Got in the mail yesterday a copy of a newly revised edition of the Spanish translation of my book John Owen on Scripture. The revision was completed by David Astudillo and now has Scripture citations using the @tbsbibles Spanish Bible (RV-SBT).
Grace Publications Trust will be releasing a new edition of my book Gospel Church Government in 2024 in the series "Grace Essentials." The first edition was published in 2012 but has been out of print for several years.
This book is a simplification and abridgement of John Owen's classic work on ecclesiology, titled The True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government found in Vol. 16 of his Collected Works.
Since it went out of print, I have occasionally heard from folk seeing to find it, so I am glad it will be available once again.
JTR
Here’s a follow up to WM 254 covering the JW vs. PVK debate
in which James White mocked prayer and the inward work of the Holy Spirit in
recognizing and obeying the authentic text of Scripture. In so doing, he was actually debating classic Protestant Bibliology.
James White said the following (listen here):
You say that this [the Textus Receptus] is what we must
follow, and we are asking where does this come from?
And your answer is, We pray about it. Is that how you
[answer]? Have you prayed about every variant in the NT?...
So when a Mormon missionary says, I prayed about the Book of
Mormon, and the Holy Spirit testified to me that the Book of Mormon is the Word
of God, how would you respond, because you just told us that the way we know
the Bible is the Word of God is by praying about it….
Are you seriously suggesting that John Calvin taught us to
pray over differences in manuscripts? Can you give me a single place in the voluminous
writings of the Reformer of Geneva where he taught us to pray to determine when
the Greek manuscripts differed from the Latin Vulgate….
In answer to his challenge, see the following:
John Calvin, Institutes (1.7.5) (emphasis
added):
Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the
Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture
is indeed self-authenticated [autopiston]; hence it is not right to subject it
to proof and reasoning. And the certainty it deserves with us, it attains by
the testimony of the Spirit. For even if it wins reverence for itself by its own majesty,
it seriously affects us only when it is sealed upon our hearts through the
Spirit. Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by
anyone else’s judgement that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we
affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God
himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of
men. We seek no proofs, no mark of genuineness upon which our judgment may
lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as a thing far beyond any
guesswork! This we do, not as persons accustomed to seize upon some unknown
thing, which, under closer scrutiny displeases them, but fully conscious that
we hold the infallible truth! Nor do we do this as those miserable men who
habitually bind over their minds to the thralldom of superstition: but we feel
that the undoubted power of his divine majesty lives and breathes there. By
this power we are drawn and inflamed, knowingly and wittingly, to obey him, yet
also more vitally and more effectively than mere human knowing!
See also Westminster Confession of Faith, 1:5 (emphasis
added):
5. We may be moved and induced by the testimony
of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the holy Scripture;a and the heavenliness of the matter, the
efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the
parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full
discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other
incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments
whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God; yet,
notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth, and
divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing
witness by and with the Word in our hearts.b
a.
1 Tim
3:15. • b. Isa 59:21; John 16:13-14; 1 Cor 2:10-12; 1 John 2:20, 27.
See also John Owen, The Reason of
Faith (Works, Vol. 4:57) (emphasis added):
The work of the Holy Ghost unto this
purpose consists in the saving illumination of the mind; and the effect of it
is a supernatural light, whereby the mind is renewed; see Rom. xii.2; Eph.
i.18, 19, iii.16-19. It is called a “heart to understand, eyes to see, ears to
hear,” Deut. xxix.4; the “opening of the eyes of our understanding,” Eph. 1.18;
the “giving of an understanding,” 1 John v.20. Hereby we are enabled to discern
the evidences of the divine original and authority of the Scripture that are in
itself, as well as assent unto the truth contained in it; and without it we
cannot do so, for “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they
are spiritually discerned,” 1 Cor. ii.14….. That there is a divine and heavenly
excellency in the Scripture cannot be denied by any who, on any grounds or
motive whatever, do own its divine original…. But these we cannot discern, be
they in themselves never so illustrious, without the effectual communication of
the light mentioned unto our minds,—that is, without divine, supernatural
illumination.
And John Owen, The Reason of Faith
(Works, Vol. 4:59) (emphasis added):
But as a pretense herof hath been abused, as we shall see afterward, so the pleading of it is liable to be mistaken; for some are ready to apprehend that this is a retreat unto a Spirit of revelation is but a pretense to discard all rational arguments, and to introduce enthusiasm into their room. Now, although the charge be grievous, yet, because it is groundless, we must not forego what the Scripture plainly affirms and instructs us in, thereby to avoid it. Scripture testimonies may be expounded according to the analogy of faith; but denied or despised, see they never so contrary unto our apprehension of things, they must not be. Some, I confess, seem to disregard both the objective work of the Holy Spirit in this matter (whereof we shall treat afterward) and his subjective work also in our minds, that all things may be reduced unto sense and reason. But we must grant that a “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” to open the eyes of our understanding is needful to enable us to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God in due manner, or forego the gospel; and our duty it is to pray continually for that Spirit, if we intend to be established in the faith thereof.
Conclusion:
James White’s naturalistic approach to
Scripture is contrary to the classic Protestant emphasis upon the necessity of
the inward work of the Holy Spirit, as emphasized in Calvin, the WCF, and Owen.
JTR
Introduction:
In this
episode I want to read a section on the divine providential preservation of Scripture
from John Owen’s work titled, “The Reason of Faith, Or, The Grounds Whereon the
Scripture is Believed to be the Word of God with Faith Divine and Supernatural”
(1677) (Works, 4:5-115).
This is part
of Owen’s larger study on the Holy Spirit.
I thought it
might be helpful to share this given some of the misunderstandings and even
outright misrepresentations of Confessional Bibliology that have recently been
appearing online.
Owen’s overall
thesis in this work is that the believer must come to receive Scripture as the
Word of God based on an internal compulsion founded upon the fact that Scripture
is divine revelation, rather than upon, what he calls “moral persuasion” based
on “external arguments.”
So, he
writes:
“The sum is,
We are obliged in a way of duty to believe the Scriptures to be divine revelation,
when they are ministerially or providentially proposed unto us…. The ground
whereupon we are to receive them is the authority and veracity of God speaking
in them; we believe them because they are the word of God” (49).
He adds:
“Wherefore,
we do not nor ought only to believe the Scripture as highly probable, or with
moral persuasion and assurance, built upon arguments absolutely fallible and
human… if we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at
all” (49).
Nevertheless,
Owen holds that there is a place for “external arguments” reasonably to confirm
belief in Scripture as the Word of God.
In chapter 3
of “The Reason of Faith” Owen outlines five such “Sundry convincing external arguments
for divine revelation” (20-47). They include:
1. The antiquity of the writings;
2. The providential preservation of the
Scriptures;
3. The overall divine wisdom and
authority of the Scriptures;
4. The testimony of the church;
5. The doctrines derived from the Scriptures.
Owen on
Preservation:
I want now to
read Owen’s discussion of the preservation of Scripture as one of these five external
arguments :
[Reading from
Owen, Works, 4: 23-26]
Conclusion:
The Reformed
doctrine of the providential preservation of Scripture is one of the most
neglected themes in contemporary theology. I think Owen’s views add insight into what the framer’s of the WCF meant in 1:8 when they spoke of God’s Word having
been “kept pure in all ages.”
In recent
years there have been various evangelical and even Reformed attempts either to
reject this doctrine (See Dan Wallace) or to reinterpret it (See Richard Brash).
Confessional
Bibliology represents an effort neither to reject nor reinterpret but to
retrieve this doctrine. Sadly, lack of familiarity with and misunderstanding
of this historic doctrine has resulted, in part, in the unjust confusion and
conflation of Confessional Bibliology with IFB KJVO-ism (a phenomenon of the 20th
century).
Most
recently a Presbyterian youtuber has ungraciously mocked CB as KJVO because of
questions raised by us about “missing verses” in the modern critical text and
in modern translations, accusing us of promoting wacky conspiracy theories. He
has also suggested that the historic Christian position is to accept
uncertainty about what exactly the text of Scripture is, so that we have no reason
for anxiety when modern editors and translators remove passage from OR ADD to the
traditional text.
I think you
can clearly see in this excerpt from Owen, however, that he believed in the meticulous
care of God’s Word, as he puts it, “that not a letter of it should be utterly
lost.” He expresses his trust in divine providence to preserve “this book and
all that is in it, its words and its syllables.” He even speaks clearly of the
Scriptures having been preserved despite Satan’s efforts to corrupt it. He speaks
of Scripture having been preserved despite “the malicious craft of Satan.” He
notes that God’s providence even kept “apostatized Christians” from “the corrupting
of one line in it.”
I think we
can see that the beef some have with CB is really a beef with John Owen and the
Reformed Protestant Orthodox and, sadly enough, perhaps with WCF 1:8.
I hope that
this reading of Owen might help to clarify this point for those with sincere, serious,
and open-minded interest in this topic.
JTR
Thanks to Debbie F. my book John Owen on Scripture: Authority, Inspiration, Preservation, which includes my introductory essay on Owen's bibliology and my simplification and abridgement of Owen's two influential essays on Scripture from Volume 6 of his Collected Works, is now available in a Kindle format on amazon.com (find it here).
JTR
“…yet, through the watchful care and providence of God, sometimes
putting itself forth in miraculous instances, it [Scripture] hath been
preserved unto this day, and shall be so to the consummation of all things. The
event of that which was spoken by our Saviour, Matt. v. 18, doth invincibly
prove the divine approbation of this book, as that doth its divine original, ‘Till
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.’
God’s perpetual care over the Scripture for so many ages, that not a letter of
it should be utterly lost, nothing that hath the least tendency toward its end should
perish, is evidence of his regard unto it."
“For my part, I cannot but judge that he that seeth not an hand
of divine Providence stretched out in the preservation of this book and all that
is in it, its words and syllables, for thousands of years, through all the overthrows
and deluges of calamities that have befallen the world, with the weakness of
the means whereby it hath been preserved, and the interest, in some ages, of
all those in whose power it was to have been corrupted,—with the open
opposition that hath been made unto it, doth not believe there is any such
thing as providence at all.”
-John Owen (The Reason of Faith, Works, 4, 24).
The Bibliology
of John Owen (1616-1683):
The sum of
what I am pleading for, …, is,
That as the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were immediately
and entirely given out by God himself, his mind being in them represented unto
us without the least interveniency of such mediums and ways as are capable of giving
change or alteration to the least iota or syllable; so, by his good and
merciful providential dispensation, in his love to his word and church, his
whole word, as first given out by him, is preserved unto us entire in the
original languages; where, shining in its own beauty and lustre (as also in all
translations, so far as they faithfully represent the originals), it manifests
and evidences unto the consciences of men, without other foreign help or
assistance, its divine original and authority (Works, 16, 349-50).
John Owen, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding The Mind of God As Revealed In His Word (Collected Works, 4, 213):
“The words of Scripture being given thus immediately from
God, every apex, tittle, or iota in the whole is considerable, as that which is in effect divine wisdom, and therefore filled with sacred truth, according to
their place and measure. Hence, they are all under the especial care of God,
according to that promise of our Saviour, Matt v.18.... “Till heaven and earth
pass, one jota or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law. That our
Saviour doth here intend the writing of Scriptures then in use in
the church, and assure the protection of God unto the least letter, vowel, or
point of it, I have proved elsewhere [see Works, 16, 345-421]; and [God]
himself in due time will reprove the profane boldness of them who, without
evidence or sufficient proof, without that respect and reverence which is due
unto the interest, care, providence and faithfulness of God in this matter, do assert manifold changes to have been made to the original writings of the Scripture."
