A heavenly directory

A heavenly directory: Trinitarian piety, public worship and a reassessment of John Owen's theology, by Ryan M. McGraw, Reformed Historical Theology, Gottingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014, 256 pp., euro89.99 (hardback), ISBN 976-3-525-55075-5The life and work of John Owen (1616-83) has been attracting increasing attention as the four hundredth anniversary of his birth approaches. Owen was one of the most important religious figures of seventeenth-century England: born in humble circumstances in the reign of James I, and ordained as an Anglican priest under Charles I, Owen became known as a Congregationalist preacher to the Long Parliament (from 1646), preacher of the regicide (1649), chaplain to Oliver Cromwell on the invasions of Ireland and Scotland (1649-50), dean of Christ Church (1651-60) and vice chancellor of the University of Oxford (1652-57), principal mover in the Cromwellian religious settlement and active agent in the downfall of Richard Cromwell's administration (1659). The changing legal and cultural circumstances of the reign of Charles II forced Owen to withdraw from public life and facilitated the reenergising of his already prolific publishing career in defence of high Calvinist theology and the toleration of protestant dissenters: Owen wrote more than half of his eight or so million words in the twenty years before his death, while making significant contributions to the careers of John Bunyan and Andrew Marvell, among others.Over the last few years, the significance of Owen's contributions has been recognised (and sometimes, from a confessional perspective, defended) in a growing spate of publications. Some of the best writing on Owen has come from historians who have adopted a comparative approach to the study of his work: Tim Cooper's John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity and Edwin Tay's The Priesthood of Christ: Atonement in the Theology of John Owen are distinguished examples of scholarly work which pay attention to the conceptual nuance, rhetorical development and broader social contexts of their subjects. Much of the best writing on Owen emanating from theologians has adopted a very different perspective, however, focusing on texts above contexts, and offering reflections on his work which provide helpful snapshots of principal thematic elements: The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen s Theology and Christopher Cleveland's Thomism in John Owen are some of the best examples of this approach.Ryan McGraw's new book on Owen's theology of public worship will make an important contribution to the latter approach within the study of early modern theology. McGraw's work is based on his recent doctoral dissertation (University of the Free State, South Africa) and seeks to move beyond accepted conclusions about Owen's Trinitarianism by identifying its highest expression in public worship (12). McGraw draws upon a wide range of reading in Owen and other contexts within early modern Reformed theology to make a sometimes subtle but always convincing case for the centrality of public worship in Owen's theological imagination

Art · Directory · Piety · Sociology · Theology · Worship · Computer Science · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies

• The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen's Theology

  Kelly M Kapic, Mark Jones•Ashgate Research Companion to…•2016

  Add to list