Crawford Gribben has written a full scale biography of John Owen entitled, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat. This is something different. Here Owen’s story is interwoven with his teachings on how the Christian faith casts light on every stage of life, from childhood to death and eternal life. Novices will find this a useful way of getting into Owen and will be stimulated to dive deeper. Seasoned Owen readers will discover fresh insights into some of his key writings.

John Owen was a particular favourite among early Particular Baptists such as Nehemiah Cox. They valued his account of the relationship between the old and new covenants, which they saw as tending in a Baptist direction. Owen was an Independent and a paedobaptist, however. He wrote in defence of infant baptism, but he had a cordial relationship with the Particular Baptists.  Unlike other contemporaries he did not accuse them of being schismatic Donatists because they insisted on baptising believers who had been ‘baptised’ as babies.

Owen’s advocacy of infant baptism made for tensions in his ecclesiology. He acknowledged that in the apostolic church “all baptized initiated persons, ingrafted into the church” were recognised as “sanctified persons” (p. 57). Further, “the proper subjects of baptism” are “professed believers… and their infant seed” (p. 58). But this did not mean children of believers should be admitted to church membership, at least not until they had made a credible profession of faith. Admitting unconverted people into the church would have compromised the Independent’s vision of churches as a gatherings of visible saints. ‘Well, quite’, Owen’s Baptist friends may have been tempted to say.

Issues of baptism aside, Owen firmly believed that the children of believers needed careful instruction in the faith. To that end he penned The Primer and The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ, Unfolded in Two Short Catechisms. These texts were intended to supplement the teaching children will have received in church meetings.

The rise of William Laud not only made church life difficult for Puritan-minded types. It also made things rather challenging for godly students at Oxford and Cambridge. Certainly for Owen, whose dreams of pursuing an academic career at Oxford were dashed.

Owen’s university days had given him a good grounding in theology, but it was through the ministry of an unknown preacher in London that he was converted. Now he had an experiential knowledge of the truths he had studied so diligently at Oxford.

Owen returned to the city in 1651, where he was appointed dean of Christ Church and then vice-chancellor of the university.  He took the opportunity to preach to the young people in his charge.