by Sinclair B. Ferguson
[For four decades now the Banner of Truth Trust has been committed to
republishing and keeping in print the works of John Owen. All over the
English-speaking world there exists testimony to the incalculable value
of his biblical teaching in many vital areas of Christian doctrine and
experience. For some time now, our associate editor Sinclair B. Ferguson
worked on a book on Owen's theology, under the unifying theme of the Christian
life. This is called, "John Owen on the Christian Life."
While this is the first book-length study of Owen's theology ever to be
published, Sinclair Ferguson's main aim has been to make Owen more accessible.
As well as providing an exposition of many areas of Owen's teaching, "John
Owen on the Christian Life" also serves as a 'reader's guide' to
Owen's writings. In both these ways it has served pastors, teachers and
all serious Christians in their study in those areas in which John Owen
has proved to be a true doctor of the church.
The article which follows is the substance of an address given at the
Leicester Ministers' Conference in 1986. While not an extract from "John
Owen on the Christian Life", it yet serves to illustrate the rich
veins of teaching to be found almost everywhere in Owen's writings.]
[Reprinted from the Banner of Truth Magazine, Issues 293-294, Feb.-March
1988]
It is said, sometimes with embarrassing frequency, that until recent
decades the Holy Spirit was 'the forgotten Person in the Godhead'. It
is assumed in such a statement that only in the second half of the twentieth
century has there been a recovery of biblical teaching. Only now has the
Holy Spirit been given the central place he merits in evangelical thinking.
The word 'embarrassing' is not used here carelessly. For such statements
suffer from a characteristic modernism-a false assumption that our discovery
of something must be epochal in its significance. But the truth of the
matter is that this century is yet to produce an evangelical work on the
Holy Spirit which merits comparison with the great and biblically creative
studies of the past. It is doubtful if we moderns begin to approximate
to the experimental and intellectual wrestlings of our forefathers (whether
Father, Reformers or Puritans) in their desire to know the 'communion
of the Holy Spirit' [2 Cor. 13:14].
In this context, it is worth reminding ourselves that probably no writer
has produced a treatise on the Holy Spirit which begins to rival the detailed
exposition of John Owen's great study in his Pneumatologia. Much attention
has been rightly focused on Owen's quasi Ph.D. dissertation, The Death
of Death in the Death of Christ, and on his great studies on the nature,
power and conquest of indwelling sin, Works. But Owen himself seems to
have regarded the material now contained in volumes III and IV of Goold's
edition of his Works as his special contribution to the theology of the
Christian Church. What follows is not intended as a major redress of that
balance, so much as an hors d'oeuvre, designed to give a taste of the
riches of Owen's Pneumatology. At the same time it will point to an area
of our thinking about the Holy Spirit which too frequently continues to
be overlooked in our thoughts of him, and in our teaching about him.
There were three reasons for Owen's self-conscious focus on the person
and ministry of the Holy Spirit.
1. Historical. Born in 1616, Owen died in 1683. He was 58 when his multi-volumed
Pneumatologia began to appear. Able to look back over the 150 years since
the Reformation, he could assess the planting, budding, and flowering
of reformed theology, and its application to the life of society in seventeenth-century
Puritanism. He realised that central to the Reformation's rediscovery
of the gospel had been the place, person and power of the Spirit. He saw
(as Warfield later did) that Calvin was the theologian of the Holy Spirit.
This was what made reformed Christianity different. In this point at least
he might well have agreed with the view of Edmund Campion (the famous
sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary in England) that the greatest difference
between Rome and Geneva lay in the doctrine of the person and work of
the Spirit.
Why should this be the case? Because the Reformation's emphasis on the
ministry of the Spirit took salvation out of the hands of the Church and
put it back where it belonged, in the hands of God!
Yet Owen recognised that no comprehensive treatment of the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit had appeared in print:
I know not any who ever went before me in this design of representing
the whole economy of the Holy Spirit, with all his adjuncts, operations
and effects. [Works, III, 7]
Thus, now twice the age he had been when he authored The Death of Death,
Owen began to do for the doctrine of the Spirit what he had done in his
late twenties for the doctrine of the extent of the atonement.
But there was a second reason for his writing:
2. Polemical. In Owen's day, as in ours, there existed a special need
to expound, accurately and biblically, the ministry of the Spirit. Indeed,
part of the value of his work for us today lies in the way he had to fight
on two fronts:
(i) He faced an unbiblical rationalism, which gave little or no place
to the Spirit. It was nurtured on the illusion of man's autonomy, and
blindly suggested that natural Christianity was an adequate substitute
for supernatural grace.
(ii) He also faced an unbiblical Spirit-ism, which stressed the immediacy
of the Spirit's work and of individual divine revelation. It down-played
the significance of the Scriptures, exalting the so-called 'Christ within'
above the Christ of Scripture, and the 'inner light' above the light of
the Word. Owen recognised that this displacement of Scripture would eventually
lead to its abandonment: 'He that would utterly separate the Spirit from
the word had as good burn his Bible' [Works, III, 192].
But there was a third reason for Owen's exposition:
3. Personal. Owen was brought up in a home of settled Puritan convictions.
In a rare personal comment he tells us that his father was 'a Non-conformist
all his days, and a painful labourer [i.e. one who 'took pains' in his
work] in the vineyard of the Lord' [Works, XIII, 224]. As Calvin said
of Timothy, he had drunk in godliness with his mother's milk. But his
own experience taught him what he later called the difference between
the knowledge of the truth, and the knowledge of the power of the truth.
Only the latter was of real spiritual significance. Spiritual things can
be known only by the power of the Spirit. Owen's earliest biographer suggests
he struggled for a lengthy period without enjoying personal assurance
of God's grace. His own experience of receiving it was, for him, a paradigm
of how the Spirit works: sovereignly, Christ-centredly and biblically
[Works, VI, 324]. So, it was not merely as a widely-read theologian, nor
only as a polemicist, but as a believer, that Owen penned his treatise
on the Holy Spirit.
Owen's teaching on the Spirit's ministry is spread throughout many of
his writings, but is particularly concentrated in volumes III and IV in
his Pneumatologia. Here he draws attention, in seminal fashion, to a theme
of great theological importance, and one that is determinative for our
personal knowledge of communion with the Holy Spirit: The Ministry of
the Spirit in the Life and Ministry of Christ.
Owen refers with some frequency to the description of the Messiah in the
Royal Wedding Psalm:
You love righteousness and hate wickedness
Therefore, God your God, has set you above your companions by anointing
you with the oil of joy [Ps. 45:6-7]
Two questions arise here: (i) Who is the person addressed? Owen finds
the biblical answer in Hebrews 1:9. These words are spoken 'about the
Son'. (ii) What is the anointing referred to? Owen answers that it is
the anointing of Jesus with the Spirit. Jesus is the one to whom the Spirit
is given without measure [Jn. 3:34].
What Owen focuses our attention on is that Jesus Christ, whom we often
think of as the Bestower or Baptiser with the Spirit, is first of all
the Recipient or Bearer of the Spirit. As Jesus' obedience to the Father
grew in harmony with his developing capacities as a man and the demands
of his ministry as the Messiah, so he received the power of the Spirit's
anointing for each step of his way.
It is an axiom, then, for Owen: The Spirit works on the Head of the New
Creation, Jesus Christ, and thus creates the source, cause, and pattern
of his working throughout the new creation, in believers.
But how did this teaching work itself out? Owen points us essentially
to the four central divisions of Jesus' life: (1) Incarnation; (2) Ministry;
(3) Passion; and (4) Exaltation.
1. The Ministry Of The Spirit In The Incarnation Of Christ
Owen recognised the value of the old Latin axiom: Opera ad extra trinitatis
indivisa sunt [the external works of the Trinity are not divisible, they
are all works of the entire Trinity]. Nowhere is its truth more evident
than in the incarnation. There, Father and Son were both active. The Father
prepared a body for His Son [Heb. 10:5]; the Son took hold of the seed
of Abraham [Heb. 2:14]. But, Owen adds, neither of these actions took
place apart from the ministry of the Spirit. In the incarnation, he worked
in two ways:
(i) Jesus was conceived by the power of the Spirit. The conception of
Jesus in the womb of the virgin Mary has all the hallmarks of the Spirit's
operations. Just as the Spirit overshadowed the waters in creation and
later overshadowed the church at Pentecost, so he came to Mary-sovereignly
and secretly-and took her already existing substance in order to form
it into a humanity that was altogether holy [Lk. 1:35]. The humanity which
was assumed by the Son of God really was that of Mary. Jesus was conceived
by Mary in her womb by the overshadowing of the Spirit. From the first
moment of his conception he experienced human development and every stage
of human existence [Heb. 2:17-18].
But that immediately leads to the second aspect of the Spirit's work:
(ii) Jesus was sanctified by the power of the Spirit. There are two questions
in Christology which Owen believed can be answered only when we take account
of the ministry of the Spirit in the Incarnation. How did Jesus become
fully one with us? And, how did Jesus become fully one with us, yet remain
free from sin?
Owen's answer was that the Son of God really shared our humanity [Heb.
2:14]. He rejected all forms of Docetism. The holy humanity of Jesus was
real humanity. It was earthly, not heavenly. The virgin Mary was truly
'the mother of my Lord' [Lk. 1:43], not merely the channel through which
the humanity of Jesus entered this fallen world. [This view had been held
at the time of the Reformation by (among others) Melchior Hoffman (d.
1543) and was taught by Menno Simons (1496-1561), founder of the Mennonites.
The latter's view was related, at least in part, to his deficient understanding
of human biology. It should be noted that his view did not become part
of Mennonite theology.] By the Spirit, Jesus came from among us. But,
having given this affirmation of the reality of Christ's humanity, Owen
was careful to avoid the pseudo-logical deduction sometimes drawn from
it-that the Son of God must therefore have assumed sinful humanity. No,
says Owen, Scripture teaches us that through the overshadowing of the
Spirit, that which was born was holy [Lk. 1:35], the Son of God. At the
very moment of conception and assumption, the Holy Spirit sanctified the
human nature of Jesus equipping him as Son of God to be the Saviour of
men. Consequently Jesus was not only (in a negative sense) separate from
sinners, he was positively endowed with all appropriate grace, and was
holy and harmless, as well as undefiled [Heb. 7:26].
What is so significant about this for Owen? This: the consequence of the
Spirit's ministry in the Head of the new creation is that he is truly
man and truly holy. In Jesus, holiness and humanity become one and the
same thing, perfectly, for the first time since Adam.
Why should this be so relevant to the continuing ministry of the Spirit?
Because our Lord Jesus Christ is the cause, source, and pattern of the
Spirit's ministry in the believer. What he did in Jesus he seeks to do
in us! In a word, Owen is saying: true humanity is true godliness; true
holiness is true manliness or true womanliness! Whatever is dehumanising
them, cannot be the fruit of the Spirit's ministry in us. Whatever makes
you less human must be carnal, not spiritual.
That fundamental principle is of tremendous significance in Owen's theology,
even although it is not one he expounds at great length. Indeed, in one
sense his chief exposition of it is not to be found in his published works,
but in his own life. Shortly after Owen's death, these words were written
about him: there was in him:
Much of heaven and love to Christ and saints and all men; which came from
him so seriously and spontaneously as if grace and nature were in him
reconciled and but one thing.'
The purpose of the Spirit's ministry is to conform us to the image of
the Incarnate Son, in order that he might be the firstborn of many brothers
[Rom. 8:29]. John Owen apparently expounded this principle chiefly by
his own personal example.
2.The Ministry Of The Spirit In The Ministry Of Jesus Christ
For John Owen, it was axiomatic that Jesus Christ 'acted grace as a man'.
He did this (as men must) through the energy of the Spirit. That was evident
in two ways:
(i) In his personal progress in grace. The work of the Spirit in the Messiah
was prophesied in Isaiah 11:1-3 and also in 63:lff. Owen saw great significance
in the prophecy that it was by the Spirit that the Messiah would be filled
with wisdom, and that this characteristic was singled out for reference
in Luke's account of Jesus' growth [Lk. 2:52]. In this sense, the coming
of the Spirit on Jesus involved a continuous presence. In keeping with
the development of his natural faculties as man, and his unique responsibilities
as Messiah, he was sustained by the Spirit. The Spirit enabled Jesus to
do natural things perfectly and spiritually, not to do them unnaturally.
He was taught the wisdom of God from the Word of God by the Spirit of
God! This is precisely the picture we are given in the third Servant Song:
The Sovereign Lord has given me the instructed tongue to know the word
that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear
to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears
and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back [Isa. 50:4-9].
Each step of his way, it was through the word of the Father in Scripture,
illuminated by his constant companion, the Spirit, that Jesus grew in
the knowledge of the Lord. So, writes Owen:
In the representation then, of things anew to the human nature of Christ,
the wisdom and knowledge of [his human nature] was objectively increased
and in new trials and temptations he experimentally learned the new exercise
of grace. And this was the constant work of the Holy Spirit on the human
nature of Christ. He dwelt in him in fulness, for he received not him
by measure. And continually, upon all occasions he gave out of his unsearchable
treasures grace for exercise in all duties and instances of it. From hence
was he habitually holy, and from hence did he exercise holiness entirely
and universally in all things. [Works, III, pp. 170-171]
But besides this personal progress, there is another aspect of Christ's
life in which the presence of the Spirit is manifested:
(ii) In Jesus' exercise of the gifts of the Spirit. In the hidden years
of his life, Jesus 'grew... strong' in the power of the Spirit [Lk. 2:40].
What was distinctive for Owen about his later baptism was that there,
in the fulness of his years, he received the fulness of the Spirit's anointing
for public Messianic ministry.
Owen, however, notes that the significance of Jesus' baptism and anointing
with the Spirit cannot be separated from his experience of temptation
or from the 'driving' of the Spirit, by which he was thrust into the wilderness
[Mk. 1:12]. The same expression [ekballein] is used of both the Saviour
being driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, and the disciples being
driven out into the harvest by the Lord of the Harvest [Lk. 10:2]. In
both cases the function of the Spirit's ministry is the advance of the
kingdom of God and the defeat of the powers of darkness. The sword of
the Spirit is a weapon tested and tried by our Lord so that his disciples
may use it with confidence; the armour the disciple is to take is the
armour which the Spirit forged for Christ in his ministry. The controlling
thought here, for Owen, is that the ministry of the Spirit in the ministry
of Christ is the paradigm for the ministry of the Spirit in the ministry
of his disciples.
Owen further underlines a point he has already made: when Jesus returned
in triumph from his testing and preached in the synagogue in Luke 4, he
did not speak as a retired military colonel, barking out orders to subordinates
(if the analogy may be used). What shone through the Spirit's presence
in our Lord's exercise of spiritual gifts, as Luke notes, was his gracious
humanity, and especially his gracious words [Lk. 4:22] . Here, again,
Owen sees Scripture emphasising that the chief evidence of the power of
the Spirit in ministry is true and holy humanity.
This brings us to the third aspect which Owen underlines:
3. The Ministry Of The Spirit In The Atonement Of Christ
Here the key text is Hebrews 9:13-14. Christ, by contrast with the Old
Testament ritual sacrifices of dumb beasts, offered himself as a sacrifice
to cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death. This he did 'through
the eternal Spirit'.
Owen saw two possible ways of understanding these words: (a) the reference
might be to the personal spirit of Jesus; (b) alternatively, it could
refer to the Holy Spirit. In that case, the text expresses two things:
(i) An implicit contrast between the sacrifice of Christ and those of
the Old Testament. The sacrifice of Christ was made not on the altar of
the temple, but on the altar of the Spirit. Whereas an earthly altar could
bear the weight of animal sacrifices, only an eternal altar could support
the weight of Christ's sacrifice. Again, while fire consumed the whole
burnt offering in the Old Testament, it was zeal for the glory of God,
kindled by the Spirit, which consumed Christ [cf. Jn. 2:17].
(ii) But secondly, these words imply the nature of the Spirit's ministry
in the sacrifice of Christ.
(a) The Spirit supported him in his decision to give himself without
reserve to the Father's will. Our Lord thus devoted himself to his Father
throughout the whole course of his life, in order to offer himself consummately
on the Cross. He did this by his constant dependence on the Spirit.
(b) The Spirit supported Jesus as he came to the door of the temple, in
the Garden of Gethsemane and there caught a glimpse of the bloody altar
that awaited him.
© The Spirit also sustained him in the breaking of his heart and
the engulfing of his soul with sorrow as he contemplated his coming sense
of dereliction at Calvary, and then experienced what he had contemplated.
But Owen adds a final, moving touch. On the Cross, Jesus committed his
spirit into the hands of his God and Father [Lk. 23:46]. But, what of
his body? Externally, it was guarded by the angels who mounted watch over
the tomb. Internally, it was preserved from corruption by the Holy Spirit
[Acts 2:27]. And so, from first to last, the Spirit is the companion of
Jesus' life and the support of his ministry. By his agency, the Holy One
was conceived in the darkness of the Virgin's womb. By his presence, the
Holy One was preserved in the darkness of Joseph's tomb.
From womb to tomb, the devotion of the eternal Spirit to the eternal Son
in the flesh was abundantly evident.
This brings us to the fourth element:
4. The Ministry Of The Spirit In The Exaltation Of Christ
Here again, the principle of the unity of the work of Father, Son and
Spirit is illustrated. The Father raised the Son [Gal. 1:1]; the Son took
up his life again, having laid it down [Jn. 2:19; 10:38]. But Owen notes
that there is also a strand of teaching in the New Testament which underlines
the role of the Spirit in the resurrection: Christ was declared Son of
God in power by the resurrection through the Spirit of holiness [Rom.
1:4]; he was justified by the Spirit in the resurrection [1 Tim. 3:16].
Nor was this merely a work of resuscitation. Christ's resurrection by
the Spirit was his transformation. Indeed, it is his glorification [ 1
Cor. 15:43a; 45-9]. Thus, says Owen, 'he who first made his nature holy,
now made it glorious' [Works III, p. 183]. The Spirit's ministry in the
life of Jesus, therefore, was not merely from womb to tomb: it was from
womb to throne.
There is something both profoundly moving and exhilarating about these
emphases in Owen's teaching on the Spirit. But what is the practical and
experimental value of his biblical insight?
It should be immediately evident that Owen's teaching on the Spirit corresponds
to the basic law of the Spirit's ministry given in John 16:13-14. The
Spirit can be known only in connection with Christ. He glorifies Christ,
not himself. In Reformed exposition of the ministry of the Spirit we are
accustomed to this emphasis. But Owen's teaching challenges us to take
this with the seriousness it deserves. For notice what his study of the
Spirit in the life of Christ implies:
1. The source of the Spirit's ministry to us is Jesus Christ. Our Lord
Jesus Christ became the Bearer of the Spirit, in order to be the Bestower
of the Spirit (cf. Jn. 14:17: 'He [the Spirit] dwells with you [i.e. by
his presence in Christ who is with them] and will be in you [i.e. when
he was sent at Pentecost to indwell them as the Spirit of the ascended
Lord]). That is why, in the New Testament, Pentecost is not seen as a
separate event from Calvary and the Resurrection. Rather, it is the public
manifestation of their significance: Jesus has received and borne the
Spirit for his people. Now, the last monumental act takes place-overwhelming
and epoch-making in its significance (as the first disciples realised):
Jesus gives his own Spirit to his own people (cf. Jn. 14:18)!
2. The pattern of the Spirit's ministry in us is Jesus Christ. Perhaps
the simplest way to expand Owen's insight is to say: the Spirit was in
Christ in order to create the master copy of the life-style he would reproduce
in all those who belong to Christ. Nothing is more central to the Reformed
understanding of the ministry of the Spirit than this union to Christ
which produces conformity to him. It is by the Spirit that we are being
changed from one degree of glory to another [2 Cor. 3:18].
3. The means of (one might even say the equipment for) the Spirit's ministry
in us is the work of Christ. He was the life-long companion of our Lord
Jesus Christ. As such, he now takes what is Christ's and brings it to
us [Jn. 16:14]. He is truly 'another Counsellor' [i.e. another of the
same kind as Jesus himself had been to the disciples] [Jn. 14:16]. What
he brings to us is nothing less than all that Jesus himself is to us.
Owen clearly understood the significance of Jesus' words that it was to
the advantage of the disciples that he should leave them [Jn. 16:7]. The
only conceivable logic which can sustain such a statement is this: the
Spirit who was in and on our Lord now lives in and on our lives, bringing
to us all that Christ was and is for us.
4. The goal of the Spirit's ministry in us is faith in Christ and glorifying
of him. One of the impressive consequences of reading Owen's study of
the Spirit in the ministry of Jesus is that we inevitably begin to rejoice
in knowing the Spirit. Yet, even in this, the Spirit does not transgress
the principles which he equipped Christ to utter and the apostles to record
in Scripture. For our new joy in the Spirit goes hand in hand with a new
admiration of the Son, and a new desire to glorify him through the Spirit.
The Spirit is Christ's witness. We likewise are to bear witness to Christ
through the Spirit [Jn. 15:26-7]. His desire is that we should love and
admire the Incarnate and Ascended Lord, just as he himself does-eternally.
This 'Christ-full' character of Owen's teaching on the Spirit seals it
with the marks of biblical authenticity.
