What is the relationship between Creator and creature? And how ought this relation guide our ethics? Timothy Robert Baylor’s book examines how John Owen (1616–1683) handles these questions through the lends of divine dominion.
Divine dominion, as Owen understands it, holds together ‘God’s right, power, and liberty of rule over the creature’ (pp. 3, 22). Our age often assumes a list of ‘human rights’, such as dignity and honour, but seldom states a basis for them. In the biblical tradition, such rights were never self-generated: special dignity and honour were gifts bestowed on those creatures who uniquely bore the divine image and likeness. Baylor recognises this and observes how ‘talk of “justice” and “right” always implies relations of dependence within some order of the good, and so a regulative conception of the nature of our dependence upon God’ (6).
Owen similarly describes human agency and freedom in the context of God’s freedom. But, as Baylor repeatedly shows, God’s free action is ‘non-contrastive’ or ‘non-competitive’ (e.g., pp. 27, 47, 51, 180) with ours. Owen explains, ‘God can work with contingent causes for the accomplishment of his own will and purposes, without the least prejudice to them, either as causes or as free and contingent’ (p. 49, citing Owen, Works 12:131). That is, providence can be exhaustive without vacating the dynamics of contingency, since God’s dominion is what guarantees ‘the integrity of creaturely causes’ (pp. 27, 44–45, 49).
Baylor handles Owen’s thick account of nature and grace masterfully. Contrary to deism, Owen contends that creation not only depended upon God at the beginning but also continues to depend on him, and human nature shows that we are no exception. Just as the sky holds light only until the source of that light sets in the west, so we necessarily depend on God as the source of our life.
It is only the Holy Spirit’s ordering and grace that have ever made it possible for us to know and love God. Even before the fall, Adam and Eve were able to fulfill their telos of worshiping and serving God because God’s Spirit upheld them in doing so and enabled them to function as ‘mediators’ between God and the rest of creation (p. 77). This is how Owen explains natural law: God imprints this telos in us so we are inclined towards love, worship and service. Adam and Eve were not made neutral, but ‘upright’ with ‘original righteousness’, so that this telos was as natural to them ‘as though God had commanded a fish to swim or a bird to fly’ (p. 157). Instead of competing with us, God’s activity enables us, so pursuing that telos was completely natural to us: human ‘creatures have a natural obligation to God which is grounded in their dependence upon him, and God has a natural right to their obedience which is grounded in the perfection of his essence’ (p. 124). The contingency of creation signifies creation’s need to be upheld and enabled: God’s grace, therefore, permeates creation from the beginning and does not begin with the fall. Owen brings together the covenant and natural law as ‘co-principles of moral economy’ (p. 174), for God’s enabling was always necessary to our obedience (no form of subtle deism enters his approach). This is why Owen can claim that God always has the ‘highest advantage and interest of man’ behind all of his laws (pp. 96, 109–109, cf. 117).
As creatures, the Creator can never be in our debt. Yet God also appears to be a ‘rewarder’. How are we to make sense of this? Owen examines this ‘rewarding’ as a function of grace within the covenant. That is, God freely covenants with humankind from their very beginning, elevating them ‘out of their lowly position’ to ‘a dignified and privileged status as his covenant partners’ (p. 136). Accordingly, when God makes a promise, he is faithful to see it through. Thus, God’s covenantal fidelity guarantees blessing on the obedience of the incarnate Son and on all united to him. Jesus’ faithfulness makes salvation not simply possible, but actual for those in Christ. This is why universalism is a genuine struggle for Owen, and why he arrives at his doctrine of particular redemption: that is, he denies that the incarnate Son’s exaltation was incomplete, or that our fallen agency becomes the basis on which God accepts us. Owen’s reasoning here is surprisingly close to Barth’s as they both feel the draw of universalism: both are committed to the goodness of God and the beauty of Christ’s person and work as they articulate the truly radical nature of the good news.
God compromises neither his character nor our integrity when he redeems those united to Christ. Creation’s telos is discovered in the covenant, which for Owen means the covenant has logical priority over creation: ‘The covenant perfects creation. For, while creation is a necessary condition for the covenant, the covenant itself is the internal basis of creation, supplying the end for the sake of which it exists’ (p. 176).
Baylor’s study builds one argument upon another to show how Owen grounds moral discourse in divine dominion that establishes contingency and human agency, both grounded in creation and covenant. I strongly recommend this volume to those interested in Reformed theology, but also for all who want to think more theologically as they navigate contemporary moral discourse regarding human obligations, rights and agency.
