Additional information
by John Owen (Author)
John Owen's work, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, is the classic text defending the purposeful and actual procurement of salvation for sinners in the death of Christ. While characteristically portrayed as a polemical work on the Calvinistic understanding of limited atonement this work is actually much more. In brief, it is a defense for the perfect work of Christ, which actually obtained salvation on the cross. It argues that the purpose of the triune God is to glorify himself and to save sinners. Owen's thesis asserts that in the death of Christ salvation of sinners was actually accomplished. Christ came to the earth to seek and to save those who were lost. Through his oblation, being the entire humiliation of his life and death, he has secured perfectly the redemption of those for whom he died. Therefore the salvation of sinners was completely secured through the death of Christ. This stands in direct contrast to the Arminian and Amyraldian understanding of a universal redemption, which makes salvation only possible or hypothetical.
Author Biography
John Owen (1616-1683) was an English Nonconformist church leader, theologian, and academic administrator at the University of Oxford. On 29 April he preached before the Long Parliament. In this sermon, and in his Country Essay for the Practice of Church Government, which he appended to it, his tendency to break away from Presbyterianism to the Independent or Congregational system is seen. Like John Milton, he saw little to choose between "new presbyter" and "old priest." He became pastor at Coggeshall in Essex, with a large influx of Flemish tradesmen. In March 1651, Cromwell, as Chancellor of Oxford University, gave him the deanery of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and made him Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in September 1652; in both offices he succeeded the Presbyterian, Edward Reynolds. During his eight years of official Oxford life Owen showed himself a firm disciplinarian, thorough in his methods, though, as John Locke testifies, the Aristotelian traditions in education underwent no change. With Philip Nye he unmasked the popular astrologer, William Lilly, and in spite of his share in condemning two Quakeresses to be whipped for disturbing the peace, his rule was not intolerant. Anglican services were conducted here and there, and at Christ Church itself the Anglican chaplain remained in the college. While little encouragement was given to a spirit of free inquiry, Puritanism at Oxford was not simply an attempt to force education and culture into "the leaden moulds of Calvinistic theology." Owen, unlike many of his contemporaries, was more interested in the New Testament than in the Old. During his Oxford years he wrote Justitia Divina, an exposition of the dogma that God cannot forgive sin without an atonement; Communion with God, Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance, his final attack on Arminianism; Vindiciae Evangelicae, a treatise written by order of the Council of State against Socinianism as expounded by John Biddle; On the Mortification of Sin in Believers, an introspective and analytic work; Schism, one of the most readable of all his writings; Of Temptation, an attempt to recall Puritanism to its cardinal spiritual attitude from the jarring anarchy of sectarianism and the pharisaism which had followed on popularity and threatened to destroy the early simplicity.
