At present, John Owen (1616–1683) is undergoing a resurgence of popularity in the academy and the Church. At one time, historians and theologians lamented that his life and theology were disregarded or completely ignored. However, this has all changed. In our day, Owen is commonly referred to as the “Prince of the English Divines,” “the Calvin of England,” or the “Prince of the Puritans.” His exegetical, theological, polemical, spiritual, and practical proficiency remains worthy of a close and careful reading.

This edition has been produced in response to a growing number of scholars interested in Owen, beginning with Peter Toon, Sarah Cook, Sinclair Ferguson, Christopher Hill, Richard Muller, Carl Trueman, Alan Spence, Christopher Cleveland, Ryan McGraw, Edwin E. M. Tay, Andrew Leslie, Tim Cooper, Crawford Gribben, Marty Cowan, and John Tweeddale. Further, the four-volume work of Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, and William van Asselt’s Protestant Scholasticism has led to a resurgence of interest in Reformed scholasticism of which Owen was a part. Moreover, the volumes of scholarly contributions from editors Kelly Kapic and Mark Jones, The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology (New York: Routledge, 2012); Kelly Kapic and Willem van Vlastuin, eds., John Owen between Orthodoxy and Modernism, Studies in Reformed Theology 39 (Leiden: Brill, 2021); and Crawford Gribben and John Tweedale, eds., T&T Handbook of John Owen, T&T Clark Handbooks (New York: T&T Clark, 2022) warranted this publication.

This renaissance of Owen Studies has been captured by the Crossway edition of the Complete Works of John Owen. This forty-volume project is edited by two reputable scholars, Lee Gatiss and Shawn Wright, who have recruited world-class academics to participate in the production of this edition. This handsomely bound installment of his works is a welcome addition to Owen scholarship. Volume 7 contains two treatises, The Reason of Faith (1677) and The Cause, Way, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God (1678). They are an elaboration of Owen’s doctrine of Scripture. The two discourses are complementary and can be summarized in the following: the Holy Spirit alone enables a person to believe that the Scripture is truly God’s Word, and the Spirit alone illuminates the mind of the regenerate so this person can understand the mind and will of God.

As to the arrangement of volume 7, Gatiss and Wright give a “Works Preface” to the entire set discussing the publication history of Owen’s writings (pp. vii–x). In 1721, one “uniform edition” of Owen was published, but this proved “abortive.” In 1826, the Thomas Russell edition included twenty-one volumes. Finally, in 1850, William H. Goold produced twenty-four volumes, which is the most well-known edition. This edition was reprinted by Banner of Truth beginning in 1965, with Owen’s Hebrews commentaries appearing in 1991. The new Crossway version appears warranted because the “appetite for Owen” has grown (p. vii). Gatiss and Wright have concluded the older editions (Russell and Goold) “fail to meet the needs of modern readers who are often familiar with neither the theological context nor the syntax and rhetorical style of seventeenth-century English divinity” (p. viii).

The editor’s introduction by Andrew Ballitch (pp. 1–70) contains a biography of Owen. Ballitch begins with his education at Oxford (1632–1635) and moves to his writing The Display of Arminianism in 1642, to his rise in prominence, to his pastoral ministry (1642–1646; 1646–1649), to his call to the chaplaincy of Oliver Cromwell (1649–1651), to his academic positions at Oxford (1651–1657), to the ascendency of Charles II, and to his reclusion from public life after Act of Uniformity in 1662 until his death in 1683. This last stage was one of the busiest times for Owen as he published the Hebrews commentary, Pneumatologia, Justification by Faith, Meditation and the Discourses on Christ, and these two treatises, the Reason of Faith and The Cause, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God.

Moreover, Ballitch incorporates a description of Owen’s polemical adversaries from the Roman Catholics, revolutionary sectarians, Quaker, and Socinians. He also includes outlines for not only the present discourses but also future works about the Holy Spirit, which have been included in volume 8, The Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer, The Holy Spirit as a Comforter, and A Discourse on Spiritual Gifts.

This new edition is not just for academics; it is also for the Church. For the pastors and laypeople’s ease, Gatiss and Wright have returned to the original sources and conformed the spelling to American standards; modernized it; added Scripture references, new paragraph breaks, chapter titles and headings; and renumbered “imprecise and inconsistent” ordering; etc. Translations of the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew have been included, making these volumes more manageable for the common reader, but they have retained the original languages for scholars (pp. viii–ix). They included “certain shorter works that have never before been collected in one place,” including Owen’s correspondence, his sermons, and an “extensive index to the whole set” (p. ix).

This is a noteworthy publication, and I look forward to the other thirty-nine volumes. The editors should be congratulated.