Owenâs Understanding of the Priority of Pastoral Preaching
What is to be a pastorâs priority in pastoral ministry? Paul exhorts Timothy, as he awaits his sentence of death:
Paulâs greatest concern in his parting words with his son in the faith, a pastor and elder, was that Timothy would be found faithful in all seasons to be preaching the word of God. That the people of God would be fed the truth of God rightly from Timothyâs clear and precise exposition of the Scripture. Why was this so important to Paul? The answer to that question is found in what Paul had said right before 2 Tim 4:1â5. In 2 Tim 3:16â17 Paul the apostle stated:
Paul taught that the word of God alone gave the people of God the right knowledge of God, convicted them of their sin, called them to righteous living, and equipped them for every good work. The word of God per Paul was inspired by God. Did John Owen emphasize what we see Paul emphasize here with regards to the pastoral ministry of a man called to serve a local church?
Some modern scholarship would not necessarily answer yes to that question. Owen has been accused of addressing even in his sermons to the Leadenhall church a multitude of politically charged messages that stemmed from a faulty apocalyptic worldview. Crawford Gribben, in his book John Owen and English Puritanism, wrote, âFor Owen would preach to his small congregation messages that he could not dare commit to print, messages that experimented with prognostication and the sometimes politically charged interpretation of providence.â Kelly Kapic wrote concerning Owenâs preaching in his role as a statesman:
Kelly Kapicâs statement concerning Owenâs preaching is focused on his speaking to parliament and other officials as a statesman who saw the imperative for England to promote the reformed faith as a nation. Martyn Cowan wrote, referencing Owenâs sermon Faithâs Answer to Divine Reproofs:
While no one would seem to deny Kapic and Cowanâs conclusions concerning Owenâs ministry as a statesman this does not necessarily prove that Owen took such prophetic preaching into the pulpit of his local church in his later years consistently. The idea examined by Cowan and Gribben is that a lot of political proclamation was incorporated in Owenâs sermons to the flock that gathered as two combined churches at Leadenhall. While it may genuinely be the case that his political views occasionally made its way into some of his sermons in an unhelpful manner, it does not prove that political providential ideology was Owenâs focus as a local church pastor. This proposal seems difficult to prove for we only have a few sermons that others transcribed, or he published which does not necessarily provide the evidence for such a claim that he was more concerned about being a political prophet than the salvation and growth in personal holiness of those entrusted to his care in his endeavors as a local church pastor. Gribben implicitly acknowledges this weakness in his statement that most of Owenâs sermons were not put to print.
Peter Toon, an early twentieth-century biographer of John Owen would not necessarily agree with Crawford Gribben and Martyn Cowanâs perspective. Peter Toon, in his book Godâs Statesman, wrote:
In line with Peter Toonâs view John Owen, from his writings, did not see pastoral preaching as a platform primarily to express political ideals based in apocalyptic ideology. Owen wrote in True Nature of a Gospel Church: