I’m sharing a quote from John Owen’s awesome little book The Glory of Christ. This book has long been available as a Puritan Paperback (hereafter just "paperback") from Banner of Truth trust, but has more recently been included in Crossway’s new Complete John Owen Works. Personally—and probably to your surprise—I’m partial to smaller books, so I appreciate the paperback.
The quote below is long, spanning an entire page of the paperback. Here Owen, arguably the greatest protestant theologian of the 17th century, shows us a mature understanding of Christ’s presence in the Old Testament. To me, reading Owen is like reading CS Lewis: Much of what I find is challenging to my assumptions and presuppositions. But as I process it and give it time, I find that I agree with it. Before I know it, I’m listing the book in which I found the challenging quote as a personal influence. I think the below quote, typical of Owen’s mature theology but atypical of (even early) modern theology’s shallowness, is a worthy example of my point.
In expounding “The Glory of Christ Under the Old Testament,” Owen says:
The glory of Christ was represented and made known under the Old Testament in his personal appearances to leaders of the church in their generations. In these appearances he was God only, but appeared in the assumed shape of a man, to signify what he would one day actually be. He did not create a human nature and unite it to himself for a while. Rather, by his divine power he appeared in the shape of a man. In this way, Christ appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Joshua and to others.
Further, because Christ was the divine person who dwelt in and with the church under the Old Testament, he constantly assumed human feelings and emotions, to intimate that a time would come when he would assume human nature. In fact, after the fall everything said of God in the Old Testament ultimately refers to the future incarnation of Christ. It would have been absurd to represent God as grieving, repenting, being angry and well-pleased and exhibiting all other human emotions, were it not that the divine person intended to take on him human nature in which such emotions dwell.
The glory of Christ under the Old Testament was (also) represented in prophetic visions. So John tells us Isaiah’s vision of the glory of the Lord was a vision of the glory of Christ (Isa.6; John 12:41). ‘The train of his robe filled the temple’ (Isa.6:1). This symbolized the glorious grace which filled the temple of his body. This is the true tabernacle, which God pitched, and not man; it is the temple which was destroyed, and which he raised again in three days, in which dwelt the fullness of the Godhead (Col.2:9) This glory was revealed to Isaiah, and it filled him with fear and astonishment. But by the ministry of one of the glorious seraphim, his iniquity was taken away by a coal from the altar, which symbolized the sacrificial blood which cleanses from all sin. This is food indeed for the souls of believers.**
Note just a few things: First, to Owen many Old Testament theophanies (appearances of God) were in fact Christophanies (appearances of Christ). When God appeared in the shape of a man—think Jacob’s wrestling match God (Gen.32), Abraham’s sight of the three angels of the Lord (Gen.18), Moses’ sight of God in the burning bush (Ex.3) as well as his time speaking to God on the mountain (Ex.33-34), and Joshua’s conversation with the commander of the Lord’s army (Josh.5)—it was actually Christ showing himself in a form like he would one day appear. Thus the idea of an incarnation should not have seemed off-limits to the scribes of Jesus’ day, nor should it seem odd to the scribes of our day.
Second, note that Owen subsumes the Old Testament’s teaching about God’s “emotions” under the prophetic scope of Christ’s eventual coming as a man. That is, the fact that God was “sorry” that he made man (Gen.6:7), or “regretted” making Saul king (1 Sam.15:10) doesn’t indicate that he experiences emotions the same way that man does. And truly he couldn’t, since he a) prophesies his wrathful response to sin (Deut.31:17) meaning that he is in utter control of his wrath, b) doesn’t change but remains the same (Mal.3:6), and therefore, c) is not like man in having regrets (1 Sam.15:29). Rather, these examples of God’s “emotions” were intended prophetically to point to Christ who would one day come as the radiance of God’s glory in human body, with emotions the same as man, yet without sin. Just see Jesus' exasperation with his generation (Matt.17:17), and his emotions over Jerusalem's unbelief (Lk.19:41). In these moments we see God the Son responding to the world's sin as the antitype of God's earlier prophetic "emotions" toward Old Testament sin. What an interesting explanation for God’s emotions!
Finally, note that to Owen the heavenly glory which Isaiah peeked (Is.6)—which the Apostle John very clearly states was the glory of Christ himself (Jn.12:41)—was itself a type of God’s glorious gospel. Isaiah saw heavenly temple glory as a type of the fullness of God’s filling Christ in his coming to earth (Col.2:9). The touching of the coal to Isaiah’s mouth to atone for his sin was a type of Christ’s working to atone for our sins in fullness. The reason such a vision of glory must be thought of as an accommodation is that God dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim.6:16a), and no one has seen or can see God (Jn.1:18, cf. 1Tim.6:16b). So it must be that Isaiah’s sight of glory was an accommodation to his senses. Owen’s reading of it as a picture of the gospel is not only appropriate but unavoidable.
As you can see, Owen read the Scriptures as a witness to the Incarnation of God the Son in the person of Jesus. Owen’s world was a Christ-centered world, like it was for the church fathers all those generations ago. Truly, the world is Christ-centered; it is only for us to labor to see it. But as we meditate on the types of things Owen says above, we find our blurry eyes beginning to see a little more clear. And indeed this gospel truth is food for the soul!
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**John Owen, The Glory of Christ: Abridged and Made Easy to Read by RJK Law (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994), 70-71.
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