Communion with the Triune God (Foreword by Kevin J. Vanhoozer) E-Book

John Owen

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Beschreibung

Does it make a difference that the God Christians claim to worship has revealed himself as triune-the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Does this fundamental truth of biblical authority have an effect on a believer's personal fellowship with God? Puritan theologian John Owen recognized the great need for every believer to understand the triune God. Communion with the Triune God revisits the truth presented by John Owen and challenges all believers to truly recognize and appreciate the ministry that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have in their lives. This work of John Owen encourages Christians to enjoy true communion with each person of the triune God.

Leseprobe

Communion with the Triune God Copyright © 2007 by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor Published by Crossway Books a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Cover design: Josh DennisCover illustration: Bridgeman Art LibraryFirst printing 2007Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Owen, John, 1616–1683.Communion with the Triune God / by John Owen; edited by Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor; foreword by Kevin J. Vanhoozer.p. cm.Rev. ed. of: Of communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, each person distinctly in love, grace, and consolation.Includes indexes.ISBN 978-1-58134-831-6 (tpb)1. Spirituality. I. Kapic, Kelly M., 1972– II. Taylor, Justin, 1976– III. Owen, John, 1616–1683. Of communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, each person distinctly in love, grace, and consolation. IV. Title. BV4501.3.O93 2007231.7—dc22

2007020762

DP   15  14  13  12  11  10  09  08  07        9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2   1

With gratitude and love to our parents:

Gary and Linda Kapic Gerald and Diane Taylor

CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations

Foreword, Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Worshiping the Triune God: The Shape of John Owen’s Trinitarian Spirituality, Kelly M. Kapic

A Note on This Edition, Justin Taylor

Outline

Communion with the Triune God

Preface

Part 1: Of Communion with the Father

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part 2: Of Communion with the Son Jesus Christ

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Digression 1

Digression 2

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part 3: Of Communion with the Holy Ghost

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Glossary

List of Abbreviations

ANF     The Ante-Nicene Fathers

LXX     Septuagint

NPNF    The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers

NPNF1  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1

NPNF2  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2

PCG       Poetae Comici Graeci

PG       Patrologia Graeca

PL       Patrologia Latina

FOREWORD

As one who has ploughed postmodern fields and cleared deconstructive hermeneutical thickets, it gives me particular pleasure to introduce and commend the work of a seventeenth-century theologian that takes us to the very heart of Puritan faith, hope, and love. Despite my extended forays into various kinds of postliberal and postconservative theology—or perhaps because of them—John Owen’s study of communion with the triune God strikes me as especially significant, even contemporary, and this for three, maybe four, reasons.

In the first place, much has been made of late concerning the “renaissance” of Trinitarian theology that began with Karl Barth and picked up steam throughout the twentieth century until it achieved “bandwagon” status around 1980. One of the most important present-day litmus tests for theologians pertains to how far one accepts (or understands!) Rahner’s Rule: “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and vice versa.”

Read against the backdrop of the current discussion, Owen’s approach to the doctrine of the Trinity is impressive indeed. Owen walks a fine line that balances the oneness and the threeness, emphasizing our communion “with each person distinctly” while at the same time insisting that to commune with each person is to commune with the one God. Perhaps one advantage of Owen’s approach over more than a few contemporary approaches is that he is able to preserve the distinctness of the Father’s love while simultaneously focusing on Christ as the one alone who makes it known.

A second point. Christianity, it has been said, is not a religion but a personal relation. Owen agrees that theology is relational, but his account of our relation with God bears little resemblance either to the casual way in which it sometimes gets played out in dumbed-down theology and worship or to the reductionistic way it gets worked out in wised-up theology that defines persons as “nothing but” relations and which views the God-humanity relation in terms of a flattened out mutuality. Owen’s Communion with the Triune God is indispensable reading for all those who want to go deeper into the meaning of relationality than one typically goes in the pop-theology boats that float only on the psychological surface of the matter.

The gospel is the good news that in Christ there is union and communion with God. According to Owen, communion involves “mutual relations” between God and humankind—a giving and receiving—but it does not follow that God and humankind are equal partners. Only God can bring about the union that establishes and enables the subsequent communion. Humans enjoy fellowship with God, therefore, only by actively participating in what God has unilaterally done for them in Christ through the Spirit. Owen may here have something to teach contemporary theology concerning the nature of human participation in God’s triune life, namely, that participation, like communion itself, is neither a legal fiction nor idle piety but rather the meat and drink of the Christian life. We appropriate the friendship God offers through the workings of his Word and Spirit in and through our natural human faculties.

The third significant feature is Owen’s emphasis on theology for right worship and faithful practice. Here too, twenty-first-century theology is playing catch-up with the Puritans as it seeks ways of coordinating theory and practice, both informally, in everyday life, and formally, in theological education. Owen’s work provides just the right balance, tempering spiritual experience with biblical exegesis, and argumentative rigor with pastoral application.

“I pray God with all my heart that I may be weary of every thing else but converse and communion with him” (letter to Sir John Hartopp).This prayer signals for me a fourth way in which Owen’s Communion with the Triune God has something to contribute, in this case to my own work in progress. As one who has seen great potential in the notion of Scripture as made up of God’s speech acts, I am encouraged and intrigued by Owen’s way of relating communion and communication:“Our communion . . . with God consisteth in his communication of himself unto us, with our return unto him of that which he requireth and accepteth, flowing from that union which in Jesus Christ we have with him. . . .” To be sure, by “communication” Owen has in mind every kind of divine self-giving, not only the verbal and the cognitive. In this regard, Owen’s emphasis, some three hundred years before Barth, on Christ as the “medium of all communication” between God and us is particularly noteworthy.

Though Owen was born the year Shakespeare died, his writing is somewhat less accessible. Yet what we have in Owen is ultimately a holy sonnet with an extended introduction and a protracted analysis: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.” Communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit begins with God’s love for us and ends in our love to God. Communion with the triune God is sweeter yet more profound than human friendship or any human relationship.

In sum: Owen’s work anticipates key modern and postmodern developments without falling into some of the traps to which these later movements are prone. While John Bunyan probably did not have John Owen in mind when he wrote about the House of the Interpreter in Pilgrim’s Progress, Christians today may nevertheless find Owen to be a reliable guide to the triune way of the Word.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer Research Professor of Systematic TheologyTrinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Few things are more pleasurable to authors and editors than when they reach the end of an exhausting project and finally have the opportunity to write acknowledgments. Sometimes people have the impression that editing books is less time consuming than writing them. While there is some truth to that, we have found that the amount of work that goes into preparing a volume like this is substantial, and consequently the help and encouragement of many people is just as vital. With that in mind, here are some of the people for whom we are so thankful, for without their partnership in this process, the present volume and our lives would have been impoverished.

Two of Kelly’s former students and research assistants deserve special mention: Cameron Moran and Brian Hecker. They worked hard, put in countless hours, and were willing to go beyond the call of duty on many occasions. We also benefited from the Latin expertise of Casey Carmichael, Daniel Hill, and Jonathan Rockey, whose assistance certainly made this volume better. Others who provided support of various kinds, including much-needed encouragement, include: Tim Cooper, Jay Green, John Holberg, Jeff and Lynn Hall, Scott Jones, Danny Kapic, Ryan Kelly, John and Lynn Malley, Tad Mindemann, Susan Hardman Moore, Jeff Morton, Paul Morton, Joy Muether, J. I. Packer, Joshua Sowin (who helped Justin create www.johnowen.org), and Carl Trueman.

We would like to acknowledge the generous support received from the Kaleo Center at Covenant College, which is funded through Lilly Endowment Inc.

Kevin Vanhoozer is worthy of many thanks for his willingness to take time away from his many other projects to pen a foreword for this volume.

We are thankful to Allan Fisher of Crossway Books for endlessly supporting and believing in this project and to Lydia Brownback for editing it and offering encouragement along the way.

Our families have been incredibly gracious, and we wish to recognize our wives, Tabitha Kapic and Lea Taylor, for their tremendous support and love. You two are truly amazing; thank you for filling our lives with color and perspective. Our children, Jonathan and Margot Kapic, and Claira and Malachi Taylor, have been a constant source of joy, reminding us of the important things in life: trucks, stickers, sand, and giggling.

Finally, we dedicate this work to our parents: Gary and Linda Kapic, and Gerald and Diane Taylor. We are thankful for your consistent love and for the sacrifices you have made through the years. May you know and ever increase in your love of the triune God in whom we find rest and communion.

INTRODUCTION

Worshiping the Triune God:The Shape of John Owen's Trinitarian Spirituality

KELLY M.KAPIC

“So much as we see of the love of God, so much shall we delight in him, and no more.”1

“No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”2

Since 1942 there has been an incredibly popular BBC radio program entitled Desert Island Discs. During this show the host asks a guest to select just eight “must-have” recordings they would take to the island. Similar programs turn the focus from music to books. If you had just eight books, what would they include?

When I am occasionally asked such a question, there is always one book that makes my personal short list: John Owen’s Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Each Person Distinctly, in Love, Grace, and Consolation.3 What surprises me, however, is how few people are aware of this particular classic. The good news is that Owen’s writings are being rediscovered and appreciated by pastors, theologians, historians, and lay readers alike.4 The reason is simple: his work has relevance for people in all of these categories.

Owen’s writings are theologically rich, pastorally wise, and exegetically stimulating. One need not agree with everything this Puritan wrote in order to greatly profit from wrestling with his thinking. Because Owen’s methodology consistently unites—rather than divides—knowledge about God and human nature, his work can have a fresh quality to it. His devotional reflection does not divorce spirituality from a robust theological infrastructure. Sadly, due to the barriers presented by Owen’s difficult writing style, language, and cultural distance, his insights are often underappreciated by contemporary readers. It is our hope that through this new edition of an Owen classic, we can reintroduce a wider audience to John Owen and his approach to Trinitarian spirituality.

Brief Biography

John Owen (1616–1683) lived through an extraordinarily turbulent time in British history.5 During his lifetime he personally witnessed the severity of a civil war, the beheading of a king, a parliament that consistently flirted with chaos, the return of an exiled king, deep religious strife, and even persecution at the hands of protestant and catholic alike. He even suffered the anguish of the death of his first wife and all of his children. Such experiences shaped this Puritan divine as he fluidly moved among the spheres of academic, political, and pastoral life.

Well trained at Oxford, Owen’s career included not only working as an army chaplain at the personal request of Oliver Cromwell, but also serving as the vice chancellor of Oxford University (1652–1657) and dean of Christ Church, Oxford (1651–1660). When he was not serving in the academy, he was normally assisting in some kind of pastoral work, which continued until the very end of his life. Through all of this, Owen was able to produce a massive amount of literature: ultimately his writings in the authoritative nineteenth-century edition include twenty-four tightly packed volumes.6 Through these thousands of pages, Owen covers everything from church government to justification by faith, from toleration to the nature of the atonement.7 In the study before us, we find him delving into what it means for believers to commune with the triune God.

Communion with God: The Book

Communion with God was first published in 1657, but the material in the book grew out of sermons preached some years earlier.8 Apparently there were many who, upon first hearing him preach through this material, were eager for it to get into print and were frustrated at the delay.9 Remembering that the original context was primarily pastoral and not an exercise in academic polemics helps explain the tone of much of the discourse. While it is clear that he modified, revised, and added various details to this work before it was published, the heart of the material points back to the pulpit.

Convinced that believers need to know their God in order to be faithful worshipers, Owen framed his approach to Christian spirituality in a Trinitarian manner; for only in the divine persons did Owen believe we can rightly know God. Owen’s contribution lies not merely in what is said but in how and when he says it, for he was a master of theological creativity and expression. The very structure of this work—with his emphasis on the Three as the way to understand the One—makes even this book’s design significant in the history of Western theology. We discover a work that is intentionally and consistently Trinitarian in structure and Christocentric in emphasis.10 In order to appreciate his method and content, let us turn to the work itself.

Overview of This Essay

Brief highlights of what will be covered in the work may prove helpful. We begin by exploring the general idea of communion with the eternal triune God; this includes reflections on Owen’s distinction between union and communion, as well as his stress on the importance that the one God is eternally three. From there we turn our attention to the Father, of whom Owen believes we often have a distorted view which makes us hesitant to commune with him. When Owen’s focus turns to the Son we will discover what it means to rightly know God by fixing our eyes on Christ, the great Lover of the church. Finally we briefly survey Owen’s extensive work on the Holy Spirit. Special attention is paid to how, in this particular treatise, Owen encourages us to identify and worship the Spirit of God. In the end we will have a panoramic view of Owen’s approach to communion with the triune God.

Communion with God: A Triune Approach

Union and Communion: Spiritual Security without Neglecting Human Activity

Central to Owen’s thesis is the idea that communion requires “mutual relations” between God and us. Before turning to examine the relations among the divine persons, we will begin by considering our relationship with God. To experience communion there needs to be fellowship and communication—e.g., shared affections, response, delight, and satisfaction. In other words, when Owen speaks of our communion with God, he really means active communion, and not merely a state of passivity.“Communion consists in giving and receiving.”11

But to appreciate how this informs his view of spirituality, it is important to note that Owen maintains an essential distinction between union and communion. Believers are united to Christ in God by the Spirit. This union is a unilateral action by God, in which those who were dead are made alive, those who lived in darkness begin to see the light, and those who were enslaved to sin are set free to be loved and to love. When one speaks of “union,” it must be clear that the human person is merely receptive, being the object of God’s gracious action. This is the state and condition of all true saints.

Communion with God, however, is distinct from union. Those who are united to Christ are called to respond to God’s loving embrace. While union with Christ is something that does not ebb and flow, one’s experience of communion with Christ can fluctuate. This is an important theological and experiential distinction, for it protects the biblical truth that we are saved by radical and free divine grace. Furthermore, this distinction also protects the biblical truth that the children of God have a relationship with their Lord, and that there are things they can do that either help or hinder it. When a believer grows comfortable with sin (whether sins of commission or sins of omission) this invariably affects the level of intimacy this person feels with God. It is not that the Father’s love grows and diminishes for his children in accordance with their actions, for his love is unflinching. It is not that God turns from us, but that we run from him. Sin tends to isolate the believer, making him feel distant from God. Then come the accusations—both from Satan and self—which can make the believer worry that he is under God’s wrath. In truth, however, saints stand not under wrath but in the safe shadow of the cross.

While a saint’s consistency in prayer, corporate worship, and biblical meditation are not things that make God love him more or less, such activities tend to foster the beautiful experience of communion with God. Giving in to temptations and neglecting devotion to God threaten the communion but not the union.12 And it is this union which encourages the believer to turn from sin and to the God who is quick to forgive, abounding in compassion, and faithful in his unending love. Let there be no misunderstanding—for Owen, Christian obedience was of utmost importance, but it was always understood to flow out of this union and never seen as the ground for it.13 In harmony with Bunyan and other dissenters like him, Owen “insisted upon a very personal and emotional experience of union with Christ and the Holy Spirit,” and out of this union naturally flowed active communion.14

Along these lines, when Owen unpacks the work of the Spirit, he makes a distinction between the Spirit being received in terms of “sanctification” and the Spirit’s work of “consolation.”15When he refers to sanctification in this context he means the work whereby the Spirit sets us apart, uniting us to Christ and making us alive. This is “a mere passive reception, as a vessel receives water.”16 This is the movement from being outside the kingdom of God to becoming a child of the King.

When Owen speaks of the Spirit’s work of consolation, he has in mind the comforting activity of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Christians need not be passive in the hope that the Spirit will bring comfort; rather, they should (1) seek his comfort by focusing on the promises of God realized in the Spirit, (2) call out to the Spirit of supplication to bring consolation, and (3) attend “to his motions,” which take us to the Father and Son. In all of this we rightly and actively receive him who freely comes to bring comfort and grace. Again, our union with God in Christ is never in jeopardy, but our sense of fellowship with God does necessitate appropriate human agency and response. “The Comforter may always abide with us, though not always comfort us; he who is the Comforter may abide, though he do not always that work.”17 Believers have the Spirit of God in them, without question, but that does not mean they should view their actions as irrelevant. Along these lines, sometimes the Spirit “tenders [i.e., offers] consolation to us” but we do not receive it and thus do not enjoy the full fruit of his activity in us. Christian living, for Owen, neither divides the labor between the divine and human nor neglects the activity of both: we work because God works in us.18

Any true relation requires what Owen elsewhere calls mutuality, and we should not shy away from the fact that we are invited, by the Spirit, to actively commune with God.19 This communion assumes the security of the union. Keeping in mind Owen’s distinction between union and communion, one is better able to make sense of his conclusion:“The Spirit as a sanctifier comes with power, to conquer an unbelieving heart; the Spirit as a comforter comes with sweetness, to be received in a believing heart.”20 Though the Spirit will never abandon a believer, it should not surprise us that neglecting such receptivity to the Spirit’s movement compromises our sense of intimacy. For Owen, grace must be understood as the ground of this relationship, from first to last, from justification to preservation of the saints, from God’s acceptance of us to his glorifying the saints—grace is the bottom of the entire understanding of the saints’ security and privilege before God.21 This grace, however, demands rather than denies human response. But if we are to respond rightly, we must know to whom we are responding.

The One God Who Is Eternally Three

Who is God? To whom do I pray, trust, and cry out in times of confusion and pain? Can God really be known, or do we just have signposts to God that have little correspondence with who he really is? What does it mean for me to know God? Such questions should cut to the heart of Christian faith and experience. What could be more fundamental than making sure that one’s praise is directed toward the true God and that one’s view of that God is not mere fancy but correspondent with his reality?

Drawing from Scripture, Owen shows us that the one true God is, from all eternity, Father, Son, and Spirit; and in light of his self-manifestation, we are to know, love, and respond to him as such. It is crucial here to recognize that God is and always has been triune: he does not become triune at some point in history. While such a distinction may seem unduly technical, in truth the eternality of the Trinity is pivotal to rightly grounding all manner of key doctrines (such as God’s love). Without this eternal triune reality, we end up with God needing something outside himself before he can be loving. We can also end up misunderstanding the triune persons, whether pitting the persons against one another or creating an inappropriate hierarchy in God.

Owen always views the eternal distinction within the Godhead in light of its unbreakable unity.22 Accordingly, the Father, Son, and Spirit “know each other, love each other, delight in each other, must needs be distinct; and so are they represented unto our faith.” Their distinction “lies in their mutual relation one to another,” and thus we are to understand that the “distinct actings and operations” of the persons grow out of this eternal mutual relation.23 In other words, the Father is eternally the Father and not the Son, and the Son is always the Son and not the Father, while the Spirit is distinct from the Father and the Son, though proceeding from them both.24 So when the triune God acts, he acts as he is—in perfect triunity.

Human communion with God presupposes the eternal communion of the divine persons in perfect unity and eternal distinction. Unity and distinction are crucial themes in Owen’s approach to communion with God, for they tell us something about God and, consequently, something about how we are to approach him. First of all, Owen stresses the fact that God is free, and his freedom is framed in a Trinitarian manner:

[S]o the love of the Father in sending the Son is free, and his sending doth no ways prejudice the liberty and love of the Son, but that he lays down his life freely also; so the satisfaction and purchase made by the Son doth no way prejudice the freedom of the Father’s grace in pardoning and accepting us thereupon; so the Father’s and Son’s sending of the Spirit doth not derogate from his freedom in his workings, but he gives freely what he gives. And the reason of this is, because the will of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is essentially the same; so that in the acting of one there is the counsel of all and each freely therein.25

Such comments point back to Owen’s underlying belief in the covenant of redemption—an idea that had growing significance in the seventeenth century.26 Scripture passages that emphasize the sending of the Son and Spirit, as well as the Father’s love for the world, are all taken as indications of the eternal Trinity. Thus, in perfect oneness the three persons willed and desired the redemption of the elect. Hundreds of times throughout his writings Owen employs such language as “the counsels of God,” “eternal counsels,” the “divine counsel,” and “counsels of his will.” Such references often (though not always) point to the communion of the divine persons. Here is divine freedom, knowledge, and perfect unity—here is the One God upon whom our salvation rests.

An example of this type of approach is seen in Owen’s book Pneumatologia. Here he exegetes John 16:13–15, which describes the Spirit speaking “whatever he shall hear.” Creatively unpacking the idea of “hearing,” Owen argues that this indicates a distinction among the persons, but not a devaluation of the Spirit. “Being the Spirit of the Father and Son, proceeding from both, he is equally participant of their counsels,” and thus such texts point to the Spirit’s “infinite knowledge of the eternal counsels of the Father and Son; he is no stranger unto them.”27

Building on the eternal counsels, it is clear that the whole Trinity is active and exalted in redemption.28 While Christ is at the center of the history of redemption, this divine movement of grace is triune and occurs accordingly. Owen even affirms, through use of a classic maxim, that what might be taken as “inequality of office” among the persons should in no way “prejudice the equality of nature.”29 We do not have competing gods, but rather one God in three persons, free and united, wise and deliberate—One God, yet having distinction in himself.

While distinctions among the persons can be made, God always works in perfect harmony and is worshiped in light of that. Three examples may prove helpful. First, consider the example of faith—it is given by the Father as the source, directed toward the Son who secures and increases faith, and empowered by the Spirit of life.30 Second, Owen employs the model of God giving diverse gifts: different gifts come from the same Spirit, and varieties of service from the same Lord, and various empowerments come from the same God: “so graces and gifts are bestowed, and so are they received.”31 They come from the divine persons, and thus from God, and we respond to the persons, and thus to God himself. Third, holiness for the saints is the will of the triune God for his people. Thus, the Father has “appointed it” (Eph. 2:10), the Son also ordains or appoints it “as the mediator” (John 15:16), and the Spirit “appoints and ordains” this holiness in believers (Acts 13:2). Christian obedience is placed in the context of the desire and empowerment of the triune God: “Our holiness, our obedience, work of righteousness, is one eminent and especial end of the peculiar dispensation of Father, Son, and Spirit, in the business of exalting the glory of God in our salvation—of the electing love of the Father, the purchasing love of the Son, and the operative love of the Spirit.”32 Our response and “gospel”obedience lights up the glory of the Father, Son, and Spirit—distinctly, yet in perfect unity.33

The point is that a believer’s encounter with God is always an encounter with a divine person, not an abstraction. Building on Ephesians 2:18, Owen recognizes that when we approach the Father we come through the Son and by the Spirit: “the persons [are] being here considered as engaged distinctly unto the accomplishment of the counsel of the will of God revealed in the gospel.”34In other words, distinction does not obliterate divine unity, nor does divine unity undercut distinction. Rather, unity governs distinction, and distinction must inform conceptions of unity.

Owen concludes that our communion with God is always communion with the divine persons, for there is no God other than the persons. His thesis is fairly clear: “There is no grace whereby our souls go forth unto God, no act of divine worship yielded unto him, no duty or obedience performed, but they are distinctly directed unto Father, Son, and Spirit.”35 Later he adds, “There being such a distinct communication of grace from the several persons of the Deity, the saints must needs have distinct communion with them.”36 We worship this one God, but to rightly worship him, we approach the persons, not an abstract force. In this way, he echoes the claim of Gregory of Nazianzus that the “three are a single whole in their Godhead and the single whole is three in personalities.”37 Owen is very sympathetic with this early Cappadocian formulation of the Trinity, believing it positively influences our view of worship.

Worship That Is Trinitarian

Worship is always and only directed to the triune God. Thus, we worship the distinct persons, and yet “the person, as the person, of any one of them [i.e., the three divine persons], is not the prime object of divine worship, but as it is identified with the nature or essence of God.”38 In other words, God’s essence is the object of worship. Nevertheless, you can never separate or extract the “essence” by moving beyond the persons. There is no “God behind the gods.”

Consequently, when one of the divine persons works, God works, and thus is praised as God himself. According to Owen, there is always a “concurrence of the actings and operations of the whole Deity in that dispensation, wherein each person concurs to the work of our salvation, unto every act of our communion with each singular person.”39 To illustrate: while the Father is commonly associated with creation, the Son and Spirit are not absent or passive. Similarly, while one commonly looks to the Son in terms of redemption, in truth the Father and Spirit are essential to this work; likewise, a believer’s sanctification cannot be understood apart from the Father and Son, despite this doctrine’s common link to the Spirit.40

Communion is with God. To commune with a divine person is nothing short of communion with God himself—not a part of God, not God behind a mask, but God himself. Christians practice distinct communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit, but they do not worship three gods;rather, they bow down before the one God who is triune, in perfect unity. Here is the drama, beauty, and vibrancy of worship. In this light we can now appreciate Owen’s significant use of Gregory of Nazianzus’s statement: “No sooner do I conceive of the One than I am illumined by the Splendour of the Three; no sooner do I distinguish Them than I am carried back to the One.”41

In his own way, Owen explores the relationship between worship and the Trinity. “The divine nature is the reason and cause of all worship;so that it is impossible to worship any one person, and not worship the whole Trinity.”42 He goes on to explain:

Our access in our worship is said to be “to the Father”; and this “through Christ,” or his mediation; “by the Spirit,” or his assistance. Here is a distinction of the persons, as to their operations, but not at all as to their being the object of our worship. For the Son and the Holy Ghost are no less worshipped in our access to God than the Father himself; only, the grace of the Father, which we obtain by the mediation of the Son and the assistance of the Spirit, is that which we draw nigh to God for. So that when, by the distinct dispensation of the Trinity, and every person, we are led to worship . . . any person, we do herein worship the whole Trinity; and every person, by what name soever, of Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, we invocate him.43

Our worship is always directed toward the divine persons, but in doing so, it is rightly given to God himself. To worship the Son is not to worship a part or portion of God, but rather it is to praise the One God in three persons. And in this way, we are reminded that in the end, “the distinction, of the persons in the Trinity is not to be fancied, but believed.”44

Knowing the Father: Overcoming Common Distortions

Unfortunately, many Christians often have a distorted view of the heavenly Father. We tend to view him as angry and full of wrath toward us.While we imagine Jesus as the one who loves us, the Father is portrayed as full of hesitation toward us—distant at best, furious at worst. It is as if Jesus pleads with the Father to put up with us and to let us live, perhaps even against the Father’s desire. We often view Jesus as the “kind”person of the Trinity, with the Father only wanting us punished. Is the Father, in fact, really reluctant to show tenderness toward people?

According to Owen, the whole movement of the biblical drama of redemption points in a different direction. Jesus is not the one who convinces the Father to love us, but, rather, the Son of God becomes incarnate in light of the Father’s eternal and free love toward us. The Father is not at odds with the Son, but rather, God the Father is love, and out of his love he sent his Son to die for our sins—“this love [of the Father] . . . is antecedent to the purchase of Christ.”45 In other words, while the work of Christ is all-important for redemption, it does not make the Father love us but is rather the outgrowth of God’s love.46

Out of the Father’s love the Son is sent as the embodiment of love, and the Spirit pours this love into the hearts of his children. Here the distinct actions among the divine persons are united by the same love of God. It makes sense that the test of authenticity for those who claim to know God is love—for this God is love, and those who have encountered the Son and are enlivened by the Spirit will surely show signs of love. And yet our love is always understood as a response to God’s love, not that which generates God’s love toward us.47 Put simply, we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). This is what it means to discover freedom, for (in Christ and by the Spirit) saints are those who have been freed to love God and others. All of this points back to the love of the Father.

If the antecedent love of the Father is lost, then we might mistakenly believe that God’s love for us is contingent upon our human efforts.This is not merely the mistake of ancient Pelagianism, which reduced the gospel to mere moralism, but it is also the danger of evangelical Christians who, in practice, live as if God’s love for them ebbs and flows according to their actions. So when we have our quiet times for the day, or when we have given a tithe, we are confident of God’s love toward us. But when our days become crowded and personal devotions end up neglected, we start to avoid God, sensing that we are under his wrath and anger. We imagine that God is waiting for us to get ourselves together before we again enter his presence. Such thinking betrays our failure to grasp the security of our union and the depth of God’s love and consequently disrupts our communion with him.

Making God’s love contingent on our action is a sad but common misunderstanding in the church. Remember, a believer’s union is never in jeopardy. For God’s love “is an eternal love, that had no beginning, that shall have no ending; that cannot be heightened by any act of ours, that cannot be lessened by any thing in us.”48 While our sense of communion with God may fluctuate, his love does not grow and diminish. The wrath of God against the sin of saints was exhausted on the cross.49 Thus, while it is true that God sometimes disciplines his children in their sin and disobedience (cf. Heb. 12:6), he is not wrathful toward them. His disposition toward his children is always one of love. This love can bring forth the kind discipline of the loving Father, but it is just that—an expression of love, not vengeful wrath.50 In fact, Owen estimates that nothing is “more grievous to the Lord, nor more subservient to the design of Satan” than for believers to have such “hard thoughts” of God.51

Because Owen was familiar with common Christian struggles, he knew all too well that believers often view the Father in a negative light. Instead of worshiping a compassionate God, they envision him as distant, lacking sweetness, “always angry, yea, implacable,” a consuming fire with “everlasting burnings” and thus inapproachable.52 Owen notes that some believers “are afraid to have good thoughts of God. They think it a boldness to eye God as good, gracious, tender, kind, loving.. . . And [they] think herein they do well.”53 Such a misunderstanding can quickly sap the life out of God’s people. While such distortions may delight Satan, “it is exceeding[ly] grievous to the Spirit of God to be so slandered in the hearts of those whom he dearly loves.”54 Elsewhere when talking about the believer’s struggles with sin, Owen powerfully reminds his readers of the great difference between their sad expectations and the Father’s reality: “I mourn in secret under the power of my lusts and sin, where no eyes see me; but the Father sees me, and is full of compassion.”55 We need not run from the Father, but rather to his open arms of love, for by his Son and Spirit he can renew and strengthen us. He stands not over us in judgmental silence, but he sends his Word and Wisdom, that we might know the power and degree of his redeeming love. Run from him? That is the last thing he desires. Run to him—this is to understand the glory of the gospel: “Assure thyself, then, there is nothing more acceptable unto the Father, than for us to keep up our hearts unto him as the eternal fountain of all that rich grace which flows out to sinners in the blood of Jesus.”56

To have communion with the Father—since communion consists in mutual relations—means that we must respond to his love. This is done, according to Owen, by receiving his love, and then by returning love to him. The order is essential: our love is always “consequential”to God’s love—he does not love us based on a contingent condition that we love him, but we only and always love him based on his prior love for us.57

The great revelation of Christ to us is that of “God as a Father,” and this matters greatly, “for the love of the Father is the only rest of the soul.”58 Elsewhere Owen proclaims, “the souls of believers exceedingly magnify Jesus Christ, that they can behold the face of God with boldness, confidence, peace, joy, assurance—that they can call him Father, bear themselves on his love, walk up and down in quietness, and without fear.”59 This statement comes in the context of Owen’s noting that before we are brought into the faith, our thoughts of God are full of fear, uncertainty, and disquiet. But to encounter the heavenly Father in his love, grace, and fellowship, we are transformed, and that transformation is understood in the context of relationship. The redeemed stand in the surety of God’s full love, acceptance, mercy, and empowering grace. We need not run from God but, rather, rest in him.

Embraced by the Son

While Owen’s theological approach is unapologetically Trinitarian, he is not shy about being Christ-centered—Jesus Christ is the mediator between God and man who grounds our knowledge and communion in God. To know God, we are called to look to Christ. We are often tempted to formulate views of God without reference to Christ, and in this way we run the risk of constructing a philosophical rather than biblical conception of the divine. In truth, Scripture in general and Christ in particular must govern our notion of God.

To Know God, Look to the Son

Divine attributes, or truths about God, should always be viewed through the lens of Christ. Owen argues that we will never understand “some of the most eminent and glorious properties of God” unless we see them as revealed in “the Lord Christ, but only by and in him.”60 For example, our knowledge of God’s love and pardoning grace must be located in Christ and him alone. In fact, regarding some divine attributes, we have comparatively “no light of but in him; and of all the rest no true light but by him.”61 A person who claims to know God apart from these truths in Christ “knows him not at all. They know an idol, and not the only true God.” For the Son is the great revelation of the Father (Heb.1:3), and the Spirit always draws believers to the Son, who is the perfect image of God. By Jesus Christ “alone we have our understanding to know him that is true.”62 Elsewhere he writes: “There is no acquaintance with God, as love, and full of kindness, patience, grace, and pardoning mercy . . . but only in Christ.”63

To appreciate Owen’s Christ-centered approach we must recognize that for him, the incarnate Lord is the “medium of all communication between God and us. In him we meet, in him we walk. All influences of love, kindness, mercy, from God to us, are through him; all our returns of love, delight, faith, obedience unto God, are all through him.”64 While we have already noted that communion with God is fellowship with the Trinity, Owen’s Trinitarian structure has a christocentric focus. “From him [Christ] have we the Spirit of life and power, whereby he bears, as on eagles’ wings, swiftly, safely, in the paths of walking with God. Any step that is taken in any way, by strength that is not immediately from Christ, is one step towards hell.”65 Notice that Christ provides the strength through his Spirit. By emphasizing Christ, Owen is not meaning to pit the divine persons against one another but is aiming to maintain the biblical pattern and method for framing our communion with God.We come to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

In addition to the divine attributes of love and mercy, Owen argues that other attributes are more fully appreciated in light of the incarnation. Here he includes such attributes as divine justice, patience, wisdom, and all-sufficiency—each of these truths about God are known at a whole different level in Jesus Christ.66 So discussions about the attributes of God are best viewed, not vaguely, but clearly through a christologicallens. To speak of these attributes as philosophical abstractions, and not in light of the incarnation, is to risk opening up all kinds of sub-Christian conceptions of God. On the other hand, Owen argues that discussing God’s attributes in light of Christ yields not just greater understanding but also strong comfort for God’s people. These attributes apart from Christ bring only feelings of terror, misery, and uncertainty. “There is no saving knowledge of any property of God, nor such as brings consolation, but what alone is to be had in Christ Jesus, being laid up in him, and manifested by him.”67 Going even further, Owen concludes that not only must our knowledge of God be christologically formed, but also our knowledge of ourselves! We cannot rightly know ourselves apart from Christ, and thus a crucial aspect of the Spirit’s work is to reshape our understanding of self as illumined by the incarnate Son.68 Finally, he connects the dots and concludes that our conception of what it means to “walk with God” must grow out of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.69 These are the keys of understanding any communion with God.

When Owen writes of the empowering love of Christ, which is the very love of God, he notes that this love actually makes things happen.“He loves life, grace, and holiness into us; he loves us also into covenant, loves us into heaven.”70 Notice that Owen frames this discussion in terms of love, and not in abstract philosophical speculation about predestination. How are we made alive and holy? By the love of Christ. How do we enjoy eternal communion with God? Because God in Christ loves us into his holy presence. “How many millions of sins, in every one of the elect, every one whereof were enough to condemn them all, hath this love overcome! [W]hat mountains of unbelief doth it remove!”71

The redeeming love of God is not something that can be found in contemplating the glorious stars and moon, or the regularity of the seasons. Only in Christ Jesus do we discover with utter clarity that we are not dealing with a distant deity, but the Creator God whose love becomes incarnate. Divine love cannot be put into a category of vague spirituality that can be equally understood in all religions. Rather, according to Owen, the full revelation and anchor of our understanding of God’s love must be found in the incarnation.

The Lover Appears: Drawing from the Song of Songs

Following a long tradition in Western theology, Owen draws heavily from the imagery of the Song of Songs to describe the love between Christ and his bride. While allegorical interpretations of this great biblical poem can be highly suspect and problematic, we should nevertheless avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water. Certainly it seems that this Song was originally about the celebration of human love and sexuality—we should not let a neo-platonic fear of the physical lead us to neglect this natural reading of the text. On the other hand, we should also not allow modernist notions of a “scientific hermeneutic” to blind us from recognizing fascinating biblical parallels. Elsewhere in Scripture God is described as in a marital relationship with Israel, and Christ is the groom of his church, the bride. In fact, one day there will be a great wedding celebration when this relationship will be consummated in its fullness!72 Given such imagery, it is not unreasonable for theologians to speak of the believer’s intimate communion, communication, and even what Owen calls “conjugal relations” with the Son. To draw this all from the Song of Songs would be problematic; to recognize this general motif in Scripture seems wholly appropriate.73

While Owen and many before him have been guilty of problematic exegesis of the particulars from Song of Songs, the general use of the imagery and idea of Christ’s love for his bride is clearly (as mentioned above) a biblical motif.74 It makes sense that a biblically saturated imagination would turn to the rich pictures and language found in the Song of Songs to unpack the imagery of Christ’s love for his bride. J. I. Packer thus believes that Owen’s christological reading of Canticles (i.e., Song of Songs)75 might best be described as parable rather than allegory.76 For in this love poem we find many idealized images of human love between a man and a woman, and if God is comfortable describing his relationship to his people in marital terms, then this Song helps guide the church’s view, not merely of human love, but of God’s love for his bride. This need not require a fanciful allegorical interpretation, because the historical and original intent could be preserved, serving as the guide for the multiple applications drawn from the texts. One could legitimately utilize the imagery and theological implications of this love poem as a way to help the church better know how her Heavenly Lover views her.

When Owen, especially in his commentary on Hebrews, develops principles for rightly handling biblical typology, he consistently warns against fanciful and ungrounded interpretations that can come from unguarded allegorical readings.77 In practice, however, Owen does not always maintain his own careful guidelines in his reading of Canticles. At times he stretches the actual text to the breaking point (e.g., seeing the Beloved as white for his deity and ruddy for his humanity, or reading into the ornaments of the Lover’s head).78 Despite this, it still seems overly hasty to dismiss the way in which many interpreters, both in the East and the West, drew insight about human communion with God from this beautiful love poem.79

Owen’s interpretive language for the Song is intimate, at times almost uncomfortable for the reader who remembers that he is speaking of our relationship to Jesus.80 But his point should not be missed: Jesus seeks his people as a lover seeks his beloved. This relationship includes pursuit and response. Christ’s disposition toward his beloved is one of delight, finding great joy in her presence and wanting to protect her in the power of his love and grace. “And let our souls be persuaded of his sincerity and willingness in giving himself, in all that he is, as mediator unto us, to be ours; and let our hearts give up themselves unto him. Let us tell him that we will be for him, and not for another: let him know it from us;he delights to hear it.”81 This is the language of the Lover to the beloved, and this is his portrait of communion.

Here we move beyond a mere cognitive grasp of God’s love to an experience of it, as found in Christ. As with his discussion of our inappropriate views of the Father, so Owen believes we tend not to really grasp Christ’s love for us. Building on the imagery of Canticles, Owen voices what he believes are common thoughts among the saints concerning Christ’s love: “I fear thou dost not love me, that thou hast forsaken me; because I know I deserve not to be beloved. These thoughts are hard as hell; they give no rest to my soul.”82 Therefore, the soul will never be satisfied with mere “thoughts of Christ’s love to it,” but must experience and know this love which is “inconceivable, and cannot be increased” because it is full and complete.83 Looking at our sins makes us despair that we could be loved by God, but in the embrace of Christ we discover the great Lover who does not abandon the beloved.

Responding to Christ

The reason we can delight in God is because the Son delights in us.“Christ will sup with believers: he refreshes himself with his own graces in them, by his Spirit bestowed on them. The Lord Christ is exceedingly delighted in tasting of the sweet fruits of the Spirit in the saints.”84 Christ displays a wonder of affections toward his people, and by his Spirit he will awaken anew the right affections of his people. We love, because he first delighted to love us. So Owen freely speaks of the Son’s delighting in his saints, just as a groom delights in the presence of his bride without reserve or a mixture of emotion. “His heart is glad in us, without sorrow. And every day whilst we live is his wedding-day.”85 In fact, building on such texts as Zephaniah 3:17 and John 1:14, he claims that “the thoughts of communion with the saints were the joy of his heart from eternity.”86 This is the background for understanding the Son’s willingness, even joy (Heb. 12:2), in going to the cross on behalf of his beloved ones.87 Christ will be the great revealer of God’s mystery and secrets to the saints. But such revelation is not merely about the words on the pages of sacred Scripture, but also about embracing the fullness of the gospel embodied in Jesus Christ. “There is a wide difference between understanding the doctrine of the Scripture as in the letter, and a true knowing the mind of Christ.”88 The former is merely cognitive, while the latter assumes a relational character of intimacy that is only possible by the Spirit of Christ, who opens the eyes, softens the heart, and awakens the affections of his people.

To commune with the Son we must know him and abandon our inaccurate distortions. “There are none who despise Christ, but only they that know him not; whose eyes the god of this world hath blinded, that they should not behold his glory.”89 Consequently, Owen encourages his readers to “study him a little; you love him not, because you know him not.”90 Our sin is that we do not know the bounty of Christ’s mercy, and thus we do not receive from him what he is ready to supply.91

Enlivened and Kept by the Spirit

How are believers to know Christ so that they may love him? How can Christians bask in the love of the Father and the grace of the Son? According to Owen, only by the Spirit can anyone truly know God and enjoy his love and grace. And thus, while the Spirit is sometimes referred to as the “quiet” person of the Trinity, Owen believes that he is no less to be worshiped and glorified than the Father and Son, for he is no less God.

The Puritan Theologian of the Holy Spirit

While it may surprise many contemporary readers, the truth is that Puritanism was often known as a movement that spent considerable time exploring the person and work of the Spirit.92 As one author comments, “It is only the truth to say that Puritan thought was almost entirely occupied with loving study of the work of the Holy Spirit.”93 Only when the Puritans’ emphasis on the Spirit is appreciated can we make sense of their common concerns about certain kinds of rituals, prayer books, and the dangers of formalism.94 While it is true that some Puritans were weary of oft-repeated ceremonies, their main concern was that such observances might become a substitute for enjoying the presence of the living Spirit. Without this pneumatological understanding, it is far too tempting to view the Puritans as merely uptight pastors ignorant about the benefit of repetition. It may be argued that many of them went too far, but it should be recognized that they did so out of a concern to make space for the ongoing work of the Spirit. They did urge their people to learn catechisms, partake of the sacraments, be active in Christian fellowship, and even to use certain kinds of prayer books, but it was always with an eye toward creating sensitivity to the Spirit’s work.

Central to Puritan thinking was an effort to make sure their activities held together two realities—Word and Spirit. Thus, even when Puritans spoke of the vital importance of the Word—whether preached or read—they always linked this with the Spirit.95 For them, Spirit and Word should always be united; when they are separated, problems quickly arise.

John Owen self-consciously viewed himself as a theologian of the Spirit, and as such he poured more time and energy into exploring questions related to the third person of the Trinity than anyone else in his day, and possibly even before him. His most exhaustive studies are found in volumes three and four of his collected works. In these tomes there are five main treaties. Pneumatologia: A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit was published in 1674. In this massive volume of 651 pages, Owen discusses all manner of things related to the Spirit. Not only does he unpack the names and titles of the Spirit, he also draws biblical insight about the Spirit’s nature and personality. He looks at the Spirit’s work in creation throughout the Old Testament and into the New.

As Owen explores the Spirit’s work in the incarnate Christ, the reader discovers one of Owen’s most brilliant and challenging insights. He believes one can make sense of Jesus’ full humanity and divinity, without compromising either, only by highlighting the Spirit’s work “in and on”the human nature of Christ.96 After this, Owen unfolds the implications of the Spirit’s applying the work of Christ to the church, spending considerable time on the idea of sanctification.

Four shorter works also came from his pen, focusing on more narrow aspects of the Spirit’s work. In 1677 Owen’s The Reason of Faith was printed. Here he concentrates on the Spirit’s work that enables us to know Scripture as the very Word of God. His volume The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God (1678) builds on this idea, arguing that all believers can interpret the Scriptures because they have the Spirit within them. The Spirit was not only active in the composition of Holy Writ, but also in the continuing illumination of the saints as they meditate on it. The Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer (1682) examines not just the theology of the Spirit’s activity in prayer, but also includes practical suggestions for how these truths should inform our exercises in this devotional practice. The final two treatises were published after Owen’s death. In A Discourse on the Holy Spirit as Comforter (1693), Owen describes in detail the Spirit’s role as advocate and comforter for the church, inhabiting God’s people and serving as their anointing, seal, and guarantee of what is to come. Finally, in A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts (1693), Owen carefully distinguishes between gifts and “saving grace,” as well as basic differences between “extraordinary” and “ordinary” gifts. Owen is certainly not opposed to the Spirit’s giving of gifts to God’s people, but he parses such gifting in the context of redemptive history and the ongoing ministry of the Church.97

After reading Owen’s work on the Spirit, one can appreciate his claim that his research was “increased” because “I know not any who ever went before me in this design of representing the whole economy of the Holy Spirit.”98 He was well aware of the early Fathers, medieval authors, and Reformers who had written on the Spirit, and he draws heavily from them. Yet Owen’s extensiveness and intensiveness set him apart. For Owen, discussion of the Spirit cannot help but be personal. Geoffrey Nuttall puts it well: