May
21
John Owen: what’s the big deal?
Filed Under John Owen
J.I. Packer wrote of John Owen,
In his own day he was seen as England’s foremost bastion and champion of Reformed evlangelical orthodoxy, and he did not doubt that God had given him this role; but his interest lay in broadening and deepening insight into the realities that orthodoxy confesses, and a humbled and humbling awareness that his present understanding, though true (so he believed) as far as it went, was deeply inadequate to those realities pervades all that he wrote. In this, as in most things, he was more like John Calvin than was any other of the Puritan leaders. (A Quest for Godliness, 81)
His main body of work was published in the 19th century as a 16-volume set (what might he have accomplished with a word processor?), plus a 7-volume commentary on Hebrews and a work on biblical theology which has only recently been translated from Latin to English. His work is not easy reading. If you studied Latin somewhere along the way you have an advantage in reading with understanding, as Owen’s style is Latinate. His writing is condensed and heavy. The trick I have learned is to read it aloud (at a whisper at least), and much of the difficulty fades.
You might expect a man of such depth and accomplishment to struggle with pride and vanity–and Owen apparently did. His enemies accused him of such. But time and again his writings reflect the kind of maturity that brings men low in their opinion of themselves before God. He wrote,
There are two things that are suited to humble the souls of men…a due consideration of God, and then of ourselves. Of God, in his greatness, glory, holiness, power, majesty and authority; of ourselves, in our mean, abject and sinful condition…the man that understands the evil of his own heart, how vile it is, is the only useful, fruitful and solidly believing and obedient person. [vi.200-201]
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