Justification By Faith Alone: The Perspectives Of William Kiffen And John Owen -- By: Shawn D. Wright

Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 20:4 (Winter 2016)
Article: Justification By Faith Alone: The Perspectives Of William Kiffen And John Owen
Author: Shawn D. Wright


Justification By Faith Alone: The Perspectives Of William Kiffen And John Owen

Shawn D. Wright

Shawn D. Wright is the Associate Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also earned his PhD in Church History. Dr. Wright is the author of numerous articles and of Theodore Beza: The Man and the Myth (Christian Focus, 2015). In addition to his responsibilities at Southern Seminary, he is also the Pastor of Leadership Development at Clifton Baptist Church, Louisville, KY.

Introduction

All theology is historical theology. That is to say, all human attempts to make sense of God and his revelation of himself and his ways in Scripture are done, as one of my teachers put it, by particular people who lived in particular times and who thought in particular ways. That simple (but not simplistic) observation opens up vistas as we study various aspects of the church’s past. It allows us to see how brothers and sisters in the past struggled both to make sense of the Bible and also to apply it in their contexts. As we observe them doing this—seeing both their victories and their defeats—we can better learn what it means to be faithful to the Lord in our day.

On the eve of the 500th celebration of the start of the Protestant Reformation, it is very appropriate that we think together about the great bedrock of the Protestant faith—the doctrine of justification by faith alone—sola fide. Sinners are declared to be in a right standing before God, the holy Judge, not on the basis of anything they have done or ever would accomplish. They have nothing good to offer God in themselves. Everything good had to be done

for us extra nos (to use one of Martin Luther’s favorite expressions), outside of us. What we are talking about in this doctrine is memorably defined by the Westminster Shorter Catechism in this theologically-packed manner: “Justification is an act of God’s free grace, by which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.” William Kiffen and John Owen both agreed with this statement.

Both of these men were giants in their own day, non-Conformists who lived long lives—Kiffen was born in 1616 and died in 1701; Owen also was born in 1616 and passed away in 1683. They both provided ecclesiological and theological acumen leadership to the non-establishment movements in England during the tumultuous era of the middle and second half of the seventeenth century. This was the period of the English Civil War, parliament’s rule, the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell and hi...

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