Introduction to John
Owen’s work The Death of Death in the
Death of Christ
By J.I. Packer
The Death of Death in the
Death of Christ is a polemical work, designed to show among other things, that the
doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the gospel.
There are many, therefore, to whom it is not likely to be of interest. Those
who see no need for doctrinal exactness and have no time for theological
debates which show up divisions between so-called Evangelicals may well regret
its reappearance. Some may find the very sound of Owen's thesis so shocking
that they will refuse to read his book at all; so passionate a thing is
prejudice, and so proud are we of our theological shibboleths. But it is hoped
that this reprint will find itself readers of a different spirit. There are
signs today of a new upsurge of interest in the theology of the Bible: a new
readiness to test traditions, to search the Scriptures and to think through the
faith. It is to those who share this readiness that Owen's treatise is offered,
in the belief that it will help us in one of the most urgent tasks facing
Evangelical Christendom today--the recovery of the gospel.
This last remark may cause some raising of eyebrows,
but it seems to be warranted by the facts.
There is no doubt that Evangelicalism today is in a
state of perplexity and unsettlement. In such matters as the practice of
evangelism, the teaching of holiness, the building up of local church life, the
pastor's dealing with souls and the exercise of discipline, there is evidence
of widespread dissatisfaction with things as they are and or equally widespread
uncertainty as to the road ahead. This is a complex phenomenon, to which many
factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall
find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip
on the biblical gospel. Without realizing it, we have during the past century
bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar
enough in points of detail, is as a whole a decidedly different thing. Hence
our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the
authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty. The new gospel
conspicuously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility,
a spirit of worship, a concern for the church. Why? We would suggest that the
reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centred
in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily
what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the
old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be
"helpful" to man--to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction--and
too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was "helpful,"
too--more so, indeed, than is the new--but (so to speak) incidentally, for its
first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a
proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down
and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature
and in grace. Its centre of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new
gospel the centre of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel
was religious in a way that the new
gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship
God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The
subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of the new
is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole
perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed.
From this change of interest has sprung a change of
content, for the new gospel has in effect reformulated the biblical message in
the supposed interests of "helpfulness". Accordingly, the themes of
man's natural inability to believe, of God's free election being the ultimate
cause of salvation, and of Christ dying specifically for His sheep, are not
preached. These doctrines, it would be said, are not "helpful"; they
would drive sinners to despair, by suggesting to them that it is not in their
own power to be saved through Christ. (The possibility that such despair might
be salutary is not considered: it is taken for granted that it cannot be,
because it is so shattering to our self-esteem.) However this may be (and we
shall say more about it later), the result of these omissions is that part of
the biblical gospel is now preached as if it were the whole of that gospel; and
a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Thus,
we appeal to men as if they all had the ability to receive Christ at any time;
we speak of His redeeming work as if he had done no more by dying than make it
possible for us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God's love as if it
were no more than a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust;
and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners
to themselves, but as waiting in quiet impotence "at the door of our
hearts" for us to let them in. It is undeniable that this is how we
preach; perhaps this is what we really believe. But it needs to be said with
emphasis that this set of twisted half-truths is something other than the
biblical gospel. The Bible is against us when we preach in this way; and the
fact that such preaching has become almost standard practice among us only
shows how urgent it is that we should review this matter. To recover the old,
authentic, biblical gospel, and to bring our preaching and practice back into
line with it, is perhaps our most pressing present need. And it is at this
point that Owen's treatise on redemption can give us help.
II.
"But wait a
minute," says someone, "it's all very well to talk like this about
the gospel; but surely what Owen is doing is defending limited atonement--one
of the five points of Calvinism? When you speak of recovering the gospel, don't
you mean that you just want us all to become Calvinists?"
These questions are worth considering, for they will
no doubt occur to many. At the same time, however, they are questions that
reflect a great deal of prejudice and ignorance. "Defending limited
atonement"--as if this was all that a Reformed theologian expounding the
heart of the gospel could ever really want to do! "You just want us all to
become Calvinists"--as if Reformed theologians had no interest beyond
recruiting for their party, and as if becoming a Calvinist was the last stage
of theological depravity, and had nothing to do with the gospel at all! Before
we answer these questions directly, we must try to remove the prejudices which
underlie them by making clear what Calvinism really is; and therefore we would
ask the reader to take note of the following facts, historical and theological,
about Calvinism in general and the "five points" in particular.
First, is should be observed that the "five
points of Calvinism," so-called, are simply the Calvinistic answer to a
five-point manifesto (the Remonstrance) put out by certain "Belgic
semi-Pelagians"[1] in the early seventeenth
century. The theology which it contained (known to history as Arminianism)
stemmed from two philosophical principles: first, that divine sovereignty is
not compatible with human freedom, nor therefore with human responsibility;
second, that ability limits obligation. (The charge of semi-Pelagianism was
thus fully justified.) From these principles, the Arminians drew two
deductions: first, that since the Bible regards faith as a free and responsible
human act, it cannot be caused by God, but is exercised independently of him;
second, that since the Bible regards faith as obligatory on the part of all who
hear the gospel, ability to believe must be universal. Hence, they maintained,
Scripture must be interpreted as teaching the following positions: (1.) Man is
never so completely corrupted by sin that he cannot savingly believe the gospel
when it is put before him, nor (2.) is he ever so completely controlled by God
that he cannot reject it. (3.) God's election of those who shall be saved is
prompted by His foreseeing that they will of their own accord believe. (4.)
Christ's death did not ensure the salvation of anyone, for it did not secure
the gift of faith to anyone (there is no such gift); what it did was rather to
create a possibility of salvation for everyone if they believe. (5.) It rests
with believers to keep themselves in a state of grace by keeping up their
faith; those who fail here fall away and are lost. Thus, Arminianism made man's
salvation depend ultimately on man himself, saving faith being viewed
throughout as man's own work and, because his own, not God's in him.
The Synod of Dort was convened in l618 to pronounce
on this theology, and the "five points of Calvinism" represent its
counter-affirmations. They stem from a very different principle--the biblical
principle that "salvation is of the Lord";[2] and they may be summarized
thus: (1.) Fallen man in his natural state lacks all power to believe the
gospel, just as he lacks all power to believe the law, despite all external
inducements that may be extended to him. (2.) God's election is a free,
sovereign, unconditional choice of sinners, as sinners, to be redeemed by
Christ, given faith, and brought to glory. (3.) The redeeming work of Christ
had as its end and goal the salvation of the elect. (4.) The work of the Holy
Spirit in bringing men to faith never fails to achieve its object. (5.)
Believers are kept in faith and grace by the unconquerable power of God till
they come to glory. These five points are conveniently denoted by the mnemonic
TULIP: Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Preservation
of the saints.
Now, here are two coherent interpretations of the
biblical gospel, which stand in evident opposition to each other. The
difference between them is not primarily one of emphasis, but of content. One
proclaims a God who saves; the other speaks of a God Who enables man to save
himself. One view presents the three great acts of the Holy Trinity for the
recovering of lost mankind--election by the Father, redemption by the Son,
calling by the Spirit--as directed towards the same persons, and as securing
their salvation infallibly. The other view gives each act a different reference
(the objects of redemption being all mankind, of calling, those who hear the
gospel, and of election, those hearers who respond), and denies that any man's
salvation is secured by any of them. The two theologies thus conceive the plan
of salvation in quite different terms. One makes salvation depend on the work
of God, the other on a work of man; one regards faith as part of God's gift of
salvation, the other as man's own contribution to salvation; one gives all the
glory of saving believers to God, the other divides the praise between God,
Who, so to speak, built the machinery of salvation, and man, who by believing
operated it. Plainly, these differences are important, and the permanent value
of the "five points," as a summary of Calvinism, is that they make
clear the points at which, and the extent to which, these two conceptions are
at variance.
However, it would not be correct simply to equate
Calvinism with the "five points." Five points of our own will make
this clear.
In the first place, Calvinism is something much
broader than the "five points" indicate. Calvinism is a whole
world-view, stemming from a clear vision of God as the whole world's Maker and
King. Calvinism is the consistent endeavour to acknowledge the Creator as the
Lord, working all things after the counsel of His will. Calvinism is a
theocentric way of thinking about all life under the direction and control of
God's own Word. Calvinism, in other words, is the theology of the Bible viewed
from the perspective of the Bible--the God-centred outlook which sees the
Creator as the source, and means, and end, of everything that is, both in
nature and in grace. Calvinism is thus theism (belief in God as the ground of
all things), religion (dependence on God as the giver of all things), and
evangelicalism (trust in God through Christ for all things), all in their
purest and most highly developed form. And Calvinism is a unified philosophy of
history which sees the whole diversity of processes and events that take place
in God's world as no more, and no less, than the outworking of His great
preordained plan for His creatures and His church. The five points assert no
more than that God is sovereign in saving the individual, but Calvinism, as
such, is concerned with the much broader assertion that he is sovereign
everywhere.
Then, in the second place, the "five
points" present Calvinistic soteriology in a negative and polemical form,
whereas Calvinism in itself is essentially expository, pastoral and
constructive. It can define its position in terms of Scripture without any
reference to Arminianism, and it does not need to be forever fighting real or
imaginary Arminians in order to keep itself alive. Calvinism has no interest in
negatives, as such; when Calvinists fight, they fight for positive Evangelical
values. The negative cast of the "five points" is misleading chiefly
with regard to the third (limited atonement, or particular redemption), which
is often read with stress on the adjective and taken as indicating that Calvinists
have a special interest in confining the limits of divine mercy. But in fact
the purpose of this phraseology, as we shall see, is to safeguard the central
affirmation of the gospel--that Christ is a Redeemer who really does redeem.
Similarly, the denials of an election that is conditional and of grace that is
resistible are intended to safeguard the positive truth that it is God who
saves. The real negations are those of Arminianism, which denies that election,
redemption and calling are saving acts of God. Calvinism negates these
negations order to assert the positive content of the gospel, for the positive
purpose of strengthening faith and building up the church.
Thirdly, the very act of setting out Calvinistic
soteriology in the form of five distinct points (a number due, as we saw,
merely to the fact that there were five Arminian points for the Synod of Dort
to answer) tends to obscure the organic character of Calvinistic thought on
this subject. For the five points, though separately stated, are really inseparable.
They hang together; you cannot reject one without rejecting them all, at least
in the sense in which the Synod meant them. For of Calvinism there is really
only one point to be made in the
field of soteriology: the point that God
saves sinners. God--the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three
Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the
salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the
Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son
by renewing. Saves--does everything,
first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in
glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies,
sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners--men
as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, blind, unable to lift a
finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot. God saves sinners--and the force of this confession may not be
weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the
achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man's
own, or by soft-pedalling the sinner's inability so as to allow him to share
the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic
soteriology which the "five points" are concerned to establish and
Arminianism in all its forms to deny: namely, that sinners do not save
themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and
entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever;
amen.
This leads to our fourth remark, which is this: the
five-point formula obscures the depth of the difference between Calvinistic and
Arminian soteriology. There seems no doubt that it seriously misleads many
here. In the formula, the stress falls on the adjectives, and this naturally
gives the impression that in regard to the three great saving acts of God the
debate concerns the adjectives merely--that both sides agree as to what
election, redemption, and the gift of internal grace are, and differ only as to
the position of man in relation to them: whether the first is conditional upon
faith being foreseen or not; whether the second intends the salvation of every
man or not; whether the third always proves invincible or not. But this is a
complete misconception. The change of adjective in each case involves changing
the meaning of the noun. An election that is conditional, a redemption that is
universal, an internal grace that is resistible, is not the same kind of
election, redemption, internal grace, as Calvinism asserts. The real issue
concerns, not the appropriateness of adjectives, but the definition of nouns.
Both sides saw this clearly when the controversy first began, and it is
important that we should see it too, for otherwise we cannot discuss the
Calvinist-Arminian debate to any purpose at all. It is worth setting out the
different definitions side by side.
(i.) God's act of election was defined by the
Arminians as a resolve to receive to sonship and glory a duly qualified class
of people--believers in Christ.[3] This becomes a resolve to
receive individual persons only in virtue of God's foreseeing the contingent
fact that they will of their own accord believe. There is nothing in the decree
of election to ensure that the class of believers will ever have any members;
God does not determine to make any man believe. But Calvinists define election
as a choice of particular undeserving persons to be saved from sin and brought
to glory, and to that end to be redeemed by the death of Christ and given faith
by the Spirit's effectual calling. Where the Arminian says, "I owe my
election to my faith," the Calvinist says, "I owe my faith to my
election." Clearly, these two concepts of election are very far apart.
(ii.) Christ's work of redemption was defined by the
Arminians as the removing of an obstacle (the unsatisfied claims of justice)
which stood in the way of God's offering pardon to sinners, as he desired to
do, on condition that they believe. Redemption, according to Arminianism,
secured for God a right to make this offer, but did not of itself ensure that
anyone would ever accept it; for faith, being a work of man's own, is not a
gift that comes to him from Calvary. Christ's death created an opportunity for
the exercise of saving faith, but that is all it did. Calvinists, however,
define redemption as Christ's actual substitutionary endurance of the penalty
of sin in the place of certain specified sinners, through which God was
reconciled to them, their liability to punishment was for ever destroyed, and a
title to eternal life was secured for them. In consequence of this, they now
have in God's sight a right to the gift of faith, as the means of entry into
the enjoyment of their inheritance. Calvary, in other words, not merely made
possible the salvation of those for whom Christ died; it ensured that they
would be brought to faith and their salvation made actual. The cross saves. Where the Arminian will only say;
"I could not have gained my salvation without Calvary," the Calvinist
will say, "Christ gained my salvation for me at Calvary." The former
makes the cross the sine qua non of
salvation, the latter sees it as the actual procuring cause of salvation, and
traces the source of every spiritual blessing, faith included, back to the
great transaction between God and His Son carried through on Calvary's hill.
Clearly, these two concepts of redemption are quite at variance.
(iii.) The Spirit's gift of internal grace was
defined by the Arminians as "moral suasion," the bare bestowal of an
understanding of God's truth. This, they granted--indeed, insisted--does not of
itself ensure that anyone will ever make the response of faith. But Calvinists
define this gift as not merely an enlightening, but also a regenerating work of
God in men, "taking away their heart of stone, and giving unto them a
heart of flesh; renewing their wills, and by His almighty power determining
them to that which is good; and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ; yet
so as they come most freely, being made
willing by his grace."[4] Grace proves irresistible
just because it destroys the disposition to resist. Where the Arminian,
therefore, will be content to say, "I decided for Christ," "I
made up my mind to be a Christian," the Calvinist will wish to speak of
his conversion in more theological fashion, to make plain whose work it really
was:
"Long my imprisoned
spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night:
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke; the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off : my heart was free:
I rose,
went forth, and followed thee."[5]
Clearly, these two notions
of internal grace are sharply opposed to each other.
Now, the Calvinist contends that the Arminian idea
of election, redemption and calling as acts of God which do not save cuts at
the very heart of their biblical meaning; that to say in the Arminian sense
that God elects believers, and Christ died for all men, and the Spirit quickens
those who receive the word, is really to say that in the biblical sense God
elects nobody, and Christ died for nobody, and the Spirit quickens nobody. The
matter at issue in this controversy, therefore, is the meaning to be given to
these biblical terms, and to some others which are also soteriologically
significant, such as the love of God, the covenant of grace, and the verb
"save" itself, with its synonyms. Arminians gloss them all in terms
of the principle that salvation does not directly depend on any decree or act
of God, but on man's independent activity in believing. Calvinists maintain
that this principle is itself unscriptural and irreligious, and that such
glossing demonstrably perverts the sense of Scripture and undermines the gospel
at every point where it is practised. This, and nothing less than this, is what
the Arminian controversy is about.
There is a fifth way in which the five-point formula
is deficient. Its very form (a series of denials of Arminian assertions) lends
colour to the impression that Calvinism is a modification of Arminianism; that
Arminianism has a certain primacy in order of nature, and developed Calvinism
is an offshoot from it. Even when one shows this to be false as a matter of
history, the suspicion remains in many minds that it is a true account of the
relation of the two views themselves. For it is widely supposed that
Arminianism (which, as we now see, corresponds pretty closely to the new gospel
of our own day) is the result of reading the Scriptures in a
"natural," unbiased, unsophisticated way, and that Calvinism is an
unnatural growth, the product less of the texts themselves than of unhallowed
logic working on the texts, wresting their plain sense and upsetting their
balance by forcing them into a systematic framework which they do not
themselves provide. Whatever may have been true of individual Calvinists, as a
generalisation about Calvinism nothing could be further from the truth than
this. Certainly, Arminianism is "natural" in one sense, in that it
represents a characteristic perversion of biblical teaching by the fallen mind
of man, who even in salvation cannot bear to renounce the delusion of being
master of his fate and captain of his soul. This perversion appeared before in
the Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism of the Patristic period and the later
Scholasticism, and has recurred since the seventeenth century both in Roman
theology and, among Protestants, in various types of rationalistic liberalism
and modern Evangelical teaching; and no doubt it will always be with us. As
long as the fallen human mind is what it is, the Arminian way of thinking will
continue to be a natural type of mistake. But it is not natural in any other
sense. In fact, it is Calvinism that understands the Scriptures in their
natural, one would have thought inescapable, meaning; Calvinism that keeps to
what they actually say; Calvinism that insists on taking seriously the biblical
assertions that God saves, and that he saves those whom he has chosen to save,
and that he saves them by grace without works, so that no man may boast, and
that Christ is given to them as a perfect Saviour, and that their whole
salvation flows to them from the Cross, and that the work of redeeming them was
finished on the Cross. It is Calvinism that gives due honor to the Cross. When
the Calvinist sings,
"There is a green hill
far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all;
"He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good;
That we might go at last to Heaven,
Saved by His precious blood ."
he means it. He will not
gloss the italicised statements by saying that God's saving purpose in the
death of His Son was a mere ineffectual wish, depending for its fulfillment on
man's willingness to believe, so that for all God could do Christ might have died
and none been saved at all. He insists that the Bible sees the Cross as
revealing God's power to save, not His impotence. Christ did not win a
hypothetical salvation for hypothetical believers, a mere possibility of
salvation for any who might possibly believe, but a real salvation for His own
chosen people. His precious blood really does "save us all"; the
intended effects of His self-offering do in fact follow, just because the Cross
was what it was. Its saving power does not depend on faith being added to it;
its saving power is such that faith flows from it. The cross secured the full
salvation of all for whom Christ died. "God forbid," therefore,
"that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."[6]
Now the real nature of Calvinistic soteriology
becomes plain. It is no artificial oddity, nor a product of overbold logic. Its
central confession, that God saves
sinners, that Christ redeemed us by
His blood is the witness both of the Bible and of the believing heart. The
Calvinist is the Christian who confesses before men in his theology just what
he believes in his heart before God when he prays. He thinks and speaks at all
times of the sovereign grace of God in the way that every Christian does when
he pleads for the souls of others, or when he obeys the impulse of worship
which rises unbidden within him, prompting him to deny himself all praise and
to give all the glory of his salvation to his Saviour. Calvinism is the natural
theology written on the heart of the new man in Christ, whereas Arminianism is
an intellectual sin of infirmity, natural only in the sense in which all such
sins are natural, even to the regenerate. Calvinistic thinking is the Christian
being himself on the intellectual level; Arminian thinking is the Christian failing
to be himself through the weakness of the flesh. Calvinism is what the
Christian church has always held and taught when its mind has not been
distracted by controversy and false traditions from attending to what Scripture
actually says; that is the significance of the patristic testimonies to the
teaching of the "five points," which can be quoted in abundance.
(Owen appends a few on redemption; a much larger collection may be seen in John
Gill's The Cause of God and Truth.)
So that really it is most misleading to call this soteriology
"Calvinism" at all, for it is not a peculiarity of John Calvin and
the divines of Dort, but a part of the revealed truth of God and the catholic
Christian faith. "Calvinism" is one of the "odious names"
by which down the centuries prejudice has been raised against it. But the thing
itself is just the biblical gospel.[7]
In the light of these facts, we can now give a
direct answer to the questions with which we began.
"Surely all that Owen is doing is defending
limited atonement?" Not really. He is doing much more than that. Strictly
speaking, the aim of Owen's book is not defensive at all, but constructive. It
is a biblical and theological enquiry; its purpose is simply to make clear what
Scripture actually teaches about the central subject of the gospel--the
achievement of the Saviour. As its title proclaims, it is "a treatise of
the redemption and reconciliation that is in the blood of Christ: with the
merit thereof, and the satisfaction wrought thereby." The question which
Owen, like the Dort divines before him, is really concerned to answer is just
this; what is the gospel? All agree that it is a proclamation of Christ as
Redeemer, but there is a dispute as to the nature and extent of His redeeming
work: well, what saith the Scripture? what aim and accomplishment does the
Bible assign to the work of Christ? This is what Owen is concerned to
elucidate. It is true that he tackles the subject in a directly controversial
way, and shapes his book as a polemic against the "spreading persuasion...
of a general ransom, to be paid by
Christ for all; that he dies to redeem all
and every one."[8] But his work is a
systematic expository treatise, not a mere episodic wrangle. Owen treats the
controversy as providing the occasion for a full display of the relevant
biblical teaching in its own proper order and connection. As in Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the
polemics themselves are incidental and of secondary interest; their chief value
lies in the way that the author uses them to further his own design and carry
forward his own argument.
That argument is essentially very simple. Owen sees
that the question which has occasioned his writing--the extent of the
atonement--involves the further question of its nature, since if it was offered
to save some who will finally perish, then it cannot have been a transaction
securing the actual salvation for all for whom it was designed. But, says Owen,
this is precisely the kind of transaction that the Bible says it was. The first
two books of his treatise are a massive demonstration of the fact that
according to Scripture the Redeemer's death actually saves His people, as it
was meant to do. The third book consists of a series of sixteen arguments
against the hypothesis of universal redemption, all aimed to show, on the one
hand, that Scripture speaks of Christ's redeeming work as effective, which
precludes its having been intended for any who perish, and, on the other, that
if its intended extent had been universal, then either all will he saved (which Scripture denies, and the advocates
of the "general ransom" do not affirm), or else the Father and the Son have failed to do what they set out to
do--"which to assert," says Owen, "seems to us blasphemously
injurious to the wisdom, power and perfection of God, as likewise derogatory to
the worth and value of the death of Christ."
Owen's arguments ring a series of changes on this
dilemma.[9] Finally, in the fourth book, Owen shows with great
cogency that the three classes of texts alleged to prove that Christ died for
persons who will not be saved (those saying that he died for "the
world," for "all," and those thought to envisage the perishing
of those for whom he died), cannot on sound principles of exegesis be held to
teach any such thing; and, further, that the theological inferences by which
universal redemption is supposed to be established are really quite fallacious.
The true evangelical evaluation of the claim that Christ died for every man,
even those who perish, comes through at point after point in Owen's book. So
far from magnifying the love and grace of God, this claim dishonours both it
and Him, for it reduces God's love to an impotent wish and turns the whole
economy of "saving" grace, so-called ("saving" is really a
misnomer on this view), into a monumental divine failure. Also, so far from
magnifying the merit and worth of Christ's death, it cheapens it, for it makes
Christ die in vain. Lastly, so far from affording faith additional
encouragement, it destroys the Scriptural ground of assurance altogether, for
it denies that the knowledge that Christ died for me (or did or does anything
else for me) is a sufficient ground for inferring my eternal salvation; my
salvation, on this view, depends not on what Christ did for me, but on what I
subsequently do for myself. Thus, this view takes from God's love and Christ's
redemption the glory that Scripture gives them, and introduces the
anti-scriptural principle of self-salvation at the point where the Bible
explicitly says "not of works, lest any man should boast."[10] You cannot have it both
ways: an atonement of universal extent is a depreciated atonement. It has lost
its saving power; it leaves us to save ourselves. The doctrine of the general
ransom must accordingly he rejected, as Owen rejects it, as a grievous mistake.
By contrast, however, the doctrine which Owen sets out, as he himself shows, is
both biblical and God-honouring. It exalts Christ, for it teaches Christians to
glory in His Cross alone, and to draw their hope and assurance only from the
death and intercession of their Saviour. It is, in other words, genuinely
Evangelical. It is, indeed, the gospel of God and the catholic faith.
It is safe to say that no comparable exposition of
the work of redemption as planned and executed by the Triune Jehovah has ever
been done since Owen published his. None has been needed. Discussing this work,
Andrew Thomson notes how Owen "makes you feel when he has reached the end
of his subject, that he has also exhausted it".[11] That is demonstrably the
case here. His interpretation of the texts on the points of issue is sure; his
power of theological construction is superb; nothing that needs discussing is
omitted, and (so far as this writer can discover) no arguments for or against
his position have been used since his day which he has not himself noted and
dealt with. One searches his book in vain for the leaps and flights of logic by
which Reformed theologians are supposed to establish their positions; all that
one finds is solid, painstaking exegesis and a careful following through of
biblical ways of thinking. Owen's work is a constructive, broad-based biblical
analysis of the heart of the gospel, and must be taken seriously as such. It
may not be written off as a piece of special pleading for a traditional
shibboleth, for nobody has a right to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness,
or particularity, of atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he
has refuted Owen's proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation
of redemption, clearly taught in plain text after plain text. And nobody has
done that yet.
"You talked about recovering the gospel,"
said our questioner; "don't you mean that you just want us all to become
Calvinists?"
This question presumably concerns, not the word, but
the thing. Whether we call ourselves Calvinists hardly matters; what matters is
that we should understand the gospel biblically. But that, we think, does in
fact mean understanding it as historic Calvinism does. The alternative is to
misunderstand and distort it. We said earlier that modern Evangelicalism, by
and large, has ceased to preach the gospel in the old way, and we frankly admit
that the new gospel, insofar as it deviates from the old, seems to us a
distortion of the biblical message. And we can now see what has gone wrong. Our
theological currency has been debased. Our minds have been conditioned to think
of the cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a
Saviour who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection which
cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the human help which
God needs for this purpose. As a result, we are no longer free either to
believe the biblical gospel or to preach it. We cannot believe it, because our
thoughts are caught in the toils of synergism. We are haunted by the Arminian
idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts, they must be
independent acts; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely
by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from
Calvary. Instead, we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think
about salvation, telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on God and
next moment that it all depends on us. The resultant mental muddle deprives God
of much of the glory that we should give Him as author and finisher of
salvation, and ourselves of much of the comfort we might draw from knowing that
God is for us.
And when we come to preach the gospel, our false
preconceptions make us say just the opposite of what we intend. We want
(rightly) to proclaim Christ as Saviour; yet we end up saying that Christ,
having made salvation possible, has left us to become our own saviours. It
comes about in this way. We want to magnify the saving grace of God and the
saving power of Christ. So we declare that God's redeeming love expends to
every man, and that Christ has died to save every man, and we proclaim that the
glory of divine mercy is to be measured by these facts. And then, in order to
avoid universalism, we have to depreciate all that we were previously
extolling, and to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have
done can save us unless we add something to it; the decisive factor which
actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this--that Christ
saves us with our help; and what that means, when one thinks it out, is
this--that we save ourselves with Christ's help. This is a hollow anticlimax.
But if we start by affirming that God has a saving love for all, and Christ
died a saving death for all, and yet balk at becoming universalists, there is
nothing else that we can say. And let us be clear on what we have done when we
have put the matter in this fashion. We have not exalted grace and the Cross;
we have cheapened them. We have limited the atonement far more drastically than
Calvinism does, for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ's death, as such,
saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ's death, as
such, is sufficient to save any of them.[12]
We have flattered impenitent sinners by assuring
them that it is in their power to repent and believe, though God cannot make
them do it. Perhaps we have also trivialised faith to make this assurance
plausible ("it's very simple--just open your heart to the Lord...
."). Certainly, we have effectively denied God's sovereignty, and
undermined the basic conviction of true religion--that man is always in God's
hands. In truth, we have lost a great deal. And it is, perhaps, no wonder that
our preaching begets so little reverence and humility, and our professed
converts are so self-confident and so deficient in self-knowledge and in the
good works which Scripture regards as the fruit of true repentance.
It is from degenerate faith and preaching of this
kind that Owen's book could set us free. If we listen to him, he will teach us
both how to believe the Scripture gospel and how to preach it. For the first:
he will lead us to bow down before a sovereign Saviour who really saves, and to
praise Him for a redeeming death which made it certain that all for whom He
died will come to glory. It can't be overemphasised that we have not seen the
full meaning of the Cross till we have seen it as the divines of Dort display
it--as the centre of the gospel, flanked on the one hand by total inability and
unconditional election, and on the other by irresistible grace and final
preservation. For the full meaning of the Cross only appears when the atonement
is defined in terms of these four truths. Christ died to save a certain company
of helpless sinners upon whom God had set His free saving love. Christ's death
ensured the calling and keeping--the present and final salvation--of all whose
sins he bore. That is what Calvary meant, and means. The Cross saved; the Cross saves. This is the heart of true Evangelical faith; as Cowper
sang--
"Dear dying Lamb,Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved to sin no more."
This is the triumphant
conviction which underlay the old gospel, as it does the whole New Testament.
And this is what Owen will teach us unequivocally to believe.
Then, secondly, Owen could set us free, if we would
hear him, to preach the biblical gospel. This assertion may sound paradoxical,
for it is often imagined that those who will not preach that Christ died to
save every man are left with no gospel at all. On the contrary, however, what
they are left with is just the gospel of the New Testament. What does it mean
to preach "the gospel of the grace of God"? Owen only touches on this
briefly and incidentally,[13] but his comments are full
of light. Preaching the gospel, he tells us, is not a matter of telling the
congregation that God has set His love on each of them and Christ has died to
save each of them, for these assertions, biblically understood, would imply
that they will all infallibly be saved, and this cannot be known to be true.
The knowledge of being the object of God's eternal love and Christ's redeeming
death belongs to the individual's assurance,[14] which in the nature of the
case cannot precede faith's saving exercise; it is to be inferred from the fact
that one has believed, not proposed as a reason why one should believe.
According to Scripture, preaching the gospel is entirely a matter of
proclaiming to men, as truth from God which all are bound to believe and act
on, the following four facts:
(1.) that all men are
sinners, and cannot do anything to save themselves;
(2.) that Jesus Christ,
God's Son, is a perfect Saviour for sinners, even the worst;
(3.) that the Father and the
Son have promised that all who know themselves to he sinners and put faith in
Christ as Saviour shall be received into favor, and none cast out (which
promise is "a certain infallible truth, grounded upon the superabundant
sufficiency of the oblation of Christ in itself, for whomsoever (fewer or more)
it be intended"[15]);
(4.) that God has made
repentance and faith a duty, requiring of every man who hears the gospel
"a serious full recumbency and rolling of the soul upon Christ in the
promise of the gospel, as an all-suffcient Saviour, able to deliver and save to
the utmost them that come to God by him; ready, able and willing, through the
preciousness of His blood and sufficiency of his ransom, to save every soul
that shall freely give up themselves unto Him for that end."[16]
The preacher's task, in other words, is to display Christ, to explain man's need of
him, His sufficiency to save, and His offer of himself in the promises as
Saviour to all who truly turn to Him; and to show as fully and plainly as he
can how these truths apply to the congregation before him. It is not for him to
say, nor for his hearers to ask, for whom Christ died in particular.
"There is none called on by the gospel once to enquire after the purpose
and intention of God concerning the particular object of the death of Christ,
every one being fully assured that His death shall be profitable to them that
believe in Him and obey him." After saving faith has been exercised,
"it lies on a believer to assure his soul, according as he find the fruit
of the death of Christ in him and towards him, of the good-will and eternal
love of God to him in sending His Son to die for him in particular';[17] but not before. The task to
which the gospel calls him is simply to exercise faith, which he is both
warranted and obliged to do by God's command and promise.
Some comments on this conception of what preaching
the gospel means are in order.
First, we should observe that the old gospel of Owen
contains no less full and free an offer of salvation than its modern
counterpart. It presents ample grounds for faith (the sufficiency of Christ,
and the promise of God), and cogent motives to faith (the sinner's need, and
the Creator's command, which is also the Redeemer's invitation). The new gospel
gains nothing here by asserting universal redemption. The old gospel,
certainly, has no room for the cheap sentimentalising which turns God's free
mercy to sinners into a constitutional softheartedness on His part which we can
take for granted; nor will it countenance the degrading presentation of Christ
as the baffled Saviour, balked in what He hoped to do by human unbelief; nor
will it indulge in maudlin appeals to the unconverted to let Christ save them out
of pity for His disappointment. The pitiable Saviour and the pathetic God of
modern pulpits are unknown to the old gospel. The old gospel tells men that
they need God, but not that God needs them (a modern falsehood); it does not
exhort them to pity Christ, but announces that Christ has pitied them, though
pity was the last thing they deserved. It never loses sight of the Divine
majesty and sovereign power of the Christ whom it proclaims, but rejects flatly
all representations of Him which would obscure his free omnipotence. Does this
mean, however, that the preacher of the old gospel is inhibited or confined in
offering Christ to men and inviting them to receive Him? Not at all. In actual
fact, just because he recognises that Divine mercy is sovereign and free, he is
in a position to make far more of the offer of Christ in his preaching than is
the expositor of the new gospel; for this offer is itself a far more wonderful
thing on his principles than it can ever be in the eyes of those who regard
love to all sinners as a necessity of God's nature, and therefore a matter of
course. To think that the holy Creator, who never needed man for His happiness
and might justly have banished our fallen race for ever without mercy, should
actually have chosen to redeem some of them! and that His own Son was willing
to undergo death and descend into hell to save them! and that now from His
throne He should speak to ungodly men as He does in the words of the gospel,
urging upon them the command to repent and believe in the form of a
compassionate invitation to pity themselves and choose life! These thoughts are
the focal points round which the preaching of the old gospel revolves. It is
all wonderful, just because none of it can be taken for granted. But perhaps
that most wonderful thing of all--the holiest spot in all the holy ground of
gospel truth--is the free invitation which "the Lord Christ" (as Owen
loves to call him) issues repeatedly to guilty sinners to come to Him and find
rest for their souls. It is the glory of these invitations that it is an
omnipotent King who gives them, just as it is a chief part of the glory of the
enthroned Christ that He condescends still to utter them. And it is the glory
of the gospel ministry that the preacher goes to men as Christ's ambassador,
charged to deliver the King's invitation personally to every sinner present and
to summon them all to turn and live. Owen himself enlarges on this in a passage
addressed to the unconverted.
"Consider the infinite condescension and love
of Christ, in his invitations and calls of you to come unto Him for life,
deliverance, mercy, grace, peace and eternal salvation. Multitudes of these
invitations and calls are recorded in the Scripture, and they are all of them
filled up with those blessed encouragements which divine wisdom knows to be
suited unto lost, convinced sinners.... In the declaration and preaching of
them, Jesus Christ yet stands before sinners, calling, inviting, encouraging
them to come unto him.
"This is somewhat of the word which he now
speaks unto you: Why will ye die? why will ye perish? why will ye not have
compassion on your own souls? Can your hearts endure, or can your hands he
strong, in the day of wrath that is approaching... Look unto me, and be saved;
come unto me, and I will ease you of all sins, sorrows, fears, burdens, and
give rest unto your souls. Come, I entreat you; lay aside all procrastinations,
all delays, put me off no more; eternity lies at the door... do not so hate me
as that you will rather perish than accept of deliverance by me.
"These and the like things doth the Lord Christ
continually declare, proclaim, plead and urge upon the souls of sinners.... He
doth it in the preaching of the word, as if he were present with you, stood
amongst you, and spake personally to every one of you.... He hath appointed the
ministers of the gospel to appear before you, and to deal with you in his
stead, avowing as his own the invitations which are given you in his name, 2
Cor 5:19, 20."[18]
These invitations are universal; Christ addresses them to sinners, as such, and every
man, as he believes God to be true, is bound to treat them as God's words to
him personally and to accept the universal assurance which accompanies them,
that all who come to Christ will be received. Again, these invitations are real; Christ genuinely offers Himself to
all who hear the gospel, and is in truth a perfect Saviour to all who trust
Him. The question of the extent of the atonement does not arise in evangelistic
preaching; the message to be delivered is simply this--that Christ Jesus, the
sovereign Lord, who died for sinners, now invites sinners freely to Himself.
God commands all to repent and believe; Christ promises life and peace to all
who do so. Furthermore, these invitations are marvellously gracious; men despise and reject them, and are never
in any case worthy of them, and yet Christ still issues them. He need not, but
he does. "Come unto me ... and I will give you rest" remains his word
to the world, never canceled, always to be preached. He whose death has ensured
the salvation of all His people is to be proclaimed everywhere as a perfect
Saviour, and all men invited and urged to believe on Him, whoever they are,
whatever they have been. Upon these three insights the evangelism of the old gospel
is based.
It is a very ill-informed supposition that
evangelistic preaching which proceeds on these principles must be anaemic and
half-hearted by comparison with what Arminians can do. Those who study the
printed sermons of worthy expositors of the old gospel, such as Bunyan (whose
preaching Owen himself much admired), or Whitefieid, or Spurgeon, will find
that in fact they hold forth the Saviour and summon sinners to Him with a fulness,
warmth, intensity and moving force unmatched in Protestant pulpit literature.
And it will be found on analysis that the very thing which gave their preaching
its unique power to overwhelm their audiences with broken-hearted joy at the
riches of God's grace--and still gives it that power, let it be said, even with
hard-boiled modern readers--was their insistence on the fact that grace is free. They knew that the dimensions of
Divine love are not half understood till one realises that God need not have
chosen to save nor given his Son to die; nor need Christ have taken upon Him
vicarious damnation to redeem men, nor need He invite sinners indiscriminately
to Himself as He does; but that all God's gracious dealings spring entirely
from His own free purpose. Knowing this, they stressed it, and it is this
stress that sets their evangelistic preaching in a class by itself. Other
Evangelicals, possessed of a more superficial and less adequate theology of
grace, have laid the main emphasis in their gospel preaching on the sinner's
need of forgiveness, or peace or power, and on the way to get them by
"deciding for Christ." It is not to be denied that their preaching
has done good (for God will use his truth, even when imperfectly held and mixed
with error), although this type of evangelism is always open to the criticism
of being too man-centered and pietistic; but it has been left (necessarily) to
Calvinists and those who, like the Wesleys, fall into Calvinistic ways of
thought as soon as they begin a sermon to the unconverted, to preach the gospel
in a way which highlights above everything else the free love, willing
condescension, patient long-suffering and infinite kindness of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And, without doubt, this is the most Scriptural and edifying way to
preach it; for gospel invitations to sinners never honour God and exalt Christ
more, nor are more powerful to awaken and confirm faith, than when full weight
is laid on the free omnipotence of the mercy from which they flow. It looks,
indeed, as if the preachers of the old gospel are the only people whose
position allows them to do justice to the revelation of Divine goodness in the
free offer of Christ to sinners.
Then, in the second place, the old gospel safeguards
values which the new gospel loses. We saw before that the new gospel, by
asserting universal redemption and a universal Divine saving purpose, compels
itself to cheapen grace and the Cross by denying that the Father and the Son
are sovereign in salvation; for it assures us that, after God and Christ have
done all that they can, or will, it depends finally on each man's own choice
whether God's purpose to save him is realised or not. This position has two
unhappy results. The first is that it compels us to misunderstand the
significance of the gracious invitations of Christ in the gospel of which we
have been speaking; for we now have to read them, not as expressions of the
tender patience of a mighty Sovereign, but as the pathetic pleadings of
impotent desire; and so the enthroned Lord is suddenly metamorphosed into a
weak, futile figure tapping forlornly at the door of the human heart, which he
is powerless to open. This is a shameful dishonour to the Christ of the New
Testament. The second implication is equally serious: for this view in effect
denies our dependence on God when it comes to vital decisions, takes us out of
His hand, tells us that we are, after all, what sin taught us to think we
are--masters of our fate, captain of our souls--and so undermines the very
foundation of man's religious relationship with his Maker. It can hardly be
wondered at that the converts of the new gospel are so often both irreverent
and irreligious, for such is the natural tendency of this teaching. The old
gospel, however, speaks very differently and has a very different tendency. On
the one hand, in expounding man's need for Christ, it stresses something which
the new gospel effectively ignores--that sinners cannot obey the gospel, any
more than the law, without renewal of heart. On the other hand, on declaring
Christ's power to save, it proclaims Him as the author and chief agent of
conversion, coming by His Spirit as the gospel goes forth to renew men's hearts
and draw them to Himself. Accordingly, in applying the message, the old gospel,
while stressing that faith is man's duty, stresses also that faith is not in
man's power, but that God must give what He commands. It announces, not merely
that men must come to Christ for
salvation, but also that they cannot come
unless Christ Himself draws them. Thus it labours to overthrow self-confidence,
to convince sinners that their salvation is altogether out of their hands, and
to shut them up to a self-despairing dependence on the glorious grace of a
sovereign Saviour, not only for their righteousness but for their faith too.
It is not likely, therefore, that a preacher of the
old gospel will be happy to express the application of it in the form of a
demand to "decide for Christ," as the current phrase is. For, on the
one hand, this phrase carries the wrong associations. It suggests voting a
person into office--an act in which the candidate plays no part beyond offering
himself for election, everything then being settled by the voter's independent
choice. But we do not vote God's Son into office as our Saviour, nor does He
remain passive while preachers campaign on His behalf, whipping up support for
His cause. We ought not to think of evangelism as a kind of electioneering. And
then, on the other hand, this phrase obscures the very thing that is essential
in repentance and faith--the denying of self in a personal approach to Christ.
It is not at all obvious that deciding for
Christ is the same as coming to Him
and resting on Him and turning from sin and self-effort; it sounds like
something much less, and is accordingly calculated to instill defective notions
of what the gospel really requires of sinners. It is not a very apt phrase from
any point of view.
To the question; what must I do to be saved?, the
old gospel replies: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. To the further question;
what does it mean to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?, its reply is: it means
knowing oneself to be a sinner, and Christ to have died for sinners; abandoning
all self-righteousness and self-confidence, and casting oneself wholly upon Him
for pardon and peace; and exchanging one's natural enmity and rebellion against
God for a spirit of grateful submission to the will of Christ through the
renewing of one's heart by the Holy Ghost. And to the further question still,
how am I to go about believing on Christ and repenting, if I have no natural
ability to do these things?, it answers: look to Christ, speak to Christ, cry
to Christ, just as you are; confess your sin, your impenitence, your unbelief,
and cast yourself on His mercy; ask Him to give you a new heart, working in you
true repentance and firm faith; ask Him to take away your evil heart of
unbelief and to write His law within you, that you may never henceforth stray
from Him. Turn to Him and trust Him as best you can, and pray for grace to turn
and trust more thoroughly; use the means of grace expectantly, looking to
Christ to draw near to you as you seek to draw near to Him; watch, pray, and
read and hear God's word, worship and commune with God's people, and so
continue till you know in yourself beyond doubt that you are indeed a changed
being, a penitent believer, and the new heart which you desired has been put
within you. The emphasis in this advice is on the need to call upon Christ
directly, as the very first step.
"Let not conscience
make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requireth
Is to feel your need of Him"--
so do not postpone action
till you think you are better, but honestly confess your badness and give
yourself up here and now to the Christ who alone can make you better; and wait
on Him till His light rises in your soul, as Scripture promises that it shall
do. Anything less than this direct dealing with Christ is disobedience of the
gospel. Such is the exercise of spirit to which the old evangel summons its
hearers. "l believe--help thou mine unbelief": this must become their
cry.
And the old gospel is proclaimed in the sure
confidence that the Christ of whom it testifies, the Christ who is the real
speaker when the Scriptural invitations to trust Him are expounded and applied,
is not passively waiting for man's decision as the word goes forth, but is
omnipotently active, working with and though the word to bring His people to
faith in Himself. The preaching of the new gospel is often described as the
task of "bringing men to Christ"--as if only men move, while Christ
stands still. But the task of preaching the old gospel could more properly be
described as bringing Christ to men, for those who preach it know that as they
do their work of setting Christ before men's eyes, the mighty Saviour whom they
proclaim is busy doing his work through their words, visiting sinners with
salvation, awakening them to faith, drawing them in mercy to Himself.
It is the older gospel which Owen will teach us to
preach: the gospel of the sovereign grace of God in Christ as the author and
finisher of faith and salvation. It is the only gospel which can be preached on
Owen's principles, but those who have tasted its sweetness will not in any case
be found looking for another. In the matter of believing and preaching the
gospel, as in other things, Jeremiah's words still have their application:
"Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old
paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your
souls."[19] To find ourselves debarred, as Owen would debar us,
from taking up with the fashionable modern substitute gospel may not, after
all, be a bad thing, either for us or for the church.
More might be said, but to go further would be to
exceed the limits of an introductory essay. The foregoing remarks are made
simply to show how important it is at the present time that we should attend
most carefully to Owen's analysis of what the Bible says about the saving work
of Christ.
III.
It only remains to add a few
remarks about this treatise itself. It was Owen's second major work, and his
first masterpiece. (Its predecessor, A Display
of Arminianism, published in
1642, when Owen was twenty-six, was a competent piece of prentice-work, rather
of the nature of a research thesis.)
The Death of Death is a solid book, made up of
detailed exposition and close argument, and requires hard study, as Owen fully
realised; a cursory glance will not yield much. ("READER... If thou are,
as many in this pretending age, a sign or
title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out
again--thou has had thy entertainment; farewell!"[20]) Owen felt, however, that
he had a right to ask for hard study, for his book was a product of hard work
("a more than seven-years' serious inquiry... into the mind of God about
these things, with a serious perusal of all which I could attain that the wit
of man, in former or latter days, hath published in opposition to the
truth"[21]), and he was sure in his own mind that a certain
finality attached to what he had written. ("Altogether hopeless of success
I am not; but fully resolved that I shall not live to see a solid answer given
unto it."[22]) Time has justified his optimism.[23]
Something should be said about his opponents. He is
writing against three variations on the theme of universal redemption: that of
classical Arminianism, noted earlier; that of the theological faculty at Saumur
(the position known as Amyraldism, after its leading exponent); and that of
Thomas More, a lay theologian of East Anglia. The second of these views
originated with a Scots professor at Saumur, John Cameron; it was taken up and
developed by two of his pupils, Amyraut (Amyraldus) and Testard, and became the
occasion of a prolonged controversy in which Amyraut, Daillé and Blondel were
opposed by Rivet, Spanheim and Des Marets (Maresius). The Saumur position won
some support among Reformed divines in Britain, being held in modified form by
(among others) Bishops Usher and Davenant, and Richard Baxter. None of these,
however, had advocated it in print at the time when Owen wrote.[24]
Goold's summary of the Saumur position may be
quoted. "Admitting that, by the purpose of God, and through the death of
Christ, the elect are infallibly secured in the enjoyment of salvation, they
contended for an antecedent decree, by which God is free to give salvation to
all men through Christ, on the condition that
they believe on him. Hence their system was termed hypothetic(a1) universalism. The vital difference between it and
the strict Arminian theory lies in the absolute security asserted in the former
for the spiritual recovery of the elect. They agree, however, in attributing
some kind of universality to the atonement, and in maintaining that, on certain
condition, within the reach of
fulfillment by all men... all men have access to the benefits of Christ's
death." From this, Goold continues, "the readers of Owen will
understand... why he dwells with peculiar keenness and reiteration of statement
upon a refutation of the conditional system.... It was plausible; it had many
learned men for its advocates; it had obtained currency in the foreign
churches; and it seems to have been embraced by More."[25]
More is described by Thomas Edwards as "a great
Sectary, that did much hurt in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire; who
was famous also in Boston, [King's] Lynn, and even in Holland, and was followed
from place to place by many."[26] Baxter's description is
kinder: "a Weaver of Wisbitch
and Lyn, of excellent Parts."[27] (More's doctrine of
redemption, of course, was substantially Baxter's own.) Owen, however, has a
poor view of his abilities, and makes no secret of the fact. More's book, The Universality of God's Free Grace in
Christ to Mankind, appeared in 1646 (not, as Goold says, 1643), and must
have exercised a considerable influence, for within three years it had evoked
four weighty works which were in whole or part polemics against it:
A Refutation... of Thomas
More, by
Thomas Whitfield, 1646; Vindiciae
Redemptionis, by John Stalham, 1647; The
Universalist Examined and Convicted, by Obadiah Howe, 1648, and Owen's own
book, published in the same year.
More's exposition seems to be of little intrinsic importance;
Owen, however, selects it as the fullest statement of the case for universal
redemption that had yet appeared in English and uses it unmercifully as a
chopping-block. The modern reader, however, will probably find it convenient to
skip the sections devoted to refuting More (I. viii., the closing pages of II.
iii. and IV. vi.) on his first passage through Owen's treatise.
Finally, a word about the style of this work. There
is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read. This is not so much due to
obscure arrangement as to two other factors. The first is his lumbering
literary gait. "Owen travels through it [his subject] with the elephant's
grace and solid step, if sometimes also with his ungainly motion," says
Thomson.[28] That puts it kindly. Much of Owen's prose reads
like a roughly-dashed-off translation of a piece of thinking done in Ciceronian
Latin. It has, no doubt, a certain clumsy dignity; so has Stonehenge; but it is
trying to the reader to have to go over sentences two or three times to see
their meaning, and this necessity makes it much harder to follow an argument.
The present writer, however, has found that the hard places in Owen usually
come out as soon as one reads them aloud. The second obscuring factor is Owen's
austerity as an expositor. He has a lordly disdain for broad introductions
which ease the mind gently into a subject, and for comprehensive summaries
which gather up scattered points into a small space. He obviously carries the
whole of his design in his head, and expects his readers to do the same. Nor
are his chapter divisions reliable pointers to the structure of his discourse,
for though a change of subject is usually marked by a chapter division, Owen
often starts a new chapter where there is no break in the thought at all. Nor
is he concerned about literary proportions; the space given to a topic is
determined by its intrinsic complexity rather than its relative importance, and
the reader is left to work out what is basic and what is secondary by noting
how things link together. The reader will probably find it helpful to use a
pencil and paper in his study of the book and jot down the progress of the
exposition; and it is hoped that the subjoined Analysis will also be of service
in helping him keep his bearings..
We would conclude by repeating that the reward to be
reaped from studying Owen is worth all the labour involved, and by making the
following observations for the student's guidance. (l.) It is important to
start with the epistle "To the Reader," for there Owen indicates in
short compass what he is trying to do, and why. (2.) It is important to read
the treatise as a whole, in the order in which it stands, and not to jump into
Parts III. and IV. before mastering the contents of Parts I. and II., where the
biblical foundations of Owen's whole position are laid. (3.) It is hardly
possible to grasp the strength and cogency of this massive statement on a first
reading. The work must be read and reread to be appreciated.
J. I. Packer.
