This post comes from Wesley Lassiter, student in the MA in Theology degree and conference presenter at the International John Owen Convention at Union Theological College, Belfast
John Owen (1616-1683) was a British minister known as a leading figure in the Puritan tradition. While much of his leadership was during tumultuous times in England, he wrote many theological books and participated in many controversial conversations. However, a side of Owen that is often neglected and rarely spoken about is his pastoral heart and motivation. Owen was one of the most learned and esteemed theologians of the day, and yet his work consistently shows the care and concerns of a pastor. Therefore, is shouldn’t be surprising that for his readers today, one of the most important things Owen offers us is a pastoral plea for the saints to look to Jesus for the most blessed state in this life and the life to come.
Owen as Pastor
One will find no shortage of debate concerning Owen’s theological methodology; even Owen’s preaching has been growing in attention. An account of John Owen as pastor is more difficult to find. Particularly in his view of the Beatific Vision, more recent debate has focused on the exact placement within Reformed Scholasticism and Thomistic influence. Reading Owen positions the reader face-to-face with a pastor’s heart and not a mere academic musing of the subject. Pastor Owen understands the importance of theology, yet Pastor Owen also pleads with the saints to look to Jesus as the present hope in sin and suffering, for this will also be the object of eternal blessedness.
The thrust of Owen’s pastoral ministry is found in turning his congregants’ eyes to the face of God in the incarnate Jesus for hope and satisfaction in all circumstances. For Owen, “a constant view of the glory of Christ will produce this blessed effect in us”1 which, though it is in part, will be the transformative action of eternal blessedness at Christ’s return. How fitting in God’s providence that the man so focused on the eternal state of blessedness would receive word of his work so focused on the subject just before death. Pastorally, Owen shepherds his congregants to understand “that one of the greatest privileges and advancements of believers, both in this world and unto eternity, consists in their BEHOLDING THE GLORY OF CHRIST.”2
Beholding and Blessedness
Such beholding of the glory of Christ is often described as the Beatific Vision, the spiritual seeing of God’s glory as our highest and final good, our greatest goal of blessedness. Many pastors and churches today would do well to understand the significance of the Beatific Vision as John Owen implored saints to do in his day. Owen was motivated to turn all his congregants’ eyes to behold the glory of God in Christ—both now and in eternity. For if the saints seek to behold the glory of Christ, they will find themselves looking face-to-face with God. Owen was a pastor who exemplified the importance of beholding God through the face of Christ, separating his theology from being a mere philosophical exercise to a practical theology in the life of the saints.
Owen the Exemplar
In an age in which our culture no longer sees the role of pastors as counselor to the lives of congregants and their communities, Owen might actually cast a vision for resurrecting that model. Owen serves as an exemplar when he points his readers to the ability and sufficiency of Scripture to bring healing to our minds and hearts. He offers the hope of Christ to minister to those who are hurting and suffering. Owen models for pastors how to suffer well in the face of turmoil, loss, and opposition. He models for all saints the need to fix our eyes on Jesus regularly. No matter if the state is against you, your family members pass away, or you lose your ministry position, Christ is sufficient, and the glory of God in Christ is your hope.
Owen also models for pastors how to be a well-rounded pastor, one who can boldly stand on orthodox and essential doctrines of the faith while at the same time shepherding the flock by carefully exegeting and applying the text aimed at the experience of seeing God as the source of satisfaction. Owen does not minister as one who tells his congregation to put up as best as possible with the sufferings of the day, for one day there will be relief. Instead, he pleads with the saints to look to Christ now, and while we only have in part what we will experience in full later, it is sufficient for Christ to be our eternal enjoyment of the glory of God. We do not live as those without hope, for Owen centers all Christian hope on the present realities of Christ and the fullness of that reality in eternity.
Pastor Owen Leads us to See and Savor Christ
John Owen is widely read and recognized; however, contemporary readers have only begun to plum into the depths that are offered concerning his pastoral heart. Owen is certainly a polemicist and a scholar. He is all these things, and yet Owen sees each as serving his greater role as pastor. Owen offers us a model of a pastor-theologian in a world where one is often compromised for the other. Even greater, he models an under-shepherd offering the glory of God as the satisfaction the saints are looking for. While Owen’s understanding of the object the saints will see in eternity is important and must be discussed, the end of this doctrine is what he was after: to lead people to this vision themselves. Much like his methodology of moving from theology to application, Owen offers a robust and pastoral doctrine of blessedness for the saints to experience through Christ to the glory of God for all eternity.
Wesley Lassiter is Senior Pastor of The Rock Church and Director of Spiritual Development at Trinity Christian School in Sharpsburg, Georgia. He is an MA in Theology student interested in the theology of John Owen, the beatific vision in the Reformed tradition, and Reformed Baptist studies. He lives in Thomaston, Georgia with his wife and children.
Footnotes:
1 John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. W.H. Goold, 23 vols (Edinburgh, 1850-1853), i.651.
2 ibid., i.413.