“That the will and affections being more corrupted than the understanding, – as is evident from their opposition unto and defeating of its manifold convictions – no man doth actually apply his mind for the receiving of the things of the Spirit of God to the utmost of that ability which he hath; for all unregenerate men are invincibly impeded therein by the corrupt stubborness and perverseness of their will and affections” (268).

In his work on the Holy Spirit (Works, Vol III) Owen spends a good deal of time considering the fallenness  of human nature because in his view and that of the Reformed  generally the key to the sanctifying work of the Spirit is regeneration. Regeneration is new life from God, not the alteration of our natural states, however noble and useful those states may be. However, in the course of his discussion Owen interestingly while affirming totaldepravity – that fallenness affects every faculty of the human mind – he does not commit himself to what might be called  uniform depravity. There is a different degree in respect of different faculties. So we find him stating

That the will and affections being more corrupted than the understanding, – as is evident from their opposition unto and defeating of its manifold convictions – no man doth actually apply his mind for the receiving of the things of the Spirit of God to the utmost of that ability which he hath; for all unregenerate men are invincibly impeded therein by the corrupt stubborness and perverseness of their will and affections. (268)

What Owen has to say is based on 1Corinthians 1 and 2. (257 onwards)  So in the case of 1.14, where Paul states that ‘the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit  of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned’. The same is true of every natural person notwithstanding their ‘parts’ [talents] and education. Humanity is divided into the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘natural’. The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God no matter what else is true of him. He cannot understand them, nor receive them.

A person may understand the meaning of the words in which the gospel is expressed, but that is not equivalent to having a ‘spiritual discernment’ of them. What is such a discernment? Owen says that it requires ‘their [that is, the words understood] conformity and agreeableness to the wisdom, holiness, and righteousness of God’. (He cites 1 Cor. 1.23-4)  This discernment is seen as a personal judgment, a recognition of the mind as it benefits from the regenerating work of the Spirit. But not otherwise. And consistently with this Paul wrote ‘The spiritual person judges all thing, but is himself to be judged by no one’. (1 Cor.  2.15) So that he or she is not to take any lessons on such judging from a purely ‘natural’ person, whoever he or she may be.

These ends [of setting forth the gospel in preaching and so on] being the glory of God in Christ, with our deliverance from a state of sin and misery, with a translation into a state of grace and glory, unless we are acquainted with these things, and the aptness, and fitness, and power of the things of the Spirit of God to effect them, we cannot receive them as we ought; and this a natural man cannot do. (261)

This leads Owen to develop the distinction between a two-fold ability a person may be said to receive or understand spiritual things. There are natural powers. The exhortation, promises and threatenings of the gospel shows those who are in their conversion, are not treated like animals or stones, but as having ‘rational minds’.

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