Christ’s Gift to the Church: Prayer – John Owen on Public Prayer (Daniel R. Hyde)
Rev. Daniel R. Hyde–“Pastor Danny” to the members of Oceanside United Reformed Church–has an eclectic past: he was baptized Roman Catholic, was converted in a Foursquare church, attended an Assemblies of God college where he flirted spiritually with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism before he discovered the riches of the historic Protestant and Reformed Christian faith. All of this prepared him to minister in the diverse religious culture of Southern California. In 2000, while still in seminary, Danny planted the Oceanside United Reformed Church (United Reformed Churches in North America) in Carlsbad/Oceanside, California. Fifteen years later he continues as pastor and is married with four children. He and his wife enjoy showing hospitality in their home for meals, prayer, and to study the Word.
Pastor Danny has a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Vanguard University, Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from Westminster Seminary California, and a Master of Theology (Th.M.) from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. His Th.M. thesis was entitled, “Of Great Importance and of High Concernment: The Liturgical Theology of John Owen (1616-1683),” and was read by Drs. Joel Beeke, Derek W. H. Thomas, and Mark Jones. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
He is the author of several books (which you can read about here) and one of his most recent books is God in Our Midst: The Tabernacle and Our Relationship with God.
In the recent issue of Credo Magazine, ” The Prince of Puritans: John Owen,” Hyde contributed an article called, “Christ’s Gift to the Church: Prayer – John Owen on Public Prayer.” Here is the start of the article:
Despite the burgeoning field of John Owen studies since the reprinting of his Works by The Banner of Truth Trust in 1965, many aspects of John Owen’s thought remain unstudied and overlooked. While substantial ink has been spilled in secondary works concerning his covenant theology, doctrines of the Trinity, Christ, the Christian life, and the Lord’s Supper, as well as his theological method, there is only scant material devoted to his liturgical theology. This lack of scholarship on Owen’s liturgical theology is surprising given the prominence of it in his Works.
When we dig deep into Owen’s writings what we discover is that Owen’s liturgical theology is a multi-faceted and theologically rich understanding of New Covenant worship being a heavenly phenomenon. Let’s look at just one aspect of Owen’s complex liturgical theology, namely, that public prayer is the gift of the Holy Spirit from the ascended Christ.
The gift of the Spirit for prayer
Owen contrasted the ordinances of worship under the Old Covenant, which were many and burdensome, with those ordinances instituted under Christ in the New Covenant. These ordinances that the Lord instituted for his worship were few: “preaching of the word, administration of the sacraments, and the exercise of discipline,” and all were to be administered “with prayer and thanksgiving.” Further, in administering these ordinances the ministers of the New Covenant would be gifted by the Holy Spirit to bring edification to his people and glory to God.
Concerning the ordinance of prayer in particular, he wrote A Discourse of the Work of the Holy Spirit in Prayer to demonstrate that there is a particular gift of the Holy Spirit in the life of believers and especially ministers to execute their calling to pray according to the mind and will of God. This was of central importance to Owen in the context of the liturgical struggles in the latter half of the seventeenth-century: “Hence I know not any difference about religious things that is managed with greater animosities in the minds of men and worse consequents than this which is about the work of the Spirit of God in prayer; which, indeed, is the hinge on which all other differences about divine worship do turn and depend.”
Owen turned to passages like Zechariah 12:10, Galatians 4:6, Romans 8:26, and Ephesians 6:18 as sedes doctrinae to establish this gift of the Holy Spirit in prayer. Of this promise he said, “It cannot be denied but that the work and actings of the Spirit of grace in and towards believers with respect unto the duty of prayer are more frequently and expressly asserted in Scripture than his operations with respect unto any other particular grace or duty whatever.” …
Read the rest of this article today!
Church history matters. We are not the first generation to read the Bible. So looking to the help of those who have come before us is incredibly valuable. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Many godly individuals have preceded us and more often than not their insights into God’s Word tend to be far more valuable than what you will find on the best seller rack of a Christian bookstore. By looking to those giants of the faith in the history of the church, not only do we avoid falling prey to the heresies of the past, but we also stand firmly on the shoulders of others so that we persevere in sound doctrine (Titus 2:1).
One set of broad shoulders belongs to the seventeenth-century Puritan John Owen. It is hard to exaggerate the importance and influence of Owen’s life and writings. His books were and still are some of the best works in theology that we have, standing alongside those of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and many others. The Christian today will benefit in countless ways from works like On Communion with God, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, On the Mortification of Sin, and Of Indwelling Sin in Believers.
What is so remarkable about Owen, however, is not merely the robust, biblical theology nature of his writings, but his insistence that theology affects the Christian life. In other words, Owen refused to separate head and heart. Doctrine must lead to doxology every time, otherwise we have not truly understood its purpose. Therefore, Owen is the Doctor who looks into the human soul in order to diagnose our spiritual disease and offer us a cure in Jesus Christ. If read carefully, it is hard not to finish a book by Owen without feeling a desire to know God more.
The upcoming year, 2016, will be the four hundredth anniversary of Owen’s birth. So what better timing for an issue of Credo Magazine that aims to introduce some of Owen’s theology and writings. But as much as we love you reading Credo Magazine, this issue would be a failure if you did not study and read this Prince of Puritans for yourself.
Contributors include: J. V. Fesko, Ryan M. McGraw, Geoff Thomas, Daniel R. Hyde, Joel Beeke, Leonardo De Chirico, Kelly M. Kapic, Michael Haykin, and many others.
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