Chambers:

FAITH

The soul can do without anything but the word of God; and apart from the word it has no means of help. When it has the word, however, it has no need of anything else.¹

Owen’s presentation confronts the reader with two issues in relation to faith. Firstly, is faith properly conceived as ‘purchased’ for believers on the cross, and, secondly, is unbelief a sin like any other, the penalty for which Christ suffered on the cross? As was seen in the summary of Owen’s argument both of these assertions are important to Owen’s position and each will be considered in turn.

The purchase of faith.

Owen introduces the idea of the purchase of faith, considered as the essential means of salvation, early in the second book.² In chapter one, considering the intermediate end of Christ work which is work, which is “bringing many sons to glory”, he tells us that this subservient end can be “considered distinctly in two parts, whereof one is the end and the other the means for attaining of that end.” He is insistent that both, “the one the condition, and the other the thing promised upon that condition”, are

equally and alike procured for us by Jesus Christ; for if either be omitted in his purchase, the other would be vain and fruitless.³ [my italics]

The means are characterized as grace, holiness, and faith; the ends as glory, blessedness and salvation. Owen focuses on faith as the means and condition, salvation as the end or promised inheritance, and, demonstrating what Muller calls “the Ramist tendency to delineate exhaustive and inclusive categories,”⁴ expands faith to be a category that comprehends “all saving grace that accompanies it,” that is “all the effectual means of faith, both external and internal”, “all advancement of state and condition attending it,” and “all fruits flowing from it”⁵. Salvation is likewise taken to encompass “the whole ‘glory to be revealed.’.” He concludes the chapter thus

A real, effectual, and infallible bestowing and applying of all these things (that is faith and all that accompanies it N. C. J . . . unto all and everyone for whom he died, do we maintain to be the end proposed and effected by the blood-shedding of Jesus Christ, with those other acts of his mediatorship which we before declared to be therewith inseparably conjoined: so that everyone for whom he died and offered up himself hath, by virtue of his death or oblation, a right purchased for him unto all these things, which in due time he shall certainly and infallibly enjoy.⁶

While some of these things are bestowed “upon condition that they do believe” Owen is insistent that faith itself is bestowed “absolutely upon no condition at all.”⁷ Thus the elect have a right to the means of salvation purchased for them by Christ, and faith is seen as the principal of these means whose bestowal is guaranteed unconditionally by the purchase of Christ. Owen recognizes the

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Clifford:

Consistent with his commercialism, [John] Owen insisted that God’s justice was only satisfied by Christ’s payment of the same quantitative penalty or debt owed by the elect to God on account of their sins–the solutio ejusdem.³¹ Baxter (following Grotius at the only point where he could do so with any real justification) argued that, in virtue of the differences (in detail and duration) between Christ’s sufferings and the actual sufferings of the lost, Christ only paid a qualitative equivalent–the solutio tantidem.³² Since the penalty of the law threatens eternal punishment to impenitent offenders, Christ clearly did not suffer the identical punishment, for his resurrection terminated his banishment.³³ God therefore relaxed the law with regard both to the persons who should suffer (which Owen obviously agreed with)³⁴34 and to the penalty suffered. Clearly, there was not the ‘sameness’ Owen pleads for.

Although a strict particularist like William Cunningham denied the importance of this issue,³⁵ Owen saw clearly that his doctrine of limited atonement hung upon the ‘sameness’ between Christ’s sufferings and those deserved by the elect. However, he could only argue his case with the aid of Aristotle’s metaphysics. His very language betrays him: ‘When I say the same, I mean essentially the same in weight and pressure, though not in all the accidents of duration and the like; for it was impossible that he should be detained by death.’³⁶ He therefore resorts to Aristotle’s dubious essence-accidents theory³⁷ to prove his point. In Baxter’s view even this statement ‘yieldeth the cause,’³⁸ but after learning of Baxter’s criticism Owen granted that ‘There is a sameness in Christ’s sufferings with that in the obligation in respect of essence, and equivalency in respect of attendencies.’³⁹

But Owen’s use of this philosophical distinction simply obscures the fact that there is a real difference between Christ’s temporary sufferings and the eternal sufferings deserved by the elect. He cannot establish his concept of ‘sameness’ without philosophical double-talk. If he is prepared to grant an equivalence in either respect, he is forced to concede that there is only a similarity, and not a sameness at all. Clearly, Aristotle’s metaphysical formula⁴⁰ only serves to permit unreal and meaningless distinctions. Had Baxter been as nimble as David Hume⁴¹ at this point, he would have exploded Owen’s case; however, Aristotle had a few more years to reign in scholastic circles. In view of later criticism of ‘the philosopher’ it is possible to see how Owen’s questionable commercialism falls to the ground, and with it the classical doctrine of limited atonement. In other words, he cannot demonstrate that the sufferings of Christ were commensurate with the deserved sufferings of the elect without the doubtful support of Aristotle. He fails, therefore, to prove that the atonement is necessarily limited by its nature. Indeed, his thesis requires that the sinner be eternally saved at the ‘expense’ of the Saviour’s eternal loss.

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Chambers:

Unbelief as a sin atoned for.

At the conclusion of the triple choice argument Owen, to rule out the possibility that there could be any sense in which Christ could be said to have died for all men, asks the general redemptionists why, if Christ did die for all men all are not saved?

You will say, “Because of their unbelief; they will not believe.” But this unbelief, is it a sin, or not? If not, why should they be punished for it? If it be then Christ underwent the punishment due to it, or not. If so, then why must that hinder them more than their other sins for If he did not, then did he not die for all their sins. Let them choose which part they will.⁷⁷

Clifford has made a number of criticisms of this argument in relation to its impact on the guilt of unbelief, its depriving “general exhortations to believe of all significance,” and the tension it establishes with Owen’s commitment to common grace which need not be repeated here.⁷⁸ What needs to be seen is that Owen’s argument defeats itself by proving too much. If, in Owen’s terms, Christ died for all the sins of some people, the elect, then he must also have died for their unbelief, where ‘died for’ is understood to mean having paid the penalty for all their sins at Calvary. If this is the case, then why are the elect not saved at Calvary? If Owen replies that it is because the benefits of Christ is death are not yet applied to them, then I would ask what it means for those benefits not to be applied to them? Surely it means that they are unbelieving, and therefore cannot be spoken of as saved. But they cannot be punished for that unbelief, as its penalty has been paid and God, as Owen assures us, will not exact a second penalty for the one offense.⁷⁹If then, even in their unbelief, there is no debt against them, no penalty to be paid, surely they can be described as saved, and saved at Calvary. That being the case, the gospel is reduced to a cipher, a form of informing the saved of their blessed condition.

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THE CONFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

I believe and confess my Lord God, eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, and invisible, one in substance, and three in person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who by His almighty power and wisdom, has not only of nothing created heaven and earth, and all things therein contained, and man after His own image, that He might in Him be glorified, but also by His fatherly providence governs, maintains, and preserves the same, according to the purpose of His will.

I believe also and confess Jesus Christ the only Savior and Messiah, who being equal with God, made Himself of no reputation, but took on Him the shape of a servant, and became man, in all things like unto us, except sin, to assure us of mercy and forgiveness: for when through our father Adam’s transgression, we were become children of perdition, there was no means to bring us from the yoke of sin and damnation, but only Jesus Christ our Lord, who giving us that by grace, which was by nature His, made us through faith the children of God, who when that fullness of time was come, was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary (according to the flesh) and preached in earth the gospel of salvation, till at length by tyranny of the priests, He was guiltlessly condemned under Pontius Pilate, the president of Jewry, and most slanderously hanged on the cross between two thieves, as a notorious trespasser, where taking upon Him the punishment of our sins, He delivered us from the curse of the Law.

And for as much as He being only God, could not feel death, neither being only man, could overcome death, He joined both together, and suffered His humanity to be punished with most cruel death, feeling in Himself the anger and severe judgment of God, even as He had been in extreme torments of hell, and, therefore, cried with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Thus of His mercy: without compulsion, He offered up Himself as the only sacrifice to purge the sins of the world, so that all other sacrifices for sins are blasphemous and derogate from the sufficiency hereof, which death, albeit it did sufficiently reconcile us to God, yet the Scriptures commonly do attribute our regeneration to His resurrection. For as by rising again from the grave the third day He conquered death, even so the victory of our faith stands in His resurrection: and, therefore, without the one, we cannot feel the benefits of the other. For as by His death sin was taken away, so our righteousness was restored by His resurrection. And because He would accomplish all things, and take possession for us in His kingdom, He ascended into heaven, to enlarge the same kingdom, by the abundant power of His Spirit, by whom we are most assured of His continual intercession towards God the Father for us.

“The Confession of Faith in the Geneva Bible,” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed., James T. Dennison, (Grand Rapids Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 2:182-183.