Daniel R. Hyde |

Reformed Catholic Theology

John Owen on Evaluating Experience

Share on facebook
Share on google
Share on twitter
Share on linkedin

At the end of chapter 13 John Owen’s (1616–83) well-known treatise Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers (1656) we read godly and helpful advice on how to evaluate whether God is speaking to us when we have some experience we can’t explain. The context of Owen’s advice is when our souls are downcast with sin. When they are he said we can’t speak peace to our souls before God does. Then Owen deals with a list of objections, the last of which is how do we actually know it’s God? Check it out, read slowly, and let sink in John Owen on evaluating experience.

Here Owen expresses what I’d label anachronistically “soft cessationism.” The ascended Christ gave certain “sign or miraculous gifts” to authenticate and establish the ministry of the apostles. These have ordinarily ceased. Yet there’s so much more to the Holy Spirit’s ministry than just the more dramatic sign gifts. This is where I as a former Pentecostal and now-Reformed pastor think both are imbalanced. Pentecostalism over-emphasizes part of the Holy Spirit’s work while modern Reformed reactions to it under-emphasize the Spirit’s work. The one can have the Spirit without the Word; the other the Word without the Spirit.

Background

The men of Owen’s era said in the Westminster Confession of Faith that God revealed himself in “diverse manners” in the past and after “commit[ted] the same wholly unto writing.” Then it states “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased” (1.1). On the theology of the WCF and those of its era, see Garnet Milne’s The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Cessation of Special Revelation: The Majority Puritan Viewpoint on Whether Extra-Biblical Prophecy Is Still Possible. Milne demonstrates that the English Reformed were mostly “cessationists” (to use our modern term). They rejected “immediate” revelation through dreams, visions, and miraculous gifts in which God shows the way of salvation. He’s given that in the Word. Yet some believed “mediate” revelation still existed in the gift of prophecy via dreams, visions, and angelic communication yet always tied to the Word. This still held to the Reformed doctrine of the unity of Word and Spirit while allowing God to be free. In this, prophecy was more a direct application of the Word to fresh circumstances not more revelation of truth unknown in Scripture. In other words, while the Spirit’s “inspiration” has ceased, his “illumination” continues.

Summary

Owen on Mortification gives helpful direction to process what’s true in our experience of being in covenant with God. Too many of us former Charismatics/Pentecostals-turned Reformed have thrown the baby out with the bathwater: “Theology good; experience bad.” But Owen gives us a theology of experience. I won’t re-produce this chapter; I want you to read it yourself. Let me off several points for conversation:

  1. In the context of dealing with a disquieted heart due to the guilt of sin, Owen says “take heed you speak not peace to yourself before God speaks it.” In other words, God, his Word, and his Spirit take precedence even in our day-to-day struggles.
  2. Owen goes on to say God still speaks to the soul/conscience of believers. We need hear this because we have a tendency to enclose the Spirit into the Word then lock him up and throw away the key. This privilege God “reserves…to himself, to speak peace to whom he pleases, and in what degree he pleases…amongst them on whom he has bestowed grace.”
  3. The big question, then, is “how shall we know when he speaks?”
  4. Owen answers that there’s “a secret instinct in faith, whereby it knows the voice of Christ when he speaks indeed.” The examples he gives are John the Baptizer when he was in utero yet praised the Messiah. Another is Jesus’ saying “my sheep know my voice.” Owen assumes this is still the case. Finally, Owen uses the example of the sad wife of the Beloved in the Song of Songs. She heard and knew his voice just as the church now recognizes Christ’s.
  5. Then comes Owen’s direct application: exercise yourself in acquaintance and communion with Christ. This enables you to develop that “secret instinct of faith” and easily discern Jesus’ voice from the voice of a stranger. FYI: Owen was operating with the distinction between “revelation” of the inspired Word and “illumination” of that Word causing us to appropriate it for ourselves in fresh situations of our lives. Does God still speak? Yes! Does he still speak inspired, inscripturated words? No. Does he speak via illuminating his Word in the lives of his people? Absolutely!
  6. So what are the criteria/tests/marks of whether what our conscience perceives is the Lord or not? Owen gave three:
    1) When the Lord speaks, he speaks with authority putting “his Spirit into your hearts to seize on you.”
    2) Hearing leads to exercising your conscience in communion with Christ to discern good or evil.
    3) The effects in your life evidence his speaking: “If the word of the Lord does good to your souls, he speaks it; if it humble, if it cleanse, and be useful…to endear, to cleanse, to melt and bind to obedience, to self-emptiness.” The proof is in the pudding.
  7. Finally, Owen said, “Without the observation of [this discussion of hearing the Lord], sin will have great advantages towards the hardening of the heart.” May the Lord ever soften our calloused hearts to be malleable to his speaking and leading us to his glory! May this advice of John Owen on evaluating experience encourage your heart.

Support the ongoing cost of this site, the Spanish site in-development, and mailing theology books to pastors-in-need outside of the U.S by visiting our merchandise store or with a donation.