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Examined Doctrine

John Owen on Divine plurality & the unseen realm

1616 – 1683 · REFORMED / CONGREGATIONALIST
NOT LOCATED IN A SOURCENO POSITION FOUND°
NO STANCE — AND WHY

No position located in this corpus

Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.

THE POSITION

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.

WHY THERE IS NO QUOTATIONFifteen of eighteen positions carry a verbatim quotation from a primary text; the millennium is contested, the Old Testament canon rests on standard historical theology rather than a passage read this run, and divine plurality is an honest blank.

WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE

Real created spiritual beings, ranked under Yahweh and holding delegated ruleJONATHAN EDWARDS · M. HEISER
Human judges or rulers addressed as gods by office, not by natureCALVIN
Never posed as a question in these termsCHRYSOSTOM · SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION · LUTHER · WESTMINSTER CONFESSION
See all 12 figures on divine plurality & the unseen realm →

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

The most formidable English Puritan theologian: Dean of Christ Church and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford under Cromwell, later a nonconformist pastor in London. This entry rests on The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647), The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1677), Pneumatologia and the Discourse of Spiritual Gifts (1674), and the Two Short Catechisms (1645), read in the Goold edition of the Works.

16 OF 18 POSITIONS QUOTED
Everything John Owen holds →
Cite this page

"John Owen on Divine plurality & the unseen realm", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/owen/divine-plurality (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/owen/divine-plurality).

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