Becoming John Owen: The Making Of An Evangelical Reputation

By Crawford Gribben

[Crawford Gribben is a professor of history at Queen’s University Belfast.]

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 especially popular writer, and few of his titles proved to be an immediate success. Owen’s work grew in popularity after his death. In the early eighteenth century, Owen was repackaged for new audiences that appropriated some of his convictions within the context of trans-Atlantic evangelicalism. Jonathan Edwards became one of Owen’s most active American readers, while the movement of reform among English Particular Baptists was identified as “Owenism.” English publishers tended to promote Owen’s devotional writing, while Scottish publishers tended to publish his ecclesiological texts, even as many copies of Owen’s work passed through several generations of owners. As Owen’s reputation was re-engineered, his work was championed among Methodists, Presbyterians, and, eventually, “Plymouth” Brethren, being co-opted in communities that held to principles he had critiqued. Owen was, for a while, almost ubiquitous within some cultures of Victorian evangelicalism, making an appearance in J. R. Herbert’s famous painting of The Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents at the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1844). His collected works were published in the 1860s. Their republication by the Banner of Truth provided for the recent revival of interest in Owen’s work, for the cottage industry of Owen scholarship, for his status in religious cultures of consumption, and, consequently, his standing as an evangelical.

----------------

John Owen died on August 24, 1683, believing that the cause to which he had dedicated his life had failed.[1] After the restoration of Charles II, the gradual unwinding of the English revolution had been illustrated in the public torture of old republicans, the ejection of dissenters from the national church and their brutal persecution, and the formation of a new community of nonconformists that was quickly divided by disputes about the elemental doctrines of the Reformation. Twenty years after the end of the revolution, it seemed clear to Owen that the Puritan project of building godly congregations in Reformed communities was in ruins. He was increasingly worried that the “minds of professors” had “grown altogether indifferent as to the doctrine of God’s eternal election, the sovereign efficacy of grace in the conversion of sinners, justification by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ.”[2] He could hardly believe that those English Protestants who had been shut out of the national church “should have come to an indifferency as to the doctrine of justification, and quarrel and dispute about the interest of works in justification; about general redemption, which takes off the efficacy of the redeeming work of Christ; and about the perseverance of the saints.”[3] Growing old, facing bereavements among family and friends, and increasingly plagued by ill health, Owen had begun to doubt his legacy. Too much of his preaching, he feared, had been “poor, weak … and perhaps … quickly forgotten.”[4] “I have now been very long, though very unprofitable, in the ministration of the word,” he explained to his congregation in the spring of 1681. “I am ready to faint, and give over, and to beg of the church they would think of some other person to conduct them in my room, without these disadvantages.”[5] And he finally realized that the providential analysis that had been necessary to so much of his earlier work provided no effective theodicy to explain the situation of dissenters: “I do not know that [God] hath given me a greater rebuke, in the whole course of my ministry, than that I have been labouring in the fire to discover the causes of God’s withdrawing from us without any success.”[6] Writing to a friend, shortly before his death, Owen reported that he was “labouring with age, infirmities, temptations, and troubles,” and admitted “dreadful apprehensions of the present state of things in the world.” God, he believed, was “withdrawing his presence from His Churches and other professors of the gospel.”[7] And the decline was to continue: shortly before his death, some of his work was publicly burned at the University of Oxford, over which he had once been vice-chancellor.[8] Owen ended his ministry in defeat. But he could not anticipate his afterlife, for, in the early part of the eighteenth century, as nonconformists realigned with godly conformists to develop the new “evangelical” movement, new and diverse reading communities began to consume Owen’s work and to establish his evangelical reputation.

I.

Owen’s reputation was established in the dissenting and evangelical cultures of print. In his own lifetime, Owen had been an important voice in the development of Cromwellian institutions and in the emergence and sustention of Restoration nonconformity, but does not appear to have been an especially popular writer. Owen became an author when access to print was democratized in the early 1640s. His earliest work illustrated his occasionally unreliable grasp of Reformed orthodoxy even as it established his concern to defend truth as he understood it.[9] His first few books were published in London by Philemon Stephens, an entrepreneur associated with the radical religious underground, but Owen self-published the sermons he preached after the siege of Colchester, Eben-Ezer: A Memoriall of the Deliverance of Essex, County and Committee (1648), a gesture that may suggest that Stephens was no longer prepared to take financial risk on a relatively unknown writer in the increasingly crowded world of print. Owen enjoyed his first literary success in the sermon he preached on the day after the execution of Charles I, which was published, by one of Stephens’s rivals, in two editions in 1649. The success of this pamphlet encouraged Stephens to package the unsold text blocks of Owen’s earliest books into a single volume, which he marketed as an anthology of Certaine Treatises Written by John Owen … Formerly published at severall times, now reduced into one volume (1649). As Owen ascended into public view in the early 1650s, his work found a more ready audience, with his political and devotional writing making more impact than those more demanding publications addressing the theological problems of the period.

Some titles proved to be an immediate success. The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ in the Shaking of the Kingdoms of the World was published in London (1651), Oxford (1651), and Leith (1652), its wide circulation perhaps best explained by its rationale for the success of the Cromwellian invasion of Scotland. Of the Mortification of Sinne in Believers was published in 1656, and reprinted in 1658 and 1668. Of Communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost appeared in two quarto editions in 1657, and was republished in a second, octavo, edition in 1700, the smaller and cheaper format indicating new expectations of how and by whom the book might be read. A Peace-Offering in an Apology and Humble Plea for Indulgence and Liberty of Conscience went through two editions in 1667, and Exercitations Concerning the Same did the same in 1671. A Discourse Concerning Evangelical Love was published in 1672, reprinted in 1673, and again in 1696. A Brief Vindication of the Nonconformists appeared in three editions in 1680. Owen’s exposition of Heb 6–10 was published in 1680, and reprinted in 1681 and 1684. Some Considerations about Union among Protestants passed through two editions in 1680, and his exposition of Heb 11–13 did the same in 1684. Owen’s devotional and political writings were most likely to find a ready audience within his own lifetime.

Others of Owen’s books took longer to establish their appeal. A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God was published in 1667, and republished in 1676 and 1688. The exposition of Heb 1–2 was published in 1668 and went into a second edition in 1676. The Nature, Power, Deceit and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers appeared in 1668 and went into a second edition in 1675. A Practical Exposition of the 130th Psalm was published in 1669 and went into its second edition only eleven years later. A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity was published in 1669 and went into a third edition in 1676. An Enquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches was published in 1681 and went into a second edition in 1696. A Brief and Impartial Account of the Nature of the Protestant Religion appeared in 1682 and went into a second edition in 1690. The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ was first published in 1645 and appeared in a second edition almost forty years later, and again in 1700. Θεολογουμενα παντοδαπα, his “biblical theology,” was published in Oxford in 1661, and was reprinted almost a generation later and for entirely new audiences in Bremen (1684)[10] and Franeker (1700).[11] This extraordinary and compendious history of culture and religion does not appear to have attracted high prices in the second-hand market, even shortly after its publication. In 1665, for example, the book was included in a shipment of 116 standard medical, legal, literary, and theological texts purchased by Chetham’s Library, Manchester, but was listed as one of the cheapest items in the shipment, costing 6 shillings and sixpence against the average item cost of approximately £1 8s.[12] In the challenging circumstances of the Restoration, when Owen’s most obvious audience was facing persecution and being monitored by government spies, his work had again become a risk for publishers.[13]

Owen’s ability to attract a posthumous readership may be indicated by the fact that some of these books were republished long after his death in 1683. These republished texts were indicating the kind of readers who continued to find Owen’s work interesting, and the various uses to which his ideas and his reputation were being put. But these posthumous publications are indicative of the trends by which aspects of his distinctive political and theological thought were forgotten, as Owen was repackaged for new audiences and began the slow process of becoming an evangelical.[14]

II.

Owen’s later reputation as a devotional writer of choice for right-thinking evangelicals was fashioned by the texts that were republished in the decades immediately following his death. Setting aside the first editions of books that appeared in the years immediately after 1683, around a dozen of Owen’s works were republished in the period before 1700. The content of this list is surprising, and illustrates the uneven processes by which Owen’s reputation was being re-engineered, and as publishers attempted to anticipate his readers’ changing tastes. Although we cannot assume that early modern audiences read as we do today, it is clear that publishers throughout the later Stuart period remained willing to take financial risks on his principal devotional works.[15] By contrast, Owen’s polemical works against Roman Catholics, Socinians, and Quakers did not appear to attract a continuing audience, and later audiences consumed very little of his religious writing from the 1650s. Perhaps surprisingly, Owen’s early catechisms, The Principles of the Doctrine of Christ (1645), appeared in a second edition in 1684, despite the fact that the work had become unrepresentative of certain elements of his mature thought, especially in claiming that adoption was in some sense effected by baptism. Of Communion with God, which had appeared in two quarto editions in 1657, was republished in octavo in its second edition in 1700. Owen’s massive prolegomena, Θεολογουμενα παντoδαπα (1661), was unique in being reprinted for audiences among the European Reformed; while it was certainly not the last of his books to be marketed especially for overseas readers, it was quickly forgotten by English readers, being so technically and linguistically demanding. Similarly, A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God (1667) appeared again in 1676 and 1688, and A Discourse Concerning Evangelical Love (1672) was quickly reprinted in 1673 and again in the very different political and ecclesiastical circumstances of 1696. The exposition of Heb 6–10 that was first published in 1680 appeared again in 1681 and 1684. An Enquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches (1681) went into its second edition in 1696. And A Brief and Impartial Account of the Nature of the Protestant Religion (1682) appeared in a second edition in 1690.[16] Of course, the many publishers involved in these enterprises were not making coordinated decisions about which Owen texts to republish. But they were at least gesturing towards their expectations about the changing reading and consumption habits of their target audiences.

For Owen’s audience was changing. His congregation, after his death, was led by David Clarkson and Isaac Chauncy. Isaac Watts was appointed as Chauncy’s assistant in 1699, and, after the senior man’s resignation in 1701, became the minister. But over the next forty years, and from as early as the publication of The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity (1722), Watts moved away from the theological position that Owen had articulated, eventually proposing doctrine that encouraged Unitarians to believe he had endorsed their own position.[17] Owen’s work found a new audience in members of a very different religious community: the Methodist movement advertised its marked hostility to high Calvinism even as John Wesley, one of its guiding lights, sought to reinforce its enthusiasm for subjective piety by including some of Owen’s devotional writing in the Christian Library (1750).[18] The republication of Owen’s writing in the eighteenth century confirmed the expectation of his anonymous elegist that his “Pious Pen” would “Preach to Multitudes of Men” in his “Theo-Christo-Pneumatology / And various Volumes more.”[19] For the elegist had correctly anticipated that the work by Owen that readers would find of most enduring value would include his volumes on the Trinity (alluding to the titles of several Owen works in referring to “Theo-Christo-Pneumatology”) and the work of its individual members (especially his Christologia and his massive work on the Holy Spirit).

As London Congregationalists reconsidered Owen’s truth claims, their fellow travelers in other locations remained appreciative of his contribution. Owen’s work had a marked influence on American Puritan writing. In New England, Increase Mather read Owen’s work on the Sabbath,[20] Samuel Mather owned several volumes of his commentary on Hebrews,[21] and Thomas Weld III may have been “typical” of colonial clergy in including several works by Owen in his library of 170 volumes.[22] Jonathan Edwards was one of Owen’s most active early American readers. He read and annotated his copy of An Enquiry into the Origin, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of Evangelical Churches (1681),[23] and owned Owen’s commentary on Hebrews (1680–1688), which he cited on some thirteen occasions, lending several of its volumes to a colleague.[24] Edwards also cited Owen’s Pneumatologia (1674) on six occasions, twice in Religious Affections (1746),[25] and referred to Owen’s exposition of Ps 130 in his “Miscellanies.”[26] Eschol had reached its eighth American edition by 1771, and The Death of Death in the Death of Christ appeared in its first American edition in 1792.[27]

Scottish readers also continued to appreciate Owen’s theology, and his works became a staple of their religious publishing industry. A second edition of An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations, based on an Owen sermon on Luke 13, appeared in Glasgow in 1737,[28] with a third edition following in 1758.[29] A third edition of Φρονημα του πνευματος, or The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded was published in Glasgow in 1756,[30] and was followed by A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer.[31] In the same year, another Glasgow printer published Christologia,[32] which he followed with The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (1760).[33] There was another flurry of publishers’ interest in Owen in 1772, when Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ[34] and Christologia[35] appeared in Edinburgh, and Of Temptation[36] and The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers[37] appeared in Paisley. This latter edition may have been that read in January 1779 by the wife of an Anglican rector: “I hope to read it often, that I may transcribe it on my memory and note the many useful remarks contained in it.”[38] Meanwhile, a new volume of collected sermons, Twenty Five Discourses Suitable to the Lord’s Supper, was published in Glasgow in 1774 and appeared in a second edition one year later, with a portrait of the preacher.[39] Two Short Catechisms had reached its twelfth Glasgow edition by 1783.[40] The market for Owen was now strong enough to support the production of more demanding work, such as Christology[41] and Of Communion with God.[42] Pneumatologia was published in Glasgow in 1791, and in a second Glasgow edition of two volumes in 1792; in 1798 it appeared in Falkirk in an edition of three volumes. An edition of A Brief Declaration and Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity appeared in Glasgow in 1798. These publications bore witness to a remarkable Scottish resurgence of interest in Owen—and its influence may have been felt elsewhere.

Owen’s work on ecclesiology also began to circulate. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, these publications came to the aid of those Scottish Presbyterians who were working to resist the influence of patronage within the established church. A View of the Nature, Order, & Communion of the Churches of Christ, as Exhibited in the New Testament was “extracted from Dr. John Owen’s Treatise on evangelical churches” and included “an appendix on Scripture presbytery.”[43] The same kinds of contexts and arguments supported the publication of The True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government.[44] In the 1820s, Scottish readers continued to be interested by Owen’s work on practical divinity. An Edinburgh edition of Φρονημα του πνευματος: or, The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded appeared in 1820. William Collins, in Glasgow, published The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers (1825),[45] with a second edition in 1827 appearing with a preface by Thomas Chalmers.[46] As Chalmers’s identification with the Owen corpus suggests, Owen was being co-opted in the evangelicals’ struggle against patronage within the established church, with an edition of Two Questions concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate about Religion and the Worship of God appearing in Glasgow in 1833[47] and extracts from Owen appearing as The Right of the Church, in Particular Congregations, to Appoint and Elect Their Own Pastors and Elders in Edinburgh in 1841.[48] Owen was not just becoming an evangelical—his literary legacy was being interpreted within the context of particular theological controversies. But other Scottish Presbyterian theologians found in Owen a useful foil. James Buchanan (1804–1870) was one of a number of divines who continued to engage in a serious way with Owen’s thinking in his dispute with Thomas Erskine of Linlathen (1788–1837) on the extent of the atonement.[49] Their debate was followed up by a chapter-length discussion of Owen’s reading of the atonement in John McLeod Campbell’s The Nature of the Atonement (1867): McLeod Campbell took Owen as representative of his age before dismissing his conclusions.[50] Owen, a convert to Independent church government, was being co-opted by Scottish Presbyterians—and identified as someone whose work other more progressive Presbyterians might need to resist.

Elsewhere in the British Isles, publishers adopted a more eclectic response to Owen. Owen found new readers in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth, which had been republished in Edinburgh in 1774, was reprinted in Belfast and in Monaghan in 1795, and again in Belfast in 1797.[51] And his work continued to be translated. His commentary on Hebrews was translated into Dutch by Simon Commenicq, a wealthy merchant in Rotterdam, who circulated it privately (Amsterdam, 1733–1740), while other Dutch translations appeared throughout the nineteenth century. Owen’s reputation was growing far beyond his native land.

III.

But Owen never entirely lost his English audience. The slow move towards republication of his work in English centers of print may suggest that Owen’s writings continued to be consulted by means of second-hand copies. English readers put their older copies of Owen to heavy use. Some of the most interesting evidence of engagement and the transmission of ownership between English readers may be found in texts that are held in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Its copy of Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1674) bears marks of multiple ownership: Sam Sewall, who may have purchased or first read the volume in June 1688, appears to have transferred ownership to Addington Davenport before Samuel Eaton recorded his purchase of the book in Boston in June 1766. His ownership may have been followed by that of S. K. Smith, whose name is recorded in pencil on the rear of the front board, and whose ownership devolved onto Dr. Abbot Smith, who donated the text to the Library. One user of the text attempted to work out, on the title page, how many years had passed between publication and his or her reading of the text—the answer being 166.[52] Similarly, the Folger copy of Owen’s Enquiry into the Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion Of Evangelical Churches (1681) has the arms of James Bengough of the Inner Temple, London, 1702, pasted on a fly-leaf; an inscription of “J. Jackson, August 20 1803” on an inside front page; and a modern sticker with “Hollycombe” and “J. C. Hawkshaw” inscribed upon it.[53]This copy bears few evidences of usage, other than a large “No!” written in the margin against Owen’s claim that separation from a congregation could be justified in the case of the imposition of false doctrine upon its members.[54] Of course, much of this inscription is ambiguous as evidence of how the text was used. Less ambiguous—though, from Owen’s perspective, rather more unfortunate—was the reading experience of William Abbott, who, in 1697, inscribed his copy of Σύνεσις πνευματική: or, The Causes, Waies & Means of Understanding the Mind of God as Revealed in His Word, with assurance therein (1678) with a list of bonnets and cravats.[55] Similarly, the Folger’s copy of Owen’s first volume of the commentary on Hebrews is annotated in several hands, apparently over several centuries, with the most recent annotator spending considerable energy comparing the author’s chronological computations with those of Joseph Mede, using the margins to jot down lengthy numerical tables and checks on Owen’s Latin, while also preparing an additional contents page of matters of prime concern.[56] The copy of The Advantage of the Kingdome of Christ that is held in the Folger includes an inscription of an exchange of ownership between friends which dates from the early nineteenth century.[57] If English publishers were slower to reprint Owen’s works, therefore, it may have been because so many of the earlier editions were continuing to circulate.

But some English publishers were providing new material. A biographical note by Edward Williams introduced an abridged version of An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews (London, 1790).[58] Its appearance was perhaps more explicable than the republication of Ουρανων ουρανια, The Shaking and Translating of Heaven and Earth (London, 1793). At the end of the eighteenth century, Owen had become a feature of the provincial press, especially in such traditional centers of nonconforming religion as East Anglia and the Midlands. An edition of Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ was published in Sheffield in 1792, with editions of Pneumatology and The Reason of Faith appearing in Coventry in 1792 and 1799 respectively. One generation later, London publishers produced an edition of William Orme’s biography (1820),[59] as well as texts of A Practical Exposition on Psalm CXXX (1824)[60] and A Treatise on the Sabbath (1829).[61] In the same period, a movement away from hyper-Calvinism among English Baptists was dubbed by one of its proponents as “Owenism”—a signal of the extent to which Owen’s reputation still functioned as a barometer of orthodoxy within some sections of English dissent and as a metonym for a more moderate and evangelistic Calvinism.[62]

By the mid nineteenth century, Owen was being represented as an exemplar for Victorian evangelicalism, even being identified with some of its peculiarities, including its zeal for the study of unfulfilled prophecy. In 1854, an anonymous editor published an Owen sermon as Predicted Events Coming upon the Nations of the Earth, and appended the text of A Most Glorious Scripture Prophecy, by Owen’s contemporary Christopher Ness, in a literary pairing that reflected Ness’s penchant for prophetic idiosyncrasies and, ironically, Owen’s relative disinterest in this kind of speculation.[63] But those Victorian theologians who wished to interrogate the arguments of their seventeenth-century forebears could not avoid his presence. Charles Bridges, a Church of England minister in Cambridge, included a substantial discussion of Owen in his textbook on The Christian Ministry (1830). Owen, he argued,

stands preeminent among the writers of this school.... His work on the Spirit (though discordant in some particulars from the principles of our Church) embraces a most comprehensive view of this vitally important subject ... for luminous exposition, and powerful defence of Scriptural doctrine—for determined enforcement of practical obligation—for skilful anatomy of the self-deceitfulness of the heart—and for a detailed and wise treatment of the diversified exercises of the Christian’s heart, he stands probably unrivalled. The mixture of human infirmity with such transcendent excellence will be found in an unhappy political bias—in an inveterate dislike to episcopal government, and (as regards the character of his Theology,) a too close and constant endeavour to model the principles of the Gospel according to the proportions of human systems. But who would refuse to dig into the golden mine from disgust at base alloy, that will ever be found to mingle itself with the ore?[64]

Other adulation for Owen was more succinct. For C. H. Spurgeon, pulpit hero of Victorian London, Owen was the “prince of divines.”[65]

Spurgeon’s accolade came as Owen’s stock rose with the general resurgence of interest in Puritan piety and theology which drove the publication of a large number of collected works projects. The publication of the Goold edition of Owen’s works was part of a trend that also saw the production of the collected works of Richard Baxter, Thomas Brooks, John Goodwin, Thomas Goodwin, Thomas Manton, and Richard Sibbes, among others. This extraordinary enthusiasm of Victorian evangelicals for Puritan literature nuances David Bebbington’s argument that there existed a discontinuity between Puritans and their evangelical successors.[66] Rather, as this evidence suggests, evangelicals invented the category of “Puritan” in their search for a useable past. In fact, the veneration for Owen and other Puritan worthies was so pronounced as to drive an extraordinary historical revision. In 1844, John Rogers Herbert, R.A., completed his famous painting The Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents at the Westminster Assembly of Divines. The image is the best-known representation of the proceedings of the Assembly, but is notable for its lack of historical accuracy. Herbert, a convert to Roman Catholicism, was encouraged to work on the painting by a Congregational minister, James W. Massie, who provided an initial sketch of how the image might look. But Herbert’s final result included representations of some of the most important Independents of the period, including Owen alongside John Milton and Oliver Cromwell, none of whom had been Assembly delegates.[67] Owen’s inclusion was more than merely anachronistic. Of course, his reputation would suffer with the eclipse of interest in Puritanism in the later Victorian period, but, in mid-century, Owen was being identified as the single most significant theologian of the period. He was the Puritan whose work defined the evangelical faith, and the evangelical by whose work an authentic Puritanism could be identified.

IV.

Owen’s canonization as a Victorian evangelical exemplar was both a cause and consequence of the edition of his works edited by William Goold (1850–1855)—an edition that, with the exception of one volume of writings in Latin, remains in print to this day. The ready availability of the Goold edition perhaps disguises the extent to which, for most of the period since his death, English readers have not been able to benefit from a standard text of Owen’s works. In this respect, Owen’s literary remains were unlike those of other Puritan leaders, whose theological legatees rapidly produced complete editions of their works. Thomas Manton’s death (1677) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1681–1691); Thomas Goodwin’s death (1679) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1681–1696); Stephen Charnock’s death (1680) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1684); John Flavel’s death (1691) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1701); William Bates’s death (1699) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1700); and John Howe’s death (1705) was followed by the publication of his complete works (1724).[68] But the first attempt to produce a complete set of Owen’s works was made almost forty years after his death, in 1721. The editors of this project were all eminent Independents in London: John Asty (who wrote his biography for the edition), John Nesbitt, Matthew Clarke, Thomas Ridgley, and Thomas Bradbury. The consortium established a firm financial footing for their project, gathering 375 subscribers for the edition, including some very distinguished individuals, in a sign that Owen was emerging from the reputational difficulties associated with his role in the mid seventeenth-century crisis. Nevertheless, they were only able to produce one of their projected volumes, collecting Owen’s sermons, tracts, and Oxford orations.[69] Perhaps the most significant contribution of this edition was its prompting for John Asty to complete his biography of Owen, a likely “first draft” of which is held in manuscript in New College, Edinburgh.[70] This edition came to the attention of some important readers and collectors: the copy of this edition held in the Folger library, for example, was owned by the earl of Onslow.[71] Owen’s celebratory status was sealed in the edition published by William H. Goold, which gathered almost three thousand subscribers, “a number almost unprecedented in the history of religious publications.”[72] Goold’s edition was strongly interventionist: he admitted that “the punctuation has undergone a thorough revisal,” and that “no liberties have been taken with the text,” but failed to explain why some texts were presented in their second edition forms, or in their first edition form but with their second edition preface.[73] Despite its editorial difficulties, and its thematic rather than chronological organization, Goold’s edition provided for a new appreciation of Owen’s achievements.

For Owen’s influence continued as evangelicalism continued to diversify through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. William Kelly, leader among the English Exclusive Brethren, praised the “excellent and learned Dr. John Owen.”[74] Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, newspaper editor, and prime minister, admitted to being “heavily indebted to Owen” in his theology of the Holy Spirit.[75] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who would become one of the most distinguished nonconformist preachers of the mid twentieth century, was much inspired by the second-hand set of Owen’s Works that he was given as a wedding present in 1927.[76] In 1949, Jim Elliot, during his student days at Wheaton College, reflected on Owen’s arguments for “effectual redemption” as part of his growing rejection of Arminian and dispensational theology, and as he prepared for the mission to Ecuador that would end with his becoming one of the most famous evangelical missionary martyrs of the twentieth century.[77] Elliot’s discussion of Owen signals the extent to which members of the Brethren movement had preserved an interest in Puritan writings within discursive communities which were often isolated from the broader cultures of evangelicalism.[78] Elliot’s engagement with Owen is a useful reminder that the revival of Calvinistic theology among British and American evangelicals was taking place a full decade before the publication of The Death of Death by the Banner of Truth Trust (1958).[79] J. I. Packer, who contributed a robust and energetic introduction to the new edition of The Death of Death, could hardly have anticipated the sea-change in evangelical attitudes to early modern Reformed scholasticism which he precipitated.

Owen’s appeal continued as the four hundredth anniversary of his birth approached. The revival of interest in Owen’s work has encouraged evangelical publishers to make a number of his most important works available in “updated English” even as scholarly output on Owen has blossomed.[80] Some entrepreneurs, recognizing his status in the new Calvinism, have rushed to identify an Owen brand: a brief search of the Internet will demonstrate the broad range of clothes and crockery that now bear Owen’s image. Three centuries after Owen began to be refashioned as an evangelical, evangelicals are increasingly fashioning themselves in his likeness—an irony that reveals as much about the commercial vitality of contemporary religion as it does about the making of Owen’s evangelical reputation.

Notes

1. For more on the later stages of Owen’s life, see Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism: Experiences of Defeat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chs. 8 and 9.
2. John Owen, The Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, 24 vols. (Edinburgh: Johnstone & Hunter, 1850-1855; repr. in 16 vols., London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 9:327.
3. Ibid., 9:459.
4. Ibid., 9:332.
5. Ibid., 9:405.
6. Ibid., 16:490, 492.
7. John Owen, The Correspondence of John Owen (1616-1683), ed. Peter Toon (London: James Clarke, 1970), 172.
8. Sarah Gibbard Cook, “A Political Biography of a Religious Independent: John Owen, 1616-1683” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1972), 383.
9. See, e.g., the discussion in Crawford Gribben, John Owen, Baptism and the Baptists (Dunstable, UK: Strict Baptist Historical Society, 2015).
10. Johannis Oweni, Theologoumena pantodapa ... De natura, ortu, progressu et studio verae theologiae libri sex ... Accedunt quoque digressiones (Bremen, 1684).
11. Johannis Oweni, Theologoumena pantodapa sive De natura, ortu, progressu, et studio verae theologiae libri sex. Quibus etiam origines & processus veri & falsi cultus religiosi, casus & instarationes ecclesiae illustriores ab ipsis rerum primordiis enarrantur (Franeker, 1700).
12. Matthew G. Yeo, “The Acquisition of Books by Chetham’s Library, 1655-1700,” 2 vols. (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2009), 2:370-80.
13. Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism, 215.
14. See also John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 257-58, for a discussion of the evangelical reception of Rutherford.
15. Jennifer Richards, “Useful Books: Reading Vernacular Regimens in Sixteenth-Century England,” Journal of the History of the Ideas 73 (2012): 262; Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
16. Short-Title Catalogue, s.v.
17. Isabel Rivers, “Watts, Isaac (1674-1748),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28888.
18. Isabel Rivers, “John Wesley and Religious Biography,” Bulletin of The John Rylands Library of Manchester 85, nos. 2-3 (2003): 209-26; Karl Ludwig Ganske, “The Religion of the Heart and Growth in Grace: John Wesley’s Selection and Editing of Puritan Literature for A Christian Library” (PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2009); Isabel Rivers, “John Wesley as Editor and Publisher,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, ed. Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 144-59.
19. Anonymous, An Elegy on the Death of That Learned, Pious, and Famous Divine, Doctor John Ovven, who dyed the 24th. of August, 1683 (London, 1683), single page.
20. Samuel Green, ed., Diary by Increase Mather (Cambridge, MA: John Wilson & Son, 1900), 33-34.
21. Julius Herbert Tuttle, Libraries of the Mathers (Worcester, MA: The Davis Press, 1910), 15, 75.
22. Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 91.
23. Copy in Firestone Library, Princeton University; see Jonathan Edwards, Catalogue of Books, ed. Peter J. Thuesen, vol. 26 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 425.
24. Ibid., 339.
25. Ibid., 53.
26. Ibid., 455. Edwards’s use of Owen is surveyed in Amy Plantinga Pauw, The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), esp. 7-8.
27. Bibliographical data is drawn from Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO).
28. John Owen, An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations: Or, The Only Way to Deliver a Sinful Nation from Utter Ruin by Impendent Judgments, 2nd ed. (Glasgow, 1737).
29. John Owen, An Humble Testimony unto the Goodness and Severity of God in His Dealing with Sinful Churches and Nations, 3rd ed. (Glasgow, 1758).
30. John Owen, Φρονημα του πνευματος, or The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually Minded, declared and practically improved. To which is added, a short account of the author’s life and writings, 3rd ed. (Glasgow, 1756).
31. John Owen, A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer. With a brief enquiry into the nature and use of mental prayer and forms ... To which is added, three other treatises by the same author (Glasgow, 1757).
32. John Owen, Christologia; or, A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ, God and Man (Glasgow, 1757).
33. John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith through the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ, explained, confirmed and vindicated (Glasgow, 1760).
34. John Owen, Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ (Edinburgh: John Gray, 1772).
35. John Owen, Christologia: or, A Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ, God and Man (Edinburgh, 1772).
36. John Owen, Of Temptation, the Nature and Power of It, the Danger of Entering into It, and the Means of Preventing That Danger (Paisley, 1772).
37. John Owen, The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers (Paisley, 1772).
38. The Diary of Mrs Arabella Davies, Late Wife of the Rev. E. Davies, A. B., Rector of Coychurch (London, 1788), 124.
39. John Owen, Twenty Five Discourses Suitable to the Lord’s Supper (Glasgow, 1774; 2nd ed., with portrait, 1775).
40. John Owen, Two Short Catechisms; in which the principles of the doctrine of Christ are unfolded and explained, 12th ed. (Glasgow, 1783).
41. John Owen, Christology (Glasgow, 1790).
42. John Owen, Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Glasgow, 1792).
43. John Owen, A View of the Nature, Order, & Communion of the Churches of Christ, as exhibited in the New Testament: extracted from Dr. John Owen’s Treatise on evangelical churches. With an appendix on Scripture presbytery (Edinburgh, 1797).
44. John Owen, The True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government (Glasgow, 1801).
45. John Owen, The Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalency of Indwelling Sin (Glasgow, 1825).
46. John Owen, On the Nature, Power, Deceit, and Prevalence of Indwelling Sin in Believers ... with an introductory essay by Thomas Chalmers, 2nd ed. (Glasgow, 1827).
47. John Owen, Two Questions concerning the Power of the Supreme Magistrate about Religion and the Worship of God, with one about Tithes, proposed and resolved (Glasgow, 1833).
48. John Owen, The Right of the Church, in Particular Congregations, to Appoint and Elect Their Own Pastors and Elders: clearly manifested from Scripture (Edinburgh, 1841).
49. Nicholas R. Needham, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen: His Life and Theology, 1788-1837 (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1990), 186, 188.
50. John McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1867), 50-75.
51. Three copies of this text are held in the Linen Hall Library, Belfast. Editions on ECCO.
52. Folger 151. 390f.
53. Folger 0764.
54. Ibid., 332.
55. Folger 137959q.
56. Folger 0753.
57. Folger 133-795.5q.
58. John Owen, An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews: With the preliminary exercitations, by John Owen; revised and abridged; with a full and interesting life of the author, a copious index, &c. by Edward Williams, 4 vols. (London, 1790).
59. William Orme, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Religious Connexions, of John Owen, D.D., Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and Dean of Christ Church, during the Commonwealth (London: T. Hamilton, 1820).
60. John Owen, A Practical Exposition on Psalm CXXX (London: J. Smith, 1824).
61. John Owen, A Treatise on the Sabbath (London: Hatchard & Son, 1829).
62. John W. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Death of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (London: Wightman & Cramp, 1826); William H. Goold, “General Preface,” in Works of John Owen, 1:x.
63. Predicted Events coming upon the Nations of the Earth; a sermon preached above two hundred years since ... by John Owen ... to which is added, A Most Glorious Scripture Prophecy, by Christopher Ness (London: Houlston & Stoneman, 1854). See also Crawford Gribben, “John Owen’s Eschatology,” forthcoming.
64. Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry, 6th ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), 40-44.
65. C. H. Spurgeon, Commenting and Commentaries, vol. 4 of Lectures to My Students (London: Sheldon & Co., 1876), 174.
66. David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989), 42-50.
67. The exhibited painting was noticed in The Baptist Magazine (August 1849).
68. Goold, “General Preface,” 1:xi.
69. Ibid.
70. New College, Edinburgh, MS Comm. 2; Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter and the Formation of Nonconformity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), 259n3.
71. Folger 219 349.
72. Goold, “General Preface,” 1:xii.
73. Ibid., 1:xiii–xiv.
74. William Kelly, “Appendix to the Notice of the Achill Herald Recollections,” http://www.stempublishing.com/authors/kelly/8_Bt/achill2.html.
75. Edwin E. M. Tay, The Priesthood of Christ: Atonement in the Theology of John Owen (1616-1683), Studies in Christian History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2014), 3n8.
76. Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 155-56.
77. Elisabeth Elliot, ed., The Journals of Jim Elliot (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1978), 149, 294, 327.
78. “Exclusive” brethren, in particular, took an active interest in the dissemination of Puritan literature; see, e.g., Hamilton Smith, ed., Extracts from the Writing of Thomas Watson (London: The Central Bible Truth Depot, 1915).
79. Iain H. Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1990), 363.
80. See, e.g., Kelly M. Kapic and Justin Taylor, Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006).

Do I Need to Repent to be Saved? (What is Repentance?)

Are You of the Chosen Race? (1 Peter 2:9)

What is the "Rock" Upon Which Christ Will Build His Church?

What is the Seeker Sensitive Movement or a Seeker Driven Church?

What are 10 Responses to Common Abortion Arguments?

What Does the Bible Say About Abortion? (Remastered)

Can You Be So Heavenly Minded You're No Earthly Good?

Anthony Tuckney (1599–1670) On Union With Christ

By Youngchun Cho

[Youngchun Cho is assistant pastor at Jubilee Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA.]

Abstract

This article investigates the soteriology of Anthony Tuckney (1599–1670), an influential member of the Westminster Assembly, focusing on his understanding of union with Christ. Tuckney presented union with Christ as undergirding and permeating the whole of the ordo salutis. The believer is first united to Christ through faith and then participates in every redemptive benefit as a result of this union. Yet Tuckney did not deny the need to make a distinction between each benefit in an orderly manner. In Tuckney’s soteriology, union with Christ and the ordo salutis are complementary, not competitive. This study aims to rebut the accusation that the Westminster Standards pursued logical precision at the expense of the dynamic aspect of union with Christ.

----------------

According to Geerhardus Vos, the distinguishing mark of the Reformed understanding of salvation is the primacy of union with Christ: “One is first united to Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, by a mystical union, which finds its conscious recognition in faith. By this union with Christ all that is in Christ is simultaneously given.”[1] It has been widely acknowledged that John Calvin represents this uniqueness of Reformed theology, which emphasizes union with Christ as the central soteric reality of the gospel.[2] Recent studies have further demonstrated that Calvin’s substantial understanding of union with Christ was a product of dialogues with such other sixteenth-century Reformers as Heinrich Bullinger and Peter Martyr Vermigli.[3] Later seventeenth-century Reformed theologians, however, have been criticized as being obsessed with the language of causality and the ordered structure of soteriology, having thereby abandoned the heritage of union-centered theology of the Reformation and tending toward legalism instead. The Westminster Confession of Faith, which is considered the most representative example of seventeenth-century Protestant orthodoxy, has been particularly contrasted with Calvin in this regard.

For example, James B. Torrance criticizes the Westminster divines for following the soteriology of William Perkins’s The Golden Chain rather than Calvin’s Institutes; as a result, the Confession presents God as a harsh Judge instead of a benevolent Father, admits the priority of law over grace, denies the converting effect of the Lord’s Supper, and neglects the significance of pneumatology.[4] Thomas F. Torrance also maintains that the Westminster Confession describes God “not primarily as Father, but primarily as creator, lawgiver and judge.”[5] With such a rigid view of God, the soteriology of the Westminster Confession turns into a legalistic system, following “a medieval conception of the ordo salutis (reached through various stages of grace leading to union with Christ), which reversed the teaching of Calvin that it is through union with Christ first that we participate in all his benefits.”[6] Whereas participation in redemptive benefits through union with Christ by faith and its corollary of assurance of salvation were central to the Reformation in general, as illustrated best in Calvin, the Westminster divines departed from this heritage and returned to medieval soteriology. Charles Partee similarly contrasts Calvin and the Westminster divines and asserts that “Calvin is not a Calvinist because union with Christ is at the heart of his theology—and not theirs.”[7]

Did the Westminster divines lose their focus on union with Christ? Was the doctrine of union with Christ incompatible with the ordo salutis in seventeenth-century Reformed theology? The present article answers these questions by exploring the soteriology of Anthony Tuckney, an important member of the Westminster Assembly.[8] Tuckney was chairman of the catechism committee and contributed to the shaping of the Shorter and Larger Catechisms, both of which emphasize union and communion with Christ.[9] At the same time, he was instrumental in honing the soteriological section in the Confession, which takes a sequential approach to the matter. He participated in the committee in charge of drafting the Westminster Confession and also reported on many articles to the full assembly as the representative of the committee. The articles he helped to shape include “Free Will,” “Perseverance and Certainty of Salvation,” “Sanctification and Saving Faith,” “Repentance unto Life,” “Good Works,” and “Religious Worship and Sabbath Day,” key soteriological and practical sections of the Confession.[10] Because of Tuckney’s strategic place in formulating the assembly’s principal theological documents, his theology provides a valuable reference point for understanding the connection between union with Christ and the ordo salutis.

I. The Centrality Of Union With Christ

The theme of union with Christ runs through Anthony Tuckney’s writings. To illustrate, Thanatoktasia or Death Disarmed, a 1653 funeral sermon, explains how such redemptive benefits as justification, sanctification, and glorification flow from union with Christ and provide assurance of salvation to the believer in death as well as in life.[11] Tuckney’s posthumous work, Forty Sermons (1676), which was edited by his son, also indicates that union with Christ was his lifetime theological interest. Though Forty Sermons contains diverse sermons preached on different texts and occasions, the emphasis on the believer’s union with Christ runs through most of them. The work opens with twelve sermons on Phil 3:5–8 that focus on the supremacy and benefits of knowledge of Jesus Christ, and it ends with two sermons on Phil 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”[12] Four sermons on Prov 8 present a christological understanding of the wisdom in Proverbs and highlight Christ as the utmost substance and treasure of all things on earth.[13] Three sermons on Ps 73:28, “But it is good for me to draw near to God,” teach that fellowship with God through Christ is the end for which we are created and redeemed.[14]

What, then, is Tuckney’s idea of union with Christ? Though he does not provide a concrete definition of the union, Tuckney clarifies its nature by way of negation. Observing that the notion of union with Christ was appropriated widely but incorrectly in many cases, he seeks to set forth what union with Christ is not. First, union with Christ does not mean a philosophical deification. In his 1652 commencement sermon, None But Christ, Tuckney takes aim at Cambridge Platonism and proclaims that “it is no Platonic faith (as some call) which can unite us at so great an odds to God, without Christ, our alone Mediator, to come between, and make up the breach.”[15] He then continues to maintain how insufficient one’s philosophical endeavor is in the realm of religion.[16] In his sermon on 2 Pet 1:4, Tuckney rejects explicitly the idea that a human soul can ascend into and partake of a divine mind: “Some high flown Platonists of our times” assert that “by their divine contemplations they are abstracted from their own dark personality, their humanity annihilated, and they swallowed up in the profound abyss of the Divinity into which they are wholly transported,” but this belongs to one of the most corrupt understandings of partaking of the divine nature, argues Tuckney.[17]

What is more, union with Christ does not imply a mystical deification. A group of Enthusiasts claimed that “they are Godded with God, and Christed with Christ” through their intimate union and communion with Christ, but Tuckney viewed such a pretense “to get so near as properly to participate of the essence of God” as “Antichristian Blasphemy.”[18] Tuckney was adamant in affirming that union with Christ does not entail any degree of mixture of the human with the divine and that any attempt by a believer to partake of divine nature even in close union with Christ is presumptuous. Observing that this sort of extreme mysticism was influenced by Andreas Osiander’s teaching that sinners are justified by participation in Christ’s divine perfection, Tuckney rebutted Osiander’s arguments point by point.[19]

Instead, Tuckney set forth what union with Christ is in terms of a covenant solidarity between Christ and the believer. Adam was a representative of the human race, and so was Christ. One’s destiny depends upon nothing other than whether he belongs to Adam or to Christ.[20] To stress solidarity with Christ’s federal headship, Tuckney observes diverse titles given to Christ in Scripture.

Christ is the cornerstone and foundation, the root and true vine, the head of the body, the beloved husband, and so forth.[21] According to this covenantal scheme, as the first fruit is holy, the lump also becomes holy; as the root is holy, its branches become holy. Likewise, since Christ is “both first fruits and root and the whole covenant,” all the redemptive benefits, which are procured by the covenant head, flow into its members by virtue of the unity.[22] In this connection, Tuckney affirms that no single part of salvation is possible apart from Christ.

This truth, that out of Christ no salvation is further made out from all the parts of this salvation, in the whole progress from first to last, all is in and by Jesus Christ. Elected in him, Ephes. 1.4. Redeemed by him; in whom we have Redemption through his blood. verse 7. If Adopted. It is in our Elder Brothers right, unto the Adoption of Children by Jesus Christ. v. 5. If justified. It is by his righteousness imputed; accepted, but in the Beloved. v. 6. If sanctified. It is by his Spirit communicated, He hath chosen us in him to be holy. v. 4. If saved. It is by his merit imparted. In whom also we have obtained an Inheritance. v. 11. And blessed with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places, but still in Christ. v. 3.[23]

Election, adoption, justification, and sanctification are not discrete or independent entities, but incorporated into the common foundation, Christ. Christ himself has become “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption” for his covenant member, and a believer possesses all these realities derivatively by virtue of his union with Christ.[24]Such a conviction that one’s union with Christ is the all-encompassing condition in which each part of the ordo salutis takes place is also evident in Tuckney’s early work, A Briefe and Pithy Catechisme (1628).

[6] Q. How may these benefits come to us in this covenant of grace by this application? Ans: 1. by our union with Christ. 2. by that communion of his benefits. 

[7] Q. What is our union with Christ? Ans. Our union with Christ is when God by his worde & spirit or whatsoever means is pleased to drawe us from our sinfull estate to Christ & this is our vocation. 

[8] Q. What are these benefits? Ans. They are relative or absolute. Relative which are in God’s imputation, as our justification & adoption. Absolute, which are inherent in us. Sanctification & glorification.[25]

Here Tuckney again highlights the pivotal role of union with Christ in the application of covenantal benefits. “Our union with Christ” enables us to partake of such benefits as vocation, justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. On the one hand, justification and adoption are called relative in that they are actualized only through God’s imputation. By calling these two “relative,” Tuckney excludes any notion that one’s justification and adoption rely upon inherent godliness within oneself. To put it differently, justification and adoption are external or alien blessings imputed to the believer. On the other hand, sanctification and glorification belong to the category of absolute benefit in that they “have an absolute beinge & a reale work in a christians hearte.”[26] Tuckney’s point here is that they are internal realities the Spirit works in the believer. Vocation is “the first beginning of sanctification” and “the first infusion of grace.”[27] Sanctification “includes the whole worke of God’s Spirit in us,” and “is an instrument to apprehende Christ & as an inherent qualitye of grace.”[28] Such expressions as “infusion of grace” and “inherent quality” may appear to be Roman Catholic. What Tuckney means by these words, however, is not to show sympathy with a synergistic understanding of salvation that exalts inherent righteousness within a person, but to highlight that the benefits from union with Christ should entail the actual transformation of the life of the justified as well as the change in their status. To put it differently, when we believe in Christ, the benefits extra nos (outside of us) and in nobis (in us) occur together, and both of them originate from union with Christ. Thus Tuckney incorporates diverse aspects of soteriology into the concept of union with Christ, to which we now turn.

II. Calling And Union With Christ

For Tuckney, calling or vocation is the point at which the believer is united to Christ. Tuckney speaks of vocation as a synonym of union with Christ: “Our union with Christ is when God by his worde & spirit or whatsoever means is pleased to drawe us from our sinfull estate to Christ & this is our vocation.”[29] Or, following the order in Rom 8:30, Tuckney presents calling or vocation as the first benefit that flows from union with Christ.[30] He distinguishes between effectual calling and ineffectual calling. Not every calling is effectual. Tuckney defines ineffectual calling as the calling that “comes into the heart and falls as on stony ground.”[31] There are some outward signs of grace in the ineffectual calling. For example, it may awaken a person to a sense of sin and misery, thereby causing him to long for a remedy for his miserable plight. It may also bring him to “some kind of degree of possession of the thing called for” and “some outward correspondence, as to reform many sins.”[32] That is to say, ineffectual calling may produce a certain degree of theological understanding and ethical improvements. Yet this is short of a saving effect because it does not bring one’s heart fully to Christ.[33] On the other hand, effectual calling “doeth not onely suadere [propose or suggest] but persuadere [convince], fully persuade to receive Christ to our salvation.”[34] The essence of effectual calling goes beyond intellectual assent to a proposed doctrine or pursuit of moral reformation but lies in accepting Christ himself.

This effectual calling is the sovereign work of the Triune God.[35] No human works or merits can procure the calling since human nature is totally depraved and completely dead in spiritual matters.[36] No one can please God until he is “reunited to him in Christ.”[37] The cause of the sinner’s reunification into this covenantal relationship is “grace, speciall grace, & only grace.”[38] God the Father’s predestination, which is the eternal ground of one’s union with Christ, effects this calling.[39] The Son of God calls the sinner in his three offices of prophet, priest, and king. The Spirit, who is “the medium, vinculum & causa” [means, bond & cause] of new life,[40] applies what Christ has achieved to the believer, thereby actualizing one’s union with Christ.[41]

III. Justification And Union With Christ

As Van Dixhoorn has demonstrated, the Westminster divines debated over justification extensively to articulate its meaning as precisely as possible.[42] Diverse subjects, including the nature of justification, the relationship between justification and sanctification, and the imputation of Christ’s obedience, were examined in depth. The same was true for Tuckney. He argues that the doctrine of justification is indeed crucial, because it manifests the glory of God’s mercy and justice and guarantees one’s comfort both in life and death.[43] He also observes that much confusion and many misunderstandings exist regarding this essential doctrine.[44] As a result, he pursues a more thorough and rigorous examination of this topic than of any other.

First of all, Tuckney affirms the priority of union with Christ in its relation to justification. He presents justification as deriving from union with Christ.

1. Union with Christ is the unmediated fruit of faith. Accordingly, by it alone we first receive Christ (John 1:12); and therefore we are united with him (Eph. 3:17).
2. This union with Christ through faith arises originally in effectual calling, through which we come to Christ (1 Pet. 2:4). And with gratitude we accept him as he is freely offered to us in the gospel.
3. I grant that justification is the fruit of faith, mediated by this union (which is accomplished in our calling). For those whom he first called, they he then justified (Rom. 8:30).[45]

Faith brings a person to union with Christ, and so this union is said to be “the immediate fruit of faith.” However, this does not mean that the union is caused by some inherent worth of faith. Faith is nothing but an instrument by means of which one accepts Christ. It is “the receiving hand” or “an empty hand to receive all of God’s free largess.” Regarding justification, faith simply says, “Christ shall be All in All.”[46] The role of faith in justification is simply to point to Christ, the source of justification. So all we have to do “for our justification and acceptance with God” is “to be found in Christ, as to be able to say … Dominus meus, Deus meus, Christus meus. Amor meus & omnia [the Lord is mine, God is mine, Christ is mine. My love and everything].”[47] Being in Christ through faith is the only way in which we are justified.

In order to secure the centrality of Christ in justification, Tuckney disputes against those who claim that a beliver’s inherent righteousness can contribute to his justification. This view is unacceptable because it undermines the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as the only ground on which God accepts a sinner. Imputation of Christ’s righteousness is so vital in salvation, Tuckney warns, that if this is denied, the whole link in the so-called golden chain (Rom 8:29–30) will be broken.

We have nothing inherent in ourselves to stick to; Imputed righteousness not only by Papists must be derided; But be too much sleighted and undervalued by too many amongst our selves; the great mystery of godlinesse, and the whole counsel of God in Christ must all at once be dasht, and all the links of that golden Chain snappt asunder, piè scilicet![48] 

And our proud hearts too self-full are loath to go out of themselves to Christ. His imputed righteousnesse is to us a riddle, and something inherent in us we make our idol. Something in us some way our own. The Pharisees and Jews of old, and Pelagius, with all his heirs and allies in their several shapes to this day, they would have some way or other to commend us to God.[49]

In the quotations above, Tuckney indicates two adversaries of the orthodox teaching of imputed righteousness: “Papists” and “many amongst ourselves.” Regarding the first group, medieval scholastics argued, and modern papists still argue, that infused righteousness and good works in a person, instead of Christ’s righteousness apprehended by faith, are the instrumental cause of justification. The Council of Trent declared that justification is “not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man, through the voluntary reception of the grace and of the gifts whereby man of unjust becomes just,” and that “we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just, receiving justice within us.”[50] Rejecting the Protestant principle of sola fide, Bellarmine also affirmed that faith can justify only when it is not separated from all other virtues within a person, such as charity, hope, love, penitence, and so on.[51] One of their arguments was that justificare in Latin originates from facio (“to do”), as indicated by its suffix -facere. God does not merely consider a sinner as righteous on account of Christ’s righteousness, but makes the sinner actually righteous through the infusion of grace. So the essence of justification consists in God’s actual transformation of a person, rather than in a simple declaration of a person as righteous.

Tuckney criticized this view for not distinguishing properly between justification and sanctification, but rather intermingling them.[52] Not every Latin verb ending with -facere indicates the acquisition of new inherent quality. Lucrifacere (“to gain money”) does not imply that an inherent quality of money is given, but that a new relationship is established between money and a person. When magnificare is applied to what the Virgin Mary did to the Lord, one must conclude not that she made him great, but rather that she declared that the Lord is great. Likewise justificare (“to justify”) is to be understood not as creating an inherent righteousness, but as introducing a new relationship, like lucrifacere, or as exhibiting a declaration of righteousness, like magnificare.[53] What is more, the nature of justification should be decided by examining the original meaning of הצדיק in Hebrew and δικαιόω in Greek, rather than the Latin word justificare. The usage of these terms in Scripture demonstrates that to justify is related to a public and forensic tribunal rather than private judgment.[54] Tuckney asserts that forensic declaration is the essence of justification.

The justification of the sinner before God is always understood in the forensic sense only. It is never used in a formal sense. That is, its uses do not mean to make a man righteous who was previously unrighteous, by the infusing of the disposition of righteousness either physically or morally. Rather, it means to freely absolve someone wicked in himself both because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to him by God, truly apprehended by faith, and applied to him, to consider him righteous, to proclaim him righteous, and to establish him as truly righteous as a consequence of that imputation. And also, as a consequence of this, to treat him as righteous in every respect.[55]

Thus he emphasizes the forensic nature of justification as much as he does to prohibit the surreptitious entry of the idea that any inherent factor within a person is a possible contribution to justification.

In addition to papists, Tuckney was also concerned that some Protestants did not fully adhere to the doctrine of imputation of Christ’s righteousness. One of these was Benjamin Whichcote, who allowed that the moral transformation of the believer, in addition to Christ’s objective work of redemption, is a subjective ground of justification. He made a distinction between Christ’s work for us—“to be believed-on by us as a sacrifice for the expiation and atonement of sin”—and his work in us—“to be felt in us as the new man”—and merged the two as a twofold ground of justification: “Christ does not save us; by only doing for us, without us.… Christ is to be acknowledged, as a principle of grace in us; as well as an advocate for us.”[56] If someone maintains that he is reconciled with God on account of Christ’s work without his life being transformed to be God-like, he not only deceives himself but also makes God to perform a vain show. Such a claim denies the nature of God who does not lie, and thus deserves to be called “Divinity minted or taught in Hell.”[57] In this connection, Whichcote insisted on the necessity of preparing for justification, and affirmed that “the beginnings of Grace are wrought in us, before God actually justifies sinners.”[58]

Tuckney saw Whichcote’s claim that reconciliation is produced from within ourselves (nascitur e nobis) as suspicious and dangerous.[59] Admitting that, as Whichcote maintained, Christ’s work has two aspects—Christ’s work for us and his work in us—Tuckney further argued that what indeed matters is to keep the right order between the two, beyond a mere distinction. In other words, while he recognized both Christ’s work in us and Christ’s work for us, he insisted that the latter must precede the former in terms of logical order. He rejected the notion that sanctification should be made before justification, and emphasized that God’s initiative should govern both the design and the execution of justification.

God, not onlie in his eternall election had before purposed, and by the death of his Son after purchased, our reconciliation: but, even in the execution of that purpose, and application of that purchase, Hee is before us; and is setting out first that happie meeting of our fulle reconciliation.[60] 

Yett in hoc motu God moves first; and so farre as Justification consists in pardon of sinne, itt is verie considerable; whether immediate antecedenter itt hath for its object a sinner, as a sinner, under the guilt and in the state of sinne; though it do not so leave him: and so God properlie justifie the ungodlie.[61]

Thus the ground of justification is not any inherent righteousness in a person. God does not declare the sinner to be righteous on the basis of what occurs within him, but only on account of what is accomplished outside him, that is, the righteousness of Christ. Justification takes place only by the imputation of Christ’s alien righteousness to the believer; it is thus called “relative grace.” This does not imply, however, that this is a fictional declaration, as Bellarmine claimed, or God’s vain show, as Whichcote claimed. God’s imputation of Christ’s righteousness and declaration of justification is the greatest reality.

The Imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us in Justification is not putative, or putatitious, as some of us lisp, and the Papists speak it out.… Indeed Justification is a Relative Grace, and we are wont to say that Relationes sunt minimae Entitatis; but where both Termini and Fundamentum are real, as Chemnitius shewth it to be so here, though Bellarmine laugh at it with scorn, yet a true Believer that feeleth the benefit of it rejoiceth in it with humble thankfulness. There is greatest reality in Gods giving, and in faiths receiving. Christ hath really satisfied for us, and this is really conveyed and applied to us. In this first step (of justification) we are brought to be possessed of Christ, and then sure we are made to inherit substance.[62]

Nothing but Christ’s righteousness is the ground of justification. Therefore we have to possess Christ and obtain his righteousness through imputation in order to be able to stand righteous before God.

Additionally, the imputation of Christ’s righteousness involves both passive obedience, that is, Christ’s suffering and death as satisfaction for God’s wrath, and active obedience, that is, his perfect law-keeping. Tuckney held that the essence of justification consists in two factors: one is “not imputing sin” (non imputando peccatum), and the other is “imputing righteousness” (imputando justitiam).[63] Forgiveness of sin and liberation from its guilt and punishment are great blessings, but they do not exhaust the meaning of justification. Those who are justified are “not only liberated from condemnation and punishment out of the imputation of Christ’s passive obedience, but also acquire the eternal right and life in heaven out of the imputation of his active obedience.”[64] The imputation of Christ’s passive obedience removes divine wrath and punishment, and thereby brings the believer back to Adam’s state of innocence before the fall. The ultimate goal of redemption, however, is not merely to restore and maintain Adam’s pre-fall state at creation, but to receive a higher reward, eternal life. And it is the imputation of Christ’s active obedience that enables the believer to achieve this eschatological reward.

Thus imputation of Christ’s active obedience and its corollary benefit, adoption, should be included in justification. Tuckney understands adoption as a second part of or a positive aspect of justification, rather than an entity distinct from justification. Adoption is similar to justification in several points. Believers are adopted in a relative sense, meaning that they become God’s children “in Christ,” just as they are justified relatively in Christ. That is to say, adoption is basically about a change of status, rather than of inherent nature.[65] As in the case of justification, the believer’s adoption is grounded upon God’s eternal decree (Eph 1:5), accomplished in Christ (Gal 4:4–5), executed through the Spirit (Gal 4:6), effected by faith (John 1:12), and will be completed in the future (Rom 8:23). All these past, present, and future aspects of adoption have Christ at the center: predestination for adoption is made through Christ; the Son of God became incarnate in order that his people may be God’s children; the Holy Spirit is sent as the Spirit of the Son; belief in the name of Christ brings the right to become the sons of God.[66] Such a privilege that the sinner not only is forgiven but even becomes God’s son is the fruit of his union with Christ.

It is worthy of observation that Tuckney rebutts Andreas Osiander’s radical teaching on union with Christ when he discusses the doctrine of justification, which was similar to what Calvin did in Institutes 3.11. Osiander, a Lutheran heretic, called the forensic understanding of justification a doctrine “colder than ice,” and insisted that justification is grounded in “the righteousness of the Christ dwelling in us by faith. God is not indeed so unjust as to regard him as righteous in whom there is really nothing of true righteousness.”[67] A believer is united to Christ’s divine and essential righteousness through faith, and God declares the one who becomes actually righteous by this union to be justified.[68] Such a view not only destroyed the line between Creator and creature by asserting that the ground of justification is the infusion of Christ’s divine essence, but also perverted the understanding of the nature of union with Christ. Tuckney was especially concerned that this heretical teaching had been revived in his day and was favored particularly by a group of fanatics.[69]

Tuckney censured Osiander’s teaching that the essence of divine nature abides in us as a resurgence of the ancient heresy of Manicheanism. Though Scripture speaks in many places of the intimate union between Christ and the believer, it does not posit the possibility of union between divine and human nature in the believer. Such hypostatic union is the exclusive prerogative of Christ, and the believer is far away from it.[70] The nature of the believer’s union with Christ is to be understood in terms of mystical union instead of essential or formal union: “Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are in the saints mystically, through union by faith and effect of grace.”[71] If the divine essence of righteousness is infused into the believer, as Osiander insists, this blurs the ontological distinction between Creator and creature. Yet, union with Christ does not entail any degree of mixture of the human with the divine. Any expectation to partake of the divine nature even in close union with Christ is presumptuous. A believer becomes one with Christ “not by any Partnership of his Essence and substance, but of excellent graces.”[72] In this regard, Tuckney presents Christ’s hypostatic union as the quintessential illustration of this principle: “If Christ’s hypostatical union did not confound the natures and their properties, much less will this mystical union of God and the soul work any commixtion, or transfusion of it into the Godhead.”[73]

Tuckney further maintains that Osiander’s doctrine nullifies God’s economy of redemption. He notes that the sinner’s justification requires satisfaction and passion, which belong to the human nature of Christ, not to his divine essence. That is to say, we are justified on the ground of the satisfaction and passion made by Christ as a human.[74] What is necessary for justification is not the infusion of divine essence, but the fulfillment of the law, which was accomplished by Christ as Mediator.[75] This redemption accomplished by Christ is not distributed in a lump, but in an ordered application. Those who are predestined in God’s election are first called, they believe what Christ has done, and such benefits as remission of sins, justification, and sanctification are applied to them. It was vital for Tuckney to preserve the distinction between diverse aspects and follow the proper order of salvation without merging all of them into Christ’s essential righteousness.[76] Whereas Osiander developed his doctrine of justification to maximize the significance of union with Christ, Tuckney believed that an emphasis on the union does not negate the legitimacy and value of the ordo salutis.

To sum up, Tuckney discussed the doctrine of justification more extensively than any other subject. In his discussion on justification, first, he stressed that justification results from union with Christ. Possession of Christ by faith and thereby obtainment of his righteousness is the foundation of the sinner’s justification. In this vein, Tuckney criticized the papists and Whichcote for arguing that one’s inherent righteousness contributes to justification, thereby intermingling justification and sanctification. Second, Tuckney held the forensic declaration to be the essence of justification, and he maintained that both the passive and the active obedience of Christ are to be imputed to the believer. For him, union with Christ is not incompatible with forensic justification or the imputation of active obedience. Last, against Osiander, Tuckney affirmed that the union with Christ, which causes justification, should be understood in terms of mystical union through faith, not as essential union in which the individual believer is infused with the divine essence of Christ.

IV. Sanctification And Union With Christ

Tuckney’s attention to union with Christ continued in his discussion on sanctification. Union with Christ is the required precondition that makes good works truly good. What should precede ethical behavior is one’s union with Christ. This is because Christ is the foundation of true virtue: “So indeed I desire that Christ (and faith in him) should be laid as the foundation … of all our moral qualifications and performances.… For sine Christo omnis virtus in vitio est [without Christ, every virtue is in vain].”[77] However decent and virtuous pagan philosophers and Socinians may be, their lives are not good in the true sense, since their good works are “abstracted or separated from Christ.”[78] Also, even though one’s endeavor after holiness is imperfect, his good works will be accepted by God as long as he is accepted in Christ.[79] Therefore, it is necessary that “we be Justified by the imputed Righteousness of Christ, and Sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, and that our best Works and Graces be Enlivened and Spiritualized with the Tincture of the Blood of Christ.”[80] In other words, union with Christ is the starting point of sanctification. It is not that those who pursue holiness can be sanctified, but that those who are “Enlivened and Spiritualized with the Tincture of the Blood of Christ” can pursue holiness. The definitive moment of sanctification occurs when one is united to Christ by faith.

In this vein Tuckney holds that justification is more than a mere forensic declaration: “To justify in Scripture is taken not only declaratively, but also effectively, and signifies to constitute righteousness from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”[81] When we are justified, we are “not only reckoned [reputamur] as righteous, but also made [efficimur] righteous.” Just as everyone was made unrighteous by Adam’s disobedience in a real sense, those who are justified will be constituted (constituentur) righteous by Christ’s obedience.[82] Of course, Tuckney is well aware that equating justification with sanctification is the official teaching of the Council of Trent.[83] So he immediately adds a comment that this is only the secondary meaning of justification, and points out that it should not be confused with the papal doctrine that denies the forensic nature of justification.[84]

He further clarifies the relationship between justification and sanctification in a nuanced way. According to Tuckney, the extent of sanctification is wide, covering from the beginning of new life through its progressive advance to ultimate completion.[85] Sanctification “signifies not only the first infusion of grace, but its increase and progress until its completion in glory.”[86] An individual is sanctified by the Holy Spirit as soon as he accepts Christ (Rom 15:16). His holiness remains and continues in this life (Rev 22:11) and will be perfected in heaven (2 Cor 7:1; 1 Thess 5:23). Holding to this broad extent of sanctification, Tuckney locates justification between “the initiated sanctification” and the “progressive and complete sanctification.”

Therefore, it is necessary that justification (which requires actual faith, indeed even an act of faith, for its production) be after calling and regeneration (which implants that faith) and thus after inchoate sanctification. But if we look at the advanced and complete sanctification, as far as it indicates the strength and growth of this disposition, it is both an inward and outward working of sanctification and of new obedience; thus justification is entirely prior to this sanctification, while it inserts us into Christ as the, so to speak, root; “Only from him all our fruits are found,” Hos. 12:8, John 15:4. Therefore he in his first calling was made 1. wisdom for us 2. Righteousness for us in justification; and finally 3. He became sanctification and redemption, that is full glorification. 1 Cor. 1:30.[87]

For Tuckney, sanctification is a large term that “includes the whole work of God’s Spirit in us.” Effectual calling, or vocation “is the first beginning of Sanctification … in respect of the first infusion of grace.”[88] In speaking against Osiander he repeats this point when he explains the true nature of holiness within the believer: “We believe that Christ makes us whole and righteous not only by his merit and the imputation to us of his satisfaction, but also by the communication of himself with us, by the infusion of his grace and inherent righteousness, by its beginning, its increase, until finally it grows up and is perfected in glory.”[89] In other words, as soon as one believes Christ, he not only is declared to be just, but also instantly becomes holy. This is why the Corinthian church was said to be “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:2; 6:11), in spite of the presence of various unethical issues within them.[90] This inchoative sanctification, the alpha point of sanctification, results from union with the resurrected Christ; it occurs simultaneously with effectual calling.[91] In this sense, sanctification is said to precede justification in that its origin is union with Christ, which is prior to justification.

On the other hand, sanctification also follows justification in its advanced aspect. Though the believer is liberated from the guilt and punishment of sin by justification by faith, “the guilty malefactor is not always presently taken out of prison upon his first receiving of his pardon.”[92] So those who are justified must seek to walk worthy of their new status by fighting against various indwelling sins. Tuckney regards this ongoing pursuit of holiness as the genuine meaning of participating in the divine nature. Observing that the statement “you may become partakers of the divine nature” is immediately followed by a modifying phrase “having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” in 2 Pet 1:4, he affirms that “Christianity in its proper formality is nothing but the imitation of the divine nature, and fully to imitate God and Christ is in the general both to be partakers of it and to walk worthy of it.”[93] The heart of advanced sanctification (sanctificationem promotam) is to conform to Christ. After the believer is united to Christ and inchoatively sanctified, he has to keep on drawing closer to Christ in his lifetime process of sanctification. Thus Christ is the destination of the journey of sanctification, and its fountain and motivation as well.

To summarize, Tuckney maintained that Christ is the source of sanctification, whether definitive or progressive. Christ is not only the believer’s justification, but also his sanctification (1 Cor 1:30). Since union with Christ is foundational in sanctification, Tuckney does not simply present sanctification as preceding justification (as do the Roman Catholics) or following justification (as do the Lutherans). Whereas justification is certainly prior to the progressive aspect of sanctification, it is also posterior to the inchoative or definitive aspect of sanctification. It is interesting to see a structural similarity between Calvin and Tuckney in this regard. Calvin begins Book 3 of the Institutes by proclaiming that union with Christ is central for all redemptive benefits.[94] And then he explains the double benefit of union with Christ in the order of sanctification (chs. 3–10), justification (chs. 11–16), and sanctification (chs. 17–19). This structure was intentional in order to demonstrate that the Protestant teaching of salvation does not neglect good works, and that justification and sanctification simultaneously flow from one source, union with Christ.[95] Likewise, though not identical with Calvin in every detail, Tuckney presents a similar sandwich structure in which justification is placed between definitive sanctification, the inchoative point of union with Christ, and progressive sanctification, the ongoing aspect of union with Christ.

V. Glorification And Union With Christ

Though union and communion with Christ begin and advance in this life through effectual calling, justification, and sanctification, they wait for their final consummation in the state of glorification. Distinguishing three aspects of the knowledge of Christ, “Ex Lege, Ex Evangelio, Ex Vision,” Tuckney affirms, “The second of them is more excellent than the first, and the third than the second.”[96] Those who are already united to Christ by faith will see him face to face when the Lord appears again in power and glory: “That is the perfecting of grace in glory, when God showing himself face to face shall so fill us with his light and life, that then we shall be most fully Deopleni.”[97]

Tuckney presents the final stage of the ordo salutis, glorification, as the state in which the initiated fellowship with Christ is fully manifested.[98] In this state of beatitude, a wedding banquet between Christ and his bride will be held in heaven, in which “no one interrupts mutual acquaintance.”[99] The believer will have complete knowledge, perfect love, and fullest joy with Christ. Tuckney illustrates this with two prototypes in Scripture. The first example is seen in the story of Christ’s transfiguration, in which Moses and Elijah talked with the glorified Christ. Such an intimate relationship between them and Christ was not by virtue of their own heightened spiritual knowledge, but only by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who poured wisdom and recognition into them. Similarly, the Spirit will dissipate all clouds of doubt and weakness, and illuminate the believer’s mind and heart that they will see Christ most clearly.[100] What is more, quoting Chemnitz, Tuckney refers to the creation narrative, in which Eve was made in the image of Adam during his deep sleep, and recognized by him who exclaimed with full admiration, “This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Likewise, once the believer goes through a sleep of death, he will be renovated through Christ, changed to be the same body with him, and fully recognized by him.[101]

Since glorification is such a blessed state, the believer should not fear death, which is its entrance. In a funeral sermon in memory of Thomas Hill, a fellow Westminster Assembly divine, Tuckney assured the mourners of the victory over death in Christ. He pointed out that the primary reason for the fear of death is the lack of confidence in Christ’s work of redemption.[102] So Tuckney reminded them of the efficacy of Christ’s death and of how the believer’s triumph over sin is advanced gradually. Christ’s suffering and death fully satisfied God’s wrath, thereby eliminating the condemning guilt of sin, which we receive in justification. Christ’s resurrection has broken the power and dominion of sin, and enables us to start and continue the progress of sanctification. While the pursuit of holiness is imperfect in this life, death liberates the believer from a lifetime of struggle against the enslaving power and pollution of sin, thereby uniting him more fully to Christ.[103] As a remedy for the fear of death, Tuckney recommends frequent reflection on the efficacy of Christ and active participation in prayer to enhance the sense of union with Christ: “By constant acquaintance with prayer, we come to more familiar acquaintance with Christ, and so come to see and feel how happy it is to be near him, which cannot but make us the more ready and desirous of getting out of the body, that we may be no longer absent from him.”[104] Furthermore, faith’s role as apprehending and applying Christ is needed at the deathbed more desperately than at any other moment:

And therefore here again, the death of Christ applied by faith, proves a Soveraign remedy; for it is then safe drawing near to God, when our hearts are sprinkled from an evil conscience, Heb. 10.22. and that is by the blood of Christ, Heb. 9:14. grace therefore in a way of daily mortification to be implanted into Christs death, and this sweet fruit amongst others, will spring out of his grave, that what mortifieth sin, will kill the fear of death, which is caused by it.[105]

The idea that death deprives us of everything belonging to this world and separates us from those who are most beloved makes us fearful; yet, those who are united to Christ can now willingly embrace death. Death becomes the moment of gain rather than loss, and of union rather than separation. It is the gateway through which the people of God enter into full union with Christ, not merely by faith but also by sight, and enjoy all heavenly blessings without reservation. So Tuckney agrees with Paul, who professes, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21), and expects the most glorious state following death: “If Christ be our All in all, then although all things else at Death be taken from us, and we from them, we have lost nothing; no, have gained by it, fullest union with him, and possession of him, which is our greatest gain, because our greatest happiness.”[106]

VI. Conclusion

In response to the criticism that the Westminster divines replaced the Reformers’ emphasis on union with Christ with a more rigid structure of the ordo salutis, Robert Letham argues that “the whole process of salvation is placed under the umbrella of union and communion with Christ” in the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and that this is not incompatible with the more logical structure of the ordo salutis in the Confession of Faith.[107] Examining Puritan theologians’ soteriology, Mark Jones also concludes that “union with Christ, not justification by faith, is the chief blessing a Christian receives from God. The believer’s union with Christ enables him to receive all the benefits of Christ’s work, including justification, adoption, and sanctification.”[108] Anthony Tuckney’s understanding of salvation confirms this observation. Tuckney affirmed the priority of union with Christ. No single benefit of salvation takes place apart from union with Christ: “All the parts of this salvation, in the whole progress from first to last, all is in and by Jesus Christ.”[109] Those who are elected in Christ are effectually called to embrace Christ, justified by the whole righteousness of Christ, and sanctified by Christ’s holiness, and will enter into glorification in which union with Christ is ultimately completed. All parts of the ordo salutis originate from the reality of union with Christ.

On the other hand, Tuckney does not emphasize union with Christ at the expense of the ordo salutis. The distinction and order of each redemptive benefit should be maintained. He takes the golden chain of Rom 8:30 seriously: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” The application of redemptive benefits should follow the sequence of predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. Forestalling any argument that sanctification is not explicitly mentioned, Tuckney provides a nuanced interpretation that sanctification extends from calling to glorification. The inchoative or definitive sanctification takes place at the moment of effectual calling when a person accepts Christ by faith, and the progressive sanctification follows justification and becomes complete in glorification. Furthermore, the relationship between each ordo is not that of causality. Justification does not cause sanctification, nor does sanctification cause glorification. Union with Christ undergirds all the stages of the ordo salutis, and all the redemptive benefits are distinct-yet-inseparable aspects and manifestations of union with Christ.

This is most prominent in the Westminster Larger Catechism, which was supervised by Tuckney as chairman. On July 2, 1647, “Mr Tuckney made report of the catichisme,” and his report was followed by the Assembly’s resolutions:

Resolved upon the Q: ‘What benefits hath Christ procured by his mediation? A: Christ by his mediation hath procured Redemption with all the benefits of the covenant of grace.’ 

Ordered: ‘How doe we come to be made partakers of the benifits which Christ hath procured? A: we are made pertakers of the benifits which Christ hath procured by the application of them unto us, which is the worke especially of God the Holy Ghost.’ 

Ordered: ‘Q: What Benifitts are the elect made pertakers of by coming unto Christ? A: The elect by comming unto Christ are made partakers of union and communion with him in grace and glory.’ 

Ordered: ‘Q: What is that union which the elect have with Christ? A: The union which the elect have with Christ is the worke of Gods grace, wherby they are spiritually and mistically, yet really and Inseperably, joyned to Christ their head and husband, which is done in their effectuall calling.’[110]

The Assembly documents were the products of communal work and, therefore, any individual person’s role should not be exaggerated. Nevertheless, considering Tuckney’s leading role at the committee that produced the Larger Catechism, it can be surmised that he laid a foundation for the catechism’s distinguished teaching on union with Christ, which is complementary to the logical presentation of the ordo salutis in the Confession.

Notes

1. Geerhardus Vos, “The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1980), 256.
2. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Justification and Union with Christ,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2008), 248-69; Richard B. Gaffin Jr., “Union with Christ: Some Biblical and Theological Reflections,” in Always Reforming: Explorations in Systematic Theology, ed. A. T. B. McGowan (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 271-88; Lane G. Tipton, “Union with Christ and Justification,” in Justified in Christ: God’s Plan for Us in Justification, ed. K. Scott Oliphint (Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 2007), 23-49; Mark Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008); J. Todd Billings, Union with Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011); J. Todd Billings, “John Calvin: United to God through Christ,” in Partakers of the Divine Nature, ed. Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 200-218; J. Todd Billings, “John Calvin’s Soteriology: On the Multifaceted ‘Sum’ of the Gospel,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11 (2009): 428-47; Cornelis Venema, “Union with Christ, the ‘Twofold Grace of God,’ and the ‘Order of Salvation’ in Calvin’s Theology,” in Calvin for Today, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2009), 91-114.
3. Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 212-19; John V. Fesko, Beyond Calvin: Union with Christ and Justification in Early Modern Reformed Theology, 1517-1700 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 173-206.
4. James B. Torrance, “Strengths and Weaknesses of the Westminster Thoelogy,” in The Westminster Confession in the Church Today, ed. Alasdair I. C. Heron (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1982), 45-53.
5. Thomas F. Torrance, Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 133.
6. Ibid., 128.
7. Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 167.
8. For further information on Anthony Tuckney’s life and theology, see Youngchun Cho, Anthony Tuckney: Theologian of the Westminster Assembly (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, forthcoming).
9. John R. Bower, The Larger Catechism: A Critical Text and Introduction (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2010), 17.
10. Chad Van Dixhoorn, ed., The Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, 1643-1652 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4:181, 276, 284, 289, 315, 589, 599.
11. Anthony Tuckney, Thanatoktasia or Death Disarmed And the Grave swallowed up in Victory: A Sermon preached at St. Maries in Cambridge, Decem. 22. 1653. At the publick Funerals of Dr. Hill, Late Master of Trinity College in that University (London: Printed for J. Rothwell, 1654).
12. Anthony Tuckney, Forty Sermons upon Several Occasions, ed. Jonathan Tuckney (London: Printed for Jonathan Robinson and Brabazon Aylmer, 1676), 1-165, 649-98.
13. Ibid., 166-222.
14. Ibid., 502-50.
15. Anthony Tuckney, None But Christ (London: Printed for John Rothwell, 1654), 12.
16. Ibid., 53-126.
17. Tuckney, Forty Sermons, 225.
18. Ibid., 225-26.
19. Anthony Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, nec non determinationes quaestionum variorum insignium in Scholis Academicis Cantabrigiensibus habitae; quibus accedunt exercitia pro gradibus capessendis, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Jonathan Robinson & George Wells, 1679), 1:303-12.
20. Tuckney, None But Christ, 21.
21. Ibid., 10-12.
22. Tuckney, Forty Sermons, 81.
23. Tuckney, None But Christ, 13.
24. Ibid., 14.
25. Anthony Tuckney, A Briefe & Pithy Catechisme as it was delivered in Emmanuel Colledge chapel 1628 per Anthony Tuckney, Emmanuel College Library Special Collections, Cambridge. MS. 3. 1. 13. I am indebted to John Bower’s painstaking work of modernizing the English of this manuscript.
26. Ibid., Question 11.
27. Ibid., Questions 11 and 13.
28. Ibid., Question 13.
29. Ibid., Question 7.
30. Ibid., Questions 9 and 10.
31. Ibid., Question 22.
32. Ibid., Question 23.
33. Ibid., Question 24.
34. Ibid., Question 25.
35. Ibid., Questions 35-37.
36. Ibid., Question 47.
37. Ibid., Question 41.
38. Ibid., Question 39.
39. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 2:79.
40. Tuckney, “Sermon 17 on 2 Pet. 1:4, ” in Forty Sermons, 229.
41. Tuckney, Briefe & Pithy Catechisme, Question 37.
42. Chad Van Dixhoorn, “Reforming the Reformation: Theological Debate at the Westminster Assembly, 1642-1652” (PhD diss., Cambridge University, 2004). See ch. 5 in particular.
43. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:23.
44. Ibid., 1:22-25.
45. Ibid., 1:60.
46. Tuckney, “Sermon 12 on Philippians 3:6, ” in Forty Sermons, 161-62.
47. Ibid., 164.
48. Tuckney, None But Christ, 24.
49. Ibid., 35.
50. Dogmatic Canons and Decrees (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1912), 29-30.
51. Robert Bellarmine, De justificatione, qui est de fide justificante, vol. 4 of Opera Omnia (Naples: Joseph Giuliano, 1858), 482.
52. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:25.
53. Ibid., 1:27.
54. Ibid., 1:28-29, 36-38. In the Westminster Assembly, Gataker also delivered a philological analysis of the word “justify” in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English, and concluded that it indicates a judicial verdict instead of actual holiness within a person. See Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 2:44.
55. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:30: “… de peccatoris coram Deo justificatione agitur, semper sensu solo forensi, nunquam in sensu formali usurpari, hoc est, non significant hominem prius injustum justitiae habitum infundendo Physice vel moraliter justum efficere, sed in se impium gratis absolvere & propter Christi justitiam a Deo ei imputatam, fide vero apprehensam, sibique applicatam justum censere, pronunciare, atque ex imputatione illa vere constituere. Et, quod hujus consequens est, ut justum per omnia tractare.”
56. Benjamin Whichcote, “Letter 2, ” in The Cambridge Platonists: A Brief Introduction With Eight Letters of Dr. Antony Tuckney and Dr. Benjamin Whichcote, ed. Tod E. Jones (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), 78.
57. Ibid., 79.
58. Whichcote, “Letter 4, ” in Cambridge Platonists, 105.
59. Tuckney, “Letter 3, ” in Cambridge Platonists, 91.
60. Ibid., 90.
61. Tuckney, “Letter 5, ” in Cambridge Platonists, 125.
62. Tuckney, “Sermon 13 on Proverbs 8:21, ” in Forty Sermons, 172.
63. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:31.
64. Ibid., 1:34-35: “Non enim solum ex imputatione passivae Christi; obedientiae a culpa & poena liberamur, verum ex imputatione activae ipsius obedientiae jus ad vitam in caelis aeternam acquirimus.”
65. Ibid., 1:56.
66. Ibid., 1:57.
67. Cited from Reinhold Seeberg, Text-Book of the History of Doctrines (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1905), 2:369-70.
68. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:304.
69. Ibid., 1:303. On the Reformed side, John Calvin was a representative opponent of Osiander. For Calvin’s critique of Osiander, see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 3.11.5-12; and Mark Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), 197-252. Timothy Wengert offers a history of Lutheran refutation against Osiander in Defending Faith: Lutheran Responses to Andreas Osiander’s Doctrine of Justification, 1551-1559 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).
70. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:308.
71. Ibid., 1:306.
72. Tuckney, Forty Sermons, 230.
73. Ibid., 226.
74. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:305.
75. Ibid., 1:307.
76. Ibid., 1:309.
77. Tuckney, “Sermon 12 on Philippians 3:6, ” in Forty Sermons, 154.
78. Tuckney, “Sermon 40 on Philippians 1:21, ” in Forty Sermons, 675.
79. Cf. WCF 16.6.
80. Tuckney, “Sermon 40 on Philippians 1:21, ” 675-76.
81. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:33.
82. Ibid.
83. See the Council of Trent, Session 6 “Decree on Justification,” Chapter 7.
84. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:33-34.
85. Ibid., 1:81.
86. Ibid., 1:82.
87. Ibid., 1:82-83.
88. Tuckney, Briefe & Pithy Catechisme, 13.
89. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 1:306.
90. Ibid.
91. Tuckney says, “In point of Sanctification our dead hearts are raised up to a life of grace, and to seek those things which are above” (Forty Sermons, 5).
92. Tuckney, Thanatoktasia or Death Disarmed, 92.
93. Tuckney, Forty Sermons, 259.
94. Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.
95. See Gaffin, “Justification and Union with Christ,” and William Edgar, “Ethics: The Christian Life and Good Works According to Calvin,” in A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes, 248-69, 320-46.
96. Tuckney, “Sermon 1 on Philippians 3:8, ” in Forty Sermons, 5.
97. Tuckney, “Sermon 17 on 2 Peter 1:4, ” in Forty Sermons, 231.
98. Tuckney, Praelectiones theologicae, 2:152.
99. Ibid., 2:154.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid., 2:155.
102. Tuckney, Death Disarmed, 134.
103. Ibid., 170.
104. Ibid., 157.
105. Ibid., 172.
106. Tuckney, “Sermon 40 on Philippians 1:21, ” in Forty Sermons, 688.
107. Robert Letham, The Westminster Assembly (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2009), 111.
108. Joel Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine For Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2012), 483.
109. Tuckney, None But Christ, 13.
110. Van Dixhoorn, Minutes and Papers, 4:618-20. These statements correspond to the Larger Catechism 57, 58, 65, and 66.