John Owen on Election & predestination
Unconditional — grounded in God's free choice
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 POSITION
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.
11 Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand, 12 not by works but by Him who calls, she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13 So it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
16 OTHERS HOLD THIS
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.
Cite this page
"John Owen on Election & predestination", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/owen/election (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/owen/election).