In his study of John Owen and
English Puritanism, Crawford Gribben attempts to situate Owen’s life and
ministry historically, offering a social history of ideas and a window into seventeenth-century
English Puritanism. Almost all scholarship on Owen laments the difficulty of
reading his published writings owing to his Latinate style and coining of
numerous neologisms. It is, however, as far as Gribben is concerned, worth the
effort and pays in historical and theological dividends. There is little
material on Owen’s childhood according to Gribben, perhaps because Owen was
always reluctant to discuss these aspects of his life and did not write the
kind of spiritual biography – as far as we know – that was common among other
Puritan divines. Gribben notes the presence of Arminianism in Queen’s College
Oxford where Owen studied, which resulted in his decision to leave the college
after completing his degrees despite his desires to pursue an academic life. Gribben
considers Owen’s ordination under John Bancroft, Bishop of Oxford, and points
out that although Owen (a Calvinist) and Bancroft (an Arminian) would have
differed strongly on soteriology, they nonetheless shared a high view of the
sacraments of baptism and Holy Eucharist. He suffered a period of mental illness
following his studies and made the decision to move to London where he would
experience conversion and begin writing theological treatises. Owen remained sensitive to pastoral issues and practical divinity throughout the course of his life and ministry, perhaps in the light of his experiences with melancholy.
Owen weighed
into the Calvinist-Arminian debate with his treatise A Display of
Arminianism (1642) and expressed his concerns that Arminian theology could lead to Socinianism and a denial of the Holy Trinity. As Gribben
observes, according to Owen, ‘The Arminian threat to soteriology could descend
into a full-blown assault on the doctrine of the Trinity’ (p. 47). Owen also
felt that Arminian theology was corrupting the doctrine and practice of the
Established Church which according to her own articles was thoroughly
Calvinistic and Reformed, especially according to Article XVII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. Gribben traces the developments in Owen’s ecclesiology from being
an ordained priest in the Church of England, to holding Presbyterian views on
Church government, to eventually adopting Congregationalism and arguing that
toleration should be shown to those who profess orthodox Protestant beliefs whatever their ecclesiology. Returning
to the Calvinist-Arminian controversy, Gribben draws the readers attention to
one of Owen’s most well-known texts since its republication by the Banner of
Truth in 1958: Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu; or, the Death of Death in the
Death of Christ (1648). Owen takes aim at the theory of universal
redemption (or the belief that Christ’s death provides propitiation for the sins
of all humanity) as advocated by the weaver and lay theologian Thomas More in
his study The Universality of God’s Free Grace in Christ to Mankind (1646).
According to Owen, while the atonement was sufficient for all – and
theoretically could make atonement for all humanity ‘had there been millions of
men more than ever were created’ (p. 88) – it was nonetheless only effective
for those whom God had eternally chosen to save. According to the scholastic
maxim, it was sufficient for all, but efficient only for the elect. Owen
worried that Arminian beliefs would lead along a slippery slope towards
Socinianism and apostasy from the doctrine of the Trinity. This was perhaps something of a fallacy on Owen's part. It is perfectly possible to be an Arminian theologian and affirm a robust doctrine of the Trinity as later evangelical Arminians such as John and Charles Wesley would demonstrate in the eighteenth century. Despite his strong
Calvinistic beliefs, Owen also insisted upon a free and universal offer of the
Gospel to lost humanity and the duty of all to repent and believe the Gospel
for salvation. In other words, he was no hyper-Calvinist and perhaps anticipates the overtures of grace that would become common during the evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century.
Gribben frequently
notes Owen’s proximity to the Puritan revolution and the regicide of Charles I,
especially as political power came firmly into the hands of the Independents. Quite
strikingly Gribben points out that it ‘must have been an extraordinary
experience for Owen to preside, with so little pastoral experience and so few
political contacts, at the official commemoration of England’s first (and only)
judicial regicide’ (p. 98). Many evangelicals today who identify with Owen theologically would perhaps be surprised by his involvement in radical politics and with millenarian eschatology. As far as Owen was concerned, these were events of
eschatological proportions and he spent considerable time in prognostications about
the future and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. ‘The king was dead. England had changed. And Owen was becoming a
principal spokesperson for the new regime, its prophet of a new world order’
(p. 104). It was not long before Owen encountered the politician and soldier Oliver
Cromwell. He became quite friendly with the revolutionary leader, was appointed
by Cromwell as vice-chancellor of Oxford University, and became one of the key
religious statesmen during the Interregnum. Ultimately, however, Owen was to
experience defeat in his life ambitions.
After the death of Cromwell, Owen
stepped down as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and his influence
over education and politics took a serious blow, along with the decline of
power among Independents and Congregationalists more generally. Owen would
ultimately be defeated by the restoration of the monarchy in 1600 and the
ejection of some 2,000 ministers from the Established Church on suspicion of
nonconformity in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity. Owen turned to writing in
defence of toleration for Nonconformists and Independents and to commentating
on Scripture and theological writing. According to Gribben, ‘Owen
re-established his reputation as the most formidable and sometimes
unpredictable of Nonconformist divines – and one of the most significant
theologians in the religious history of early modern England’ (p. 235). Owen’s magnum
opus from this period was his multivolume commentary on the epistle to the
Hebrews – amounting to some two million words of exposition – which shows his
considerable Hebraic learning, advocacy of Pauline authorship, and his attempts
to date the text before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 A.D. The priesthood of Christ is a major theme in Owen's published theology that has not received the attention it deserves in the scholarly literature. Gribben
concludes his biography by arguing that ‘Owen emerges as the genius of English
Puritanism – its preeminent thinker, and a formative influence on successive
generations of evangelicals’ (p. 272).
Despite the considerable strengths of Gribben’s biography, not least in the telling of Owen’s frequent proximity to anti-government conspiracies, not enough attention is given to Owen’s published writings and to his theological arguments more generally. Very little for example is said about Owen’s study of Hebrews or his pneumatology in his discourses on the Holy Spirit. And more could have been said about his theological disagreements with Richard Baxter and about the theological divergences within Nonconformity itself. Nonetheless, Gribben’s biography will be essential reading for future scholarship on Owen and particularly important for locating Owen’s theological writings within their historical context, rather than viewing Owen as an ossified theologian with fixed and unchanging views. After all, history is the account of change over time. It would be interesting to explore Owen’s legacy in the emergence and development of evangelicalism during the eighteenth century and beyond, especially as Owen finds new audiences in the twenty-first century among New Calvinists in Britain and North America. Though he may have experienced defeat during his own lifetime, Owen nonetheless speaks with a living voice in the context of modern Reformed evangelicalism. And I suspect this biography will be appreciated by pastors, scholars, and laypersons who share an interest in Puritanism and the history of Reformed theology.
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