Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen.

Sebastian Rehnman: Divine Discourse: The Theological Methodology of John Owen.

Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002. Pbk. 215 pp. index. bibl. $19.99. ISBN: 0-8010-2501-X.

John Owen, leading theologian among the English Puritans, has recently been attracting increasing scholarly interest. Since the publication of Sinclair B. Ferguson's groundbreaking study John Owen on the Christian Life (1987), Owen's thought has been extensively examined in such titles as Joel R. Beeke's Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism and the Dutch Second Reformation (1991), Carl Trueman's The Claims of Truth: John Owen's Trinitarian Theology (1998) and Steve Griffiths's Redeem the Time: Sin in the Writings of John Owen (2001). Sebastian Rehnman's Divine Discourse (2002) builds on the work of these earlier writers by offering a compelling and convincing study of Owen's theological prolegomena.

Divine Discourse presents a richly contextual study of Owen's theological presuppositions, and uses them as a window into Owen's wider intellectual enterprise. Rehnman's characterization of Owen is stimulating to those who know his subject best as Cromwell's favorite chaplain--he is a "typical Renaissance man" (25), a Reformed Catholic standing appreciatively at the conclusion of the medieval Scholastic tradition (125). Rehnman's Owen is a thinker struggling with the genre of theology.

Unsatisfied by the loci-method of earlier Reformers, Owen built upon his doctrine of the preeminence of Scripture to adopt an organization of theology that reflected more closely the order of divine revelation. His early system of biblical theology identified dispensations according to the textual boundaries provided by the covenants described in the biblical narrative. The justification for his method was provided by the prolegomena of his texts. Perhaps surprisingly, Rehnman notes that these prolegomena became increasingly medieval in their orientation, but were distinguished from much earlier tradition by emphasizing the noetic effects of sin. It is fascinating in this context to note the ambivalence at the heart of Owen's sense of the importance of rationality. While he believed regeneration enabled true rationality, Owen was inconsistent in the degree of importance he attached to rationality over against faith.

All this is evidence for the argument that dominates the books in this series, Texts and Studies in Reformation and Post-Reformation Thought. The series, under the general editorial oversight of Richard Muller, endorses his conclusion that no major discontinuity separated Calvin from seventeenth-century Reformed orthodoxy. Readers will hear echoes of Muller's scholarship in Rehnman's claim that Owen's theology was not organized around an overarching theme of predestination. Rather, Owen's developing biblical theology identified the promise of Christ in the covenants as its major organizational principle.

Despite the wealth of Rehnman's analysis, there are some difficulties with his book. His style makes few concessions to literary elegance. More seriously, the respectable number of recent titles on Owen suggest that it is no longer accurate to claim that he is "almost entirely neglected" (15, 179); few Puritan theologians have attracted as much recent interest. Perhaps this comment owes something to the original date of this material. Rehnman claims to have "revised" his 1997 Oxford doctorate (11), but he seems not to have updated his bibliography to take account of recent developments. Carl Trueman's Claims of Truth has not been "forthcoming" (210) since 1998.

But these are minor quibbles in what is otherwise a comprehensive and methodical book. Divine Discourse is not an introduction to Puritan studies; instead, it addresses students well-versed in Protestant scholasticism and the intellectual culture of early modern England, and offers a stimulating rereading of England's most eminent Puritan theologian.

CRAWFORD GRIBBEN

Trinity College, Dublin