Books at a Glance Interview: Owen on the Christian Life

Michael Haykin and I (Matthew Barrett) had the joy of being interviewed by Fred Zaspel on our new book:  Owen on the Christian Life. You can listen to the audio at Books at a Glance if you are a member. If not, you can still read the transcript. The start of the interview:

Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel):
Hi, this is Fred Zaspel with Books At a Glance. We’re talking today to Matthew Barrett and Michael Haykin about their new book, John Owen on the Christian Life. It is one of the recent volumes in the series of theologians on the Christian life by Crossway. It’s a great read, we’re glad to have you guys with us, thanks for coming.

Zaspel:

Alright, let’s start off. First of all just introduce us to the Puritans. It’s a familiar term to a lot of people, but to a lot of people it’s just a vague notion. So in broad strokes, who were they, when were they, what were the circumstances that distinguished their times and work?

Haykin:
Well, the Puritans really kind of emerged in the scene of history around the 1560’s. They were a body within the Church of England. Many of them had fled during the 1550’s from England because of persecution under Queen Mary the first. Sometimes known as Bloody Mary, she was a monarch in England who tried to take the Church of England back into the Roman Catholic Church and did so by martyring a good number of Anglican leaders.

After her death and the ascension to power of Elizabeth, who was clearly a Protestant, Calvinistic in soteriology, those who fled to the continent came back. They wanted…really the word “Puritan” kind of gives you an indication…they wanted the church to be pure and that is in the sense of being governed by Scripture in terms of all of its worship. And the earliest conflicts that the Puritans found with the larger body of Anglicans was over worship.

By the 1580’s those conflicts had broadened to issues of church governance. The queen and many in the Church of England were quite happy with an Episcopal arrangement. The Puritans by and large were Presbyterian. And by the sixteen teens the issues had broadened even further with the rise of what we call Arminianism and then the issues had become soteriological—how are we saved, and can we lose our salvation, etc.? What is the role of the human being in the whole work of salvation?

The Puritans by and large sought to reform the Church of England; eventually it issued in religious war in the 1640’s. The English civil wars is what they are sometimes called. You really have the British civil wars, they began in 1638 and ended in 1651, enveloping the entirety of the British isles. The Puritans win that war, Oliver Cromwell becomes the key leader, but with his death and the collapse of Puritan government into almost anarchy, the king is invited back in 1660. His name is Charles II and he begins a massive campaign on a number of levels, one of the legal, designed to destroy the Puritan cause of any sort of political power, but also a massive campaign of propaganda against the Puritans.

So that today, when we think of the word puritan or puritanical we generally think of someone who is narrow minded, bigoted, afraid that there might be someone somewhere having joy or being happy, which is completely opposite of what the Puritans were like in many ways.

Zaspel:
Interesting.

Alright, for any who might not be familiar with him, tell us a little bit about John Owen. Who was he, when did he live, and why is he sometimes referred to as the dean of the puritans, what makes him such a significant figure?

Haykin:
Well, Owen is born in 1616, so next year is the 400^th anniversary of his birth, the very year actually that William Shakespeare dies. By the time that he is born the Puritan movement is about 50 years old, has been striving without any real success to bring about reformation, complete reformation in the Church of England. His father was a Puritan, a minister not far from Oxford.

Owen went to Oxford in the 1630’s, would eventually graduate from Oxford with a BA and an MA. But those were the years of civil war so Owen found himself shut out from Oxford. Oxford becomes a center where the king eventually establishes his court and definitely anti-Puritan. And Owen finds himself in London.  He has a number of pastorates in the London area in Essex and Kent….in Essex rather, and finds himself making a transition from Presbyterianism, which most Puritans were, to Congregationalism.

He comes to the attention of Oliver Cromwell—Cromwell loves his preaching—he serves as Oliver Cromwell’s chaplain on a campaign in Ireland, as well as preaching before Parliament. With the collapse of the Puritan government in 1660, Owen finds himself now like pretty well every other Puritan minister, not able to conduct divine worship or to lead a congregation, to pastor. He continues to do so, but with the risk of persecution and imprisonment. Because he has some very highly placed friends he is never imprisoned more than a day or so, but there is that risk. There is persecution.

Owen is remembered really because of the weight of his voluminous writings. On a number of fronts he writes definitive works for the seventeenth century. His The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is probably the classic defense of particular redemption. His book on the glory of Christ is just a masterpiece of Christology and spirituality. His massive work on the Holy Spirit, which runs to two huge volumes in the Banner of Truth edition, republished in the twentieth century from a nineteenth century edition is the largest work ever written in the English language on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. So there’s a vast amount of material that Own is remembered for in terms of his theology.

Zaspel:
Interesting.

I should have introduced you guys in the beginning.  Matthew Barrett is the soon to be tutor in Systematic Theology and Church History at Oak Hill Theological College in London. He is currently in California, but is about to move there. And Michael Haykin is Professor of Church History and Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. We’ve been talking with Michael Haykin and now, Matthew, why don’t you join us. I was going to ask next, Michael has already gotten into this a little bit, but give us a sense of Owen’s literary output, and also maybe some areas of Owen’s most outstanding contributions. Michael has addressed that as well, but maybe you can add to it for us.

Barrett:
Sure, I would be glad to.

Michael hints at this in a number of ways, but Owen’s output was unbelievable, I mean if you just look at, for example, the Banner of Truth edition of his works you have the sixteen volumes that make up his writings and then you also have another seven volumes just on the book of Hebrews—commentary and theological commentary on the book of Hebrews. It’s a little bit deceiving because even those sixteen volumes of the Banner of Truth edition, many of those volumes are made up of multiple books by Owen.

So this is a Puritan who wrote so much, and it is sometimes easy to think that he was just an intellectual, but he wasn’t, he was a theologian but he was also very pastoral in his writings. You pick up many of these writings and you are diving into deep theological truths, but also Owen, in a very Puritan-like fashion doesn’t leave things in the realm of just pure theology then transitions to show how this affects the Christian life. And almost any work you pick up of his you see that practical application. These books are not light reading, they are drenched in theology, but they are also very edifying for the soul because of their practical applications.

I think this is one of the reasons—there are many reasons—but this is one of the reasons Owen is sometimes considered the greatest theologian of the English Puritan movement and, some would argue, the greatest European Reformed theologian of his day. Michael has mentioned a number of his works that are important. Death of Death is one of his most famous works on particular atonement.

If we back up, his first theological tome is A Display of Arminianism which is also just a classic work early on where Owen displays his defense of the doctrines of grace, but there’s many other works of his—Communion With God the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit is one of Owen’s works I would recommend the most. Rarely today do you see a book written on the trinity that has such practical application, and in this book Owen not only unfolds the doctrine of the trinity, but he shows the believer how he or she is meant and designed by God to have communion distinctly with each member, each person of the trinity.

Another one I would mention, Mortification of Sin, as well as his book, Indwelling Sin, both of those books focus on sanctification. Owen is so famous for his treatment of killing sin, seeking holiness in order to glorify God and enjoy God. Michael mentioned a minute ago, the Puritans sometimes get this, they get caricatured of just going around fearful that there is someone somewhere having fun, and nothing could be further from the truth and Owen is a great example of this. In these books, likeCommunion with God or Mortification of Sin, he desires to know God and enjoy to God because he knows that is where true happiness and joy is found in the Christian life.

So those are some of his works. There are many others to be mentioned, The Person of Christ, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, Owen does an incredible job focusing on not only who Christ is, but how our understanding of the person and the work of Christ should really bring us to our knees in worship of Christ as our savior and Lord. …

Read the rest of this interview today