A Reader’s Guide to John Owen

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. PSALM 119:105

Owen wrote an enormous amount. The standard collected edition, edited by William Goold in the middle of the nineteenth century, runs to some two dozen large volumes, seven of them on the Epistle to the Hebrews alone. All of it is in the public domain. No one needs to read it all, and very few have. What follows is a short map for the ordinary reader.

Begin here

The Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656). The best place to start, and the book from which most of this companion is drawn. It is short, practical and searching, and it ends with Christ. It is in the Ochorus library. Read it slowly, a few pages at a time; it rewards patience more than speed.

Of Temptation: The Nature and Power of It (1658). The natural companion to the first, on Christ’s words in Gethsemane about entering into temptation.

Indwelling Sin (1667). The fullest of the three, and the hardest, on the deceit and power of the sin that remains in believers. These three works are often printed together, and a modern edition with helpful introductions and notes, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, edited by Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor (2006), is a good way in.

The warm centre

Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (1657). For many readers this is Owen’s best book, and it corrects any impression that he was only a stern physician of the soul. Kapic and Taylor have also edited it in a modern edition, Communion with the Triune God (2007).

Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ (1684). His last book, published after his death. Slow, meditative and deeply moving, it is best read a chapter at a time over many weeks.

The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded (1681). Written out of illness and old age, on the thoughts and affections of a renewed heart. Its test of the free thoughts is worth the price of the book.

The larger works

Pneumatologia, or A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit (1674). A massive treatment of the person and work of the Spirit, and one of the most important works on the subject in English. Not for beginners, but the sections on regeneration and sanctification repay study.

The Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews (1668–1684). Owen’s great commentary, the labour of many years. It is a treasury for anyone studying Hebrews.

Approach with care

The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647). Owen’s defence of particular redemption. It is the classic statement of that view, and many are glad of it; many others are not persuaded. Read it with the Scriptures open and with the cautions of this book in mind. J. I. Packer’s introductory essay, written for a mid-twentieth-century reprint, is a well-known and sympathetic introduction to it.

His controversial writings against the Arminians, the Socinians and the Roman Catholic Church belong to their age. They are learned and often acute, but they are harsh in tone, and the ordinary reader may leave them aside. The same is true of his sermons before Parliament during the Commonwealth, which should be read, if at all, with the history in view.

About Owen

Andrew Thomson’s Life of Dr Owen, prefixed to the Goold edition of the Works (1850), is the classic older account, warm and still useful. Peter Toon’s God’s Statesman: The Life and Work of John Owen (1971) is a careful modern biography. Crawford Gribben’s John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (2016) is a scholarly study that places Owen firmly in his troubled times and is frank about his politics. For his teaching on the Christian life, Sinclair Ferguson’s John Owen on the Christian Life (1987) is clear and faithful, and J. I. Packer’s A Quest for Godliness (1990) contains several fine chapters on Owen among the Puritans.

Counsels for reading him

Read him slowly. Owen’s sentences are long and his arguments are layered. A page a day, understood, is worth more than a chapter skimmed.

Read him with a pencil. Mark the sentences that strike you, and copy the best of them. Many readers find that a handful of Owen’s sentences stay with them for life.

Read him on your knees. Owen did not write to inform but to change. The right response to a page of The Mortification of Sin is not to agree with it but to pray about it.

Read him under Scripture. He would insist on it. Every page he wrote is thick with the Bible, and he wanted his readers to go past him to the Word. Hold fast what agrees with it, and let go what does not.

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. JOHN 5:39