which was read for this entry. The Savoy Declaration (1658), which Owen chiefly drafted, names the sixty-six books and says the Apocrypha are "of no authority in the Church of God" — but Savoy reproduces Westminster verbatim here and is a committee document, so it is reported rather than quoted as Owen's own words. This is the least checked cell in the file.

One essence, three persons, co-equal and co-eternal, with person defined as a distinct manner of subsistence rather than a separate being. Owen assigns the personal properties in the classical way — the Father of himself the fountain of the Godhead, the Son begotten from eternity, the Spirit proceeding from Father and Son — and insists that to deny the deity of one person is in effect to deny the whole Godhead.

WORTH CORRECTINGAmong the proofs Owen lists for the three persons is 1 John 5:7 in its Received Text form — the Johannine Comma, which no modern critical edition prints. The doctrine does not depend on it, but the citation is there and a reader checking a modern Bible will not find the verse as he quotes it. This cell rests on the Two Short Catechisms, written in 1645 when Owen was twenty-nine and before he became a Congregationalist; his extended defences of the Trinity against John Biddle — Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655) and the Brief Declaration of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1669) — were not read for this entry, and nothing here reports what they argue.

One only, in respect of his essence and being, but one in three distinct persons, of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost... One every way, in nature, will, and essential properties, distinguished only in their personal manner of subsistence.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 3, Q. 1 and Q. 6 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Chalcedonian, and Owen states the guardrails explicitly: God and man in one person, not a God and a man; God incarnate, not a man deified; the properties of each nature remaining that nature's own and not communicated to the other; and whatever may be said of either nature said of the whole person.

WORTH CORRECTINGOwen draws a sacramental conclusion from the Christology in the same note: transubstantiation, or any corporeal presence of Christ in the sacrament, "fully overthrows our Saviour's human nature, and makes him a mere shadow." The argument against Rome here is Christological before it is sacramental. This cell rests on the Two Short Catechisms, written in 1645 when Owen was twenty-nine and before he became a Congregationalist, and it is a marginal note rather than a question and answer. Christologia (1679), his mature treatment, was not read.

Jesus Christ is God and man in one, — not a God and a man; God incarnate, — not a man deified. The essential properties of either nature remain in his person theirs still, not communicated unto the other; as of the Deity to be eternal, everywhere; of the humanity to be born and die.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 10, marginal note 44 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Nothing found. The question of what the other elohim of the Hebrew Bible are — a real created council, human rulers addressed as gods by office, or polemical language for nothing at all — is not posed anywhere in the works read for this entry. The Two Short Catechisms mention angels only twice and only in passing, that God's decrees concern "angels and men, for whom other things were ordained" and that "the elect angels belong to this church"; neither touches rank, delegated rule, or the gods of the nations. Death of Death, Pneumatologia Book III, the Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, the Justification treatise, the Saints' Perseverance and the two sermons read say nothing on it either.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is a gap in what was read, not a demonstrated silence. Owen's Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whose opening chapters treat the angels of Hebrews 1-2, and the Exercitations prefixed to it, which handle Old Testament ground including the divine names, are where an answer would be found if there is one. Neither was read for this entry, and nothing here reports what they say.

Definite atonement, argued from the intention of God rather than from the value of the sacrifice. The hinge is intention: what the Father and the Son intended to accomplish by Christ's death is certainly effected, so Christ died for all and only those in whom it is effected (Book II, ch. 3). The famous disjunction — all the sins of all men, all the sins of some men, or some sins of all men — is an aside introduced as "this dilemma to our Universalists," and its force is the pincer on unbelief: if Christ bore it, it cannot bar anyone; if he did not, he did not die for all their sins.

WORTH CORRECTINGTwo corrections. Owen is not denying sufficiency: answering the universalist appeal to "world" texts he grants that apart from one place "all the other places seem only to hold out the sufficiency of his oblation for all, which we also maintain" (Book IV, ch. 2, Works 10:319). What he denies is that the sufficiency reflects an intention to save all. And the disjunction above is not the book's argument, though it is almost always quoted as if it were. It is Owen's word "dilemma," not "trilemma"; it is introduced with "To which I may add" at the end of Book I ch. 3; and the case the four books actually build is the one about intention in Book II ch. 3. Calvin, at sufficient-for-all/efficient-for-the-elect, is not simply a weaker version of this — the disagreement between them is partly about what question is being asked.

To which I may add this dilemma to our Universalists:— God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell for, either all the sins of all men, or all the sins of some men, or some sins of all men... But this unbelief, is it a sin or not? If not, why should they be punished for it? If it be, then Christ underwent the punishment due to it, or not. If so, then why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which he died from partaking of the fruit of his death? If he did not, then did he not die for all their sins. Let them choose which part they will.The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Book I, ch. 3 (Works, vol. 10, pp. 173-174, Goold ed.)

Forensic, and defined with unusual care against both Rome and the Socinians. Owen distinguishes imputation of what is already ours — an act of justice — from imputation of what is not ours until imputed, which is of mere grace, and puts justification wholly in the second class. He denies that imputation transfuses righteousness into the believer, and denies the Socinian reduction of imputation to a sharing in the effects of Christ's righteousness rather than in the righteousness itself.

WORTH CORRECTINGImputation is not infusion — "It is not the transmission or transfusion of the righteousness of another into them that are to be justified" — but neither is it a legal fiction. The charge that God thereby "esteems them to be righteous who are wicked" Owen turns back on his opponents: it is justification by inherent righteousness, not imputation, that would have God judge an imperfect righteousness to be a perfect one.

This imputation is an act of God 'ex mera gratia,' — of his mere love and grace; whereby, on the consideration of the mediation of Christ, he makes an effectual grant and donation of a true, real, perfect righteousness, even that of Christ himself unto all that do believe; and accounting it as theirs, on his own gracious act, both absolves them from sin and grants them right and title unto eternal life.The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677), ch. 7 (Works, vol. 5, pp. 173-174, Goold ed.)

The Spirit's saving work begins at regeneration and regeneration precedes faith. Owen argues from Ephesians 1 that the power at work in the believer is of the same kind as the power that raised Christ — "a real physical efficiency of divine power" — and then denies, in as many words, that Scripture anywhere speaks of a bestowed ability to believe standing prior to actual believing. The Spirit therefore does not wait on the act of faith; the act of faith is his effect.

WORTH CORRECTINGOwen's language in this chapter is of regeneration and inward efficiency rather than of indwelling as a datable moment, so the cell answers the locus question by ordering rather than by a sentence about when the Spirit takes up residence. His fuller account of the Spirit's common, preparatory operations on the unregenerate — real, resistible, and short of saving — is in Book III ch. 2, which was not read for this entry.

The Spirit of God works internally, immediately, efficiently, in and upon the minds of men in their regeneration... no man is born again but it is by the inward efficiency of the Spirit. [p. 317] Indeed, there is nothing mentioned in the Scriptures concerning the communicating of power, remote or next unto the mind of man, to enable him to believe antecedently unto actual believing. [p. 320]Pneumatologia, Book III, ch. 5 (Works, vol. 3, pp. 317 and 320, Goold ed.)

The will is in bondage and no bestowed ability short of regeneration frees it. Owen distinguishes a remote power — the bare faculties of mind and will, which remain — from a next power, an actual ability to believe, and denies that Scripture speaks of the latter being given before believing itself. Faith, repentance and conversion are named as God's work and effect, not as acts God merely enables. The catechism puts the same thing pastorally: fallen man is "able neither to know, nor will, nor do any thing that is spiritually good."

WORTH CORRECTINGOwen does not say the faculties are destroyed. He grants a "remote power ... in the capacities of the faculties of the soul, the reason of the mind, and liberty of the will," denying only the next power. Reading him as holding that the unregenerate have no will at all is a misreading he anticipates and blocks.

The Scripture says not that God gives us ability or power to believe only, — namely, such a power as we may make use of if we will, or do otherwise; but faith, repentance, and conversion themselves are said to be the work and effect of God.Pneumatologia, Book III, ch. 5 (Works, vol. 3, pp. 320-321, Goold ed.)

Unconditional, and stated in the negative as well as the positive: God chooses whom he pleases out of the whole of mankind, and nothing in the chosen moves him to it. Owen's catechism puts the elect and the reprobate in the same lump, separated only by undeserved grace, and marks in the margin that further reasons for God's decrees than his own will are not to be inquired after.

WORTH CORRECTINGReprobation is defined in the same chapter and is not symmetrical with election: "the eternal purpose of God to suffer many to sin, leave them in their sin, and not giving them to Christ, to punish them for their sin." God's act toward the reprobate is permission and desertion, not the working of sin in them.

Q. Doth any thing in us move the Lord thus to choose us from amongst others? A. No, in no wise; we are in the same lump with others rejected, when separated by his undeserved grace.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 4, Q. 6 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Faith is defined as resting on the promise, not as assent to it. Owen's catechism calls justifying faith "a gracious resting upon the free promises of God in Jesus Christ for mercy, with a firm persuasion of heart that God is a reconciled Father," and then names two things that are believing but do not save: historical faith, a persuasion that what the Word says is true, and temporary faith, which has joy of the affections on unspiritual grounds.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is a judgment between two near neighbours and worth stating as such. Owen does not deny that knowledge and assent belong to faith — his marginal note has faith seated "in the understanding, in respect of its being and subsistence, — in the will and heart, in respect of its effectual working" — but he does not build the definition out of three required parts the way the knowledge-assent-trust formula does. He defines faith as resting and then rules out assent held alone. His much longer analysis in The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, chs. 1-2, was not read for this entry and could sharpen or overturn the call.

Q. What is a justifying faith? A. A gracious resting upon the free promises of God in Jesus Christ for mercy, with a firm persuasion of heart that God is a reconciled Father unto us in the Son of his love.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 17, Q. 2 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

The genuinely saved cannot finally fall, and Owen wrote a book of six hundred pages on it in 1654 against John Goodwin. He faces the apostasies of his own decade head-on rather than around them — "as many stars cast from heaven ... as ever in so short a space of time since the name of Christ was known upon the earth" — and resolves them by 1 John 2:19: the apostate is shown by his apostasy never to have been what he professed. The pastoral aim is stated as the point of the doctrine, not a side benefit.

WORTH CORRECTINGOnly chapter 1, stating the controversy, was read for this entry. The seventeen chapters that follow argue the case from the divine nature, the decree, the covenant, the promises, the mediation and intercession of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit, and answer Hebrews 6 and the other apostasy texts; none of that was checked here.

He lets them know that by their being apostates, they had proved themselves to have been but hypocrites; and therefore believers' dwelling in safety was no way prejudiced by their backsliding... That no sound persons may be shaken, because unhealthy ones are shattered, — that those may not tremble who are built on the rock, because those are cast down who are built on the sand, — is one part of my aim and intendment in handling this doctrine.The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance Explained and Confirmed (1654), ch. 1 (Works, vol. 11, p. 80, Goold ed.)

Cessationist as to the present, and argued from office rather than from a proof text. Apostles, prophets and evangelists were extraordinary offices constituted by an extraordinary call, extraordinary power, extraordinary gifts and extraordinary employment; since no one can now be called as they were, the offices lapsed and the gifts serving them lapsed with them. Owen grants that miracles, healings and tongues were gifts held without office, and that these too were given for a season while the churches needed them.

WORTH CORRECTINGA flat cessationist label understates him twice over. He does not close the door in principle: on the future calling of the Jews he writes that "whether he will do it by an ordinary or an extraordinary ministry, by gifts miraculous, or by the naked efficacy of the gospel, is known only in his own holy wisdom and counsel" (same chapter, p. 440). And his polemical target here is not enthusiasts but bishops — the chapter argues that no one succeeds to the apostles or evangelists, so no one inherits their authority. Note also that the extended treatment is not in Pneumatologia proper but in the separate Discourse of Spiritual Gifts printed with it (Works, vol. 4).

These extraordinary gifts, differing not only in degree but in kind from all those of the ordinary ministry of the church, are not at present by any pretended unto; and if any should make such a pretence, it would be an easy matter to convince them of their folly.A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, ch. 3 (Works, vol. 4, p. 449, Goold ed.)

Infants of believers are baptised, on the covenant argument rather than on any efficacy in the rite: the sacrament belongs to all to whom the promise of the covenant is made, believers and their seed, and Owen's proofs run through the circumcision of Abraham's household as well as Acts 2:39. He is a paedobaptist inside Congregationalist polity — a combination unusual enough that both halves need stating, since gathered-church principles more often ran the other way.

WORTH CORRECTINGOwen puts equal distance between himself and both extremes in the margin: "It is hard to say whether the error of the Papists, requiring baptism of absolute, indispensable necessity to the salvation of every infant, or that of the Anabaptists, debarring them from it altogether, be the most uncharitable." Two caveats on this cell: the catechism is 1645, before Owen adopted Congregational polity, and his later, fuller argument in Of Infant Baptism and Dipping (Works, vol. 16) was not read for this entry. The Savoy Declaration (1658), which Owen chiefly drafted, states the same position at 29.4, but Savoy is a committee document and is not quoted here as Owen's own words.

Q. To whom doth this sacrament belong? A. Unto all to whom the promise of the covenant is made; that is, to believers, and to their seed.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 23, Q. 3 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Real but spiritual presence, received by faith. The supper communicates Christ's body and blood spiritually, the bread and wine representing them; the elements themselves remain bread and wine after the blessing, and the change is located in the receiver rather than in the elements. Owen ties this to his Christology: a corporeal presence would destroy Christ's human nature.

WORTH CORRECTING"To them that believe, they are the body and blood of Christ" is stronger than a bare memorialism and should not be flattened into one. Owen keeps "This is my body" as a word of promise, and the definition of the supper is that it does "communicate unto us spiritually his body and blood by faith" — a giving, not only a remembering. This cell rests on the Two Short Catechisms, written in 1645 when Owen was twenty-nine and before he became a Congregationalist; no later treatment of the supper was read for this entry.

Q. Do the elements remain bread and wine still, after the blessing of them? A. Yes; all the spiritual change is wrought by the faith of the receiver, not the words of the giver: to them that believe, they are the body and blood of Christ.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 24, Q. 7 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Eternal conscious punishment, stated flatly and without softening. The curse of God on the fallen includes "eternal damnation hereafter" of body and soul in hell, and when the catechism asks directly what becomes of those for whom Christ did not die the answer is everlasting torment. The doctrine sits alongside definite atonement in the same catechism rather than in tension with it.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe same catechism has Owen defining original sin as ending in "eternal damnation of body and soul in hell" (ch. 8, note 40), so the claim is not an isolated polemical remark. This cell rests on the Two Short Catechisms, written in 1645 when Owen was twenty-nine and before he became a Congregationalist.

Q. What shall become of them for whom Christ died not? A. Everlasting torments for their sins; their portion in their own place.The Greater Catechism (1645), ch. 15, Q. 3 (Works, vol. 1, Goold ed.)

Owen expects Christ's kingdom to triumph visibly within history, before the end and by ordinary providence: he tells Parliament that God "will bring forth the kingdom of the Lord Christ unto more glory and power than in former days" and lists six things "clearly promised" — peace, purity of worship, multitudes of converts, the casting out of will-worship, the professed subjection of the nations, and the breaking of all who resist. In the modern taxonomy that is postmillennial. The tier is contested rather than researched because Owen is a seventeenth-century historicist reading Daniel, Haggai and Revelation as a single unfolding prophecy, and does not use the amillennial/postmillennial/premillennial grid at all.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe stance is real but the label is imposed. What the sermon states is an in-history expectation — the gospel prevailing over the nations before the end — which is what "postmillennial" names; what it never does is exposit Revelation 20 or speak of a thousand years, so the taxonomy is supplied from outside. Scholars also genuinely disagree about how to classify Owen: some read the later Owen, and the Exposition of Hebrews, as considerably less expectant than the Parliament sermons of 1649-1652, which would change the answer. Neither the Hebrews exposition nor the other Parliament sermons were read for this entry.

Meet him in his general design of casting down all combined opposition to the kingdom of his Son; that God in his appointed time will bring forth the kingdom of the Lord Christ unto more glory and power than in former days, I presume you are persuaded. Whatever will be more, these six things are clearly promised:— 1st. Fulness of peace unto the gospel and the professors thereof... 3dly. Multitudes of converts, many persons, yea, nations... 5thly. Professed subjection of the nations throughout the whole world unto the Lord Christ... the kingdoms become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ.Sermon VII, "The Advantage of the Kingdom of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World," on Ezekiel 17:24, preached before Parliament 1651 (Works, vol. 8, p. 334, Goold ed.)