REFORMED WITNESS
Volume III, April 1995, Number 4
The Death Of Death
From the Book of the Same Title by John Owen
Excerpts from the Introduction by J. I. PackerAlso in this issue:
The Death of Death in the Death of Christ is a polemical work, designed to show, among other things, that the doctrine of universal redemption is unscriptural and destructive of the gospel. There are many, therefore, to whom it is not likely to be of interest. Those who see no need for doctrinal exactness and have no time for theological debates which show up divisions between so-called Evangelicals may well regret its reappearance. Some may find the very sound of Owen's thesis so shocking that they will refuse to read his book at all; so passionate a thing is prejudice, and so proud are we of our theological shibboleths. But it is hoped that this reprint will find itself readers of a different spirit. There are signs today of a new upsurge of interest in the theology of the Bible; a new readiness to test traditions, to search the Scriptures and to think through the faith. It is to those who share this readiness that Owen's treatise is offered, in the belief that it will help us in one of the most urgent tasks facing Evangelical Christendom today -- the recovery of the gospel.
This last remark may cause some raising of eyebrows, but it seems to be warranted by the facts. There is no doubt that Evangelicalism today is in a state of perplexity and unsettlement. In such matters as the practice of evangelism, the teaching of holiness, the building up of local church life, the pastor's dealing with souls and the exercise of discipline, there is evidence of widespread dissatisfactions with things as they are and of equally widespread uncertainty as to the road ahead. This is a complex phenomenon, to which many factors have contributed; but, if we go to the root of the matter, we shall find that these perplexities are all ultimately due to our having lost our grip on the biblical gospel. Without realising it, we have during the past century bartered that gospel for a substitute product which, though it looks similar enough in points of detail, is as whole a decidedly different thing. Hence our troubles; for the substitute product does not answer the ends for which the authentic gospel has in past days proved itself so mighty. The new gospel consciously fails to produce deep reverence, deep repentance, deep humility, a spirit of worship, a concern for the church. Why? We would suggest that the reason lies in its own character and content. It fails to make men God-centered in their thoughts and God-fearing in their hearts because this is not primarily what it is trying to do. One way of stating the difference between it and the old gospel is to say that it is too exclusively concerned to be "helpful" to man -- to bring peace, comfort, happiness, satisfaction -- and too little concerned to glorify God. The old gospel was "helpful," too -- more so, indeed, than is the new -- but (so to speak) incidentally, for its first concern was always to give glory to God. It was always and essentially a proclamation of Divine sovereignty in mercy and judgment, a summons to bow down and worship the mighty Lord on whom man depends for all good, both in nature and in grace. Its center of reference was unambiguously God. But in the new gospel the center of reference is man. This is just to say that the old gospel was religious in a way that the new gospel is not. Whereas the chief aim of the old was to teach men to worship God, the concern of the new seems limited to making them feel better. The subject of the old gospel was God and His ways with men; the subject of the new is man and the help God gives him. There is a world of difference. The whole perspective and emphasis of gospel preaching has changed. From this change of interest has sprung a change of content, for the new gospel has in effect reformulated the biblical message in the supposed interests of "helpfulness". Accordingly, the themes of man's ability to believe, of God's free election being the ultimate cause of salvation, and of Christ dying specifically for His sheep, are not preached. These doctrines, it would be said, are not "helpful"; they would drive sinners to despair, by suggesting to them that it is not in their own power to be saved through Christ. (The possibility that such despair might be salutary is not considered; it is taken for granted that it cannot be, because it is so shattering to our self-esteem.) However this may be, the result of these omissions is that part of the biblical gospel is now preached as if it were the whole of that gospel; and a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Thus, we appeal to men as if they all had the ability to receive Christ at any time; we speak of His redeeming us to save ourselves by believing; we speak of God's love as if it were no more that a general willingness to receive any who will turn and trust; and we depict the Father and the Son, not as sovereignly active in drawing sinners to themselves, but as waiting in quite impotence "at the door of our hearts" for us to let them in. It is undeniable that this is how we preach; perhaps this is what we really believe. But it needs to be said with emphasis that this set of twisted half-truths is something other that the biblical gospel. The Bible is against us when we preach in this way; and the fact that such preaching has become almost standard practice among us only shows how urgent it is that we should review this matter. To recover the old, authentic, biblical gospel, and to bring our preaching and practice back into line with it, is perhaps our most pressing present need. And it is at this point that Owen's treatise on redemption can give us help. Owen sees that the question which has occasioned his writing -- the extent of the atonement -- involves the further question of its nature, since if it was offered to save some who will finally perish, then it cannot have been a transaction securing the actual salvation of all for whom it was designed. But, says Owen, this is precisely the kind of transaction that the Bible says it was. The first two books of his treatise are a massive demonstration of the fact that according to Scripture the Redeemer's death actually saves His people, as it was meant to do. The third book consists of a series of sixteen arguments against the hypothesis of universal redemption, all aimed to show, on the one hand, that Scripture speaks of Christ's redeeming work as effective, which precludes its having been intended for any who perish, and, on the other, that if its intended extent had been universal, then either all will be saved (which Scripture denies, and the advocates of the "general ransom" do not affirm), or else the Father and the Son have failed to do what they set out to do -- "which to assert," says Owen, "seems blasphemously injurious to the wisdom , power and perfection of God, as likewise derogatory to the worth and value of the death of Christ." Owen's arguments ring a series of changes on this dilemma. Finally, in the fourth book, Owen shows with great cogency that the three classes of texts alleged to prove that Christ died for persons who will not be saved (those saying that He died for "the world," for "all," and those thought to envisage the perishing of those for whom he died), cannot on sound principles of exegesis be held to teach any such thing; and, further, that the theological inferences by which universal redemption is supposed to be established are really quite fallacious. The true evangelical evaluation of the claim that Christ died for every man, even those who perish, comes through at point after point in Owen's book. So far from magnifying the love and grace of God, this claim dishonours both it and Him, for it reduces God's love to an impotent wish and turns the whole economy of "saving" grace, so-called ("saving" is really a misnomer on this view), into a monumental divine failure. Also, so far from magnifying the merit and worth of Christ's death, it cheapens it, for it makes Christ die in vain. Lastly, so far from affording faith additional encouragement, it destroys the Scriptural ground of assurance altogether, for it denies that the knowledge that Christ died for me (or did or does anything else for me) is a sufficient ground for inferring my eternal salvation; my salvation, on this view, depends not on what Christ did for me, but on what I subsequently do for myself. Thus this view takes from God's love and Christ's redemption the glory that Scripture gives them, and introduces the anti-scriptural principle of self-salvation at the point where the Bible explicitly says: "not of works, lest any man should boast." You cannot have it both ways: an atonement of universal extent is a depreciated atonement. It has lost its saving power; it leaves us to save ourselves. The doctrine of the general ransom must accordingly be rejected, as Owen rejects it, as a grievous mistake. By contrast, however, the doctrine which Owen sets out, as he himself shows, is both biblical and God-honouring. It exalts Christ, for it teaches Christians to glory in His Cross alone, and to draw their hope and assurance only from the death and intercession of their Saviour. It is, in other words, genuinely Evangelical. It is indeed, the gospel of God and the catholic faith. It is safe to say that no comparable exposition of the work of redemption as planned and executed by the Triune Jehovah has ever been done since Owen published his. None has been needed. Discussing this work, Andrew Thomson notes how Owen "makes you feel when he has reached the end of his subject, that he has also exhausted it." That is demonstrably the case here. His interpretation of the texts is sure; his power of theological construction is superb; nothing that needs discussing is omitted, and (so far as the writer can discover) no arguments for or against his position have been used since his day which he has not himself noted and dealt with. One searches his book in vain for the leaps and flights of logic by which Reformed theologians are supposed to establish their positions; all that one finds is solid, painstaking exegesis and a careful following through of biblical ways of thinking. Owen's work is a constructive, broad-based biblical analysis of the heart of the gospel, and must be taken seriously as such. It may not be written off as a piece of special pleading for a traditional shibboleth, for nobody has a right to dismiss the doctrine of the limitedness of atonement as a monstrosity of Calvinistic logic until he has refuted Owen's proof that it is part of the uniform biblical presentation of redemption, clearly taught in plain text after plain text. And nobody has done that yet. We said earlier that modern Evangelicalism, by and large, has ceased to preach the gospel in the old way, and we frankly admit that the new gospel, insofar as it deviates from the old, seems to us a distortion of the biblical message. And we can now see what has gone wrong. Our theological currency has been debased. Our minds have been conditioned to think of the Cross as a redemption which does less than redeem, and of Christ as a Saviour who does less than save, and of God's love as a weak affection which cannot keep anyone from hell without help, and of faith as the human help which God needs for this purpose. As a result, we are no longer free either to believe the biblical gospel or to preach it. We cannot believe it because our thoughts are haunted by the Arminian idea that if faith and unbelief are to be responsible acts, they must be independent acts; hence we are not free to believe that we are saved entirely by divine grace through a faith which is itself God's gift and flows to us from calvary. Instead we involve ourselves in a bewildering kind of double-think about salvation, telling ourselves one moment that it all depends on God and the next moment that it all depends on us. The resultant mental muddle deprives God of much of the glory that we should give Him as author and finisher of salvation, and ourselves of much of the comfort we might draw from knowing that God is for us. And when we come to preach the gospel, our false preconceptions make us say just the opposite of what we intend. We want to magnify the saving grace of God and the saving power of Christ. So we declare that God's redeeming love extends to every man, and that Christ has died to save every man, and we proclaim that the glory of divine mercy is to be measured by these facts. And then, in order to avoid universalism, we have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling, and to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it; the decisive factor which actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this -- that Christ saves us with our help; and what that means, when one thinks it out, is this -- that we save ourselves with Christ's help. This is a hollow anticlimax. And let us be clear on what we have done when we have put the matter in this fashion. We have not exalted grace and the Cross; we have cheapened them. It is from degenerate faith and preaching of this kind that Owen's book could set us free. If we listen to him, he will teach us both how to believe the Scripture gospel and how to preach it. For the first: he will lead us to bow down before a sovereign Saviour Who really saves, and to praise Him for a redeeming death which made it certain that all for whom He died will come to glory. It cannot be over emphasised that we have not seen the full meaning of the cross till we have seen it as the divines of Dort display it -- as the center of the gospel, flanked on the one hand by total inability and unconditional election, and on the other by irresistible grace and final preservation. For the full meaning of the Cross only appears when the Atonement is defined in terms of these four truths. Christ died to save a certain company of helpless sinners upon whom God had set His free saving love. Christ's death ensured the calling and keeping -- the present and final salvation -- of all whose sins He bore. That is what Calvary meant, and means. The Cross saved; the Cross saves. This is the heart of true Evangelical faith; as Cowper sang --"Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Be saved from sin no more."This is the triumphant conviction which underlays the old gospel, as it does the whole New Testament. And this is what Owen will teach us unequivocally to believe.
J. I. Packer - Then And Now
An editorial by Rev. Arie den Hartog
"Those who see no need for doctrinal exactness and have no time for theological debates which show up divisions between so-called Evangelicals may well regret its (the present treatise) reappearance." So begins the Introduction to the Death of Death by J. I. Packer, Professor at Regent College, and a prominent author within Evangelical circles for many years. The quote above is typical of his uncompromising statements on the need for doctrinal purity in the Reformed faith. Readers may remember that this is also the same J.I. Packer who recently affirmed the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium. In our December 1994 issue of The Reformed Witness we evaluated this statement as a repudiation of the Protestant Reformation and a shameful compromise of the Christian faith, in large part because it downplays serious doctrinal differences between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics in favor of "unity". Yet we are now devoting an issue of our newsletter to an Introduction by Dr. Packer, an article that we approve of very much. Why? Professor Packer has received a great deal of criticism since affirming the document (referred to hereafter as ECT-- for Evangelicals and Catholics Together). His response to this criticism in a recent issue of Christianity Today provides an answer to our "why?" Packer gives at least three reasons for going with ECT, and they all have to do with the great need for Christians to present a united front to a western world that is already post-christian in many respects and that is still secularizing at an increasing rate. In his words, "Again, it is the theological conservationists, mainly, Roman Catholics and the more established evangelicals -- who have resources for the rebuilding of these ruins, and their domestic differences about salvation and the church should not hinder them from joint action in seeking to re-Christianize the North American milieu" (Christianity Today, December 12, 1994, p. 36). Look again at the quotation that begins this article, "Those who see no need for doctrinal exactness and have no time for theological debates...". John Owen wrote a 300 page book that is exhaustive, in Dr. Packer's view, on the subject of limited atonement. Packer has praised this work; would he now complain about its "doctrinal exactness"? Augustine taught and defended sound doctrine while the barbarians were destroying the Roman world in which he lived. When the Reformers broke with Roman Catholicism in the 16th century they were condemned for splitting the Christian world apart in the face of a great threat -- possible invasion and conquest by the Muslim Turks. We could also denounce Owen himself for wrangling over fine points of theology while the English civil war raged. There has never been a convenient time in the history of the church for developing and preaching sound doctrine. Social and political issues ferment and explode in all civilizations, throughout their histories. Such is the nature of societies built by fallen men and women. Christ told His disciples not to fight for His release when the Romans and Jewish leaders took Him for crucifixion, for His kingdom "is not of this world." The Christian's mission in every society, in every age, is to focus on the truths of that heavenly kingdom, and not to compromise them for the sake of expediency and for the sad state of the current cultural "milieu". J.I. Packer had a similar viewpoint when he penned these words introducing The Death of Death, "To find ourselves debarred, as Owen would debar us, from taking up with the fashionable modern substitute gospel may not, after all, be a bad thing, either for us, or for the Church."We are very pleased to quote Dr. Packer's earlier writings, for in them he clearly describes the danger of "taking up" with much of the thinking in the modern Christian world. Somewhere along the way his priorities seem to have changed, for now he puts the need for "Christian unity" above the need for doctrinal purity. We sincerely hope that he may one day re-evaluate his position, we would like nothing better than to see him regain his reputation as one of those terribly divisive fellows who is constantly concerned about doctrinal exactness.
A Puritan's Style Of Writing
Excerpts from the Introduction to The Death of Death by J. I. Packer
The Death of Death is a solid book, made up of detailed exposition and close argument, and requires hard study, as Owen himself realized; a cursory glance will not yield much. ("READER... If thou art, as many in this pretending age, a sign or title gazer, and comest into books as Cato into the theatre, to go out again -- thou hast had thy entertainment; farewell!") Owen felt, however, that he had a right to ask for hard study, for his book was a product of hard work ("a more than seven years serious inquiry... into the mind of God about these things, with a serious perusal of all which I could attain that the wit of man, in former or latter days, hath published in opposition to the truth"), and he was sure in his own mind that a certain finality attached to what he had written. ("Altogether hopeless of success I am not; but fully resolved that I shall not live to see a solid answer given unto it.") Time has justified his optimism. There is no denying that Owen is heavy and hard to read. This is not so much due to obscure arrangement as to two other factors. The first is his lumbering literary gait. "Owen travels through it (his subject) with the elephant's grace and solid step, if sometimes also with his ungainly motion," says Thomson. That puts it kindly. Much of Owen's prose reads like a roughly dashed off translation of a piece of thinking done in Ciceronian Latin. It has, no doubt, a certain clumsy dignity; so has Stonehenge; but it is trying to the reader to have to go over sentences two or three times to see their meaning, and this necessity makes it much harder to follow an argument. The present writer, however, has found that the hard places in Owen usually come out as soon as one read them aloud. The second obscuring factor is Owen's austerity as an expositor. He has a lordly disdain for broad introductions which ease the mind gently into a subject, and for comprehensive summaries which gather up scattered points into a small space. He obviously carries the whole of his design in his head, and expects his readers to do the same. Nor are his chapter divisions reliable pointers to the structure of his discourse, for though a change of subject is usually marked by a chapter division, Owen often starts a new chapter where there is no break in the thought at all. Nor is he concerned about literary proportions; the space given to a topic is determined by its intrinsic complexity rather than its relative importance, and the reader is left to work out what is basic and what is secondary by noting how things link together. We would conclude by repeating that the reward to be reaped from studying Owen is worth all the labour involved. It is hardly possible to grasp the strength and cogency of this massive statement on a first reading. The work must be read and re-read to be appreciated.
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