John Owen

Life

Owen was born in 1616 in Stadhampton, Oxfordshire, England, the son of Henry Owen, a Puritan parish minister. The family was of Welsh descent. At the age of twelve he entered Queen's College, Oxford, receiving his BA in 1632 and his MA in 1635. When the English Civil War broke out, he supported the Parliamentarian side and lost his position as a result. After a period of deep spiritual struggle, he is said to have attained assurance of salvation after happening to hear a sermon by an unknown preacher at a church in London.

In 1642 he became parish minister of Fordham in Essex, and in 1646 minister of neighboring Coggeshall. In the late 1640s he served as a chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. During the 1650s he was dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and from 1652 to 1657 he served as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. In 1657 he is said to have opposed the movement to make Cromwell king. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he continued his pastoral ministry and writing despite persecution as a Nonconformist who refused to conform to the established church. He died on August 24, 1683, at Ealing, near London.

Ministry and Achievements

Among the Puritans, Owen upheld the Congregationalist principle that each local congregation governs itself. Although he was a thoroughgoing Calvinist theologian, he was not a Presbyterian minister. His major works include the following:

• The Death of Death in the Death of Christ: A polemical work addressing, from a Calvinist perspective, the question of for whom Christ's atonement was made.
• Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656): A collection of sermons on Romans 8:13 preached to students at Oxford.
• Communion with God: A work on the believer's communion with each person of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He is also said to have petitioned King Charles II for the release of John Bunyan when Bunyan was imprisoned, and to have helped secure the publication of The Pilgrim's Progress.

Influence on the Korean Church

In Korea, Owen has been read chiefly by pastors and seminarians interested in Reformed theology and Puritan piety, and he is introduced under such epithets as "the Prince of the Puritans" and "the Calvin of England." The Mortification of Sin has been translated by several publishers, including SFC Press (translated by Seo Mun-gang), Revival and Reformation Press, and Peniel. Other available works include Sin and Temptation, Spiritual Mindedness, and the biography John Owen: Prince of the Puritans (Jipyung Books). His books on the life of sanctification and the struggle against sin, in particular, have been read consistently as devotional literature.

Assessment

Together with Richard Baxter and others, Owen is regarded as one of the foremost Puritan theologians. Generations of Welsh Calvinist preachers are said to have nourished their faith on his books. J. I. Packer testified that reading Owen made him a more thoroughgoing Calvinist.

At the same time, his sentences are often described as long and convoluted, making his works difficult even for English-speaking readers. Methodist, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches standing in the Arminian and Wesleyan traditions differ from him on the Calvinist doctrine of the atonement that he defended. These churches hold that Christ's atonement was made for all people.