June 5, 2017 Show with Michael Haykin on “The English Reformation” AND “John Owen on the Christian Life”

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this fifth day of June 2017 and in studio with me is my co -host the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's good to be back after a little bit of a leave. Yes, and the Reverend Buzz had a nice several days of time with his daughter, his daughter

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Is that what you would call a a marksman that is a woman? Yes, and don't forget that she can imitate any accent also.

Okay, well hopefully that will happen one day and she's also a very dedicated Christian young lady.

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Today we are so excited to have back on the program one of our favorite guests of all time on Iron Sherpa and Zion, Dr.

Michael A .G. Haken, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the

Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

And today we are starting off the two hours by discussing the English Reformation, and if we have time in the second hour we will at least begin a discussion on John Owen on the

Christian life, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sherpa and Zion, Dr.

Michael Haken. It's great to be with you Chris, thank you. And he buzzed

Dr. Haken just greeted us. And I want to give our listeners right away our email address in the event that you'd like to ask a question of Dr.

Haken. Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Specifically we hope that you ask a question on the

English Reformation during the first hour, but if we have time we may have him answer other questions involving the

Reformed faith or revolving Baptist history and faith, things that he is a very knowledgeable expert on.

But we are opening up the discussion on the English Reformation, and again it's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

And Dr. Haken, when we speak of the English Reformation, typically what is the time frame that we are talking about?

Are we speaking of the 16th century, just as when we speak of Luther and Calvin and so on?

Are we speaking about approximately the same time in history? Yeah, we are. Yes, we are.

The Lutheran writings started to come into England in the late 15 -teens, and probably ground zero to some degree of the

Reformation in England was Cambridge. And you start to find gospel preachers like Thomas Bilney in Cambridge, in the 1520s, and then

Hugh Latimer is converted around 1524. Always determine, try to determine when the end of Reformation is.

It's not an easy task. Is it the reign of Elizabeth I, when she dies in 1603?

Is it the beginning of her reign? But essentially we're looking at the 16th century.

Yes, and a lot of people, as I'm sure you know, whether they be Roman Catholic or your average person perhaps, who has some sort of disdain for either

Christianity, religion in general, or specifically Protestantism, they will say the

English Reformation? Oh, you're talking about King Henry VIII, who is nothing more than a lustful rebel who wanted to get a divorce, and since the

Pope wouldn't grant him one, he started a religion over it, and then wound up executing a number of these wives that he had no business marrying, and they will basically summarize the

English Reformation in a nutshell in that way. But how is that caricature really misleading?

Well, it's misleading because it failed to recognize that the English Reformation, like the other

Reformations in Europe at the time, had spiritual roots, theological roots, but also like the other

Reformations in Europe, at least most of them, there were the political elements that had to be considered, and so anybody studying the

English Reformation has to look at both sides of the story, the theological side, the spiritual side, as it were, and then also the political shenanigans, if you might describe it that way, of men like King Henry VIII, who breaks with the

Church of Rome over the issue of divorce. As Church and State for all of the

Reformers, except for the Anabaptists, were two sides of a coin, the political element can never be discounted or ignored or neglected in thinking through the

Reformation in the 16th century. Now what was the climate of England in the 16th century in regard to religion?

I mean, obviously, even though it was a Roman Catholic country until the

Reformation took hold in there, in England, and began to blossom and became the official, when

Protestantism became the official religion of England, there had to be something brewing there already for that to so quickly emerge after King Henry VIII decided to break with Rome.

Obviously, although we as Bible -believing Christians disagree with his motives, there was obviously something brewing underneath the surface with people coming to agree, even if privately, with the doctrines of the

Reformation, am I right? Yes, England is a good example of the fact that during the

Middle Ages, there had been movements seeking reform that had never been able to generate significant reform widespread in the

Roman Church. And in England, it was John Wycliffe and his followers who come to be known as the

Lollards. Wycliffe, who died in 1384, really generated a fairly significant movement of men and women who abandoned the parish church, sought to read the

Scriptures in their own homes, and really tried to go back to the simplicity of the early church.

It's interesting that the areas where the Lollards were active were the areas where the first deep roots of the

Reformation took place in England. And so the ground, to some degree, had been prepared prior to the emergence of the

Reformation. Generally speaking, parts of England were in a very dire state.

Those parts that were not touched by the Lollards, spiritually bankrupt, often with absentee priests, or where the priests were in the parishes, ignorant, unable to read the

Latin because everything was in Latin, memorizing the words that they didn't really know, committed supposedly to celibacy, but many of them on chaste individuals.

And so the situation as the Reformers emerged is one of a church desperately needing reform.

Now, I should mention that this is a big area of scholarly debate today. There have been a number of revisionist scholars, people like Eamon Duffy, who is a

Roman Catholic scholar, very knowledgeable about the Reformation period, but he argues that the medieval

Roman Catholic Church in England was actually in a very healthy state, and that the

Reformation took a lot longer to take root in England than has been generally argued. His arguments are not without a certain degree of merit, but there obviously have been those who pushed back on him, people like David Daniel, the author of a fabulous biography of William Tyndale, who basically doesn't buy

Duffy's arguments for a kind of healthy church prior to the

Reformation, and argues that the Reformation did take root much quicker than Duffy would allow.

Duffy would argue that the Reformation really doesn't start to take root in England until the reign of Elizabeth I, which is in the 1560s.

David Daniel's argument is, no, no, there's no way of explaining how the

Bible that William Tyndale translates to the New Testament, how there were some 30 ,000 copies of these.

Who was reading them? People were not buying up all kinds of Bibles for their own shelves. There'll be a

Bible per household. So you're looking at somewhere around 30 ,000 households having access to the Scriptures.

Maybe a bit less than that, because some of them were burned by Roman Catholic authorities. But I think by and large

Duffy's arguments are solid. Sorry, David Daniel's arguments are solid, and that there is indeed a

Reformation in England beginning in the 1520s, and continue to pick up steam throughout the century.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor. Just as a little aside, I'm trying to remember the beginning of a particular radio program, so I'm not referring to the radio program.

I'm talking about the real incident. But is this where the White Horse Inn fits into all of this?

The White Horse Inn was in Cambridge. It was situated between what is now Queens College and King's College.

There is a plaque that indicates its locale. The actual building is no longer there.

It was an inn that was resorted to by many of the early Reformers. Places like that, places where men could gather to discuss news topics, in this case theology, were prime places where the gospel could spread.

When we say an inn, we tend to think of a drinking establishment. Obviously they would have supplied beverages, but it would also be a place where people could come for a period of time, like a coffee shop today, or a cafe.

And so these places were prime locales where the gospel began to be shared and embraced.

Were Bibles distributed from there also? Probably not. Probably in the early days, because having a copy of Tyndale's New Testament was illegal, it would be done somewhat secret.

And William Tyndale's version of the Scriptures, when did that come to be known and resulted in his persecution?

He translated that in Europe. He had to go to continental Europe to find a context in which he could translate that.

It was published in 1526 on the press of a man named Peter Scherfer, who was

Peter Scherfer the Younger, who was a son of a

Peter Scherfer the Elder, who had worked with Johann Gutenberg, the founder of the printing press.

And he was an excellent, excellent printer. And you can tell this by the kind of, the fonts that he used.

And that was printed in Worms, a German city where Luther had had a favorite, an important meeting with the

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1521. And it was in that same place that, in 1526, five years later, that the 3 ,000 or 6 ,000, we're not sure how many, copies of the

New Testament were made and shipped back to England. Tyndale continued to revise that, and it's normally the third edition of 1534 that was heavily used by various translators in the 16th century.

The King James Version translators would have used his third edition. And what was his fate, his personal fate?

Well, he never returned to England. He was unable to get back. And King Henry VIII, in the 1520s, put a price on his head.

This is before Henry broke with Rome. And he was portrayed into Roman Catholic authorities by a perfidious individual named

Henry Phillips in 1535. Imprisoned for probably the best part of a year at a place called

Villefort in Belgium, what is now Belgium, and subsequently burned at the stake in October of 1536.

Well, I don't want to steal too much of the thunder from our listener in Slovenia, but Joe says,

Joe in Slovenia says, I'm interested in Dr. Hagen's thoughts about John Wycliffe as the forerunner of the

Reformation. He argued that the Bible was the only sure basis of belief, and that it should be translated into the vernacular.

He denied that the traditions of the Church were as important as Scripture. His rejection of transubstantiation, advocacy of clerical marriage, and denunciations of the wealth and power of the clergy, all foreshadowed

Protestant ideas. He even spawned the Lollard movement that propagate his proto -Reformation ideas through itinerant preaching.

My question is, if Gutenberg's printing press had been invented and in use before or at the time of Wycliffe, would his ideas have been decimated in the way that Luther's were nearly 200 years later?

Would we have had a sustained Reformation beginning with an English Wycliffe instead of a

German Luther? Obviously there's a lot of prophecy that you would have to be conducting or guesswork there in order to determine that answer, but if you could comment on Joe's...

Yeah, I think that sort of question is a very helpful question because it helps bring into focus what were the factors that led to the

Reformation in the 1500s and not in the 1300s. Certainly the printing press is a key factor, there's no doubt about that.

Luther, on one occasion the angel, there's an angel in Revelation which goes around the world preaching the gospel.

Luther has this bizarre, but understandable in light of his context, interpretation of that.

He says, that's none other than the printing press. No other commentator in the 16th century followed him.

You can understand why he would say that. The printing press enabled his writings to be all over Europe within a very rapid period of time.

Wycliffe's writings had to be copied by hand. If you arrested the person copying them, you basically cut the line of supply.

So the printing press certainly is a critical factor, but there are other factors as well that preceded the

Reformation that were not there in place in the 1300s. By the 1500s there was a significant rise of nationalism in Europe.

We're probably going through a period of nationalism in international affairs today, and it certainly was the case in Europe.

Men and women no longer identified themselves as first and foremost Europeans belonging to the

Roman Catholic Church. They identified themselves as Frenchmen or Germans or English. And one of the things that is widespread is just a deep dissatisfaction with funding an

Italian with a stress on Italian papacy. And so a number of the places where Reformation took deep root, for example in Geneva, the initial reasons for the embrace of the

Reformation were not at all because of the spirituality of the message, but because the people, the leading mights in the area, people in authority, were simply fed up with funding

Italians. And that certainly is the case in Geneva. Obviously then God brings

Calvin there, the Reformation moves in a godly spiritual direction. So nationalism wasn't to the fore in the 14th century as it was in the 16th.

The other thing that's not there also is the Renaissance. The Renaissance is just beginning to take off.

It's only impacted northern Italy by the 14th century. And all of the

Reformers, except for Luther, are Renaissance scholars. They've all learned their methodology of study habits and learning from Renaissance ideals.

And one of the key Renaissance ideals is this, is that if you want to retool or refurbish a culture, you need to go back to the sources.

And the Renaissance scholars argued this, particularly in light of Greek and Roman sources, for retooling

Europe's fabric, political and cultural fabric of Europe. The Reformers, like Calvin, Calvin's first book was on a commentary on Seneca, on his book on clemency.

And this is true of all the Reformers except for Luther. Calvin learned the ideal that if we want to go, want to therefore, he transferred it to Scripture, we want to refurbish the

Church, we need to go back to its sources, namely the Bible. And so the Renaissance wasn't there either.

And so while certainly the key theological elements of Wycliffe are similar, very similar to the

Reformers, there were other cultural factors that God used that would not have been there in the 14th century.

Well thank you Joe in Slovenia. And guess what, you have won a free copy of The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors, Hope is

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And who are the main figures, you've already mentioned some of them, but who are the main figures surrounding

Henry VIII during the dawn of the Reformation in England, and were they primarily the ones who were prodding him and pushing him, urging him, or suggesting to him, depending upon how frightened they were of him, to move forward with the

Reformation? Or was this largely something that came to his own mind because he wanted to be remarried and defy the

Pope and Rome, who had prohibited his remarriage? What was going on there, and who were these individuals?

Some of the key individuals would have been people like Thomas Cranmer, who was his archbishop, became archbishop about two years before Henry broke with Rome.

Cranmer, it's not clear when Cranmer was actually converted, he's definitely converted by the late 1530s.

So he was converted after the 30, well it started out as the 10

Articles of Religion and later became the 39 Articles. So he was converted after the original 10

Articles of Religion? Yeah, it's very unclear as to exactly when he would have been genuinely converted.

For him, initially, he would have gone along with Henry's break with Rome. Did that mean he was actually a converted man at that point?

That's not clear. So there's him, Thomas Cranmer, not to be confused with Oliver Cranmer, but a distant relative of Oliver Cranmer.

He definitely was committed to the Protestant cause and was seeking to further it on a number of occasions.

And then the number of Henry's wives, Anne Boleyn, would definitely be, just prior to her fall from favor, would certainly embrace the gospel and the

Protestant cause, and certainly was urging Henry to allow the

Bible free course in England. Jane Seymour, his third wife, was definitely an evangelical, and her brother was in correspondence,

Edward Seymour was in correspondence with Calvin on how to pursue and propagate the

Reformation in England. His fourth wife, Anna Cleese, was a

Lutheran, and then his final wife, Catherine Parr, was also an evangelical. So there were a number of fairly significant figures, very close to Henry, who wanted to see the

Reformation succeed in England. What about his fifth wife? Didn't he have six wives? He had six wives.

His fifth wife was a Catherine Howard, related to the

Duke of Norfolk. Very interestingly, the Norfolk line, the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, have been able to retain their

Roman Catholicism down to the present day, which is really very unusual. But yes, she was a

Catholic, and so when he was married to her, Roman Catholicism was back in favor. And so there were six articles of religion that were passed that favored transubstantiation, clerical celibacy.

During that period of time, Cranmer had to act as if he wasn't married. He actually had to send his wife over to Europe, the continent.

So it's, for people like Cranmer, seeking reform, it's like being on a rollercoaster with Henry.

Yeah, and how much of it, in your estimation, obviously these are men long dead, you can't, even if they were alive today, you couldn't read their minds, but how much of this early in the

Reformation was caused by political expediency and the desire for an independent

England, an England independent from Rome's authority, and how much of it was due to a passion for the true gospel, which came out of genuine conversions, genuinely regenerate individuals.

Because, I don't know if you agree with Dr. Ashley Null, the

Anglican scholar who I've had on this program, but he believes that Cranmer, who is one of his heroes, as you said, was certainly a genuinely converted man who eventually voluntarily gave up his life as a martyr for his faith after he had recanted it, and then ashamed of his recantation, he then recanted his recantation, and returned to the faith that he believed in, and was executed as a result.

But Dr. Null said that he believes that it is clear that Cranmer did not view

King Henry VIII as a regenerate man, because he believed that Henry was still, in reality, loyal to Roman Catholic dogma in many respects, obviously with the exception of any papal authority over him.

But he, on his deathbed, Cranmer was asking him if he believed in justification by faith alone, and he asked

Henry to squeeze his hand if he was in agreement with that, and Henry apparently did, which gave some comfort to Cranmer.

But do you agree with Dr. Null on this view of things? Yeah, essentially,

I mean, Henry embraces certain elements of what we call Protestantism.

He never embraced justification by faith alone. He rejected purgatory.

It is a very confusing, you know, how could a man who'd been married to three genuine evangelicals, he chops off Evelyn's head,

Jane Seymour dies, and then he divorces Anna Cleves, then get married to a Roman Catholic, if he's genuinely committed to Protestantism.

I mean, the morality aside, you really can't put it aside, but, you know, not even thinking about the moral aspect of marrying a fifth time when he's got, you know, he's divorced, he's got two divorced wives living.

Yeah, I, to be honest, I mean, I know the same account that you've just recounted there from Dr.

Null. We are thankful in those contexts that God knows.

God knows it's hard. Amen. But from all intents and purposes,

Henry is playing political games. Right, right. Well, yeah, even Dr. Null would have said the same.

That's why he said this was a deathbed, an alleged deathbed conversion. We have a listener in Runnels, Iowa.

I'm gonna read his question, and then I'm gonna forward his email to you, so during the break, you can mull it over and answer it when we return.

Chris from Runnels, Iowa says, great topic today. I'm curious if Dr. Haken could briefly discuss the relevance of conversion or regeneration in the

English Reformation. It seemed to play an important role in the German and Swiss Reformation, and is a particular emphasis of John Owen in his writings.

Yet I have not heard or read much about this in the earlier English Reformation history. Thank you for your faithfulness to Christ's Church, and I am sending that right now to you.

And we're gonna go to a station break. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.

Haken, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside of the good old

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back, God willing, with Dr. Michael A .G. Haken. Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio?

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Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

It's Chris Arnson again, and if you have just joined us, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, professor of church history and biblical spirituality and director of the

Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

During the first hour of the program, we are discussing the English Reformation and God willing, in the second hour, we will talk about John Owen on the

Christian life, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com, and I thank Chris in Runnels, Iowa for giving me such a large typeface when he sent in his email with a question, because I believe

I messed up a couple of the words in Joe from Slovenia's email, which was much tinier, and I think

I mixed up the word dissimated for disseminated. But Chris from Runnels, Iowa says, great topic today.

I am curious if Dr. Haken could briefly discuss the relevance of conversion or regeneration in the

English Reformation. It seemed to play an important role in the German and Swiss Reformation, and there's a particular emphasis of John Owen in his writings, yet I have not heard or read much about this in the earlier

English Reformation history. Thank you for your faithfulness to Christ's Church.

Dr. Haken, any response? Yes, I mean, just as with the Continental scene, conversion was very important for English Reformers.

Hugh Latimer would speak very clearly of the time of his conversion, for example.

He would say that prior to meeting Christ, the phrase meeting

Christ is not exactly his words, but that's the general idea. He had been as often a papist as any in England, and for him the turning point was in 1524.

He had just gotten his bachelor of divinity degree, which in those days would have followed a master's, and he was required to give a lecture, and he chose for his topic

Philip Melanchthon and attacked him heavily in the lecture. A young evangelical in the audience, a man named

Bilney, came to him afterwards and began to show him why he was dead wrong from a biblical standpoint, and Latimer said he learned more in one hour than he had known that he had learned in all of his studies over the years in theology, and he would date his conversion from that visit.

And so conversion is definitely an important thing for these men. Jane Gray, who when she was imprisoned, she was briefly

Queen of England and then imprisoned by her cousin Mary I. Prior to her execution,

Mary I sent one of her chaplains, John Feckinham, to grill her and hopefully turn her from her beliefs, and if they couldn't save her body, save her soul.

And when the conversation comes to an end, she actually, Feckinham says, because Jane stood by her views,

Feckinham said, I fear we shall never meet again, because Jane would be executed in a few days, and he's thinking, obviously,

Jane's a heretic and going to hell. Her response is, you speak the truth, for lest the

Lord send his spirit and turn your heart, you are in an evil state. And so conversion then is a,

I mean, numerous other examples could be given, but conversion is a very important part of the English scene.

The fact that Chris, you can't think of a book or maybe a study of it, might indicate that this would be an excellent study for somebody to do, looking at conversion, regeneration in the early early

English Reformation. And perhaps it should be you. Well, thank you,

Chris, in Reynolds, Iowa, and you have also won a free copy of The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors.

Hope is kindled by our guest, Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen, so please make sure we have your full mailing address, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service will mail that out to you as soon as possible.

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Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, when discussing martyrs of the faith with Roman Catholics and bringing up the countless thousands of martyrs that Rome was guilty of committing due to their atrocious and sadistic tortures and murders of those who left the

Roman Catholic faith in favor of the Reformation, you will often hear the

Roman Catholics retort that Protestants have been just as guilty of these martyrs as Rome has been, and my question is, isn't it really the

Church of England, whether it be Roman Catholic or Protestant, that were the primary culprits for martyring dissidents and causing the streets of England to run red with blood, as opposed to the other nations where the

Reformation was taking hold? Yeah, I'm not sure

I fully got the question. The question was, in England where there were martyrs, both, you know, people killed for their religious convictions.

I think he was saying, or is asking, if England was primarily the place where the martyrs of either

Catholic or Protestant were taking place, in regard to the the retort of Catholics saying that Protestants are just as guilty in their history of killing their opponents, and basically

I believe he's contrasting Protestant England with Germany and Switzerland and so on, whereas the numbers weren't nearly as high in those places as they were in England.

I think that's where he's getting it. To be honest, I can't speak about numbers.

The very idea of killing one individual for their religious convictions is, to me, anathema.

But the reality is that the Reformation occurred in a context where, apart from a few individuals like the

Anabaptists, by and large everybody accepted the idea that the Church and State were one, and that the

State was the guardian of orthodoxy, however that orthodoxy might be defined. And so, it is true, then, that Protestants did execute

Catholics, and even fellow Protestants, because some of the

Anabaptists. There's virtually no Anabaptists killed in England, but places like Switzerland and Germany saw many

Anabaptists, probably in the hundreds, maybe even thousands, killed. And again, from our point of view, looking at it from a very, very different, somewhat different theological perspective, we would argue that persecution, the use of the sword to enforce theological perspectives, is biblically unjustifiable on the

New Testament. But these people didn't see it that way. They'd had a long history of union of Church and State, and they inherited that.

And it would not be until the 17th century that you find significant groups in the world who learned the gospel from Anglican ministers, who would later honor the memory of people like Cramner and Ridley and Latimer, but who recognized that when they came to issues of Church and State, they didn't see as far as they did see on things like justification by faith alone.

Well, couldn't you say, though, that Rome, I'm not going tit -for -tat here, but just because of the prevalence of torture and execution at the hands of Roman authorities, can't you say that the

Roman Catholic Church numerically was far more guilty of execution than our

Protestant forefathers were, as far as it being widespread, gruesome, and numerically?

Yeah, I probably would agree with that. But I don't have actual numbers, and I'm not sure anybody does.

You know, even in a place like Geneva, you know, often Calvin's described as kind of, by his opponents and those who dislike him, as running some sort of kind of concentration camp.

It's completely bonkers. I mean, we know, I think, of only one individual who was actually executed in Geneva would be

Michael Cervantes. There might be one or two others, but compared to what, say, the

Spanish Inquisition was doing, it's a, as you say, it's a very small number. But then, as I say,

I just don't have numbers. But again, the other thing to be borne in mind here is this, is, like,

Elizabeth I, who is committed to Protestantism, and is definitely theologically a

Calvinist. Her disagreement with the Puritans is over who's the head of the church. During her reign, she executes about 280

Roman Catholics. They are executed not for their religion. They are executed because many of them, or at least they were implicated, all of them, in plots against the state.

So that's the other problem in this period, is that you have

Roman Catholics in countries and Protestant territories engaged in subversive political activities.

So it'd be similar, you know, in the United States today, if you have a Muslim terrorist who is planning to blow up or kill

American officials, he's caught and tried and imprisoned. He's not in prison because he's a

Muslim. He happens to be a Muslim who is engaged in subversive activities. Right. Now, isn't that really the same reason why the

German authorities often tortured and executed Anabaptists? Because of the fact that an element within the

Anabaptists were anarchists and really spoiled the reputation of the whole lot of them.

They were broad -brushed together. Am I off on that? No, that's true. I mean, in Germany, the

Anabaptist movement had a very bad name because of a 1533 -1534 incident at a place called

Münster near the Dutch border, where they basically seized the town, executed anybody who didn't undergo adult baptism, and reinstituted polygamy, all of the laws of the

Old Testament. And it ran a reign of terror until the city was taken by legitimate authorities.

So, yes, there would be other contexts where the

Catholics or Anabaptists were executed for political reasons, and not so much for religious reasons.

But that's definitely true in England. Now, there may have been some of those individuals who happened to get caught up in a plot, and they actually were not plotting themselves.

They were simply bystanders and happened to be Catholics in the wrong place at the wrong time. So there may have been some like that, but most of those who

Elizabeth executed, she did not believe she was executing anybody for their religious beliefs, but she believed she was executing them for political subversion.

That's another factor that's involved in this as well. Now today, when we look at the

Church of England, or the Episcopal Church, their cousins or stepchildren, if you will, the spectrum is very broad.

Today you have, of course, the majority which are apostate or liberal.

Then you have within the conservative camp, you have the Oxford movement side, which is very

Romish, and you do have a minority of Evangelicals.

And even within the Evangelicals, you have Arminians and you have true Reformed 39

Articles men. And in the days of the English Reformation, was there as much, of course the liberalism would never have reached the height or depth, depending upon how you want to look at it.

As it is today, of course, there would be no pro -homosexuality or anything. But was there as broad of a spectrum of belief within the

English Reformation as we have today? No, not at all. The English Reformation, I mean, to compare

Anglicanism then to now, you'd really have to look at the Anglican Church in places like Kenya and Uganda and Nigeria, where you've got a remarkably

Evangelical body of believers. You know, I mean, the real strength of Anglicanism today is no longer in the

West in any way, shape, or form. But the real strength lies in those sort of contexts where there is a deep commitment to the

Gospel. In the Reformation period, you wouldn't have had anything like Anglo -Catholicism.

And men like Cranmer, Hooper, Latimer were really kind of forerunners of the

Puritans. And if you read through Cranmer, Cranmer would not have anything, definitely nothing, to do with Anglo -Catholicism, or even the so -called

Broad Church that develops in the 18th century, which is a really kind of very moderate, you know, lukewarm

Protestantism. I mean, Cranmer is radical. He's committed to the

Gospel. He's committed to justification by faith alone and the authority of the Scriptures. And what you do have,

I mean, you have certain differences over what can continue in worship.

But the sort of breadth that you have today with, you know, on one end people who are more Roman Catholic than Roman Catholics, and then a broad -based liberal body, and then evangelicals at the other end of the spectrum, you don't have anything like that in the 16th century.

Now was it predominantly Calvinistic in its emphasis? I know that Cranmer was a

Calvinist. Yes, it was. The initial influence of Luther, but by the 1540s,

Zwingli, the Reformed wing with Zwingli and Calvin is becoming the more dominant influence.

So Cranmer is in correspondence with Calvin on how to reform the Church of England. People like Edward Seymour, the brother of the

Queen, Jane Seymour, is also involved, is also involved in correspondence with Calvin.

Calvin dedicates one of his commentaries to the man who he calls a young Josiah, Edward VI, Henry VIII's son.

So yes, these men are Calvinists, no doubt about it.

Let's see, we have a couple of more listeners on this topic.

I don't know if we'll be able to get to both of them before we switch topics. But we have

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York. Were any of the English reformers still on earth from the transition of the

Reformation to the Puritan era? I'm sorry,

I didn't catch that. Sorry. Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York says, were any of the

English reformers still on earth from the transition of the Reformation to the

Puritan era? Oh, no, not really.

Lanimer and Ridley die in 1555 as martyrs, Cranmer in 1556.

A man like John Jewell would certainly be. John Jewell lived through this entire period and is still alive in the 1570s.

A woman named Catherine Willoughby, very important figure, she was a patron of Hugh Lanimer.

She was the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk. She lived till 1580 and she becomes a key patroness of Puritan leadership.

So there would have been some who would have lived through the period. Many of the, again, partly its age,

I mean Tyndale's born 1494, Lanimer is born probably earlier than that,

Cranmer's born 1489. So by the time you get to the emergence of the Puritan movement in the 1560s, most of these people would be, if they had survived the persecutions that were there during the, some degree during the time of Henry, and definitely there during the reign of Mary I from 1553 to 1557, they would have been quite elderly.

And so while there would have been some who would have provided continuity between the early English Reformation and the

Puritans, most of them would have passed from this scene. When we return from the break we'll have you wrap up with a summary of the

English Reformation before moving on to John Owen. And if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And by the way,

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, you've also won a copy of The Reformers and Puritans as Spiritual Mentors, so thanks for joining us on the air with a question.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnzen, and before we return to our interview with Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen, we have a couple of very important announcements to make.

First of all, the upcoming conference being orchestrated by Sermon Audio, the

Foundations Conference, is going to be held June 22nd and 23rd in New York City, and speakers at this conference include

Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Dr. Joel Beeky, Phil Johnson, the executive director of John MacArthur's ministry, grace to you,

Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and a number of other speakers.

If you would like to register for the Foundations Conference, go to thefoundationsconference .com,

thefoundationsconference .com. Then after that, in August, from the 3rd through the 5th, at Reverend Buzz Taylor's old stomping grounds in Portland, Maine, at the

Deering Center Community Church, the Fellowship Conference New England is being held, featuring such speakers as Pastor Don Curran, who is the

Eastern European Coordinator with HeartCry Missionary Society, the organization founded by Paul Washer, my dear friend

Pastor Mac Tomlinson of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas, an author of a number of books,

Pastor Jesse Barrington, who we've also had on this program, who is the pastor of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, a sister station to Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who air our program every day.

Pastor Nate Pickowitz, who is coming up on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio later this month, on the 27th of June.

In fact, he is going to be speaking about his book, Reviving New England.

He is pastor of the Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Iron Works, New Hampshire.

If you'd like more details on registering for Fellowship Conference New England, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com,

fellowshipconferencenewengland .com. Then in November, from the 17th through the 18th, the

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I am looking forward to be manning an exhibitor booth at that conference. And then, last but not least, the

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And now we are back to our interview with Dr. Michael A .G. Hagen. We're wrapping up our discussion from the last hour on the

English Reformation, and we're going to move forward in the second hour with a discussion on John Owen, but my co -host

Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question for you before we have you summarize the

English Reformation. Yeah, I don't want to get too far away from the discussion before asking you, what was the impact, how much of impact was there of the

Geneva Bible during this time? Yeah, the Geneva Bible is critical for the

Reformation in England. Published in 1560, it becomes the

Bible of choice, really, for the next best part of 80 years. It's, you know,

Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s is still using the Geneva Bible. Probably one of the first figures to start to use the

King James Version that we would know would be John Bunyan in the late 1650s, early 1660s, and so the

Geneva Bible becomes, it's a very good translation, and it was written and translated by men whose fellow evangelicals had died in England.

These men had escaped and gone to Geneva, and so in some ways it was deeply associated with the persecution of Mary I, and when the

King James Version is first published in 1611, evangelicals,

Puritans, are very reluctant to use it, and there's a variety of reasons for that, but the

Geneva, part of it was because the Geneva Bible was such a good translation. Well, thank you,

Buzz, and we do have one final question that we'll take for our English Reformation discussion.

David in Ada, Ohio says, did Calvin kill Servetus? Well, I happen to know that Calvin was taken in for questioning and passed the polygraph, but Calvin didn't kill anyone, did he?

No, Calvin did not kill Servetus. Servetus was, I mean, he's a very interesting character from one perspective.

Psychologically, a bit off -kilter, he had been arrested by the

Spanish Inquisition who were about to burn him, and he escaped. And this is for his denial of the Trinity.

Yeah, he denied the Trinity. He wrote to Calvin and said he was planning to come to Geneva.

Calvin warned him, don't come to Geneva, you'll end up probably getting arrested, and you'll get burned.

He nonetheless persisted in coming to Geneva. He had some sort of strange view that the end of the world was imminent, and one of them had to be his confronting

Calvin in Geneva. And so, sure enough, in the early 1550s, he turns up in Geneva.

He's seen at a worship service, arrested, and Calvin is called as a witness for the prosecution.

Calvin is not a citizen, has no political power, and he is basically asked, is this man a heretic from your point of view?

And he says, yes, he is. He denies the Trinity, which Servetus was quite open about.

And that when the sentence of death is passed, Calvin asks him to mitigate it by not burning him, but by chopping his head off.

But a number of the men who wanted Servetus dead also don't like Calvin, and they use it as a political jab against Calvin.

And they execute him by burning. So Calvin's responsibility is there, yes, but he didn't kill

Servetus. And I understand that he was pointed out in the worship service that he was at by the authorities when he was the only one not singing holy, holy, holy.

But you just said something that I don't think that I've ever heard before. The burning of Servetus, you believe, was a part of a conspiracy to bring about negative publicity for Calvin?

Yeah, you see, when Calvin returned to Geneva in 1541, there was a party.

They come to be known as the Libertines, who had significant power in the city. They didn't like Calvin.

And so when Calvin recommended that the man be executed humanely, they were determined, they were going to execute him anyway, but they were determined to basically do it in the face of Calvin.

They were not going to listen to Calvin, so they chose the more gruesome form of execution by political burning.

And was Servetus a medical doctor as well? I think that's correct.

I'm not sure about it. I think that might be correct, yeah. Well, thank you David and Ada O 'Hio.

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And now we are beginning or transitioning over to our second topic of discussion, your book that you co -authored with Matthew Barrett, Owen on the

Christian life, living for the glory of God in Christ. Tell our listeners, who was

John Owen? Yeah, John Owen was born in 1616. His father was a

Puritan. He has one line about his dad. Owen was very much like John Calvin in that regard, rarely said much about his own personal life.

His diaries, which he probably did keep, diary -keeping was a

Puritan habit, do not exist, at least they haven't been passed down.

So we have very little about his personal life. But he was raised in a Puritan home. He would eventually go up to Oxford.

It was a tumultuous time. Puritans were being purged from Oxford during the 1630s, 1640s when he was there.

And he finds himself eventually in the early 1640s in London. And this is the outbreak of the

English Civil War. He is a very gifted preacher. People often forget that because he is also a very gifted theologian and assumed that he couldn't preach well.

But he was a very gifted preacher. And he comes to the attention of Oliver Cromwell, who's a rising general.

And Cromwell makes him one of his chaplains. And from there he actually becomes the vice -chancellor of Oxford University.

After the end of the Civil War in England, which Parliament and the Puritans win initially,

Cromwell is made the vice -chancellor of Oxford, responsible for rebuilding the university, teaches a number of very significant figures, one of whom is

John Locke, who is a very, very important figure in the genesis of American political philosophy in the 1770s.

And the emphasis that you find in John Locke on toleration, and he gets them from, in one sense, from John Owen.

The Puritan experiment of an English Republic falls apart in 1660, and the city is restored.

And from that point until 1683, when Owen dies, he is very much harassed.

He's nearly killed on one occasion, his carriage attacked. Puritans in New England offer him a position as the president of Harvard.

That'd be very interesting, though, if he had taken that. What would that have meant for Harvard? What would that have meant for the, you know, the emerging

American colonies? But he doesn't, and he stays in England until his death.

He is a remarkable theologian. You know, in many respects, kind of an atlas among remarkable giants,

Puritan giants. In his own day, he was called the Calvin of England. Well, now, who was trying to kill him?

Well, during the, between 1660 and 1688, it was illegal to conduct worship outside of the

Church of England. And there were numerous mob scenes, and a mob had surrounded his carriage and were trying to stone him.

Wow. Trying to stone him in that day and age. That's interesting.

Yeah. And I know that he, even though he was very known for his achievements in formal education and looked up to as a scholar, he had enough discernment and insight and humility to invite his friend

John Bunyan to his pulpit. John Bunyan, who had no formal education at all, but who was quite biblically literate, to put it mildly, and quite impressed

John Owen. How did their paths cross? Yeah, you know, it's not clear to me how

Bunyan ever met Owen. Bunyan would come up to London in the 1670s to preach, and it may well have been on one of those occasions.

Oh, you mean he was filling the pulpit while Owen was away? Well, no. Owen was invited to a number of other pulpits in London.

Normally, when he came up, you know, to London to preach, on a work day, he might get, you know, sometimes he preached during the week, he might get a thousand people.

On a Lord's Day, he might get three or four thousand. And so given those circles, it's not surprising that Owen would have learned of him.

I don't think we have a record of when Owen first met him.

Bunyan repaid the compliment by one of the four godly captains in the

Holy War is modeled on John Owen. And he went through a transition of his own,

John Owen. I know that he had some kind of transition with church polity. Did he not become a

Congregationalist? Yeah, in 1644, 1645, when he's a minister at a place called

Conchshul in Essex, he reads John Cotton's The Keys of the

Kingdom. And Cotton argued for a Congregationalist perspective in that book. And that transitions

Owen. Owen embraces Congregationalism from that point on, has therefore a deep commitment to the gathered church, that the church is to be a congregation of believers.

One enters the church by a conversion experience, of which you then give testimony. Also, the separation of church and state.

There's a great line in the Savoy Declaration about this spirit, that the important thing in the life of a local church is the spirit of liberty, and that it's the spirit of men and women who embrace

Christ and freely and willingly commit themselves to live together under his rule.

That's what a true church is. Yeah, I'm sure that he would be more prone towards the separation of church and state when people are trying to stone him to death.

That's quite a blight on the history of the church that that went on.

Now, I am a little bit fuzzy in my memory here, but wasn't there something significant, unless I am misremembering here, other than Congregationalism, wasn't there something that Owen, as a

Pato Baptist, had in common with Baptists that was unusual for a man from his persuasion?

Yes, his understanding of covenant theology. That's it, that's right, that's right. He basically had a similar view.

The Presbyterians, as you know, would argue for there being one covenant, two administrations, which was very standard argumentation in this period.

Owen definitely believes in the newness of the New Covenant. And so there is clear evidence,

I think, that's being given by people like Jim Renahan, who's an expert on 17th century

Baptist polity and theology, that Owen influenced men like Nehemiah Cox, who is one of the authors of the

Second London Confession. And in fact, you can see parallels between Owen and Cox in terms of their thinking about covenant theology.

Well, now I have my next topic for Jim Renahan the next time he comes back on my program. Tell us about your chapter in the book on John Owen that you co -authored on living by the

Scriptures. Yeah, that deals with Owen's quarrel, which was not simply

Owen's quarrel, but the Puritans in general with the group of people we call the

Quakers. One of the issues that emerges in the wake of the

Puritan movement is, what constitutes a genuine church?

And how do we reform the church? And there were some people, Roger Williams is a good example of this in America, who is one of the founding

Baptist figures, but he's only a Baptist for about ten months, because he becomes convinced that unless there are

Apostles, and unless the Apostleship is restored, we can't have any true churches.

And a number of Puritans begin to move in this direction. Really? Puritan congregations are waiting for God to raise up these

Apostles. In the late 1640s, a man named George Fox appears in northern

England, claiming to be sent by God, having visions, etc., working supposed miracles, and claims to be such an

Apostle. Not unlike my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor. I'm just kidding. That's another interesting subject altogether for another program.

I'm not talking about you. Not me. I mean George Fox. Yeah, that is interesting.

And how long did that movement last? Oh, it dogs the whole period of the

Puritans. Because one of the things that the Quakers argue is that the Spirit within, the indwelling

Spirit, is to be prized more highly than the Scriptures. Because surely, when the

Spirit speaks a word to you, this is a living word, it's direct, it's to you personally. And so while they claim to love the

Word of God, they actually, in actuality, find themselves in some very bizarre activities.

On one occasion, for example, well, more than one occasion, there are a number of Quakers who would go naked for a sign.

And they believed that God was calling them to go into Puritan congregations, often Puritan congregations, stripped down to the point where they're completely nude, and begin to prophesy against the

Church. And they claim the Spirit led them. Wow. James Naylor, one of George Fox's lieutenants, rides into Bristol in 1656 on a horse, with women throwing branches down in front of the horse, yelling,

Hosanna, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. He claimed it was a prophecy, an acted -out prophecy, that Jesus was about to return.

The Puritans thought it was blasphemy. A number of the Quaker leaders, like George Fox, actually believed that when the

Holy Spirit came to indwell them, He brought with them, He brought with Him, the holy flesh of Jesus.

So they were not up on the Spirit, but their bodies, to some degree, were transformed. Wow. And it's wild.

And so the book, the chapter I looked at, I looked at how basically Owen argued that the

Spirit had ceased inspiring Scripture. That we have the

Scriptures that He has inspired, and we are to judge all other claims to the

Spirit's work and leading on the basis of those holy words. Wow.

Now, it's interesting, because when you think of a Quaker, you don't necessarily think of somebody stripping down to nothing and doing crazy things like that.

I mean, how do the Quakers, how do the heirs of Fox look upon, and in later centuries, look upon that kind of activity?

Well, some of them would be very horrified. I mean, you have in the movement in the 18th century, an evangelical wing of the

Quaker movement. I'm sorry about that. Sorry? I'm sorry, that was just the computer acting up.

What were you saying, brother? Yeah, you have an evangelical wing of the Quaker movement. A number of Quakers who are converted, and they are genuinely born -again brothers and sisters who are quite solid in their

Christian walk. Quakerism, as you know, has become, you know, anything but what it was in those days, and I'm not sure how some of those antics of the early

Quakers would be viewed. What is significant is that the battle the

Puritans had with the Quakers is very similar to some of the battles we as evangelicals have had with extreme

Pentecostals and extreme Charismatics in our own day. Yeah, that was immediately something that was coming to my mind, especially things like the

Pensacola Revival and the Toronto Blessing and things like that, the more extreme aberrant movements.

We have another question from our friend in Slovenia, Joe. I just emailed you his question because it's lengthy, and I'll have you review it during the station break, but he says, this is for your

John Owen section. The following quote is attributed to John Owen, For whom did

Christ die? The Father imposed his wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either all the sins of all men, all the sins of all the sins of some men, or some of the sins of all men.

In which case it may be said, that if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so none are saved.

That if the second be true, then Christ in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.

But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?

And then he says, you answer because of unbelief. I ask, is this unbelief a sin or is it not?

If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or he did not. If he did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which he died?

If he did not, he did not die for all their sins. And his question, Joe's question is, can

Dr. Haken verify that this is an accurate quote of John Owen? Please ask him if he has presented this quote to any

Armenians among the professors in the universities and seminaries that he is associated with.

If so, what is their typical response? Thank you for edifying us today with Reformation greats.

And by the way, brother in Slovenia, you misspelled Armenians. It's not Armenians.

In fact, Roussos J. Rush Dooney was an Armenian Armenian. But my kids are

Armenian. That's right. I remember you telling me that. But if you could, you could reply to that after we return from the break.

And this is our final break. If anybody would like to join us, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

If you have a question, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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This is Chris Arns and your host of Iron Sherpa's Iron. And by the way, I had a slip of the tongue before.

I meant to say that that Roussos John Rushduni was an Armenian and not an Armenian. That's what

I meant to say. Not that he was an Armenian -Armenian. Armenian being an ethnic group and Armenian being a theological position.

But before the break, Dr. Haken, we had Joe from Slovenia ask about the classic quote,

For Whom Did Christ Die? Was it actually something that John Owen himself first penned, or was this something from someone else that came about later?

No, I don't know the exact words, whether they're Owen. It definitely is

Owen in terms of his argument. For whom did Christ die?

Did he die for all the sins of all men, all the sins of some men, or some of the sins of all men? That's definitely Owen's argument in terms of the only alternatives we've got.

And what are the consequences of those alternatives? Yeah, that's basically a question that when involving a dispute or a debate or a dialogue with an

Armenian where they would be objecting to limited atonement, they have to logically confront their own language as in regard to Christ dying for all humans and allegedly also dying for all their sins, with the result being that most people are still going to be in hell.

Yes, I mean, yeah, it becomes in the context of John Owen's classic work,

The Death of Death and The Death of Christ. And I've never used the quote to anybody who is an

Armenian. So I'm not sure how they would respond. It's a pretty solid statement.

And the logic, I think, is pretty tight. Yeah, I think when backed in the corner, a lot of Armenians will say, well, he didn't die for the sin of unbelief.

That's the only one he didn't die for. But obviously, that would mean that he did not die for all the sins of men.

Yeah. And if he didn't die for the sin of unbelief, how on earth are you going to get out of it? That's right.

That's very true. Very true. Thank you, Joe. In Slovenia, you have won a copy of the second book that we are discussing today on Owen on the

Christian Life. So please make sure that you alert your daughter in Georgia, in the

United States, that that book will be on the way in the mail. That's Owen on the

Christian Life, Living for the Glory of God in Christ, compliments of our friends at Crossway and compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who are shipping that out to you.

I have Bruce in Gardner, Massachusetts. Here is a question on John Owen.

What was Owen's input concerning John Bunyan's imprisonment? And was he at all successful with Bunyan's release?

Or was he at all involved? Would probably be a better question.

Was he involved in Bunyan's release? Yes, Bunyan was imprisoned two times. He was arrested in 1660 at a little hamlet called

Lower Samsel for illegally meeting with men and women who were not in the context of an

Anglican church. It was a law that was passed in 1593, and that law kept him in prison.

He was asked if he would give up preaching. If he would give up preaching, they'd let him go, but he because he was rightly convinced that God had called him to be a preacher.

He's arrested again briefly in 1675, and that imprisonment lasts less than a year.

And Owen was instrumental in his release on that imprisonment. Owen had a number of very powerful friends who were close to the king.

And so although Owen was arrested, his house was raided probably three or four times.

And the mob scene I mentioned where he was attacked in his carriage, he was never in prison for any period of time of any length.

And he did have some influence with the king. And it's from where you get that famous story which you alluded to earlier about the king asking him how he could ever go and hear a tinker like Bunyan.

And Owen's response was, if it pleased his majesty, he'd be quite willing to trade all of his learning for Bunyan's preaching gifts.

So he knew the king, he had contact with the king, and he used his influence with the king to get

Bunyan released a second time. Well thank you Bruce in Gardner, Massachusetts.

You have also won a copy of Owen on the Christian Life by our guest

Michael Haken and also by Matthew Barrett. Owen on the

Christian Life, Living for the Glory of God in Christ. And that will be shipped out to you by cvbbs .com

thanks to our friends at Crossway who have provided the books. Keep spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Gardner, Massachusetts and beyond.

We have Chris in Runnels, Iowa again who says,

I am curious if Dr. Haken can elaborate on the importance of family worship and catechesis in Dr.

Owen's understanding of the Christian life. Thank you. Yeah, Owen would have been raised in a typical

Puritan context in which family worship was a given. He would have heard his father, there would have been time every day when his father would have led them in prayer and reading of scripture.

And so this would have been part and parcel of Owen's understanding of what are the means of grace.

This is a vehicle that God uses for passing on the faith.

And I cannot, for the life of me, I can't think of an actual text where Owen goes into detail about this.

Other Puritans did. I'm sure there must be something in Owen that would relate to this, but I can't think of anything offhand.

As you are well aware, Owen wrote a huge amount. And I know

I haven't read everything of Owen. And I don't recall anything immediately where he speaks in great detail about family worship.

But it would have been his own experience. And we presume it would have been, you know, his experience, not only his experience growing up, but his experience as a husband and father.

We have, oh, I believe that I already told that listener that he'd won a book.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who wants to know, I find it quite difficult to read

Owen. Do you know of any reliable publishers that have rewritten his writings into modern

English so that we can read him more easily and understand what he's actually trying to say?

I guess the better phrase would have been republished his writings in modern English.

Do you know of any? There are abridgements that were done in the 1970s, 1980s in England.

I forget the publisher now. Christian Focus has done a number of his works, about four or five of them, where they've, to some degree, very modestly simplified some of the sentences by breaking them up with full stops and have definitely broken up the text with appropriate heading.

And you might go onto the Christian Focus site and see there's about a half a dozen of books there.

Crossway has done a couple under the editorship of Justin Taylor and Kelly Capek.

They've done at least two or three that are very helpful, that have, again, very modestly simplified some of his work.

And there is a new edition that's coming out with Crossway 36 volumes. I suspect that while it'll seem to be faithful to the original, it'll also help the reader in terms of breaking up the text and subtitles.

Yes, and for our listeners who want to get a hold of Christian Focus, their website is christianfocus .com,

christianfocus .com. They have provided a number of books for our listeners over the years.

And of course, Crossway, who has published the book we are discussing now, Owen on the

Christian Life, their website is crossway .org, crossway .org. And you can always go to cvbbs .com,

who actually sponsor this program, cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com,

and ask them what they can locate for you. But I'm assuming you agree with R .J. in White Plains that Owen is indeed difficult to read.

Do you, brother? I'm sorry? I said I'm assuming you agree with R .J.

in White Plains that Owen is difficult to read. Oh, yes. I mean, I was just, you know, even for somebody like myself, and I read a lot of 17th and 18th century literature,

I mean, I can understand to some degree why a man like Lloyd -Jones would describe himself as an 18th century man. The 18th century writers are much easier to read.

And I was just reading a quote from Owen just yesterday. It must have run 20, 25 lines, one sentence.

Yes. Remember, okay, what's the main verb? You know, it wasn't easy. And as I said,

I spend my life in this stuff. And so, yes, Owen is not easy to read. I think part of the reason is this, is that Owen, he would have been fluent in Latin.

And a lot of these men are writing English, and they're thinking to some degree along Latin lines.

And Latin, the sentences in Latin like Greek are very long. And I think that's part of it.

They're writing a kind of Latinate English. And even among the 17th century writers, some of these

Puritan authors like Owen of Goodwin are not easy to read. That's interesting that you referred it to an anglicized

Latin or something to the effect of that. Because if I, in Catholic school, where I went for eight years of my youth, if I had written a sentence that was 25 lines long,

I would have definitely gotten a crack on the knuckles with a ruler by a nun. But thank you,

RJ. And you have also won a free copy of Owen on the Christian Life, Living for the

Glory of God in Christ. And please make sure you give us your full mailing address in White Plains, New York.

Communing with the Trinity is an interesting heading for one of your chapters. Explain that a little bit further.

That deals with the fact that at the heart of Owen's theology is a

Trinitarianism. This is not always being recognized. And we're building here on the work of Carl Truman.

Truman has written two or three major works on Owen. And he has really brought out the fact that Owen is, as a theologian, is a

Trinitarian theologian. And I think this is really something that has escaped us for a variety of reasons, again.

But it is a very pressing matter, as recent discussions regarding the Trinity over this past year on the internet have revealed, that even among God's people and some teachers within his church, there is a woeful ignorance about how to talk about God in himself as a triune being.

And Owen combines two things in that book. One is he's building on classical

Trinitarian thought, but he's also bringing home a typical Puritan emphasis, is that the doctrine of Trinity is not simply a head thing, not simply something intellectual, but it has ongoing significance in our lives.

And so he talks about the way in which we commune with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And one of the questions

I think that I do have, and I don't have this fully answered in my own mind, is can we talk about, can we differentiate

Father, Son, and Spirit in terms of our experience of the living God? We could talk about, obviously, we thank the

Father for sending the Son. We don't thank the Father for dying for us. And so there is a sense in which we have to differentiate the persons in our walk with God.

But when we experience God and commune with God, we're communing with the entire triune being.

And so can we talk about communion with the Father and with the Son and with the Spirit? But having said that,

I think it's a tremendous work of a way of combining classical Trinitarian theology with Puritan piety, and reveals

Owen at his best and greatest. Now, do you know of Owen ever addressing the issue of whether we must always pray to the

Father through the Son? Can we pray to Christ directly? And can we pray directly to the

Holy Spirit? He does touch on those issues and emphasizes that certainly we can pray to the

Son, because that's, you know, there's a scriptural warrant to that. And if I recall correctly, and again

I can't think of the exact text, I think he indicates the legitimacy of at times praying to the

Spirit. And he would do so on the basis of passages like 2

Thessalonians 3, where Paul has, may the Lord guide you into the love of God and the love of Christ, and the

Lord there being understood to be the Spirit. Passages like the benediction in Revelation 1, or the allusion to the

Spirit in Ezekiel 37, where Ezekiel, the prophet, is urged by God to speak to the wind, come and blow upon these bones.

Which is obviously, in the context of the chapter, is an allusion to the Spirit. Now, you have a chapter that there, over the centuries, even some

Reformed Christians have had some level of disagreement over, in the way that they refer to these things in their systemized theology, or in how they express themselves.

But in regard to the indwelling Spirit, the mortification of sin, and the power of prayer, if you could comment on that chapter.

Again, that's a very important chapter, because some of the greatest of Owen's works deal with the whole area of sanctification, and the fight against sin.

And he wrote three major works on mortification. And the one work that is probably the critical one is of the mortification of sin in believers, which was a series of lectures he gave in the 1650s at the

University of Oxford. I mentioned his teaching John Locke. John Locke would have been president at the time. And he and the other men who heard it were young men, you know, 15, 16 year olds.

It's a very important text, because he emphasizes that the indwelling Spirit never works apart from us.

He uses our powers to fight sin. So in the 19th century, excuse me, in the 19th century, there is a movement which we call the

Keswick movement, or the holiness movement, which argues that when it comes to fighting sin, we need to let go and let

God. And that God will take care of the sin, as it were. And we must receive not only justification by faith, but also sanctification.

And Owen would radically disagree with that. Owen would argue that the indwelling

Spirit enables us now to fight sin. And we need to take steps to kill sin in our lives.

If we're not killing sin, as he says, sin will be killing us. And so it's a very, very important text, because of its practical consequences.

And because there has arisen in the last 200 years, a large -scale movement that's had a lot of impact upon evangelicals, that plays down the role that we have in fighting sin as believers.

And that's the means of grace, which are very important for Owen. Things like the Lord's Supper, prayer, hearing the

Word, meditation on the Word, friendship with believers. These things are critical in the fight against sin.

And it's not the case that you can have one decisional experience and sin's dead.

Again, part of the whole of this movement was this idea of making a decision to die to sin.

Well, dying to sin is a daily affair. And Owen is very helpful here. What he's helpful for is he's realistic.

He helps us understand what is the nature of the true Christian life. Would you say that Dr.

Martin Lloyd -Jones, one of the giants of the 20th century, did he part company at all with John Owen on any of these matters?

Or do you think he was in complete harmony with him? On all of this, Lloyd -Jones and Owen would have agreed.

The one area they would have disagreed was on what's called the sealing of the Spirit. Owen was of the decided opinion that the sealing of the

Spirit took place in conversion with the gift of the indwelling Spirit. Dr. Lloyd -Jones believed that the sealing of the

Spirit was a later event where the Spirit gave us both assurance of salvation as well as power to live and preach.

Well, if you could now summarize the legacy of John Owen for our listeners. Well, I think

Owen's legacy is his foundational Trinitarian vision, and that this has practical consequences.

His commitment to the Scriptures as the testing of all doctrine and teaching, and his very realistic practical view of the

Christian life as a life of pursuing holiness and fighting sin. Amen.

And I don't think that we summarized the English Reformation earlier.

I think I forgot to do that. But if you could give a summary now of the importance of understanding the English Reformation as we now celebrate the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation this year. Well, for those of us who are English speakers, our spiritual forebears first heard the gospel in the

Church of England. And, you know, I'm a Calvinistic Baptist, and my

Calvinistic Baptist forebears heard the gospel. Men like Benjamin Keech, William Kiffin, Hansard Knowles, Bunyan.

They heard the gospel in a context of Anglicanism. They came to differ with it because of their reading of the

Holy Scriptures and the New Testament, but that's where they first heard the gospel. And they honored these men, and we should too.

We should thank God that God didn't bypass the English -speaking people, but raised up such remarkable men like Tyndale, and Latimer, and Cramner.

Well, I know that the website for the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you serve on the faculty, is sbts .edu.

S -B for Southern Baptist, T -S for Theological Seminary, dot edu. Do you have any other contact information you care to give?

Yes, if you want to go to our website, the Andrew Fuller Center, it's www .AndrewFullerCenter, that's all one word, dot org.

AndrewFullerCenter .org. In fact, we've got to have you back on the program to specifically address Andrew Fuller.

Oh, yes, I'd love to. In fact, if you want to hold on when we go off the air, I have my calendar here, and you can pick it.

Thank you. And I want to thank everybody who took the time to write in today.

I'm sorry we couldn't get to each and every one of your questions before we ran out of time, but I look forward to Dr.

Hickens' return to the program, where you could resubmit those questions or ask new ones.

And I want to thank the Reverend Buzz Taylor for being in the studio today, and I want to thank everybody at Banner of Truth for giving me such a warm welcome at the conference last week.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater