Did Martin Luther and John Owen Champion a Rationalistic Gospel?

Martin Luther and John Owen on Justification

“You have to get them lost before they can be found,” echoed across the auditorium as I (Ty) sat listening to the speaker encourage the crowd of eager students in a “how to evangelize” lecture. This “prospective” view (one that looks at sin first and salvation second) has been a prominent feature of evangelical evangelism for decades. Yet it has come under criticism by several theologians and biblical scholars. Douglas Campbell, for example, laments that understanding conversion in this “plight preceding solution” paradigm has contributed to a view of justification that is overly conditional, individualistic, rationalistic, and contractual. Further, he lays the blame for this view on the magisterial Reformer Martin Luther and the post-Reformation period (the era of John Owen) for codifying it.¹

Campbell says that Luther is “clearly a transmitter, and almost certainly the origin, of this reading.”² Specifically, he claims that Luther’s view “of Justification . . . [has a] fundamentally, aggressively, and radically negative initial thrust” (i.e., beginning with the negative, sinful situation we are all in).³ In Campbell’s view, Luther’s doctrine of justification describes conversion fundamentally as an intellectual decision based on a “pros and cons” analysis, often focused on avoiding negative consequences.⁴ In American church life, this looks like evangelists appealing to nonbelievers to make a decision for Jesus so that they can avoid going to hell. The presentation of the plight first thus implies (according to some) that the speaker’s job is to convince the hearer to make a decision to accept this idea—consequently avoiding guilt, condemnation, and death.

Campbell’s critique is sweeping, exegetically sophisticated, and multifaceted.⁵ This is further complicated because we share his hesitation regarding always presenting the gospel in the plight-solution paradigm—for exegetical, theological, and pastoral reasons.⁶ Yet we wonder if Campbell’s criticisms are as historically rooted and accurate as he believes. In our examination, we look at two key figures (Luther and Owen) within the two significant historical periods that Campbell asserts are most likely responsible for that model and its problems. Our basic point is that the plight-solution ordering as Luther and Owen used it is not only innocent of the charge of rationalism (i.e., essentially relating to God by analyzing “information”)⁷ but also fundamentally opposed to the rationalistic construction that Campbell is worried about.⁸

Martin Luther on Sin’s Plight

Luther located the plight of sin within the category of the law (the commands from God indicating the way of righteousness), which raises our awareness of our failures before God. The law-gospel distinction is foundational in Luther’s thought: The law states what we must do (and have failed to do) to be righteous, while the gospel tells us what the righteous Christ has done for us.⁹ Although Luther’s views on the various “uses of the law” are disputed,¹⁰ he very clearly affirmed the “theological or spiritual [use of the law], which . . . [reveals our] sin, blindness, misery, wickedness, ignorance, hate and contempt of God, death, hell, judgment, and the well-deserved wrath of God.”¹¹ He called this “the true function and the chief and proper use of the Law.”¹² Apart from this effect of the law, “reason becomes haughty with this human presumption of righteousness and imagines that on account of this it is pleasing to God, therefore God has to send . . . the Law, to attack, subdue, and destroy this monster with full force.”17¹³ While Luther’s critique of “reason” here focused on a natural human ability and is not identical to Campbell’s understanding of analyzing information, Luther’s perception of the law certainly excluded an emphasis on the natural analysis of information in human strength.

Neither is the law aimed at communicating mere intellectual content based on superficial obedience or disobedience. Luther said, “[God’s] law. . . makes its demands on the inmost heart; it cannot be satisfied with works, but rather punishes . . . the works not done from the bottom of the heart.”¹⁴ The law exposes our desires and calls for wholehearted love and devotion—which we all fail to give.¹⁵ The law says, “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.”¹⁶ Robert Kolb summarizes Luther’s view of the law thus: “God’s commands begin with the heart of humanity, the relationship of love and trust between God and creature.”¹⁷

Attempting to use the law as a means of making oneself right with God, however, leads only to despair. Luther warned those who “have been crushed by that hammer” against using their “contrition wrongly by burdening [themselves] with even more law.”¹⁸ Conversely, since the law brings guilt and condemnation, it might be tempting, Luther admitted, to view the law as an evil oppressor. But like Paul in Romans 7:7, he insisted that the law “does contribute to justification—not because it justifies, but because it impels one to the promise of grace and makes it sweet and desirable. Therefore we do not abolish the Law; but we show its true function and use, namely, that it is a most useful servant impelling us to Christ.”¹⁹ Because the gospel removes the sin revealed by the law, the gospel “most beautifully follows the law.”²⁰ Therefore, the plight precedes the solution not by strict rational analysis but by love, trust, and solace in Jesus from the despair of our plight.²¹ Even as Luther articulated the trajectory of the plight-solution approach, he did not place it strictly on a rational-analysis track but oriented it toward love and the person of Christ. Luther even treated “reason” as the mind’s efforts to defend and justify oneself against the law’s accusations. Only when this “reason” has been destroyed by the law does the sinner hear the gospel as good news to be received by faith rather than sight. That is, the law reveals our empty hands as we receive God’s gifts of peace and confidence in Christ.²²

Martin Luther on the Solution

Rounding out the plight-solution equation, Luther insisted that as knowledge of our plight comes through the law, so God’s solution comes through the gospel.²³ To illustrate the nature of justification as the solution to our plight of sin, we focus on two metaphors that Luther used prominently: health and marriage.²⁴

For the first metaphor, he emphasized how often things get worse before they get better:

When God begins to justify a man, he first of all condemns him; him whom he wishes to raise up, he destroys; him whom he wishes to heal, he smites. . . . He does this, however, when he destroys man and when he humbles and terrifies him into the knowledge of himself and of his sins, in order that the wretched sinner may say, “There is no health in my bones because of my sins; there is no soundness in my flesh because of thy indignation” [Ps. 38:3].²⁵

Referring to Jesus’s comment that he came to heal the sick (Matt. 9:12), Luther provided this advice to those who become painfully aware of their sin: “Thank God, and do not despair. It is one step toward health when a sick man admits and confesses his disease. . . . Run to Christ, the Physician, who heals the contrite of heart and saves sinners. Believe in Him. . . . His righteousness is yours; your sin is His.”²⁶ The healing work of justification follows the recognition of our illness. Accordingly, it provokes joy in our hearts, not despair or cold analysis.

The second analogy that Luther used is that of a wedding:

Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righteousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, “[Sure] I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his,” as the bride in the Song of Solomon [2:16] says, “My beloved is mine and I am his.”²⁷

In this marriage, our sins are “laid upon Christ,” and he “adorns” us with righteousness that we can boast of as our very own because “all his is mine and all mine is his.”²⁸ In this “joyous exchange,”²⁹ Christ bears our guilt “for us” (pro nobis), and we receive his acceptance before God (see Luther’s appeals to Gal. 3:13).³⁰ Luther said elsewhere, “You must say, ‘I see my sin in Christ.’ Therefore, my sin is not mine but belongs to another person.”³¹ Christ is the

greatest thief, murderer, adulterer, robber, desecrator, blasphemer, etc., there has ever been anywhere in the world. . . . He is a sinner, who has and bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor, and assaulter; of Peter, who denied Christ; of David, who was an adulterer and a murderer, and who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord (Rom. 2:24). In short, he has and bears all the sins of all [people] in His body.³²

John Owen on Sin’s Plight

Owen stated that the “proper ends” of the doctrine of justification are (1) “the glory of God in Christ,” (2) the “furtherance of the obedience of believers,” and (3) “the proper relief of the conscience of a sinner pressed and perplexed with a sense of the guilt of sin.”³³ This third point occupies much of Owen’s treatise and much of our attention here.³⁴

Owen introduced his book The Doctrine of Justification by Faith by focusing on Scripture’s portrayal of the “way, and those means, with the causes of them, whereby the conscience of a distressed sinner may attain assured peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”³⁵ This is in contrast to a speculative philosophical inquiry,³⁶ which will “quickly wander into curious and perplexed questions, wherein the consciences of guilty sinners are not concerned.”³⁷ Owen said that it is dangerous to study justification with only “the conviction of truth in our minds” but not “the power of it in our hearts.”³⁸ So the study of justification must be not merely intellectual but also accompanied by a sensitive heart and tender conscience.

Owen boldly stated, “Until men know themselves better, they will care very little to know Christ at all.”³⁹ Only when we understand the acuteness of our plight do we care to seek a solution:⁴⁰ “When we inquire how we may be justified before him,” it is “necessary . . . unto any man who is to come unto a trial . . . duly to consider the judge before whom he is to appear. . . . Wherefore the greatness, the majesty, the holiness, and sovereign authority of God, are always to be present with us in a due sense of them.”⁴¹

Only when we understand the acuteness of our plight do we care to seek a solution.

Because we come before a holy God, Owen saw conviction—“whereby the soul of man hath a practical understanding of the nature of sin, its guilt, and the punishment due unto it”—as a necessary attitude for justification.⁴² Owen gave several reasons for this belief. First, “justification is God’s way of the deliverance of the convinced sinner, or one whose mouth is stopped, and who is guilty before God. . . . [A] sense, therefore, of this estate, and all that belongs unto it, is required unto believing.”⁴³ That is, such conviction is an essential aspect of true faith, which is the way of receiving justification. The second reason is reminiscent of Luther and regards the “order, relation, and use of the law and the gospel.”⁴⁴ Owen wrote, “Without [the law,] the gospel cannot be understood, nor the grace of it duly valued.”⁴⁵ Later, he said, “Let no man think to understand the gospel, who knoweth nothing of the law.”⁴⁶ Third, Owen remarked that Christ “calls unto him only those who are weary and heavily laden; [and] affirms that the ‘whole have no need of the physician, but the sick’; and that he ‘came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ ”⁴⁷

Up to this point, Owen’s insistence on the priority of conviction as a necessary condition in those who are justified seems to be a prerequisite for justification. Thus, the Christian’s “conviction of sin is a necessary antecedent unto justifying faith,”⁴⁸ so that “a convinced sinner” is the only “subjectum capax justificationis” (subject capable of justification).⁴⁹ He wrote, “There is nothing in this whole doctrine that I will more firmly adhere unto than the necessity of the convictions mentioned previous unto true believing; without which not one line of it can be understood aright.”⁵⁰ Yet someone might object that Owen’s insistence on conviction necessarily preceding faith leads to a kind of justification by faith and conviction.⁵¹ Owen clarified, however, that conviction is only “in order of nature antecedaneously unto that faith whereby we are justified.”⁵² That is, Owen was not establishing conviction “in order of time” or “in order of experience” as a prerequisite or precondition for belief. He even admitted that the expected experiences of conviction “are not thus eminently and distinctly translated in the minds and consciences of all” Christians, but as to “the substance of them [i.e., experiences of conviction], and as to the previousness of the conviction of sin unto faith, they are found in all that sincerely believe.”⁵³ So Owen’s insistence that conviction of sin precedes justification is consistent with the principle of “justification by faith alone” because faith “virtually and radically containeth” all these acts of sorrow and conviction.⁵⁴ Owen said, “Justifying faith includeth in its nature the entire principle of evangelical repentance, so as that it is utterly impossible that a man should be a true believer, and not, at the same instant of time, be truly penitent.”⁵⁵

John Owen on the Solution

The presence of God not only makes us aware of our sin but also presents grace and introduces a crisis:

The conscience of a convinced sinner, who presents himself in the presence of God, finds all practically reduced unto this one point,—namely, whether he will trust unto his own personal inherent righteousness, or, in a full renunciation of it, betake himself unto the grace of God and the righteousness of Christ alone.⁵⁶

Thus, as Christians, we run to Jesus as the object of our faith and the mediator who acts, as Luther would say, “for us” so that he might give us that which is “alien” to us.⁵⁷ Through faith, Christians are “fastened” to Christ so that “he makes his things ours, communicates his riches unto us.”⁵⁸ This union, whereby Christ and the church constitute “one mystical person . . . through the uniting efficacy of the Holy Spirit,” is the “principal foundation” of imputation and the “grounds” therein.⁵⁹ Here, in Christ, God imputes righteousness to Christians and declares us not “guilty” but “righteous” instead—not as a “naked pronunciation” but as a just judgment on the ones who are dressed in Christ.⁶⁰ As George Hunsinger says, the “declaration [‘not guilty but righteous instead’] was clearly a consequence of imputation, and imputation was clearly the foundation of declaration.”⁶¹ Owen, following Luther, affirmed that God imputes the righteousness of Christ to those in him,⁶² so that “the church shares in the righteousness of her Lord” “as the body shares in the honor of its head.”⁶³

The declaration of “justified” contains both a negative aspect (i.e., “not guilty”) and a positive aspect (i.e., “righteous instead”). Owen wrote,

It is one thing to be freed from being liable unto eternal death, and another to have right and title unto . . . eternal life. . . . [It is] one thing to be freed from the curse; another, to have the blessing of Abraham come upon us. . . . It is one thing to be acquitted before the throne of a king; . . . another to be made his son by adoption, and heir unto his kingdom.⁶⁴

This “great exchange” is that whereby “all our sins are transferred upon Christ by imputation, and the righteousness of Christ transferred to us by imputation.”⁶⁵ Illustrating this concept, Owen echoed Luther’s analogy of marriage:⁶⁶

As if a prince should go to take to him in marriage a poor deformed beggar, who being amazed with his kindness, and fearing much lest he should be mistaken, and account her otherwise than indeed she is, which when it is discovered will be her ruin, she plainly telleth him she is poor, deformed, and hath nothing in the world that may answer his expectation, and therefore she cannot but fear that when he knoweth her thoroughly indeed, he will utterly cast her off: but he thereupon replieth, “Fear no such thing; what I do, I do in righteousness and judgment, knowingly of thee and thy condition, and so as that I will abide by it.”⁶⁷

In summary, Owen’s view of justification avoided presenting the solution as a mere corrective to the problem but included a new relational status. Yes, of course, we can describe our plight with facts and analysis—indeed, we have done so here. But the plight itself and our experience of it are more than cognitive and analytic: They involve being confronted in one’s entire self by this personal God, being rescued and embraced by him, and being empowered to stand before him in confidence in what he has accomplished for us.

This article is adapted from Owen Among the Theologians: Conversations Across the Christian Tradition.

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