by Ty Kieser
More than nine years ago I read John Owen’s Communion with the Triune God and I was thrown into a long, committed study of his theology. While I found much in Owen that I appreciated (and expected), I ran into a few claims from Owen about the Logos arsarkos (the Word without flesh), or (less elegantly) God the Son “before” the incarnation, that threw me off my theological balance.[1] It wasn’t that these claims were necessarily wrong or unorthodox, they were just, well, strange. Here I want to name these strange statements about the Son and then reflect on what they mean about Owen, his theology, and our own view of God.
Divine Impassibility: Divine Emotions in the OT are True because of Jesus
Believing that God is “impassible” (i.e., that God cannot be caused to suffer or manipulated) is often unpopular in modern Christianity. Today many people say, “Moses changed God’s mind (Exod 32:14), it’s right there in the Bible.” Opponents of Owen made similar claims in his day. Owen is very aware that Scripture seems to attribute emotions/passions to God (Ps 7:11; Judg 2:18), yet Owen followed the historical position of the church: that God could not suffer change.
One of the primary ways that Owen understands the biblical texts which seemingly name a “passionate” God is through the Son’s union with a human nature—a nature that is capable of suffering. Owen says, “The whole Old Testament, wherein God perpetually treats with men by an assumption of human affections unto himself . . . proceeded from the person of the Son, in a preparation for, and prospect of, his future incarnation” (WJO, 1:89; 2:82).[2] That is, the passions of God in the Old Testament are true on account of the “future” assumption of a human nature (and human passions) by God the Son. Owen goes so far as to say that it would be “absurd” to attribute “anthropopathies, [such] as grieving, repenting, being angry, well pleased, and the like, were it not but that the divine person intended [i.e., the Son] was to take on him the nature wherein such affections do dwell” (1:350).
My response to this quote (when I first read it, and even now): “Interesting! . . . But strange.”
The Covenant of Redemption: True Because of Jesus
Like the above doctrine, the covenant of redemption, (i.e., the belief that the Father and Son agreed to redeem the world “from eternity past” through the Son’s incarnation in time) has its share of modern critics. One of the criticisms of the doctrine is that the church has historically believed that the triune God has “one will,” yet if the Father and Son make an agreement then it seems like there are two wills in God and if there are two wills then it seems that we have two Gods.
Owen is in a unique place because he affirms both that God has one will and that there is a covenant of redemption. He says that God is “One [in] every way, in nature, will, and essential properties” (1:472), while also stating that the Father wills to send the Son and the Son wills to be sent (12:497; 19:77). Aware that this agreement seems to imply there are two wills in God, one way that Owen addresses this seeming difficulty is to appeal to doctrine that Christ, the God-man, has two wills (dyothelitism)—one human, one divine. He says that the covenant of redemption has a “supposition of the susception of our human nature into personal union with the Son” (19:77). Of the covenant, Owen says, “This counsel of peace was originally between Jehovah and the Branch, (Zech 6:13,) or the Father and the Son—as he was to be incarnate. For therein was he ‘fore-ordained before the foundation of the world;’ (1 Pet 1:20;) viz., to be a Saviour and a deliverer, . . . and this by his own will, and concurrence in counsel with the Father” (WJO, 1:56, 64).
Again, my response to this claim of the “Son—as he was to be incarnate”: “Interesting! . . . But strange.”
What It tells us about Owen’s Theology (and Our Own)
At first I wrestled with the truthfulness of these strange statements, but then I began to stop evaluating and start appreciating what these claims meant about Owen and his view of God. Whether they are right or wrong, these claims indicate key aspects and presuppositions in Owen’s theology—aspects and presuppositions that I hope are true of our theologies also.
1. God is not a creature.
Owen’s strange statements theologically prevent us from making God into a creature with human emotions or into a team of three independent persons with three consciousnesses/wills. If Owen didn’t care about preserving the transcendence of God, these strange claims wouldn’t be necessary. Today, when we hear about God “becoming angry” or “making an agreement” we might be tempted to say, “hey, I experience that emotion, that must be what God experiences”; or “hey, my spouse and I made a covenant, that must be what the Father and Son experienced.” But Owen refused to say this and he did so because saying those things makes God a creature who has creaturely limitations. We are like God, God is not like us. Instead, God is infinite and beyond human comprehension. We cannot project our emotions and our understanding of finite human realities into the life of God.
2. God is one: the God of the OT = the God of the NT.
While it’s tempting to talk about God or YHWH as “one” in the Old Testament and as “three” in the New Testament, Owen’s strange statements show us that he considers God to be three persons in one essence throughout all of Scripture. The infinite, transcendent, one God whom we meet in the OT is the very same God as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we see even more clearly in the NT. Affirming both the triunity and immutability of God, Owen says “The Scripture tells us he [God] is eternal, I AM, always the same, and so never what he was not ever” (WJO 12:70)
3. Jesus is the Image of the Invisible God.
The unity of the triune God is ultimately revealed to us in the face of Jesus. Owen says, that the Son “in his own entire person God and man . . . [is] the image or representative of the nature and will of God unto us” (WJO 1:18). In Scripture we see Phillip ask Jesus to “show us the Father” and Jesus responds, “if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). Owen’s strange statements reverberate with that truth. If you want to know what YHWH is like, look at Jesus. If you want to know what Jesus is like, look at YHWH.
Allowing Our Heroes to Surprise Us
As I encountered these strange statements I was convicted of my own biases and presuppositions. I realized that I, too often, read Owen (and other historical theologians) in a way that was simply searching for the things that I wanted him to say. But instead of this concordance style of theology, these claims from Owen evidence the importance of loving our historical neighbors and giving them the space to speak on their own terms. Who knows; they may surprise us.
Whether Owen’s strange statements are right or wrong, they show us how he holds together a historic doctrine of God while also appreciating the fullness of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that we see the infinite and perfect God embodied. Owen says that “it is the most adorable effect of divine wisdom and grace, that we are admitted unto the contemplation of” the infinite and holy nature of God and his glories “in the person of Jesus Christ” (WJO, 1:169). Who can ascend to heaven and bring down the infinite God? No one! But Jesus has descended and “made him known” (John 1:18). May we take a cue from Owen and appreciate the unity of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ throughout all of Scripture.
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[1] If Owen scholarship is any indication, I am not alone in my experience with these texts because they are often ignored in studies about Owen and his theology. Note that “before” is in scare quotes—indicating that I will not define what it would mean for an atemporal God to exist “before” and “after” some event in time.
[2] All citations of Owen are from The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 24 vols. (Edinburgh: Johnston & Hunter, 1850–1855).