I've just come across this important resource - a notebook of sermons heard in Oxford in 1653-54, with notes taken by Thomas Aldersey, shortly after he matriculated at Brasenose College. The list of preachers is a bit of a who's-who of Cromwellian Oxford, and includes such names as Thomas Cole, John Conant, Edward Reynolds, Henry Savage,…
Crawford Gribben, "Becoming John Owen: The making of an evangelical reputation," in Westminster Theological Journal 79 (2017), pp. 311-25 [here]. Abstract: John Owen ended his life in defeat. He died doubting his legacy, and without an explanation of what he deemed to be God’s judgment upon his people. For all his fame, he had not been an…
Here's an interview about John Owen and English Puritanism, recently published on the excellent "New Books Network" podcast.
This article appeared on the The Irish Times website, 6 December 2017. Ireland’s first revolution was part of a long religious war. By 1649, the island had been in turmoil for eight years, since unrest in Ulster had spiralled into a national conflict involving five independent armies, from three nations, in a bewildering succession of alliances.…
Exactly five hundred years ago, on 31 October 1517, an undistinguished professor of theology in a small German town posted a list of ideas that he hoped might contribute to ongoing debates about the reformation of the church. Or so the story goes. Martin Luther’s voice was one among many making suggestions about how the…
John Owen (1616-83) is attracting increasing attention far beyond the theological circles in which his memory was, for many years, preserved. Owen has long been recognised as having been central to the rise and fall of the English republic – preaching to MPs on the day after the execution of Charles I, accompanying Cromwell as…
Earlier this summer, prompted by the inaugural conference of the Jonathan Edwards Centre (UK) and a glance through M. X. Lesser's Reading Jonathan Edwards, I reflected on similarities and differences between academic approaches to the study of John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. The recent monographs by Martyn Cowan and Ryan McGraw have reinforced our need to pursue…
Christopher Haigh, "The Church of England, the nonconformists and reason: Another Restoration controversy," Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2017), pp. 1-26 [available here]. Christopher Haigh's latest intervention in the discussion about the character of Restoration conformity and nonconformity sits alongside the article he published in the same journal last year, and raises the hopeful prospect that he may have much…
Just announced on Amazon - and due for publication in September - is a new book on Owen by Ryan M. McGraw, professor of systematic theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. While the contents aren't yet entirely visible, the book appears to collect material already published in some of McGraw's excellent essays on Owen's place…
Martyn Cowan, who teaches historical theology at Union Theological College, which is part of the Institute of Theology, Queen's University Belfast, has just published John Owen and the civil war apocalypse: Preaching, prophecy and politics. You can read a very lengthy section here. Having read some of this material in its earlier iteration, I know this…
