The Doctrine of Justification by Faith

John Owen presents one of the most rigorous defenses of the Reformed doctrine of justificationever written. This reprint of The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, taken fromthe 19th century edition produced by the Presbyterian Board of Publications, will serve asa welcome improvement for many readers. Latin and Greek quotations have been moved to footnotes, and English translations are given for those large blocks of material thatOwen left untranslated. It also contains a new introductory essay by Carl R. Trueman, which analyzes Owen's treatment of justification in light of the highly charged debates ofhis day. While Owen's work is technical and challenging, this edition is an effort to makehis profound exposition more manageable.

"John Owen's treatment of justification is a classic example of Reformed Orthodoxy atits best: rooted in the ongoing Anti-Pelagian trajectory of Western theology and operatingwithin the established Protestant consensus, Owen yet demonstrates the ways in which that consensus was itself under strain, exegetically, theologically, and socially, in the seventeenth century, and how it was necessary for doctrinal formulation of the doctrine to undergo careful elaboration in order to respond to such. In particular, his defense of the imputation of Christ's active and passive righteousness and his vigorous rejection of Baxter's accusations that his theology was antinomian and demanded a doctrine ofeternal justification, points towards the covenantal/Christological heart of his theology. As such, he is an example of how federal theology could be deployed to set the Protestant confessional consensus on a much firmer conceptual foundation than was the case in the early Reformation; and also how Reformed Orthodoxy's theological structure is highly elaborate and irreducible to soundbites about dogmatizing; rather, Owen's treatment exhibits the typical Reformed attention to the exegesis, doctrinal synthesis, and church consensus, and is one more piece of evidence as to how and why the Reformed faith became more elaborate in its argumentation during the course of the seventeenthcentury.  CARL R. TRUEMAN
from the introductory essay

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