The seventeenth-century “Prince of Puritans,” John Owen (1616–1683), committed his life to the work of ministry as a pastor, theologian, vice-chancellor, chaplain, and a statesman. He desired to worship the triune God freely—without any external regulations not found explicitly in Scripture. This article looks at Owen’s theology of public worship in order to understand his theological convictions concerning his liturgical practice. The guiding questions are, “What is Owen’s theology of public worship, and how is it practiced in a church’s worship service?” When Owen served as one of the editors for the Savoy Declaration in 1658, he labored over what constitutes as true and appropriate worship. This document defines worship by first looking to the doctrine of God. The Savoy Declaration explains:

The light of Nature sheweth that there is a God, who hath Lordship and Soveraignty over all, is just, good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart, and all the soul, and with all the might: But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will.1

Scriptures regulated worship for the Westminster divines and the Nonconformist Puritans because the triune God alone institutes what worship looks like. Owen’s doctrine of the Trinity establishes his theology of worship because God determines how he ought to be worshiped.

In order to answer the above question, this article is divided into three sections. First, Owen’s theology of the beatific vision and spiritual affections are considered in order to understand how the theology of worship is established on the triune God. Beholding the glory of God in worship is what drives true affections. Second, the Lord’s Day is examined in order to understand why God set a particular day apart from the rest for worship. Finally, Owen’s articulation of Sola Scriptura in worship is examined. The Bible alone, as the special revelation from God, determines how the church is to worship the Lord on the Lord’s Day.

1. Beholding the Glory of God for Worship

John Owen regularly taught that worship, private or public, is beholding the glory of God. The glory of God is what motivates and creates worship, and for Owen, this all centers on the person of Christ. Owen explains, “Some men speak much of the imitation of Christ, and following his example. But no man shall ever become ‘like unto him’ by bare imitation of his actions, without that view or intuition of his glory which alone is accompanied with a transforming power to change them into the same image.”2 It is through the “view or intuition of his glory” that Christians begin to be conformed into the image of the Son (Rom 8:29). This is why the nature of worship is connected not to the external works one does, but in the affections of the heart, which then leads to worshipful action—a life of holiness. Owen desires to get people to truly see the beauty of who Christ is as the theological foundation and motivation for worship. He asks:

Is Christ, then, thus glorious in our eyes? Do we see the Father in him, or by seeing of him? Do we sedulously daily contemplate on the wisdom, love, grace, goodness, holiness, and righteousness of God, as revealing and manifesting themselves in him?3

These are the questions Owen desires to explore as he seeks to awaken the hearts of worshipers. In seeking to understand Owen’s theology and practice of public worship, this section explores Owen’s doctrine of the beatific vision, which serves as the theological foundation for public worship, in order to see how the beatific vision stirs people’s affections for worship.4

1.1. The Christological Essence of the Beatific Vision

To understand Owen’s theological motivation in worship, it is important to recognize his christological focus. To behold the glory of God is to behold the face of Jesus Christ. The beatific vision involves not only seeing by sight the eternal glory of God in the eschaton, but also seeing by faith the glory of God in the Christian life now.5 Owen explains, “No man shall ever behold the glory of God by sight hereafter who doth not in some measure behold it by faith here in this world. Grace is a necessary preparation for glory, and faith for sight.”6 According to Owen, beholding the glory of God through the person of Christ is done by reflecting on who Christ is as the hypostatic union. Suzanne McDonald explains, “For Owen, it matters for our lives now and for all eternity that we should set aside time for our minds to be shaped by the foretaste that is offered to us of the beatific vision,” in order to shape minds and to change lives more into the image of the Son.7 Owen dedicates a treatise on this important doctrine, called Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, first published in 1684. He explains that the purpose of this work is to “stir us up unto diligence in the discharge of the duty here proposed—namely, a continual contemplation of the glory of Christ, in his person, office, and grace.”8

Contemplating the glory of Christ in his person, office, and grace begins intellectually and ends devotionally. Knowing God correctly results in worship. Owen explains:

The design of this Discourse is no more, but that when by faith we have attained a view of the glory of Christ, in our contemplations on his person, we should not pass it over as a notion of truth which we assent unto, – namely, that he is thus glorious in himself, – but endeavor to affect our hearts with it, as that wherein our own principal interest doth lie; wherein it will be effectual unto the transformation of our souls into his image.9

The person of Christ is the object of man’s adoration and as man contemplates him, hearts begin to be transformed and affections grow. Owen understands that knowledge is never exclusively intellectual but also includes the heart. To know God, to be in communion with him, is to know who he is intellectually, which results in a changed heart. McDonald observes that Owen follows Thomas Aquinas’s lead in giving precedence to the intellect, “since we cannot rightly desire or love God without true knowledge of him, but we do not truly know God if knowledge does not issue in love.”10 This knowledge of God is never the intellect apart from the heart.

Owen is Chalcedonian in his articulation of the beatific vision since he uses the person of Christ, both his divinity and humanity, as the centerpiece to see the glory of God. McDonald summarizes the primary content of Owen’s beatific vision well: “The beatific vision is primarily Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man, acknowledged by faith now, apprehended in its fullness in eternity.”11 Christ is beautiful and glorious because he is divine and human, acting as the image of the invisible God in his divinity and the elect’s advocate in his humanity. Because Christ is God, true knowledge of God comes through him; yet at the same time, because Christ is man, true worship for God also comes through him. As the hypostatic union, both knowledge from God and worship to God go through Christ. Owen gives three reasons why Christ’s humanity is important to behold God’s glory. First, in Christ’s humanity, he is “the immediate head of the whole glorified creation.”12 In other words, believers can never lose their relationship with Christ because they are already gathered in the head—Christ. Second, Christ’s human nature is “the means and way of communication between God and his glorified saints forever.”13 Lastly, Christ’s human nature “shall be the eternal object of divine glory, praise, and worship.”14 Christ is the object of worship because he is the object of God’s glory. Christ is not only the object to God’s glory, but he is also the means to see God’s glory.

The beatific vision is important for Owen because it explains that all spiritual affections received from God are communicated through Christ. Owen explains that it is only by looking to Christ, who eternally receives the Father’s love, that believers can receive the blessings of Christ, which are found in the love the Father has for the Son:

The way on our part whereby we shall receive these communications from God by Christ, which are the eternal springs of life, peace, joy, and blessedness, is this vision the sight whereof we speak. For, as it is expressly assigned thereunto in the Scripture, so whereas it contains the perfect operation of our minds and souls in a perfect state, on the most perfect object, it is the only means of our blessedness.15

According to Owen’s articulation of the beatific vision, beholding Christ—the glory of God and the eternal recipient of the Father’s love—believers now receive the Father’s love as adopted sons and daughters in Christ in order to get a “foretaste of the future blessedness in the enjoyment of Christ.”16

Owen is careful when reflecting on the glory of God by not explaining away the mystery. To behold the glory of God is to look at the face of Christ, because Christ is the image God gave humanity to show his infinite glory. In his explanation of this point Owen says:

The enjoyment of God by sight is commonly called the BEATIFICAL VISION; and it is the sole function of all the actings of our souls in the state of blessedness: which the old philosophers knew nothing of; neither do we know distinctly what they are, or what is this sight of God. Howbeit, this we know, that God in his immense essence is invisible unto our minds. For nothing can perfectly comprehend that which is infinite, but what is itself infinite. Wherefore the blessed and blessing sight which we shall have of God will be always “in the face of Jesus Christ.”17

The “actings of our souls” to which Owen refers are the spiritual affections believers will communicate back to God in worship as they have communion with him in the eschaton. In other words, the spiritual affections the church experiences now by faith is only a foretaste. This is why Owen is able to say, the “manifestation of the glory of God … shine into our souls …[which] shall fill us with peace, rest, and glory.”18 Owen is theologically rich; however, at the same time, Owen is careful not to reach beyond what humans are able to comprehend. In the closing of part one in this treatise he explains,

There is nothing farther for us to do herein but that now and always we shut up all our meditations concerning it with the deepest self-abasement, out of a sense of our unworthiness and insufficiency to comprehend those things, admiration of that excellent glory which we cannot comprehend, and vehement longings for the season when we shall see him as he is, be ever with him, and know him even as we are known.19

The longing believers have in Christ to fully see the glory of God is the longing that drive one to worship. The beatific vision is the motivation for believers to gather in a public worship service each week and worship the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit.

1.2. Christological Piety in Worship

The ability to behold the glory of Christ is initiated by the Father, accomplished through the Son, and made effective by the Holy Spirit. John Owen preached two sermons, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” on Ephesians 2:18—the same passage Owen used to explain the heavenly directory in his treatise Communion with God.20 Worship with heart-felt affections for God is motivated by the glory of God in Christ; however, beholding this glory only comes by having communion with the triune God. Packer explains, “Puritans used the word [worship] in its narrower and more common sense, to signify simply all our direct communion with God: invocation, adoration, meditation, faith, praise, prayer and the receiving of instruction from his word, both in public and private.”21 As in Owen’s treatise, Communion with God, he talks about how one has distinct communion with each person of the Godhead to produce true worship in these sermons, which highlights the doctrine of divine appropriation in worship.22 Owen explains in this sermon on Ephesians 2:18:

The first thing in general observable from these words [Eph. 2:18] is, that in the spiritual worship of the gospel the whole blessed Trinity, and each person therein distinctly, do in that economy and dispensation wherein they act severally and peculiarly in the work of our redemption, afford distinct communion with themselves unto the souls of the worshippers…. There is no act, part, or duty of gospel worship, wherein the worshippers have not distinct communion with each person in the blessed Trinity.23

By holding Owen’s doctrine of divine appropriations correctly with his doctrine of inseparable operations, Owen’s articulation of the heavenly directory begins to take shape.24 Owen brings it back to God the Son as the centerpiece of true worship when he says:

This is the general order of gospel worship, the great rubric of our service. Here in general lieth its decency, that it respects the mediation of the Son, through whom we have access, and supplies and assistance of the Spirit, and a regard unto God as a Father. He that fails in any one of these, he breaks all order in gospel worship.25

As Christians behold the beauty of the glory of Christ by the Spirit, they have access to God the Father. Christ as the High Priest in many ways serves as the centerpiece in Christian worship because it motivates, generates, sustains, and accomplishes the act and purpose of Christian worship.

The second sermon Owen preached on Ephesians 2:18 further expounds on the significance of the order of gospel worship. Owen explains there are three specific ingredients needed for gospel worship to take place:

1st. Light and knowledge, that we may be acquainted with the mind and will of God in it, – what it is that he accepteth and approveth, and is appointed by him…2dly. Grace in the heart, so that there may be, in this access unto God, a true, real, spiritual saving communion, obtained with him in those acts of faith, love, delight, and obedience, [these constitute as the spiritual affections] which he requireth; without which it is in anything “impossible to please God.” 3dly. Ability for the performance of the duties that God requireth in his worship, in such a manner as he may be glorified, and those who are called to his worship edified in their most holy faith.26

Knowledge of the Lord allows the heart to grow in love with the Lord by God’s grace, which is expressed through spiritual affections such as love and delight. These are the affections that are expressed by the worshiper as they look at the beatific vision through the Son by receiving God’s grace. Owen saw grace, the second ingredient needed for worship, as the means of communicating the Father’s love to those who have communion with him. However, because of the doctrine of inseparable operations, Owen looks at the Holy Spirit to explain how the worshiper receives the love from the Father through Christ’s grace for worship. “It is he [the Holy Spirit] alone which really affecteth the heart and soul with their wants,” because apart from the Spirit, humanity is “dull and stupid in spiritual things.”27 Without the Spirit, no one would want to receive the Father’s love through the Son. Owen explains this communion with the triune God and the love he communicates, and how worshipers reciprocate the appropriate affections in worship:

He comes upon the hearts of the elect, and communicates of his own grace unto them. These graces he enables them to act, exert, and put forth in their worship of God. These God delights in, as coming from himself, as of his own workmanship in us; – he seeth a return of himself to himself, of his grace to his glory: and by these do the saints approach into his presence, speak to him, treat with him, and hear from him.28

Worship is looking at the love received from God and expressing affections back to the Father through Christ by the Spirit.

The third ingredient needed for gospel worship, the “ability for the performance of the duties,” is where the ordinances of public worship begin to surface.29 Owen articulates that the duties to be performed are the ordinances of public worship and they are to be done for the glory of God and to the edification of the assembly.30 Owen explains that local churches are edified as believers engage in their spiritual gifting by the Spirit in order to glorify God in their public worship through the duties of the ordinances:

He [the Holy Spirit] gives spiritual gifts unto men, enabling them to perform it in a holy, evangelical manner…. He enables men to pray, so as that the souls of the saints may be drawn forth thereby unto communion with God … he enables them to preach or speak as the “oracles of God” … he enables men to administer the seals of the covenant so, that the faith of the saints may be excited and stirred up to act and exert itself in a way suitable to the nature of each ordinance.31

In this second sermon on Ephesians 2:18, Owen articulates the importance of prayer, preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper in public worship because it is through these ordinances that worship is publicly expressed.

1.3. Spiritual Affections Stimulated

The Holy Spirit is the one who stimulates spiritual affections in the believer’s heart to be outwardly expressed in the ordinances of public worship. Owen looks to Romans 8:6 as his guide to define spiritual mindedness. He says spiritual mindedness is “to have the mind changed and renewed by a principle of spiritual life and light, so as to be continually acted and influenced thereby unto thoughts and meditations of spiritual things, from the affection cleaving unto them with delight and satisfaction.”32 Owen is explaining that as one looks to and meditates on spiritual things (beholding the glory of God by faith), minds are changed as affections grow with delight. Owen claims that the foundation of what it means to be spiritually minded lies in the affections.33 Owen further explains it another way, “Spiritual affections, whereby the soul adheres unto spiritual things taking in such a savour and relish of them as wherein it finds rest and satisfaction, is the peculiar spring and substance of our being spiritually minded.”34 The spiritual affections “is the peculiar spring and substance” of being spiritually minded and it brings joy and satisfaction. Owen is careful to articulate that these affections do not arise out of nothing, but they arise from “our thoughts and meditations” by faith and eventually by sight in the beatific vision.35 Affections never initiate worship; instead, they always serve as a response to God and his revealed Word.

Owen further explains, “Every great work of God, the concluding, completing, perfecting acts are ascribed unto the Holy Ghost.”36 The Holy Spirit does the concluding work of God because he is the third person in the order of the Trinity’s subsistence. The way the Spirit concludes, completes, or perfects the work of God’s redemptive work is by gifting the church the ability to perform the ordinances of public worship. The Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father and Son to his church for their knowledge of the divine, their sanctification, and their ability to worship.37 In this undivided work of God, the Father and the Son give the Spirit as a gift for his children. Owen explains, “The power … the Holy Ghost puts forth in our regeneration is such, in its acting or exercise, as our minds, will, and affections, are suited to be wrought upon, and to be affected by it, according to their natures and natural operations.”38 Kelly Kapic summarizes Owen’s position well: “The great Gift of God is none other than the Holy Spirit, and this Spirit is none other than God himself. Rather than indicating inferiority to God, the concept of Gift is employed by Owen to highlight divine generosity, presence, and action.”39

In Owen’s treatise, A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, published ten years after Owen’s death, he examines how the gift of the Holy Spirit and all its benefits—the spiritual gifts—give believers the ability to worship God corporately through the ordinances of public worship. While the gift of the Holy Spirit is saving, what Owen identifies as the spiritual gifts is not saving.40 In the introduction of this treatise, Owen articulates, “He [the Holy Spirit] unites them [believers] into the one mystical body, under the Lord Christ as a head of influence, by faith and love; and he unites them into an organical body, under the Lord Christ as a head of rule, by gifts and spiritual abilities.”41 One of the ways the Spirit applies the undivided work of the triune God is to provide the church the ability to worship God “by gifts and spiritual abilities.”42 These spiritual gifts are so central to worship that “the neglect of these gifts hath been the ruin of the same profession as to worship and order.”43

2. Worship on the Lord’s Day

The Lord’s Day is a special and holy day set apart for the Lord. For Owen, the Lord’s Day is a continuation of the fourth commandment in the Old Testament—to keep the Sabbath—making Owen a Sabbatarian.44 Owen defends the theological conviction that the fourth commandment continues into the New Covenant predominantly in his treatise, Exercitations Concerning the Name, Original, Nature, Use, and Continuance of a Day of Sacred Rest in his Hebrews commentary.45 Owen shows that God created the Sabbath in order to ensure the worship of God is holy and pure, to make sure man does not distort the glory it is meant to bring to the Lord as spiritual affections are expressed. This theological conviction is also well articulated in the Savoy Declaration:

As it is of the law of Nature, that in general a proportion of time by God’s appointment be set apart for the worship of God; so by his Word in a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seaven for a Sabbath to be kept holy unto him, which from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week, and from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week, which in Scripture is called the Lord’s day, and is to be continued to the end of the World as the Christian Sabbath, the observation of the last day of the week being abolished.46

This confession on the Sabbath is rooted in the regulative principle of worship. This section continues exploring Owen’s theology and practice of public worship by providing the theological context to the particular day on which the Lord requires the church to worship.

2.1. Continuation of the Fourth Commandment

The Puritans were successful in establishing a culture of rest and worship on the Lord’s Day. Packer notes that even after the Great Ejection of 1662, “the Long Parliament and its successors … in 1677, [who were] a violently anti-Puritan Parliament passed the Sunday Observance Act, which repeated, and confirmed, Commonwealth legislation on this subject.”47 In other words, this anti-Puritan Parliament still passed an Act to maintain what the Puritan convictions established, a day dedicated to the Lord. This Act “prescribed that all should spend Sunday, not in trading, travelling, ‘worldly labour, business, or work of their ordinary callings,’ but in ‘exercising themselves … in the duties of piety and true religion, publicly and privately.’”48 These Puritan convictions that shaped their culture were rooted in the belief that the fourth commandment in Exodus 20:8–11, to keep the Sabbath, is still for the church today.

The reason the Puritans believed in the continuation of the fourth commandment is because they understood the commandment to be rooted in creation. It was a “memorial” of creation, since the Lord rested on the seventh day in creation. Because it was rooted in the law of creation, the Sabbath was meant for everyone. The Puritans, therefore, considered it to be part of the moral law.49 An early Puritan named Nicholas Bownd (c. 1551–1613) is famous for his treatise on the Sabbath, which helped shape the Puritan convictions on the continuation of the fourth commandment. Bownd explains, “It is needful to prove unto you that the Sabbath ought still to be continued with us; because without this persuasion, all doctrine or exhortation tending to the true manner of sanctifying it, falls to the ground and is unfruitful.”50 He continues and explains that the reason the fourth commandment is intended to be ongoing is because it is prescribed in creation, specifically in Genesis 2:3.51 Owen appeals to this same passage a generation after Bownd. A generation after Owen, this position is still confessed and defended by Matthew Henry (1662–1714) in his work, A Commentary on the Whole Bible:

It is taken for granted that the Sabbath was instituted before; we read of God’s blessing and sanctifying a seventh day from the beginning (Gen ii. 3), so that this was not the enacting of a new law, but the reviving of an old law … as a holy day, set apart to the honour of the holy God, and to be spent in holy exercises.52

Henry is demonstrating the Puritan conviction that observing the Sabbath is a commandment given in creation for revering the holiness of God. Horton Davies presents the Puritan view of the Sabbath well when he says, “The Sabbath was the great, regular red-letter day of the Puritan calendar, which looked both backward to the Creation and forward to the consummation of Creation in the eternal delight and rest of God’s elect in heaven.”53 This “eternal delight and rest of God’s elect in heaven” occurs when the church beholds the glory of God by sight in a beatific vision.

2.2. Examination of Genesis 2:1–2 and Hebrews 4:3–4

For Owen, the two proof texts for Christians to continue the Sabbath are Genesis 2:1–2 and Hebrews 4:3–4. Owen explains:

The opinion of the institution of the Sabbath from the beginning of the world is founded principally on a double testimony, one in the Old Testament, and the other in the New. And both of them seem to me of so uncontrollable an evidence that I have often wondered how ever any sober and learned person undertook to evade their force of efficacy in this cause.54

In both of these passages, Owen takes time to exegetically explain the importance of the Sabbath and why observing a day of rest is required for proper public worship. By arguing for the continuation of the fourth commandment, Owen is teaching his readers what the Lord requires for worship—a day dedicated completely to the Lord.

The text that Owen looks at in Genesis 2:1–2 states, “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work, which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”55 Owen spends time considering what God means by saying, “he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” When observing the first part of this phrase, “He blessed it,” Owen notes that the Jews say God’s blessing is “an addition of good,”56 in other words, that in some sense there is a special addition to this particular day above the rest. Owen explains, “It must be somewhat whereby it was preferred unto or exalted above other days.”57 The second part of the phrase, “And sanctified it,” further expounds on how the Lord blessed this particular day. Owen observes the Hebrew word for “sanctified” (וַיְקַדֵּשׁ), which, he explains, “none ever doubted … the meaning … [which is to] set it apart for a day of holy rest.”58 Owen further explains:

God … sanctified this day: not that he kept it holy himself, which in no sense the divine nature is capable of; nor that he purified it, and made it inherently holy, which the nature of the day is incapable of; nor that he celebrated that which in itself was holy, as we sanctify his name, which is the act of an inferior towards a superior; but that he set it apart to sacred use authoritatively, requiring us to sanctify it in that use obedientially.59

According to Owen, the Sabbath is sanctified, not because the Lord kept it holy, not because the Lord made it holy, not because the day itself is holy, but because the Lord declares it to be holy—authoritatively—so that his church keeps it holy, obediently. The Sabbath is holy because God is authoritative and commands his people to obediently keep it holy. In other words, the day would not be holy if the Lord did not authoritatively proclaim it to be holy through his revealed Word, with the church appropriately responding to his authority by expressing appropriate worship.

The text that Owen appeals to in the New Testament is Hebrews 4:3–4, which says, “For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I sware in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he speaketh somewhere concerning the seventh day on this wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”60 In this section of Owen’s work, he reflects only briefly on Hebrews 4:3–4 because he gives a fuller examination later in volume four of his Hebrews commentary.61 However, as Owen begins to examine what the author of Hebrews meant by the word “rest,” he quickly points out that there are different types of rest. There is an eternal future rest, which is the truest and purest rest believers will have in glory, and there is an earthly rest that the land of Canaan represented, serving as a shadow of the heavenly rest.62 Owen here uses the land of Canaan, where the nation of Israel rested in their promise land, as a typology pointing to the absolute and perfect rest that will be enjoyed in heaven. In Hebrews 4:3, Owen explains how this “rest” is, like the land of Canaan, a real earthly rest that can and is experienced now and ultimately serves as a foretaste of what is to come in eternity with the Lord. The earthly rest is found in beholding the beatific vision now by faith, while the heavenly rest is found in beholding the beatific vision by sight in the eschaton.

As Owen examines Hebrews 4:3, he explains why the church now makes their Sabbath on the first day of the week instead of the last. The alteration of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday is appropriate and necessary, according to Owen, because of the gospel. Under the law, man needed to work before they were able to rest in the Lord, while now under grace, man is able to rest in the Lord first before his work. Owen explains,

For of old, under the covenant of works, men were absolutely to labour and work, without any alteration or improvement of their condition, before they entered into rest…. But now it is otherwise. The first thing that belongs unto our present state is an entering into rest initially; for we enter in by faith. And then our working doth ensure; that is, “the obedience of faith.” Rest is given us to set us on work; and our works are such as, for the manner of their performance, are consistent with a state of rest.63

Owen even states that if someone argues that the Sabbath should be on the seventh day instead of the first, they are attempting to bring the church back under the covenant of works. Owen is building a theological foundation here to show why man’s obedient works are considered worship. Their obedient works are worshipful because their work is done in their communion with the triune God, which they experience as they rest in him through their faith in him.

2.3. Ordinances and Liturgy of Public Worship

Resting in the Lord on the Lord’s Day meant they were to obediently respond to God’s authoritative declaration in making the day holy. This obedient response, for the Puritans, meant they were to actively respond to the Lord in public worship through the means God prescribed in his Word. It is only through the prescribed ordinances of public worship found in Scripture that the church publicly manifests their communion with God experientially.

The Puritans’ public worship service is characteristically described as simplistic. Leland Ryken explains, “Given the context of Catholic/Anglican extravagance in public worship, the whole thrust of Puritan worship was toward getting rid of the clutter and focusing on the essential.”64 Owen did have many objections to the Book of Common Prayer because he thought the strict structure and regiment suppressed the experiential communion believers were to have with the triune God in the midst of a public worship service. Before the Great Ejection of 1662, the English Puritans used several different church directories of worship to help structure their public worship services.65 However, after 1662, Puritans simplified their worship services even more and began to not use a specific liturgical criterion. This is what Owen argued for in his Discourse Concerning Liturgies in 1662. In this treatise, Owen explains that one’s communion with God in worship is what grants the church freedom to worship simplistically—not regimented by the Book of Prayer.66 This freedom to worship God comes by the Holy Spirit; however, this does not mean one can make worship however he or she wants. Instead, worship relies on the Word of God as the church’s liturgical criterion.

3. Scripture Alone as The Liturgical Criterion

Sola Scriptura, according to Owen, does not only determine doctrine, but it also determines how the church is to worship. Davies picks up on this idea when he explains, “the Puritans were the champions of the authority of the ‘pure Word of God’ as the criterion not only for church doctrine, but also for church worship and church government.”67 This Puritan legacy rested on their conviction that Scripture alone is authoritative, infallible, and sufficient in all matters of life, including worship. This conviction is one John Owen shared and it greatly influenced his hermeneutic. Owen made sure to interpret Scripture in a way that recognized how it is in fact living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb 4:12). In this final section, Owen’s doctrine of Sola Scriptura is examined in order to understand how his convictions of the Bible’s authority and infallibility influenced the way he answered the question, “What is Owen’s theology of public worship and how is it practiced in a church’s worship service?”

3.1. The Authority and Infallibility of Scripture in Worship

The supremacy of Scripture is found throughout Owen’s writings to guide and direct all matters of life. Yet one of the most explicit places in Owen’s writings pertaining to Sola Scriptura as applied to public worship is found in his catechism, A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God. In questions 2–3 of this catechism, Owen explores the centrality of Scripture as the means to know how God is to be worshiped. Question 2 asks, “By what means do we come to know that God will thus be worshipped?”68 Answer: “That God is to be worshipped … [by] the ways and means of that worship depend merely on God’s sovereign pleasure and institution.”69 Owen continues with this answer by appealing to God’s authority when he says:

Although some of the ways which he doth appoint may seem to have a great compliance in them unto the light of nature, yet in his worship he accepts them not on that account, but merely on that of his own institution; and this as hath declared his will about in the second commandment, so he hath severely forbidden the addition of our inventions unto what he hath appointed [i.e., Book of Common Prayer], sending us for instruction unto Him alone whom he hath endowed with sovereign authority to reveal his will and ordain his worship.70

If God institutes worship by his authoritative will being done through the ways and means he prescribes, then “How … are these ways and means of the worship of God made known unto us?”71 Answer: “In and by the written word only, which contains a full and perfect revelation of the will of God as to his whole worship and all the concernments of it.”72 This answer speaks directly to Owen’s understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture. Owen explains that God’s Word is the way and means of knowing how the church ought to worship, but it also contains the “full and perfect” instruction on how to worship; nothing should be added to it. Scripture, according to Owen, is the standard for testing all ordinances of worship simply because it carries the authority of God. The Savoy Declaration explains, “The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the Testimony of any man or Church; but wholly upon God (who is Truth itself) and Author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.” 73 Sinclair Ferguson makes the observation, “Owen is intent to stress … that the Scriptures cannot validly carry the authority they claim for themselves unless they are in fact of divine origin, and have a nature in keeping with that origin.”74 In other words, Scripture is the sole authority of everything including worship because it originates from God, who is authoritative.

Owen appeals to Scripture’s infallibility when applying the doctrine of Sola Scriptura to public worship. Ferguson further explains, “The logic of inspiration means that the authority of Scripture must be of an infallible nature, that is without error.”75 Because Scripture is God’s revealed authority it must be infallible since God cannot lie.76 Owen confesses, “For the divine truth … being concerning things unseen … nothing but the absolute infallibility of the revealer can bring the mind of man to assurance and acquiescency.”77 Because Scripture is without error, man has the assurance that they can have true communion with God in public worship in the ordinances of worship that Scripture prescribes.

3.2. Spirit-Led Hermeneutics for Worship

If Scripture alone “contains a full and perfect revelation of the will of God as to his whole worship and all the concernments of it” because it is authoritative, sufficient, and infallible, then it is important for the Christian to be able to understand it in order to apply it for worship.78 This makes interpreting Scripture a supernatural exercise because the Christian relies on God to know God’s revelation. Man cannot rely on his own understanding to know God through Scripture. Instead, Owen teaches that it is by the Holy Spirit that one is able to understand and know God through his Word. This makes hermeneutics a central piece to communion with God because knowing how to interpret the Bible properly means knowing how to know the God Scripture reveals. This is why, when scholars make observations on Owen’s hermeneutical method, they explain that only those who have faith—those who have communion with God—are able to interpret Scripture. For example, Packer explains, “He who would interpret Scripture aright … must be a man of a reverent, humble, prayerful, teachable and obedient spirit … otherwise he will never reach any understanding of spiritual realities.”79 Only Christians can interpret Scripture because only those who are united to Christ and have the Holy Spirit can receive the revelation of the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is key in proper Bible interpretation. Therefore, only when the Bible is supernaturally read and understood with the help of the Holy Spirit does it alone become the liturgical criterion for public worship on the Lord’s Day. With the help of the Spirit illuminating the believer’s mind, proper understanding of Scripture is possible, which is the true knowledge of Christ. The purpose of hermeneutics is to obtain the knowledge of Christ. Owen says,

Whereas, therefore, by an acquaintance with the person of Christ, it is undeniably evident that I intended nothing but that knowledge of Christ which it is the duty of every Christian to labour after, – no other but what is revealed, declared, and delivered in the Scriptures, as almost every page of my book [Communion with God] doth manifest where I treat of these things.80

Owen explains that throughout his treatise, Communion with God, he regularly points Christians to the necessity of the knowledge of Christ for communion with God, and this knowledge is revealed, declared, and delivered in Scripture alone. Owen further articulates, “without the knowledge of the person of Christ … as revealed and declared in the Scripture, there is no true, useful, saving knowledge of any other mysteries or truths of the gospel to be attained.”81 This saving knowledge is what Owen considered “true theology.”82

4. Conclusion

John Owen cared about worshiping the triune God properly. This article deals mainly with the theological nature of public worship according to Owen, answering the question, “What is Owen’s theology of public worship, and how is it practiced in a church’s worship service?” Owen’s theology of public worship is established on the triune God and beholding him by faith now. Owen’s theology of public worship is practiced in a church’s worship service by actively being in communion with Christ, by looking at him, through the prescribed ordinances of worship found in the Word of God. Some of the prescribed ordinances include public prayer, the preaching of God’s Word, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Owen explains, “Our souls … have no way of approach unto God in duties of worship but by faith; no way of adherence or cleaving unto him but by love; no way of abiding in him but by fear, reverence, and delight.”83 Expressing spiritual affections by faith in God is the way to abide in Christ—to have communion with him. When affections are received and expressed by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father, God receives acceptable worship.

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[1] A. G. Matthews, The Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order, 1658 (London: Independent Press, 1959), 22:1–2.

[2] John Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” in The Glory of Christ, ed. William H. Goold, The Works of John Owen 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1991), 304.

[3] Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” 304–305.

[4] For a brief survey of Owen’s theology of the beatific vision, consult Boersma, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 321–27.

[5] This article is not to focused on the telos of the beatific vision, but the earthly faith the Christian has that prepares one to see by sight in the eschaton. It is this present beholding of Christ by the Spirit that produces worship as Christians receive a glimpse by faith to what the eternal glory will look like.

[6] Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” 288.

[7] Suzanne McDonald, “Beholding the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ: John Owen and the ‘Reforming’ of the Beatific Vision,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 143.

[8] Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” 277.

[9] Owen, “Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,” 321.

[10] McDonald, “Beholding the Glory of God,” 147.

[11] McDonald, “Beholding the Glory of God,” 147.

[12] John Owen, “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ: or, a Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ,” in The Glory of Christ, The Works of John Owen 1:271.

[13] Owen, “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ,” 272.

[14] Owen, “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ,” 272.

[15] Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 414.

[16] Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 415.

[17] Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 292–93.

[18] Owen, “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ,” 93.

[19] Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, 415.

[20] John Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” in Sermons to the Church, The Works of John Owen 9:53–84; John Owen, Communion with God, The Works of John Owen 2:269. The “heavenly directory” refers to the way Christians worship God by God. Worship is done in the Spirit through the Son to the Father.

[21] J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 249.

[22] Owen uses the medieval doctrine of appropriation and attributes it to God’s revelation and how the Father reveals himself in a special “distinct” way, how the Son reveals himself in a special “distinct” way, and how the Holy Spirit reveals himself in a special “distinct” way for communion to occur with a believer. Sinclair Ferguson also explains, “This is the classical doctrine of Appropriations,” when commenting on how Owen articulates God’s distinct (yet inseparable) modes of communication for communion to occur. Sinclair B. Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 76.

[23] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 56–57.

[24] While the Father, Son, and Spirit reveal themselves distinctly to initiate communion, this revelation is never separate from each other. Instead, God’s revelation, or communion of himself to mankind is a single and undivided work of God. Owen clearly teaches the doctrine of the inseparable operations of God. Owen explains, “When I assign any thing as peculiar wherein we distinctly hold communion with any person, I do not exclude the other persons from communion with the soul in the very same thing.” Owen, Communion with God, 18.

[25] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 57, 64.

[26] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 70.

[27] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 73.

[28] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 73–74.

[29] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 70.

[30] Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 74.

31 Owen, “The Nature and Beauty of Gospel Worship,” 75–76, emphasis added. The three specific ordinances listed here, prayer, preaching, and the seals of the covenant (which includes baptism and the Lord’s Supper), are the same ordinances listed in Owen’s treatise, Communion with God. Owen writes, “The soul addresses itself unto in the want of Christ; when it finds him not in any private endeavours, it makes vigorous application to the ordinances of public worship; in prayer, in preaching, in administration of the seals, doth it look after Christ” (Communion with God, 130).

[32] John Owen, “Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded,” in Sin and Grace, The Works of John Owen 7:270.

[33] Owen, “Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded,” 271.

[34] Owen, “Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded,” 395.

[35] Owen, “Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded,” 271.

[36] John Owen, “Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,” in The Holy Spirit, The Works of John Owen 3:94.

[37] Kelly Kapic articulates the polemical context between the Socinians, specifically seen in John Biddle, and the Reformed orthodox tradition, specifically seen in John Owen, to show the theological debate between the two positions on the Spirit as a gift (“The Spirit as Gift: Explorations in John Owen’s Pneumatology,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones [Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012], 113–27). Biddle, who was an anti-trinitarian, argued that if the Spirit is a gift from God, then the Spirit is not God, in XII Arguments (1647), 3. Owen responds to this argument in “Vindiciae Evangelicae” (The Gospel Defended, The Works of John Owen 12:1–590) by spending a lot of time demonstrating how the Spirit is a gift from the Father and Son, while still remaining free as His own person of the Godhead who is truly divine and one with the Father and Son.

[38] Owen, “Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit,” 318.

[39] Kapic, “The Spirit as Gift,” 139.

[40] John Owen, “A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts,” in The Work of the Holy Spirit, The Works of John Owen 4:420.

[41] Owen, “A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts,” 420.

[42] Owen, “A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts,” 420.

[43] Owen, “A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts,” 422.

[44] Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2012), 653.

[45] John Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, The Works of John Owen 18:265–460.

46 A. G. Matthews, The Savoy Declaration, 22:7.

[47] Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 236.

[48] Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 236.

[49] Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 238.

[50] Nicholas Bownd, The True Doctrine of the Sabbath (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2015), 40.

[51] Bownd, The True Doctrine of the Sabbath, 40.

[52] Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, reprint ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994), 124.

[53] Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England: From Andrews to Baxter and Fox, 1603–1690 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 2: 245.

[54] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 294.

[55] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 294, emphasis added.

[56] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 297.

[57] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 298.

[58] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 298.

[59] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 298.

[60] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 2, 301.

[61] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 4, The Works of John Owen 20:254–87.

[62] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 4, 257.

[63] Owen, Hebrews, Volume 4, 280.

64 Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 119–20.

[65] For list of several directories throughout the years see Horton Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans (Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997), 122–61.

[66] Owen, “A Discourse Concerning Liturgies and Their Imposition,” in Church Purity and Unity, The Works of John Owen 15:8.

[67] Davies, The Worship of the English Puritans, 49.

[68] John Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” in Church Purity and Unity, The Works of John Owen 15:448.

[69] Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” 448.

[70] Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” 449.

[71] Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” 449.

[72] Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” 450.

[73] Matthews, The Savoy Declaration, 1:4.

74 Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life, 185.

[75] Ferguson, John Owen on the Christian Life, 188.

[76] Owen, “The Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance Explained and Confirmed,” in Continuing in the Faith, The Works of John Owen 11:575.

[77] Owen, “ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ,” 94.

[78] Owen, “A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God,” 450.

[79] Packer, A Quest for Godliness, 100.

[80] Owen, Communion with God, 288.

[81] Owen, Communion with God, 289.

82 John Owen, Theologoumena Pantodapa, Sive, De Natura, Ortu Progressu, Et Studio Veræ Theologiæ (Edinburgi: T&T Clark, 1862), 37; John Owen, Biblical Theology, or The Nature, Origin, Development, and Study if Theological Truth, in Six Books (Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994), 16.

[83] Owen, “Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded,” 434.

 

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