May
29
John Owen and Pentecost
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This past Lord’s Day was Pentecost Sunday, the occasion of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the promise of Joel 2:28-32 (“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…”). In the Old Testament Pentecost was a feast that celebrated the first fruits of the year’s harvest (Exodus 23:16; Numbers 28:26). In the New Testament, the fulfillment appears, and the long-expected Day of the Lord has arrived: the powers of the age to come are released; the harvest of the world begins to come in. Christ—crucified, risen and ascended—pours out the Spirit in unrestrained measure and without geographical or ethnic limitation. The gospel promise “is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39).
John Owen wrote Pneumatalogia, or A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit in 1674. It
is a massive work occupying 650 pages in the Banner of Truth edition of Owen’s works (volume 3). Volume 4 contains a number of other works by Owen on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Banner of Truth Trust has also released an abridged and modernized version, edited by R.J.K. Law, in their ‘Puritan Paperback Series’ entitled The Holy Spirit, to make Owen’s monumental work a bit more accessible to contemporary readers. The Sweet Dropper, who has read and outlined the entirety of the originals in volumes 3 and 4, highly recommends the paperback.
Here is a good taste of the abridged version, which I read during Evening Worship:
The great privilege prophesied of the gospel age, which would make the New Testament church more glorious than that of the Old, was the wonderful pouring out of the promised Holy Spirit on all believers. This was the good wine which was kept to the last (Isa. 35:7; 44:3; Joel 2:28; Ezek. 11:19; 36:27).
The ministry of the gospel by which we are born again is called the ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:8). The promise of the Holy Spirit under the gospel is to all believers and not just to a special few (Rom. 8:9; John 14:16; Matt.28:20). We are taught to pray that God would give us his Holy Spirit, so that with his help we may live to God in the holy obedience he requires (Luke 11:9-13; Matt. 7;11; Eph. 1:17; 3:16; Col. 2:2; Rom. 8:26). The Holy Spirit was solemnly promised by Jesus Christ when he was about to leave the world (John 14:15-17; Heb. 9:15-17; 2 Cor. 1:22; John 14:27; 16:13). So the Holy Spirit is promised and given as the only cause of all the good that in this world we can partake of.
There is no good that we receive from God but it is brought to us and wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Nor is there in us any good towards God, any faith, love, obedience to his will, but what we are enabled to do by the Holy Spirit. For in us, that is in our flesh, there is no good thing, as Paul tells us…The Holy Spirit’s work is to bring to completion what the Father had planned to do through his Son. By this, God is made know to us, and we are taught to trust in him. (p.19,21)
May
21
John Owen: what’s the big deal?
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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]
May
11
May, 2007: John Owen month
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My scribes and archivists brought this to me from The Book of the Chronicles of the Pastors of the First Presbyterian Church of Kosciusko of Mississippi:
‘By all the executive powers invested in me as senior minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Kosciusko, Mississippi, and co-regent of the Sweet Dropper blog, I hereby declare the month of May, 2007, as “John Owen month.” So it is written; so let it be done.’
/s/ Phillip J. Palmertree, Tiller of Soils, Maker of 3-Pointers, and Drinker of the Chicory-Laced Coffee
So, I better start blogging about John Owen…John Owen (1616-1683) was by the consent of his contemporaries and generations that have followed, the weightiest and greatest of the English Puritan theologians. J.I. Packer provides this succinct summary of Owen’s life:
Born in 1616, he entered Queen’s College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and secured his M.A. in 1635, when he was nineteen. In his early twenties, conviction of sin threw him into such turmoil that for three months he could scarcely utter a coherent word on anything; but slowly he learned to trust Christ, and so found peace. In 1637 he became a pastor; in the 1640s he was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and in 1651 he was made Dean of Christ Church, Oxford’s largest college. In 1652 he was given the additional post of Vice-Chancellor of the University, which he then reorganized with conspicuous success. After 1660 he led the Independents through the bitter years of persecution till his death in 1683.
On a personal note, my introduction to Owen came while I was a student at Mississippi State University. One day in the MSU Bakery I had asked my RUF campus minister Hal Farnsworth what book he recommended on sanctification. He told me that the greatest work on sanctification had been written over 300 years ago by a man named John Owen, and that an English major like myself just might be able to tackle it. Thanks largely to the appeal to my vanity, I determined to read it…but I never did–at least until I was out of school and working as an RUF campus intern at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Owen’s On the Mortification of Sin is indeed the greatest work on sanctification. I’ll say more about it in particular later in the month.
Since then, I was able to take a class on Owen under Sinclair Ferguson, do a directed study Th.M. class on Owen under Derek Thomas and do a lot of independent study and outlining of his voluminous works. This month Owen, and some new, interesting works about Owen that have recently been published, will be the matter for my blog entries. I’ll close out this one with Owen’s words and a photo of his grave.
Let our hearts admit, “I am poor and weak. Satan is too subtle, too cunning,
too powerful; he watches constantly for advantages over my soul. The world presses in upon me with all sorts of pressures, pleas, and pretences. My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me. Occasions and opportunities for temptation are innumerable. No wonder I do not know how deeply involved I have been with sin. Therefore, on God alone will I rely for my keeping. I will continually look to him.
Mar
5
Saved by his precious blood
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J.I. Packer’s introductory essay for the Banner of Truth’s reprint of John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is one of the most important short treatments of the purpose of the atoning death of Christ you can read. Our friends at Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church in Simpsonville, South Carolina have done us all a great service by posting it on their website. The time you take to read it will be amply rewarded.
Feb
16
Making Owen Accessible
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I’m currently reading an excellent compilation of three of John Owen’s greatest works. The books is entitled, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, and is an unabridged compilation of John Owen’s Mortification of Sin, Of Temptation, and Indwelling Sin. Lovers of John Owen, who have wanted to own these works, have in years past had to decide between either buying the costly corpus of all of Owen’s works or settling for an abridged alternative. Justin Taylor and Kelly Kapic have made this version available with the intention of making Owen more accessible by eliminating the cost barrier and providing a readable unabridged version of these classic works.
Although the works are unabridged, the editors have done several things to make the text easier to read. As is stated in the introduction, features of this volume include:
- Overviews of the thesis and arguments for each book
- Footnoted definitions for difficult vocabular words
- Americanized the Brittish spellings
- Updated archaic pronouns, spellings, and word forms
- Modernized some of the punctuation
- Put Scripture references in parenthesis
- Added Scritpure references to undocumented allusions
- Transliterated Hebrew and Greek words
- Translated Latin phrases that Owen left untranslated
- Removed Owen’s intricate numbering system and placed an extended outline of each work in the appendix
- Added headings and italics throughout the volume to aid in the discernment of the flow of Owen’s thought
You could not ask for more in terms of enhancing the readability of John Owen. I will warn you though, that Owen’s works are not easy reading. They are dense. But they are dense with theological richness that will challenge and bless your growth in grace. This book is well worth your time. As I have heard John Piper say on occasion, you can’t mine precious jewels with a rake. You need a shovel and some hard labor. If you have ever wondered how to fight sin, this book is a must read!
“John Owen is a spiritual surgeon with the rare skill to cut away the cancer of sin and bring gospel healing to the sinner’s soul. Apart from the Bible, I have found his writings to be the best books ever written to help me stop sinning the same old sins.” -Philip Graham Ryken