Digital Logos Edition
Owen traces the history of Socinianism and examines the Socinian views of Scripture, the divine nature and character of God, the person and the work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the past and present condition of man, election and justification.
For solidity, profundity, massiveness and majesty in exhibiting from Scripture God’s ways with sinful mankind there is no one to touch him.
—J. I. Packer, author
To have known the pastoral ministry of John Owen . . . (albeit in written form) has been a rich privilege; to have known Owen’s God an even greater one.
—Sinclair Ferguson, professor, Redeemer Seminary, Dallas, Texas
John [Owen], English theologian, was without doubt not only the greatest theologian of the English Puritan movement but also one of the greatest European Reformed theologians of his day, and quite possibly possessed the finest theological mind that England ever produced.
—C. R. Trueman
John Owen was born at Stadhampton, Oxfordshire in 1616. He entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and completed his M.A. in classics and theology in 1635 at the age of nineteen. He was ordained shortly thereafter and left the university to be a chaplain to the family of a noble lord. His first parish, in 1637, was at Fordham in Essex, to which he went while England was involved in civil war. It was here that he became convinced that the Congregational way was the scriptural form of church government. In the 1640s he became chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, the new "Protector of England," and traveled with him on his expeditions to Ireland and Scotland. Between 1651 and 1660, he played a prominent part in the religious, political, and academic life of the nation. In 1651 he was appointed dean of Christ Church and in 1652 made Vice-Chancellor of Oxford—positions which allowed him to train ministers for the Cromwellian state church. He lost his position in 1660, however, when the restoration of the monarchy began after the death of Cromwell in 1658. Owen moved to London and led the Puritans through the bitter years of religious and political persecution—experiences which shaped his theological inquiry, pastoral reflection, and preaching. He also declined invitations to the ministry in Boston in 1663, and declined an offer to become president of Harvard in 1670. He died in August, 1683.
“‘My will,’ says God the Father, ‘is, that thou have a body, and that that body be offered up; and that to this end, that the children, the elect, might be sanctified.’ Says the Son to this, ‘Lo, I come to do thy will;’—‘I accept of the condition, and give up myself to the performance of thy will.’” (Page 498)
“The attributes of God, which alone seem to be distinct things in the essence of God, are all of them essentially the same with one another, and every one the same with the essence of God itself.” (Page 72)
“The Lord Jesus Christ accepts of the condition and the promise, and voluntarily undertakes the work” (Page 505)
“We say, then, that in the eternal generation of the Son, the whole essence of the Father is communicated to the Son as to a personal existence in the same essence, without multiplication or division of it, the same essence continuing still one in number; and this without the least show of impossibility in an infinite essence, all the arguments that lie against it being taken from the properties and attendancies of that which is finite.” (Page 237)
“And this is the third thing in this compact, He who prescribes the hard conditions of incarnation, obedience, and death, doth also make the glorious promises of preservation, protection, and success.” (Page 505)
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